Corporate Detox

We, the ordinary people, are forced during every waking hour to see the world from the perspective of villains. We accept that perspective as reality as much as it suits us and as little as our intellect allows us to penetrate the veil.

Similarly, there are those who watch The Sopranos and, seeing the world through Tony’s eyes, start pulling for him. His fans gloss over his faults. They focus on his struggles with his enemies. They hope he succeeds in evading the law. They cheer for murder.

Then there are those who ingest mainstream news, corporate TV, advertisements, government provided history textbooks, etc., and start pulling for the corporate interests that run America. They root for successful air strikes on Iraqi villages, think poor countries should be happy to receive exploitative loans, and get pissed off at Russia for not wanting American missiles in its backyard.

The following is a brief overview of ways to build consensus by providing perspective through discussions with fellow countrypeople on some key topics. In the end, using refined arguments may be the equivalent of decorating the pebbles you throw at Tony Soprano’s advancing tank but…(I don’t know, but I don’t know).

Nationalism

Emphasize the distinction between U.S. government and U.S. citizens.

• Ask “What is America?” (best source: common sense; correct answer: it’s us.)
• Demonstrate that the United States is not a functioning democracy. (best source: public opinion polls)
• Explain U.S. imperialist history in terms that convey the difference between normal American citizens and the decision makers who claim to represent us. (best sources: Zinn, Chomsky, etc.)
• Emphasize the Constitution. It does generally side with the people, after all, in spite of being written by rich racists. Sure, no one’s read it, but it’s good in the same way that freedom and justice are good. (best source: The Constitution)
• When Americans think about war they generally think of sexy machines nobly conquering bearded evildoers. This is a lie. For every vanquished evildoer, there are hundreds of vanquished innocents. The American people do not approve of killing civilians. They never have. Studies show it. (a source: Tom Engelhardt analyzes the U.S. government’s use of air power against civilians here.)

Religion

Corporate/government behavior is the cause of most major problems social conservatives blame on the left.

• Abortion– a socio-economic problem, the main causes being the wealth gap, the so-called drug war, and dehumanizing corporate TV programs, among other things.
• Hollywood and MTV are not pushed on us by wacky hippy liberals but by amoral corporations. You know, the rich people who own all that stuff and make the actual decisions? Dumbasses like Tom Green wouldn’t have careers without rich corporate assholes.
• Video game violence– hmm…who’s behind that? Rich corporate assholes? What do you fuckin know!
• The breakdown of the family? Rich corporate assholes.
• Homosexuality? Oh whoops, never mind. Let’s forget I mentioned it.

Economics

Kill Horatio Alger.

• Demonstrate that objective and subjective factors in SES determination are not mutually exclusive. In other words, when Mariah Carey claims to be living proof that believing in oneself and following one’s dreams (subjective factors) are sufficient to achieve superstardom, she neglects to mention the causal role played by musical DNA and the high demand for singing prostitutes (objective factors). Both are important. Similarly, confident, driven athletes are more likely to perform than self-doubting, don’t-give-a-damn athletes while genetically gifted athletes are more likely to perform than less gifted athletes. Sounds pretty obvious, no? Pathetically, the (sometimes complete) denial of objective factors’ causal role in SES determination is one of the major pillars upholding our faux meritocracy.
• Being born into poverty is the primary cause of poverty. Bad character is not.
• Objective factors such as the drug war (waged by corporations for profit) and poverty (which is what happens when corporations have all the money) are indisputably more relevant and readily addressed causes of crime than bad character, which in turn is a major cause of corporate success.

Suharto’s dead, NYT: “nothing to see here”

Democracy Now dedicated a full hour today to the recent death of former Indonesian dictator Suharto who, with full American and British military support, was responsible for an estimated 200,000 East Timorese deaths in the worst instance of genocide, relative to population, since the Holocaust.  Further, 300,000 to 1 million Indonesians were killed, under Suharto, with the help of the CIA in their putative fight against communism. Suharto privatized industry and handed over Indonesia’s natural resources to transnational corporations.  He, the U.S., and Britain benefited while Indonesians suffered and died. Unlike Saddam Hussein in his 1990 invasion of Kuwait, Suharto put money into elite western pockets  rather than raid those pockets. (see here)
Meanwhile, I checked the “liberal” New York Times to see how they had treated Suharto’s death.  I couldn’t find anything on the front page so I did a search.  “Suharto is Mourned in Indonesia” popped up.  21 eulogizing paragraphs plus one  paragraph sandwiched in the middle acknowledging that “he ruled Indonesia by force and fear, and was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.” No mention of U.S. involvement in those deaths of course.  Cause that’s not relevant.   Some highlights: “the sky over the mountain opened in a powerful thunderstorm — weeping for the death of a fallen leader, in the belief of Javanese mystics”; his daughter apologized for her father being such a ruthless dickhead, then spoke directly to him: “Only God can repay you for your goodness. Farewell, Father. We send our prayers.”

Another NYT article titled “Suharto Dies at 86; Indonesian Dictator Brought Order and Bloodshed”, by Seth Mydans, offered some hope of less misleading coverage.
But alas, the same story. “…good fortune came to him. Just as the United States was becoming embroiled in Vietnam, he stood as a bulwark against Communism in Asia. The United States rewarded him with a foreign aid program that eventually amounted to more than $4 billion a year. In addition, a consortium of Western countries and Japan established an aid program that in 1994 alone totaled almost $5 billion.” What a fucking hero.  Standing so bravely against democratic movements connected to the Soviet Union only in the minds of the most twisted CIA operatives.  Oh, and democratic movements that were in other countries.  He invaded a democratic country newly freed from Western imperialism.  “Bulwark” is defined, according to dictionary.com, as “protection against external danger, injury, or annoyance.” Goddamn peaceful democrats, so annoyingly living in their country next to a murderous dictator.

Mydans covers a lot of Suharto’s abuses but doesn’t come close to criticism of U.S. support.  Suharto’s a bad guy, the U.S. needed a bulwark, next question please.

Media kind of Matters I guess

I remember following Media Matters’ 2004 coverage of the era-defining intellectual clash between John Kerry’s vehement defense of civil liberties and social justice, his insistence on drastically shrinking the military-industrial complex (warning, famously, that we must “avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty”) and bringing an end to the absurdly racist drug wars on the one hand, and George W. Bush’s concise articulation of the ethical foundations of a healthy society, on the other. Or maybe my memories of the experience are so painful that George Washington’s Farewell Address got inadvertently jumbled up with a bunch of Hollywood bullshit, obvious facts, and modified Enlightenment principles in an intoxicating cocktail my mind self-administered to numb the pain of…the Swift Boat diversion.

Media Matters flew right into that storm, using a delicate rational cotton swab to attend to Kerry’s shit-bespeckled face. They countered accusations by printing them verbatim, then systematically debunking them. It didn’t matter. After the media was finished validating Swift claims with their incessant “maybe it’s not true but (in a subtle whisper) maybe…it is” routine, only Kerry’s frighteningly white teeth could be seen. And who’s gonna vote for that?

After a 3 year break from politics/thinking, I revisited the Media Matters site again only recently. How are they doing? They’re still great compilers of the most egregious quotes by the Right’s defenders of the Christian virtues of peace, love, and putting your poor brown neighbor in jails, ghettos, and Guantanamos. I do have a few concerns, however:

1. Their aim is to get the Limbaughs to apologize and shut up (the Al Sharpton approach). Sounds like a worthwhile goal, of course, but the Limbaughs never mean their apologies, obviously, and the issues are rarely addressed, only buried. Political discourse becomes even more restricted. Populism needs to breathe. If you’re going to restrict its airways, you better have a good tactical reason. Is there such a reason?

There’s a risk, and I’m just speculating here, that even if you can bury the Limbaughs, the corporate media will simply resurrect them in a less patently obnoxious form — corporate reps who will support the same fucked up policies while more tactfully concealing their elitist motivations. In a sick Darwinian twist, increasingly more deceptive facades may evolve, at which point we’ll have to deal with Limbaugh 2.0.

Limbaugh is already a toned down version of himself. He doesn’t say “I hate black people. They all need to go to jail.” He says, “We need to put the rapists, murderers, and drug dealers behind bars.” He knows he means black people (or non-white, more accurately), his listeners know it, Media Matters knows it, but he doesn’t say it. When he slips up and makes statements that more or less give away his hand, Media Matters is waiting to catch him, which is comforting and troubling at once.

Is Media Matters further constricting democracy’s trachea? Are they whacking the less evolved corporate moles? Quite possibly.

2. They defend their candidates and their supporters to a fault. Here’s an example:

In a 60 minutes interview, Michelle Obama says, “I don’t lose sleep over [Barack possibly getting assassinated], because the realities are that, you know, as a black man, you know, Barack can get shot going to the gas station, you know. So, you know, you can’t — you know, you can’t make decisions based on fear and the possibility of what might happen. We just weren’t raised that way.” Uber-racist Shelby Steele, discussing the interview in her book, writes, “[Obama] is telling the larger truth of black victimization in America. She is facilitating her race’s manipulation of the American mainstream.”

First of all, if black people are manipulating the mainstream, they’re doing a pretty shitty job.

Secondly, Obama’s comment, while not offensive, isn’t something that should be defended. Was Barack ever at real risk of getting shot at a gas station because of his brown skin? Comparing Barack’s situation to the very real threat of violence in troubled inner city black communities is disingenuous.

Media Matters would acknowledge as much if they weren’t knee-deep in America’s nastified political sludge, as likely to point out Democratic candidates’ flaws and deceptions as the candidates’ handlers.

Media Matters doesn’t lie. They’re consistently careful and technically correct (though they ignore context, when convenient, in favor of literalism). I’m glad to have them on my side and no one really knows the net effects of their efforts, which I’d guess favor the people.  They also have fine columnists, who work outside the basic “shut up, Matthews!” paradigm, to whom the above analysis doesn’t apply.  With W out of the picture, however, and the candidates all uncannily resembling each other, sacrificing honesty to the political gods no longer seems warranted.

Chalmers Johnson hates you for your freedom

According to Chalmers Johnson, the clouds hovering over America’s tomorrow will not be pink, fluffy or magical. There’ll be unicorns alright, as Americans will still be under the spell of corporate mythology, but they’ll be brandishing antiquated machine guns against a powerful Chinese army. And the streets will run red with unicorn blood.

Actually, he doesn’t predict a Chinese invasion, more of a Soviet style implosion received by the world with a similar level of enthusiasm. The military-industrial complex can’t be sustained. Military Keynesianism, as he calls it, is a tremendous economic liability, dragging the U.S. down while other giants race ahead. Well, Britain still hasn’t been invaded by its former oppressees (yet), so we’ve got that going for us.

(This Johnson’s one calm old dude, breaking down the impending disappearance from the American suburbascape of bottled water and spoiled punk teenagers like he’s telling his grandkids a twisted German fairytale.)

video Harry Kreisler interview

article “Going Bankrupt: Why the Debt Crisis Is Now the Greatest Threat to the American Republic”

Tribalism and the Beast

Allison Kilkenny writes a critique of liberal tribalism, pointing out how emotional-comfort-thinking is not limited to racists, nationalists, and W. Her liberal friends often divide themselves into liberal sects to avoid the discomfort of clashing ideas. This anti-social posture results from emotional insecurity and reflects a disregard for the kind of community-building necessary to counteract Republican idiocy, she argues. Great article, and in the discourse-encouraging spirit of same, here’s where I disagree.

Kilkenny is apparently speaking only to liberals, telling them to unite against Republicans. “We can build a foundation of unity even if that means defining ourselves by what we are not. We are not racists, we are not bigots, and we do not deny respect to any decent human being. In other words, we are not Republicans. And that is good.”

I’m not sure why the line should be drawn between conservatives and liberals. That’s a line that’s been drawn for us by the rich and powerful. A more relevant line is that between the corporate forces waging war on Americans and the Americans who are suffering as a result. This takes another form as a civil war between the rationally inclined and the rationally disinclined who fall for the convenient comfort offered by the lies of the rich and powerful.

Ways to deal with true-believer neocons

1. Them Angry Liberals

There’s outright hatred, sometimes coupled with death wishes and sadistic verbiage, a childish wish for the complete disappearance of the hated object. No discussion is possible, they think, with the morons, idiots, assholes, etc. on the right. If your grandma is a neocon, that’s too bad — fuck your grandma. They seem to be pursuing tribal catharsis after taking the abuses of an insanely irrational political climate. This is common on message boards, where an angry liberals can get solace from their tribe without actually confronting the people they attack. They see a propagandist dumping horse shit all over the American public and are helpless to stop it. They can’t penetrate the absurdity, don’t have the time or willpower to think of a rebuttal that would shut the propagandist up and have a lingering nugget of doubt “I’m not crazy, they’re crazy, right?”.

2. The Krugmans

There’s a belief in rational discussions with the rationally disinclined. The fruitlessness of this approach is the cause of the visceral hatred prevalent in group 1. If you have to explain that W is a criminal, you shouldn’t be worried primarily about facts and arguments.

3. Beasted

At buffalobeast.com, where I found Kilkenny’s article, there’s a self-assured, condescending mockery of the rationally disinclined.  Fundababble is viciously ridiculed rather than treated as refutation-demanding theses.  Confident that even if they’re not right, they’re far less wrong than Corporate Vocal Defecator X, they offer the kind of intellectual conviction sorely needed by the Krugmans and Angry Liberals who, vicariously relishing CVDX’s initial pummeling at the hands of the Beast, shriek “Let him up! He’s had enough!” as the intellectual severing of limbs and tendons leaves any decent human feeling ethically nauseous.

David Brooks says: trust your gut

NYT’s Brooks writes:

“We voters — all of us — make emotional, intuitive decisions about who we prefer, and then come up with post-hoc rationalizations to explain the choices that were already made beneath conscious awareness.”

Good point. We should try to reverse this process when making voting decisions, beginning with questions rather than answers, and choose the people who represent the people’s interests, right?

“My own intuition is that this unconscious cognition is pretty effective. People are skilled at judging character.” (…especially when judging a group of people whose occupational success depends on their ability to deceive.)

Well, never mind, then.

Here’s the link.

Save the juvenile noses!

In previous posts, I’ve advocated treating conclusion-first argumentation as a distinct species of political discourse. In this post, I’ll try to further clarify.

For the sake of community and democracy, it’s necessary and advisable to communicate with individuals who steadfastly adhere to rationally indefensible political positions. It’s not, on the other hand, effective, necessary, or ethically sound to actually argue with them.

Time and again, one finds absurd positions treated by rational people as legitimate arguments. It’s not that rationally inclined people think it might be true that for example, GWB is the greatest U.S. President ever, but they do generally feel inclined to argue that he’s not.

In academic discourse, holocaust deniers aren’t taken seriously. In American political discourse, people who argue that the U.S. government’s motives are 100% benevolent are taken seriously. More accurately, they never have to explicitly make this self-evidently absurd claim. They simply replace U.S. government — by any reasonable account, at the very least, strongly influenced by corporate interests — with the vague, emotionally charged “America” (Mellencamp version) and find their position unassailable. Now, in attempting to speak accurately about the intentions of the U.S. government, you’re attacking the collective ego. You’re attacking the good people of Lansing, MI, Reedville, VA, and Austin, TX, as well as their ancestors, Olympic teams, and McDonald’s.

Presenting facts and evidence of neocon imperialist ambitions is one way to deal with the severely rationally disinclined (SRD). If however, as is generally the case, they’re seeing the world through the red, white, and blue lenses placed gently on their still-growing noses in their pre-critical years, they’re seeing your facts and evidence in red, white, and blue as well.  In red, white, and blue, there are lots of facts and evidence that look like evil, because there are lots of facts and evidence that counter the notion that America is 100% good.  Better to concern oneself with the glasses, how they got there, how they can be removed, and how their placement on future juvenile noses can be prevented.

Are you rocking or polluting the intertubes?

Who’s polluting the intertubes?

Here, the often interesting Frank Rich succumbs to microanalyzing a brief and meaningless exchange between Hillary and Obama. Hillary praised Obama, Obama was condescending, Hillary semi-cried. Rich mocks the “incessant video replays of Mr. Obama’s condescension” while joining the echo chamber. Focusing on politics over substance gets the audience to focus on politics over substance and further encourages the candidates to do the same. When the next exchange between the two is equally meaningless, perhaps Rich will acknowledge that he’s been part of the problem, but he’s more likely to mock the banality of others’ media coverage. If Rich were ever to accidentally read my work, I hope he’d do me the favor of calling me on the same thing.

Who’s rocking the intertubes?

Media Matters’ Jamison Foser provides a great example of the approach favored by propagantidote (whoops, did I just refer to myself in the third person?) when he breaks down Chris Matthews’ irrational Hillary-phobia. When someone’s talking crazy, instead of taking their arguments seriously, it’s preferable to try to figure out their motivations. Responding to Matthews with, “Oh, I don’t think Hillary’s a witch, she’s done lots of good things like, for example…” treats his absurd claim as an argument. And, you end up defending Hillary, which is what he wants. I contend that his claim doesn’t deserve such respect. By using Matthews’ own words against him, Foser demonstrates a fairly obvious pattern — Matthews has some serious fear-of-being-controlled-by-women issues. You don’t even have to get into any difficult and debatable psychological questions. Did he have a bad experience with a nun? Maybe, but you don’t have to prove it.

I’m not interested here in moralizing. Is Matthews is a bad person for this? Maybe, but that’s not the issue. Everyone’s irrational. But if you bring that irrationality in the political ring, it’s fair game because you’re hurting the rest of us. Kudos, Mr. Foser.

Naomi Klein squared off with Alan Greenspan in a Democracy Now debate. I don’t consider Greenspan to be rationally disinclined. Elitism, after all, makes sense for the wealthy and powerful. They run into problems when they try to argue that it’s good for the rest of us. As for this debate, Greenspan had no idea what he was getting himself into. Klein, who had already picked his book apart and had it sitting on the table in front of her, destroyed him with old-fashioned logic and evidence, quoting him frequently and holding him to his past statements and actions. Greenspan made two mistakes: he wasn’t prepared and he listened to the rationality of her arguments. A good elitist doesn’t actually listen. Bill O’Reilly, with half Greenspan’s intellect, would have stood a better chance with his sheer dickheadedness. Keep rockin’, Ms. Klein.