So we know that the Michael Brown/Darren Wilson grand jury made its decision by midday; yet the verdict wasn’t announced till well after dark, a time when crowd control is more difficult, after hours of breathless media yammering about “How bad will the riots be?” and ratcheting emotions on both sides, building and building the tension till something HAD to snap.
Folks were teased with the news that there’ll be a press conference about the verdict at 7:00 ET. Then it’s not giving the verdict; it’s the governor coming out to blather on about how tense the whole situation is and everybody better be peaceful or else we’ll roll on you will all this firepower we’ve got waiting.
More time passes; more frustrated anticipation (though we all knew in our hearts what it was going to be, didn’t we?) ramps up and up.
Then, finally, the prosecutor comes out with his coldly dismissive speech, beginning with an attack on the media before launching into his defense of letting Wilson walk. Out on the streets, the vast militarized brigades of law enforcement roll into position, tear gas and armored vehicles and such straining at the leash. And predictably, Ferguson blows sky-high.
Wow! Tear gas clouds and running menacing figures and burning buildings and cars! Breathless media reports from the front lines! It’s true! They ARE all thugs! Just look at Those People running wild! Animals! That kid got just what he deserved!
Does anyone else wonder just why the announcement was handled so badly? Just whose interests are served by the propaganda value of the images out of Ferguson last night?
Or am I just being paranoid? I report; you decide.
CNN, Fox and so forth in real time I have come away from the news again with the feeling that it was all creepily synthetic. The official statement, the timing, the crews filming looting, shop-by-shop; even the eyewitness and local interviews seemed contrived and artificial. Not to mention the typically inquiring yet incurious anchors.
I have been having this sensation watching the news a lot lately; like the black cat in the Matrix. Genuinely creepy; like everything is staged or enacted.
Watching the news, I also get the creepy “it’s all staged and rote” vibe. I try to tell myself that it’s because I’m old enough (65) to have seen these types of stories over and over again, and that the media find it easiest to follow certain templates they’re all familiar with, trimming the truth to fit the accepted narrative.
But sometimes, as with this story, and as with the raging Ebola/ISIS frenzy in the run-up to the elections, it’s hard not to suspect an ulterior propagandistic hand on the tiller, thumb on the scales.
It’s the pattern, one you and I have seen many times, that is giving you that deja vue type vibe. There’s no director but all the actors know their roles when “action” happens. With 24/7 cable news, cell phone videos, it looks as if production values have gone up and there’s more material to fill news shows. Unfortunately, there’s more but it’s mostly of low or no quality.
Not that we aren’t subjected to plenty of propaganda and there are hands on tillers and thumbs on scales. All news is modified.
We should be careful in considering the possibility of managed and staged news events. ISIS video beheadings are easy to craft (and it was surprising to me how few people instantly perceived the staging). That’s the path the Sandy Hook Massacre “truthers” went down because they detected a pattern. (There was a pattern but merely a simple and predictable response pattern and not a large nefarious criminal plot.)
Good points, and well worth keeping in mind.
I tend not to buy into conspiracy theories; I stay away from topics like who really shot JFK, and is the CIA really running a Deep State shadow government, and so on. The PermaGov ranters on the left have as little attraction for me as the crazies on the right freaking out about socialist cabals destroying America.
And yet… and yet… I can’t shake a feeling of immense and mostly hidden powers running the show and writing its scripts, indifferent to the needs and desires of ordinary schmucks like me. Partly, no doubt, it’s the pattern, as you say, the deja vu all over again; partly perhaps it’s my readings in history reinforcing the sense of large forces inexorably at work, now and ever shall be, world without end (or driving us to its ending). Perhaps I give too little credit to the enduring propensity of human stupidity, shortsightedness, greed, incompetence, fear, and spitefulness to drive events in predictably disastrous directions.
This:
Combined with those in power counting on the above to initiate all variety of wars that will result in more profit and/or power for them.
I agree with you; it is the subtle staging of conversations and settings; contrived backgrounds and media-savvy spokespeople at every turn. I’m not suggesting it is conspiratorial so much as a converging incentives on the part of all concerned. Even the Kurdish militias have learned to work the media and provide ‘good television’ along with their own spin.
It may also be that the presence of the media, who seem to travel in small circuses, bends reality a little out of shape wherever they are; it’s almost like no authentic events ever occur in their vicinity. The news and reality TV are a blur.
Jean Baudrillard was right all those years ago; The Gulf War Did Not Take Place:
Smarty-pants French postmodernists.
That quote just gave me a huge flashback to what that “war” was like in real time. How most people went to OMG! the 4th largest army in the world is going to come and get us. The babies trashed out of incubators. Saddam’s army was massed on the KSA border. Then poof! It was over. Time for GHWB’s freaking fake military parades. A grand time and then most people sobered up and tossed GHWB out of the WH.
Ah, yes, the media as a gravity well, bending space/time around them wherever they go. Perhaps, even, vagabond black holes. Works for me!
A simple solution:
Don’t watch the news.
Duh.
I have been advocating a general newstrike for a number of years. A mediastrike and culturestrike as well. Why? Because it is almost all false…all contrived to do one thing and one thing only, to disinform/misinform the population by the use of addictive trancemedia. This addiction makes the heroin problem look like spilt milk. At least heroin users know that they are in trouble. The rest of us? Agnosia in action. The state of not knowing that you don’t know something. Step away from the media with your brains in the air and wake the fuck up. I am not sloganeering here, I am simply stating a fact. WTFU.
AG
There is a sense in which I agree with this. If one is not going to unplug the TV for any other reason, a good case could be made for at least doing so when it comes to what passes for “news” programming and “news” channels. What is presented is sensationalized and one-sided. One example: if one were to rely exclusively on televised news to find out what crime is like, one would be led to think that we are far more at risk for being victims of violent crimes than ever before. The amount of news coverage of criminal violence has increased several hundred fold while actual violent crime rates have been steadily trending downward over the past two decades. Another case in point: news media regularly emphasize real or imagined wrong-doing of protest movement participants (this happened a lot with Occupy and is happening with the protests in Ferguson and in solidarity with Ferguson) while ignoring all those who have not engaged in anything other than peaceful protest – typically the vast, vast majority. Fed a diet of that crap, folks end up paranoid – maybe not in a clinical sense, but paranoid nonetheless, and that paranoia plays directly into the hands of those forces that stand most to profit by efforts to further oppress us.
2001 Summer of the Shark
Dare we mention that the MSM feeding frenzy wrt Chandra Levy got that on wrong as well?
Meanwhile GWB was hanging out at his “ranch” not even doing the job of “keeping America safe” that he appropriated as he primary function.
But, just personally, this “Wake up” sloganeering seen increasingly from libertarians is the creepiest thing of all.
I am assuming you realise that “Deutshland Erwache” (Germany awakened) was a dominant theme establishing the nascent NSDAP ‘brand’ in German popular culture in the 1930s? Given the convergence of corporate power and anarchy necessary to fulfil libertarian ideological aspirations and the complete disdain for the welfare of the non-dominant cohorts which libertarianism demands I think this is a tragically unfortunate choice.
interesting
So…you think Rand Paul is the new Hitler?
Go back to sleep.
But before you do, read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Hitler was sending goon squads in to trash newspapers and assassinate opposition journalists years before he became Chancellor.
WTFU.
Please.
AG
This ain’t about Rand Paul; I think you will find him a disappointment; another PermaGov practitioner.
It’s about libertarianism seeming nothing more than a newfangled branding of corporatist oligarchy and undemocratic leadership where, as I said, the welfare of the non-dominant cohort is disdained; in fact mocked.
Perhaps unlike many of your interlocutors I’ve actually read Ayn Rand’s major works and it is an unedifying experience. It is merely institutionalised selfishness and excuses, nay demands, behaviours we wouldn’t tolerate among our own kids. Socialists have Marx and capitalists have Smith, Mills and Keynes; libertarians are stuck with a sullen White Russian émigré who wrote uneven young-adult fantasy fiction. It shows. I agree with your assertion that we are being given a Hobson’s choice between the two major parties and that the fix is in as often as not. But libertarianism seems to me an even bigger fraud.
Here’s a challenge if you like; post a diary describing what you think libertarian governance might actually look like and I will happily comment in it; I’m guessing it falls somewhere in the vicinity of the fascism of The Republic and Atlas Shrugged if not Mein Kampf.
Except other young-adult fantasy fiction has better fantasy and better writing. I’ve blocked out everything including the title of whichever Rand book I read as a young adult except for its turgid prose. Worst book I’ve ever read.
How that crap has mesmerized young adult males is a mystery to me. They’d be better off reading Playboy and jacking off to the pictures. Hefner may not ever have been cool except in comparison to Greenspan. If your political/”philosophical” touchstone is Ayn Rand, you’re going to grow up to be like Greenspan and Paul and not Bruce Springsteen.
Like the Tea Party and the Constitution I think the actual books are merely unread props; that they are thick books implies a cogency, consistency and erudition which they never provided. See Hubbard, L Ron.
Reminds me of a psych professor I once had who pointed out that the best place to find old Freud publications that had never been opened (leaves uncut) was in the personal libraries of Freudian psychologists.
“Atlas Shrugged” was around when I was in High School. No one understood it. The motivations were too weird. What we (males anyway) liked was “Brave New World”. We couldn’t understand why it was called a dystopia. Free drugs and plenty of sex, sounded like utopia to us. The savage was just a putz and a kill joy.
I agree about Ayn Rand’s books. They are bad word cartoons and thus are basically unreadable for any adult who has had a taste of real writing. I am not at all convinced that the burgeoning movement in the United States currently being branded as “Libertarianism” has much to do with Ayn Rand any more than say the “progressivism” of the ’50s and ’60s had to do with a comparably bad writer, Jack Kerouac.
You used the “wake up” idea in direct connection with what went down in Germany between the WorldWars. That is ludicrous, and I pointed it out. Deal wid it.
As far as whatever is being branded as “Libertarianism” being a fraud…I’m sorry, the jury is still out on that verdict. We shall see soon enough. I do not use that word to describe what I believe should happen, myself.
You write:
Like I said, I do not use that word very often, and usually when I do use it my aim is to point out how large and complicated sets of ideas do not reside very well inside of a given branding. I will tell you what I think a Rand Paul presidency should look like, though. Not that I believe it will because:
1- I believe that the PermaGov will not allow it to happen. The media will take care of him, and if they don’t? If they don’t there are historically established…other ways. Bet on it.
and
2-It it does happen Mr. Paul will have had to make so many back room promises and/or will face such a well united UniParty Congress that he will be essentially hogtied from the get-go.
What should happen during the next president’s term of office no matter who it is wearing the brand “President?”?
1-Most importantly, the U.S. should totally end its role as world policeman for the European races. It should withdraw all of its troops to within its own borders and construct a totally defensive military. Along with the threat of its massive weaponry and global reach, securing the borders is all that would be needed to guarantee its citizens safety.
2-A massive crackdown on economic criminality…complete with well-publicized trials and punishments…should be instituted. That crackdown should include politicians in its scope no matter at what level they may reside.
3-Because the withdrawal of troops from foreign soil would essentially signal the end of our economic imperialism-based cheap oil system, a functional native energy system would need to be constructed. During the time that such a system was be being built, the U.S. would have to tighten its belt in the same way that it did during W.W. II. Rationing, etc. So it goes. It would be tough, but this must be done to counteract the bad decisions of the ’40 and ’50s regarding making cheap oil our primary means of commercial energy. Almost all of the rest of the failed foreign policy shit to which we have been subjected stems from that one error.
4-The educational system of this country must be totally revised to give every child a real, world-class education regardless of economic position. That would end racism in two generations. We hear people talking about “ecology” all of the time, but never about the most important ecological system of all on this little planet…human ecology. The ecological disaster that we face in the near future isn’t due to problems that the earth has created, it is due to the problems that human beings have created. Educate all human beings as well as is possible for the level of their individual talents and maybe…just maybe…we might survive long enough to change what is happening to life on this planet. If not? Well, it”s been an…interesting…ride.
Libertarianism?
Just another brand.
It means nothing.
Only actions mean something.
“Libertarianism?”
Just more advertising to fool the rubes.
Like dat.
Bet on it.
AG
Firstly, thanks for taking the time and effort for such a comprehensive response. My first impression is that I have more respect for your platform than Senator Paul’s; just my opinion but I think your aspirations are more noble than your champion’s.
As for policy; can’t say I disagree with you much, in theory, except for your first assertion regarding US military presence worldwide; I still cling to the thesis of Mahan’s The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 regarding the role of the US Navy and all that implies, including global treaties and alliances. It is hard to imagine an isolationist economy so it seems to me that an engaged diplomacy naturally follows.
But we seem to be at cross-purposes regarding ideology. While noting your reluctance to use the libertarian branding I am wondering at, “a massive crackdown on economic criminality.” Isn’t part of the libertarian platform the almost complete deregulation of economic activity, to decriminalise what is already the de facto plundering of the middle class by the ‘heroic beings’ whom are already our elites? This is my major beef with the ideology, such as it is.
If you are wondering why you get so much lip sometimes it is probably because in the real world many ‘libertarians’ present with oligarchic entitlement, racial prejudice and nihilistic contempt of the commonwealth and the community. My challenge was largely inspired by the notion that libertarianism is an ideology that thrives only in opposition and lacks utterly a blueprint for governance.
Your prescriptions however seem laudable if perhaps unrealistic but outside of the basic forms of isolation and economic independence I have to agree with you; I am not seeing what I expected. How is it that you have chosen Rand Paul as your standard-bearer for this agenda? I just don’t get it.
Sigh…
Rand Paul is not only not “my champion;” neither am I his. He is simply the only American politician in any real position of national prominence who is even talking about real change that bumps up anywhere near close to what I believe should happen.
You write:
Hard for you; easy for me. So it goes.
I believe that this nation could sustain itself entirely on what lies between its various borders. Would the transition from world thief to self-supporting nation be difficult? Sure it would. But it could be done given rational use of the riches that the country has amassed in its short history, especially if its native manpower was harnessed effectively.
Did you know this?
I find that fact shocking, and I am far from an innocent in the racial wars. What a waste of good workers!!! Had these men and women been been fairly and effectively socialized and educated instead of being thrown on the trash heap that is American ghetto education, if they had seen any way that they could make it on the inside of the culture instead of as outlaws, how much good work could they have done? How much money and manpower would have been saved if most of them had not not caught up in the criminal so-called “justice” system of this wasteful, shamefully racist country before they reached about 14 years of age?
You write:
Instead of swallowing whole the “Libertarianism = Ayn Rand” bullshit that the governmental media complex is using to non-person Ron and Rand Paul, go instead to what they are and have been saying. I have seen no references to “heroic beings” from either of them, and calling for a total, public audit of the massive slush fund that said beings call the Federal Reserve looks to me to be the antithesis of that belief of yours.
Or, of course…if they want that kind of action, then they cannot possibly be “Libertarians” as you define the term. I’m OK with either result.
You also write:
Again…please show me in their writings and speeches where either of the Pauls have championed “oligarchic entitlement, racial prejudice and nihilistic contempt of the commonwealth and the community.”
And:
I repat:
“Rand Paul is not only not ‘my champion;’ neither am I his. He is simply the only American politician in any real position of national prominence who is even talking about real change that bumps up anywhere near close to what I believe should happen.”
Show me someone in a position to win the next presidential nomination from either party who is speaking out about things that I wrote in my previos reply and I will take a good,, hard look at them.
So far…Rand Paul stands alone.
So that goes as well.
AG
It did have the ramp up to the SuperBowl quality about it which made it creepy.
OTOH — the answer may just be more evidence that police authorities in MO are incompetent. They may have figured that an evening announcement would reduce the potential level of violence. The Rodney King verdict was announced in the afternoon and the riots went on for days. The fires made breathing difficult throughout the city and the curfew impacted everybody.
Some of us loathe violence — that perpetrated by cops like Wilson and the riots that materialize too often as a response. Don’t see a need to excuse either.
Good that you wrote this diary. Yesterday WBAI/ Pacifica interviewed a Rabbi Susan Taube, one of the clergy present at Ferguson. She remarked on the 8pm release of Grand Jury result, a time when the young ppl would be out on the street, just stirred things up more, (my phrasing) vs releasing it when the young ppl weren’t out on the street. I didn’t realize it was already in the daytime – wow!
I’m pretty sure it was on Letters and Politics Nov 25
link http://wbai.org/server-archive.html
they ran interviews all day, heard some while driving
Victor (c u n d gulag) over at No More Mister Nice Blog has posited that the prosecutor picked 8:00 p.m. his time for maximum effect in generating publicity for future use in striking for higher office:
Second comment on http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2014/11/a-failure-of-leadership-or-just.html#links (mine is the first, the genesis for this diary).
your comment and Victor’s together, very interesting, cover it imo. Ppl where I was at the time tuned in to see what was happening, but we saw his speech carried in full with chryons and insets of the tear gassing. I;d say
it’s not necessarily that he’s running for any office, though he may be, but he/ they believe[s] the populace is “violent” and proceed[s] in a way to “show” that, also reinforcing the “accuracy” of Wilson’s perception of Brown
Also note that the news coverage has turned from “young unarmed black man shot dead” to “officer acted in self-defense” and “black thugs riot, pillage, burn”. Mostly the latter.
And isn’t that so much more acceptable a message for the uneasy white masses to hear?
How ya gonna keep the white masses perpetually uneasy without constant and everyday reminders of scary things and scary non-white people here, there, and everywhere?
Commies everywhere was good for a few decades. Commie Russians, Chinese, N. Koreans, Cubans, Vietnamese, etc. And just as that fear was waning, the scary Muslims appeared on the scene. Losing a bit of its punch, time to synthesize the two: Russia, Iran, Syria.
ISIS and Ebola are but serendipitous gifts to the masters of government/corporate propaganda. All such scary things are set aside at the end of each year to make way for the annual spending propaganda lollapalooza, aka Christmas.
Higher office? He should be in prison!
“I report, you decide” very nice
Heh. Trying to phrase an appropriate finish and that leapt to mind as le mot juste.
Posted these musings over at The Motley Moose, and JanF had further WTF why? points to make:
She also has a collection of revealing quotes from people on the ground who saw firsthand the damage done by the execrable timing. Well worth reading.
http://www.motleymoose.com/showComment.do?commentId=143931
OTOH — later, when it’s cold and dark, meant fewer people on the streets. Fewer and smaller crowds that could get out of control. 53 people died and >2,000 were injured in the Rodney King riots. Ferguson/St. Louis is smaller than LA; so, it was highly unlikely that the unrest would have led to numbers like those in LA. Perhaps the major credit for the limited numbers of Ferguson/St Louis injuries (there is one reported homicide) goes to the community. And the preparation by the authorities was overkill. But all we’ll ever know is that there were few injuries.
the Rabbi pointed out that more young people were on the street at 8; earlier they would have been in school or at work. In the first part of her interview she mentioned that the young people were the activists in the issue (and how she respects them for that – my phrasing)
Guess schools close later in MO than they do in CA. Three to six is when most kids in CA are out “on the streets.”
Yes, 8:00 pm would be more convenient for the working population to protest. But they are also the most likely to engage in peaceful protest and not stay long as they have jobs to get to in the morning.
I guess you know more about it than that Rabbi who’s been there the entire time
My dear, don’t worry about your own neuroses. I’m sure it’s completely obvious to any thinking person that you’re not supposed to wonder about anything – just give vent to your emotions publicly so we can all watch and tut-tut. And, especially if you’re black or female, be quiet and submit graciously. Just like Mike was trying to do when he encountered a danger.
I decided long ago that nothing ever changes much. Evolution is an excrutiatingly long process.
And cultural changes move at a glacial pace. Although of late, glaciers seem to be moving rather rapidly with some nearing disappearance.
I guess y’all have seen this about witness #40. wow! amateurish, also, intertubes-aware. not.
forgot link, here it is
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2014/11/25/witness-40/
Good grief.
turns out, one commenter explains, #40 is mentally ill and can’t differentiate what happened to her and what she read on the internet (maybe that’s NOT mental illness). then why is her testimony in there?
To differentiate between reality and what one reads on the internet seems to be an increasingly common affliction these days.
hadn’t thought about this side of it before- why did it take so long, run like a secret trial, rather than the “run up” to a trial?
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/11/26/1347774/-My-82-Year-Old-Mostly-White-Parents-Respond-To-Fer
guson
guess others have discussed this?