The first rule for reading propaganda is to assume that whatever the propagandist says is the opposite of reality. So if Ronald Reagan pontificates that America is a beacon of freedom for the world, what he really means is that he is selling arms to Iran’s Mullahs and Saddam Hussein, and is training the future leaders of Al Qaida in Afghanistan. Likewise, when controversial Tea Partier Christine O’Donnell says in the above ad that she is not a witch, she is actually practicing black magic. Not to denigrate the honorable profession of witchcraft, but we have to deal with the phrase on her terms, which means the cartoony, TV babe version that completely misrepresents the arts, turning it into a tool of manipulation and control of the pettiest kind. What O’Donnell may not be aware of is the prime directive of the arts: what goes around comes around. Be careful of the kinds of spells you cast.

I don’t know O’Donnell, but judging from the various video clips that have surfaced from her past, she strikes me as a true believer that will dabble in just about anything, the kind of turncoat cultist that can easily switch from Krishna to Christianity. Don’t be alarmed if at some point she calls herself a Marxist. Unfortunately, it would be too simple to dismiss this campaign as the kind of conjuring practiced by shopping mall goths. There is too much big business at stake.

What inspires today’s blog screed is the slick salvage job the Republicans are making to shore up their million dollar electoral investment, one that will pay big time dividends to the uber-rich if the Republicans re-take control of the Senate (and can further delay climate change action). Is rehabilitating a religious fanatic as simple as donning some pearls and conservative black business suite while delivering an anti-corruption pitch layered with a bit of Holiday Inn lounge music? What about declaring with the best coached smile and earnestness money can buy that, “I’m nothing you heard, I’m you”? Here she deploys the Charlie Brown theory of cartoon psychology in which you draw something with as little detail as possible so as to make it easier for people to project their own fantasies.

I don’t know anyone in Delaware, so I honestly don’t know how on target O’Donnell is when she declares, “I am you.” If this is the case, maybe this is more the desperate cry of someone who will do and say anything to be popular. That is certainly the case with most Republican politics.

Girolamo Savonarola: Beck’s Old World counterpart (Image source: Wikicommons)

Without intending to do so, this is my belated response to the 9/11 anniversary. Even though what follows doesn’t address the event explicitly, no doubt it is the background of the current rise in rightwing fanaticism. Anyhow…

Alternet has a great thought piece about the Glenn Beck phenomena. In particular the author does an excellent job of comparing Beck’s popularity with the shenanigans of the film Network‘s Howard Beale (based on Beck’s own claim that his role model is indeed Beale). Granted, I’m far more sympathetic to Beale’s character than I am with Beck. But the parallels between Network‘s uncanny prediction of the future of news (it was made in 1976), in particular its prescient vision of what would become Fox News, makes the comparison necessary and appropriate. It has certainly become on odd time when the fake news is real (Daily Show, Colbert Report) and the real news is fake (Fox and other cable news).

Admittedly, it has been hard for me to grasp how a completely nonsensical character like Beck could come across to his fans as a serious journalist. In a way, he’s a perfect empty signifier for television. He can use the professorial signs of serious research through his deployment of a blackboard and sophisticated-looking diagrams, and he commands all the tricks that TV offers as a medium of emotional engagement. Whereas in the past you’d find such rants in conspiracy laden books, like Gary Allen’s None Dare Call It Conspiracy, or on radio (which remains a popular medium for right wing anger), TV is a “cool” medium (to put it in McLuhan’s terms) that engages more senses and therefor has a far more powerful effect. What Fox is doing is mainstreaming John Birch Society antics for its own cynical business interests, but might find itself in trouble when their clown-lead movement takes over government and starts outlawing the kind of liberal lifestyle enjoyed by the rich New Yorkers who staff and operate conservative corporate media. For a hint of what this kind of world might look like, I suggest reading Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.

All this points to something that I have found troubling. How is it that satirical depictions of corporate lunacy (such as Network) become embraced and co-opted by the right? I first noticed this when the brilliant parody of warmongering wingnuts in Team America was celebrated by so-called patriots. The film’s theme song, “Team America Fuck Yeah,” became a popular anthem for the right. Any sane being who watches this film must know that it is an ugly mirror of all the untruths and idiocy associated with fanatical patriotism. But then the reality sinks in that there is a psychological mechanism that makes it impossible for crazy people to see their craziness. I don’t want to patronize and argue that these people are stupid. But insane? Perhaps. Even rational and well-educated people can get caught-up in a wave or irrationality (such as Germans in the Nazi era) when a kind of groupthink charges the larger social field. Under such conditions, people seem to be enraptured as if under a kind of spell. Indeed, anthropologists have noted that when people participate in group rituals their normal behavior can be altered. Leftists can succumb to the same kind of behavioral modification. I have seen it in action during riots. Not fun.

The Beck scenario highlights a few trends. For one, Beck and his appeal will not go away in the near future (nor will his ilk like Sara Palin (unfortunately not related to Monty Python’s Michael Palin)). As long as it makes money and serves the interests of far right business interests, it will be amplified and well-funded.

Secondly, rational facts will not change this dynamic. We have to consider that we are dealing with people who are medieval in worldview, but have the tools of the Renaissance at their disposal. This is a kind of contradiction that usually does not end well. Consider the cultural wars between the Florentine intellectuals, artists and cosmologists (i.e. the Bohemians of the Old World) and the Vatican. While the Pope and his inner circle was as hedonistic as the neo-Platonists at their employ (Michelangelo wasn’t the only homosexual to rome the halls of the Vatican), the Church’s lower ranking minions were the shock troops to keep the power matrix intact. In particular there was the arch enemy of Florence’s Medaci family, fanatical monk Girolamo Savonarola, whose mad rants and book burnings (“Bonfire of the Vanities”) fired up enough unrest to keep the liberal values of the Renaissance in check (and eventually squashed by the Counter Reformation). Eventually the tables were turned and Savonarola was tortured and burned at the stake. Network‘s Beale ended just as badly when his ratings and public appeal dropped, and was gunned down in a staged assassination by the network bosses. I don’t predict either outcome for Beck or Palin (nor do I wish it upon them), but as a Tai Chi master pointed out, life is a roller coaster: what goes up, goes down. Simple analogy, I know, but it’s good to remember. Even Hitler’s lunacy wasn’t sustainable, but he was around long enough to cause a lot of damage and heartache.

So, then, the $10 million question becomes, What to do about it?

I’m reminded of an anecdote from the oral history of the Mexica concerning the time of Cortez’ colonial conquest of Mexico. As the story goes, Moctezuma sent his priests to confront Cortez and his growing indigenous allies who were sick of Aztec rule and were willing to help rid their oppressors. Moctezuma’s priests tried their usual tricks, including dazzling people in a kind of magic ritual that would scare them into submission. But this time it didn’t work. In the words of Moctezuma’s enemies,

You cannot deceive us; you cannot make fools of us.

You cannot frighten us; you cannot blind our eyes.

You cannot stare us down; we will not look away.

You cannot bewitch our eyes and turn them side.

You cannot dim our eyes or make them swoon.

You cannot fill them with dust or shut them with slime.

(From The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico, p. 52)

Why did the priests’ magic fail? Because the context changed. I don’t mean to sympathize with Cortez in this particular story, but only use it to illustrate how the social field can be altered through a kind of dis-illusioning. As Cesar Chavez said,

“Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore. We have seen the future, and the future is ours.”

Consider the fall of the Soviet Empire and Eastern Europe. It’s not that suddenly everyone became a revolutionary (or reformer as the case may be), but that the control mechanism was altered, enabling people to see new possibilities. Or put differently, suddenly they understood an alternative mode of existence.

What this tells me is that social change comes about not only because of information inputs, but also as a result of changing contexts. No doubt information is helpful, but it will not be useful when a mentality is incapable of utilizing it for its own good. The experience of Orson Well’s War of the Worlds broadcast on Halloween, 1938 makes this point. Recall that Wells, perhaps an early postmodernist who understood mass media as a useful artistic medium, repurposed HG Well’s chilling tale of alien invasion as a radio newscast. Some in the Northeast took the broadcast to be real and panicked. Later sociologists researched to study why people reacted in such a way. What they found was that in general those who believed the hoax tended to be very religious, whereas those who doubted it tended to be educated. In other words, those who weren’t fooled were critical thinkers. They knew how to find a phone and to call their neighbors to see if this event depicted on the radio was actually taking place.

To this end, I believe education is the real antidote to right wing fanaticism. Of course, we then need to consider what kind of education. No doubt, many on the right are products of contemporary American education, which has been thoroughly redesigned by the neoliberals, the very same kinds of people bankrolling the likes of Beck and Palin. As I discuss more thoroughly in my book, Mediacology, No Child Left Behind is a conspiracy to destroy creative and independent thinking in schools. Unfortunately, I think Obama is doing no better, and is furthering the goals of corporate interests who want to shape education so that it churns out technocrats who are good at implementing the worse aspects of the global information society. Unfortunately, I have little faith that my particular solution to the education problem–media literacy–will succeed in the public school environment, because its goals are contrary to the testable rubrics promoted by so-called education reform.

Nonetheless, It is my hope that critical thinking skills taught through media literacy will become more widespread. Indeed, as the good work of media educators and activists has shown, media literacy has become a formidable movement. But it has done so mostly in unofficial settings, such as in after school programs and nonprofit-funded arts programs. This doesn’t bother me so much because working inside much of the school system is a nightmare (I’m not using hyperbole here–I’ve been inside some of the US’ worse schools, and no child should ever be placed in such environments, let alone be tolerated as acceptable by the adults who run them). The question remains how to fund and support these semi-formal networks of alternative education. Certainly the economy and budget cuts aren’t helping the non-profit sector either (again, not to be conspiracy minded, but in A Brief History of Neoliberalism David Harvey reminds us that the financial sector periodically engineers crashes to re-appropriate wealth. He shows how depressions and recessions have historically enabled privatization and transfer of middle class resources to the rich).

I admit that I don’t have the answer for how to help spread media literacy, in particular in the communities where fear is more amplified and “foreign” ideas are rejected. I’m fairly certain that underlying most fear at the moment is a loss of power and control that historically belonged to whites. The world is getting darker (not in the ominous sense), and American power is on the wane. The crazy white people who are grasping and clinging to myths of the past will ironically exacerbate all the trends they rail against, in particular if they insist on military solutions and Christian militancy as their balm of choice. For things to shift into a new dynamic, no doubt the current cultural environment will have to change, and one place to start is to work towards a more democratic and critical media that will not elevate the claims of the insane Qu’ran-burners into national stardom. We need to isolate these orchestrated hysterias within their larger project of fear-mongering by the far right, and to somehow counter it with the power of love and creativity.

The Supreme Court has spoken. Now let corporations have the last word!

Learn more at Murry Hill Inc.

I quoted a recent George Lakoff article on environmental framing, an essay that has cause a bit of a debate about the relationship between cognition, politics and the environment. Adrian Ivakhiv has written a quite extensive and well documented critique of Lakoff’s argument (snip below). I encourage you to read the whole thing and follow all the links. I also encourage you to go the NYTimes article that sparked the discussion.

One more thing, Dr. Robert J. Brulle, who is subjected to Lakoff’s critique, has a great Website full of articles about environment and social change. You can check them out here.

Lakoff’s environmental frames vs. Connolly’s resonance machines (immanence):

In translating science for a popular audience, especially in a political context, one of course has to simplify. But I find Lakoff’s simplifications here a bit jarring. They remind me of those Cartesian diagrams of human mental circuitry by which a physical stimulus leads to a neurochemical response leads to a physical reaction (see illustration above), with no place for culture or for a feeling human agent in the middle of it. Lakoff reduces all of our understanding to words (“all of our language” works this way) activating distinct neural circuits called “frames,” which are “organized in terms of values,” with the latter in turn “determin[ing] our sense of identity.” It’s not clear where these “values” come from, or if values and identity have their own separate neural circuits or, if not, what exactly they are. According to Lakoff, “two competing value-based systems of frames,” and therefore two identities, are available “in our politics”: a conservative one and a progressive one. (See his Moral Politics for more on these.)

While I think the premise of this article is a little over-hyped, I think it’s interesting that people are comparing Woodstock with the inauguration.

Inauguration is a ‘generational touchstone’:

(01-19) 17:18 PST — America’s twentysomething Millennials have driven, hitchhiked, walked, biked and bused their way to Washington in hordes this week to witness the must-see, must-be-there event of their lives – the swearing-in of Barack Obama.

Many of their Baby Boomer parents can relate: They remember this thing called Woodstock.

A rock concert on a farm in upstate New York – where Jimi Hendrix’s guitar wailed the “The Star-Spangled Banner” during three days of rock ‘n’ roll, sex and drugs – doesn’t approach the weight of the inauguration of the first African American president.

But there are surprising similarities, experts say. Just as Woodstock was for their parents, Obama’s moment assuming the presidency represents a generational touchstone event – one that will define Millennials’ lives, their age and their experience and become the event they will tell their kids and grandkids about.

And if history is a guide, a lot of folks who aren’t there today will claim they were. Woodstock attracted a relatively small 400,000, and somehow it seems millions remember being on hand.

I like to say when things get weird, the weird go pro. I’m not talking Obama here. What I’m referring to is the under-the-radar fact that Time’s Man of the Year cover image is made by a punk-skater-guerrilla artist by the name of Shepard Fairey, the man who plastered America with Andre the Giant for the past 20 years or so. To learn more about how the poster and cover were conceived, I highly recommend viewing Time Magazine’s little video about the cover art (they don’t have an embed option, so I posted a CBS news piece above), featuring Fairey talking about guerrilla media and memes. Kinda weird to see such ideas boasted about at Time…Time “Henry Luce” Magazine, that is. I hope someone out there gets the historical significance of this.

Michael Shaw, however, who blogs at BagNewsNotes, had a less-than appreciative take on the cover:

Besides TIME’s own Obama-envy and the blatant play to a younger demographic, the illustration, as much as anything, seems to telegraph Fairey’s own desire to cash in on the original artwork — another reason for the poster-within-the-poster on Obama’s collar just under his chin, not to mention the enormous dollar sign.

Based on Fairy’s description of his own process in the Time Magazine video linked above, I think Shaw is misreading the image. But me being an Gen Xer, I feel a need to defend a fellow tribester. Also, I’m a sucker for poster art, and this is as iconic as they get.

I’ve been accused of giving light poles the benefit of the doubt, so despite the occasional appearance of my snarky writing personality (I am Gen X, after all), I tend to be an optimistic person. So what follows is coming from a space I have never felt in my short but long Republican dominated life: a totally joyous frickin’ feeling. Yeah, joy. I said it.

It won’t be a surprise, then, when I tell you that when I discovered this morning that Obama had won (I’m in Italy so I didn’t know until 6:00 am), I wept. And wept. Never in my life have I cried as a result of the political process (no doubt, when Bush won his second term, my feelings were equally strong, but on the morbid end of the scale).

As I watched reactions and celebrations on the net I felt like I was witnessing something unprecedented in American history, as if a war had ended. I don’t want to analyze too much people’s reactions, because everyone has different reasons for feeling what they are feeling right now (I can’t imagine what those on the right are going through, but maybe a little taste of their own medicine will do them good), but there is little doubt that the spontaneous nature of these public outbursts (such as college kids dancing in front of the White House, or Kenya declaring a national holiday) is reminiscent of those situations when you are released from an oppressive relationship, like quitting a shitty job, or divorcing your business partner, or leaving an abusive spouse.

These kinds of tears are ones of connection and opening, not their opposite of mourning or loss.

I think for Americans this is a bit like our Berlin Wall moment. In the end all historical analogies are false, but what is pertinent here is that some kind of bottled up oppression and fear has now been dissipated (for the moment). And for that I can say wholeheartedly that I have never been happier to see the genie of hope freed from its bottle, as I am today, to scurry about and do its mischief.

We may end up being disappointed, or find that business as usual will prevail. But I feel as if the evil empire’s illusion of control is melting like the Wicked Witch of the West under a pale of Dorothy’s water. Evidence for such a claim comes from the fact that negative and fear-based elections ads backfired on the Republicans. Even if it/them choose to reassert themselves at a later date through some nefarious means (I don’t want to imagine that right now), for now I think all the conspiracy nuts can eat some crow for Thanksgiving and be grateful that we still have a modicum of democracy to emerge with; democracy, after all, is always unfinished business. It’s a process and architecture for change.

This moment is genuinely the first time in my life I have felt good about my country and restored the faith I have in people to take charge when it’s truly necessary. This doesn’t make me a patriot or nationalist, just hopeful that our “newness” is an asset that enables us to innovate and reinvent ourselves, which is particularly important at this crucial juncture in history. The fact that the Internet was so crucial in getting Obama elected should give us a sense that we are moving in the right direction. In Italy, where it descends into fascism, it’s nice to see hope on the other side of the world energize the local opposition here in Europe.

Godspeed the next four years. Now it’s time to do the real work of democracy and to change our culture of separation and destruction one heart at a time.

The Democrats have certainly gotten their act together in their effort to define themselves. Throughout this election the Republicans have failed to define their opponents as they so successfully did with Kerry and Gore. For that I appreciate how they are rediscovering their spine.

No doubt this is a finely crafted bit of propaganda. That in itself does not make it evil. Propaganda is just political persuasion. We all need it. This half hour infomercial is full of symbols and personal stories that reinforce a lot of classic (and perhaps deceptive) images of America: wheat fields, auto workers, multicultural civil society, etc. This is as white and mainstream a portrayal as you would get in the most banal Disney film on the Family Channel. Is this supposed to dupe me into accepting some kind of “friendly fascism“?

As an exercise, we could certainly deconstruct this ad and scribe a book about American myths. But that’s not my reason for writing. What I was feeling as I watched is a qualitative difference in energy that I find welcome, and revealing. I think the scare tactics of Bush and Co. worked under a certain context, that of 9/11. But it’s apparent people want solutions, not fear.

When Palin came on the scene and gave McCain his big bump, I was sure that once again the scared ex-burbans would control our fate, the same populous that bought into the commuter car myth and into the housing bubble, the same high-metabolism, petrochemical prefab reality lining America’s highway corridors, a disembodied reality that’s coming to an end (for visual proof, notice how almost all the people in the video are overweight– a bodily representation of living beyond our means). That was supposed to be Palin territory, and the Republican’s sure bet that people would vote for no change out of a fear of acknowledging that their lifestyle has come to end.

If there is one thing the Republicans have mastered is denial, a lack of self-criticism, and the rhetorical skill to mask their true agenda. This doesn’t mean the Democrats are the good guys riding in on the white horse to save our crumbling Western town and to stave off the raiding Indians. But I genuinely feel like the will and energy is now apparent to fix our problems, symbolized by how Obama rolls up his sleeves.

It has been shown that political ads, for the most part, shore up and reinforce the base to help reconfirm and solidify those who intend to support you. Very little of them actually change people’s decision, but it does work on a small percentage. The Democrats are now targeting these undecided ex-burbans, to whom I say, get off the fricken fence. The mythical undecided voter has become the symbol of American ineptitude. If there is a person out there who does not see at this point that the national superjetliner is crashing, we are truly doomed. And it’s not terrorists taking it down. It’s just out of gas, and we have no one to blame but ourselves. Are we going to let hysterical alcoholic first class passengers take over the controls, or let skilled pilots glide the plane for a softer landing? Ultimately I don’t like this metaphor because it implies the solution is trusting the skilled technicians to solve our problems, when in fact what it takes is our collective wisdom and combined creativity. Can we rebuild the plane in midair? That would be interesting.

In Italy fascism is on the rise. So for now it feels good that maybe I can make a difference in my home country to help it choose a different path. For once I feel like I’m not voting for the anti-Republican, that is, casting a negative vote. I feel like as imperfect as the process is, this is a step forward towards reclaiming democracy.

I remember the feeling in NYC after the last election. I don’t want to see everyone walking around like zombies as they did four years ago when Bush with his so-called mandate and political capital strode back into washington in his stretch limo Hummer and blackhawk escort.

I implore you to your bit and change the energy. Vote. Please. The world is begging you to do it.

Apologies for the gratuitous election posts, but this would be great entertainment if it were not so darned spooky.