The mass media culture of the 20th Century has been killed by the internet, as the so-called intellectuals of our day tend to proclaim.
Possibly, and yet the internet binds us in multiple new prisons of our choosing, making it easy to identify us as consumers in ready-made subdivided categories to the marketers who have long since created/controlled our desires and dreams in the garish material world of modern capitalism.
No wonder advertising rates are down. The products no longer are required to hunt for us. We are captured, and the tags identifying us are clearly marked on each cage.
Caught in an invisible web, which differs from the 1940s only in that today we are connected by the newly improved media technology as "users", more tightly bound than ever, and thus less likely than ever to create anything new or different to challenge the hard wired totalitarianism inherent in the infoboobtubez era.
The internet revolutionized global capitalism and yet all we hear is the forever delusional attempt to convince ourselves that the internet is a tool for human freedom, when in fact the internet simply adds a more efficient, invisible lock on the jail cell of mass conformity than radio TV or movies ever could, albeit through sub categorization of the mass into non-dialectically-minded-conformists-within-the-subgroup.
All brought to us in living colour within the safety of our delusions by the Global Infotainment Industry.
Which brings us to Fox News. The right-wing demagogues at Fox do what demagogues have always done: they scare the living daylights out of people by identifying a hidden enemy, then flatter them until they believe they have only one champion-the demagogue himself. But unlike demagogues past, who appealed over the heads of individuals to the collective interests of a class, Fox and its wildly popular allies on talk radio and conservative websites have at their disposal technology that is perfectly adapted to a nation of cocksure individualists who want to be addressed and heard directly, without mediation, and without having to leave the comforts of home.
The media counterestablishment of the right gives them that. It offers an ersatz system of direct representation in which an increasingly segmented audience absorbs what it wants from its trusted sources, embellishes it in their own voices on blogs and websites and chatrooms, then hears their views echoed back as "news." While this system doesn't threaten our system of representative democracy, it certainly makes it harder for it to function well and regain the public's trust.
The conservative media did not create the Tea Party movement and do not direct it; nobody does. But the movement's rapid growth and popularity are unthinkable without the demagogues' new ability to tell isolated individuals worried about their futures what they want to hear and put them in direct contact with one another, bypassing the parties and other mediating institutions our democracy depends on. When the new Jacobins turn on their televisions they do not tune in to the PBS News Hour or C-Span to hear economists and congressmen debate the effectiveness of financial regulations or health care reform. They look for shows that laud their common sense, then recite to them the libertarian credo that Fox emblazons on its home page nearly every day: YOU DECIDE.
Of course the author of this fine piece of sociology zeroes in on the "Tea Party Jacobins" and fails to mention that the "Fake Left Jackoffobins" make exactly same use of our preferred postmodern media tools for precisely the same purpose: empty ego gratification and back patting affinity with like-minded individuals for purposes of group polarisation and the exclusion of all self-critical thought.
The fake left emit only from our silent keyboards, the proverbial mighty fallen trees crashing noiselessly in an empty cyberforest. Meantime, the counter-establishment right busily and loudly "taking back America" never need pause to notice: because there is nothing there.
Fortunately, major Catholic leaders -- most of them women in religious orders -- have picked up the flag of social justice discarded by a bishops' conference under increasing right-wing influence.
On Wednesday, a group representing 59,000 Catholic nuns plus more than 50 heads of religious congregations issued a strong statement urging "a life-affirming 'yes' vote" in support of the Senate bill. "While it is an imperfect measure, it is a crucial next step in realizing health care for all," the statement said, adding that the bill's support for pregnant women represented "the real pro-life stance."
"We as sisters focus on the needs of people," said Sister Simone Campbell, a spokeswoman for the group. "When people are suffering, we respond."
Sister Carol Keehan, president of the Catholic Health Association, loyally refuses to criticize the bishops but argues that their interpretation of the abortion language is simply wrong. She, too, released a forceful statement in support of the Senate bill.
"We looked at the bill. We spent a lot of time with Sens. Casey and Nelson," she said in an interview. "We agreed to support it because we believe it meets the test of no federal funding for abortion. Perhaps the language is not the way I would write it, but it meets the test. . . . I was not going to take a little bit of abortion [in the bill] to get federal funding."
She added: "I can't walk away from extending coverage to more than 30 million people."
Meanwhile, 100% of teh Republikkkan Party, the Catholic Bishops, the Amerikkkan Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), and certain fascistic-minded elements of the Whiteysphere (Godwins alert alert) banded together to ignore the needs of the 30 million poorest citizens without healthcare coverage, not to mention the 45,000 who die each year for lack of coverage, and stood strong for the very-conservative status quo, a stance which is unsupportable by anyone who exists outside of the la-la land in which they unwittingly idiotlogue together. Oh yeah. And coincidentally, they have healthcare coverage provided by the corporacrats for whom they toil.
Congratulations, loooosers. You are truly holier-than-thou.
In yet another stinging rebuke of internet pwoggiedom, 'Avatar' failed to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards this evening.
Predictably, the Whiteysphere was in full metal uproar.
"Clearly, a conspiracy," said noted film critic Stu Piddy. "The American people are simply too depressed and confused to realize that War shortens the useful lifespans of drones. And a locker gets wounded slaughtering millions of Iraqis and wins the Oscar for best picture? Life is good, very good for inanimate objects, indeed."
Piddy cut short the interview, stating that he was late for an evening tete a tete with his newest gal pal, an enigmatic, online seductress who goes by the name of "Miep".
Ormond Otvos registered anger when informed of "Avatar's" rejection by the joooish dominated Academy of Movie Arts and Sciences.
"'Avatar' is the greatest anti-corporate movie of alltime," thundered the rotund grey beard in a video posted to youtube just moments after the result was announced, #12 in a video series entitled "Jooos, its wahts for dinner."
"Ah well, back to my chemistry set. Did you know that blue litmus paper turns red when you dip it into a testube of liquid Owsley?"
Meanwhile, Avatar, the "greatest anti-corporate movie of all-time" has earned nearly $60 gazillion at the worldwide box office for its producers, the 20th Century Fox Corporation.
Perhaps the most disappointed pwoggie of them all tonite was Fail Yayhoo Reft, the American-born radical Muslim cleric who recently posted another of his interminable cut 'n paste online fatwas urging US soldiers to study "Avatar" and absorb its deep lessons before laying down their weapons and deserting their posts.
But in an exclusive interview, Imam Reft seemed undaunted by this latest in a series of consecutive defeats that has alternative pundits comparing his record favourably with that of the 1972 Philadelphia 76'ers, who finished 9-73.
"Keep readin' Dean Baker!" he exhorted his followers from inside his Chicago based mosque cubicle Sunday night, before heading out to catch a late New Jersey Nets game.
This place has some of the founding father DK bannees. Poisonally, I've forgotten how I got banned there 5 years ago.
Anyway, FSZ is a more natural fit for teh DK persecution blogger crowd. They were off there six months ago, or wtf. The wounds are still fresh.
Far as I know, only George has criticized yur fine work here at the pffake PFF. He's the Mr. Blackwell of the whiteysphere. You should embrace his criticism as a prize. Wear that "ten worst dressed" award proudly.
That Bill dude in teh 5D had an excellent 60's soul singer voice and there he was the leader of a harmony band that gained renown sounding whiter than Doris Day...he reaaly lets it all out here, tho, in part 2 of teh medley...
As if on cue, the neo-polarised among us are crawling out of their broadband connections, just a few so far, here and there, aiming higher, spurred on by their blogmates, their talk radio jocks, some gooood weeeeed and the sense that they've been badly fucked over by a cold world that not only doesn't give a shit about them, but is actively conspiring to keep them, as brilliant as their mommies convinced them that they are, unfairly chained inside their little white guy prisons.
I kinda feel sorry for this latest guy. I mean, at least Joe Stax managed some "effect." This latest loooser only bounced a few measly bullets off the chest protectors of two specially trained PTB killer guard dogs, who in return for his pathetic effort calmly splattered his brains all over the sidewalk.
Meanwhile, back home in Little White Guyville, the folks are shocked, shocked that their mild mannered, physics-degreed good buddy and loving family member was that guy.
They had no idea he could act this way. Of course not. He had never, ever acted this way before....
Until he no could longer maintain the demilitarized zone between his polarised online internet persona and his repressed psyche, which finally bubbled over into the glorious paranoid schizophrenia that seems to be washing over legions of the nation's blogging little white guys in great numbers during this, the era of the infoboobtubez.
There was no antiwar movement in Spokane in 1967, so Otvos downplayed that aspect in order to push his other issues, which remain unclear to me. Drug education? Drugs as liberation devices? Who the fuck can remember what the hippie memes were anyway, after all these years and all of the technological enhancements in marijuana agriculture that have taken place?
[:o)
But, give Otvos his props for some hippie outreach into the conservative hinterlands, circa 1967. Look upon this episode from the dimlit past as a teaching moment.
Outreach is required for anything resembling pwoggie ideology to ever regain anything like its former industrial strength.
However, outreach would take RL courage and sacrifice, so the chances of pwogs and fakeleftists (yes, Laura, Failreft, Super, et al are mere pwogs playing at a bastardized, white trash form of online leftism, hence the term 'fakeleft') actually making any RL effort are nil.
This is where pwoggies are today: bunched together on islands, reinforcing their 'superiority' only amongst themselves, while the rest of the world ignores them and moves the change meme as far right as it can possibly go...because they find zero resistance. All the potential opposition is stuck on these uncharted islands, see?
The right woos left ideology has won something, but its not first place yet in anything.
Midterm 2010 may begin to tell a different story.
I dont see paid fakes as much as I see delusional looosers who can't come to grips with reality or the exertion required to move the political pile even a few inches left.
So, no Laura, there is no "genuine" left, at least in the whiteysphere.
I'm more convinced of the belief everyday that fakeleft internet pwogs such as Failreft need to shed their self-misidentification as "left" and join in the wider revolt that is brewing amongst the unwashed non-pwogs. Their issues overlap in the classic petit bourgeois mindset of the paranoid little white guy, anyway. They have nothing to loooose but their imaginary chains.
Infiltrate the teabag movement, iow.
Politics is about attaining political power, pyrrhiod. Endless theorizing, criticism and whining, which is the nihilistic specialty of the fakeleft, is simply not revolutionary. Its reactionary. Ask, uhhhm, Marx if you dont believe me.
The significance of Critical-Utopian Socialism and Communism bears an inverse relation to historical development. In proportion as the modern class struggle develops and takes definite shape, this fantastic standing apart from the contest, these fantastic attacks on it, lose all practical value and all theoretical justification. Therefore, although the originators of these systems were, in many respects, revolutionary, their disciples have, in every case, formed mere reactionary sects.
A vigourous teaparty movement including the 7-10% of the population that is teh disaffected pwogs is a winning plurality in many a 3 way race.
Outside the Pwoggie ghettoes, that is, for inside we will still be blessed with the assured re-election of the same ol dinosaurs we know and don't love.
Disaffected Pwogs in coalition are at least alive and breathing. They mite even influence some of the Teabaggers of the libertarian persuasion...particularly if the economy continues to turn sour and rugged individualism doesnt get you fed. Even Alex Jones' stormfront larder will empty, eventually.
Disaffected Pwogs in isolated purity are caged rats, huddled together for warmth and waiting only for the teabags' sponsors to deliver the razor wire packaging in order to formalize the new paradigm.
As doberman pinche states in Otvos "Joe Stax" diary, 2/3 of people are unhappy with the antics of our leaders in Washington DC. This attitude towards government is common enough in tough economic times.
The danger is to carry this feeling too far, allowing it to become the all-consuming doomsaying belief that invades the psychology as well as the sociology, for this limited sense of "disaffection" (see below for another recent poll which offers a completely different take on people's personal satisfaction) can lead some people into making very poor, self-defeating political choices, not to mention lifestyle choices.
Isnt the Joe Stax saga simply a metaphor, an extreme one no doubt, of the tendency toward nurturing and feeding a self-sustaining unreality across a group of like minded individuals, especially on the infoboobtubez, whose very essence is designed to spread "information" and something much more profoundly disturbing than information, AKA "disinformation," like wildfire?
So i'm spending the week out hear in E. Bumfuck Texas, pop. several dozen rednecks.
I'm still trppped too far inside my most excellent memories of the Lena/Glory years to much care about the fact that there is a fucking foot of snow on the ground.
The New York State Thruway West Texas farm-to-market road is closed man! Far out! Lotta freeks!
Last nite was the Johnny Wadd of Texas blizzards, man, like, can you dig it?
12 glorious inches of white stuff all over yur face...post yur favourite caucasian music videos of all time here...
I have an idea. Ok. Its kinda fucked up. I've been thinking about contacting my first ex-wife and apologizing sincerely for breaking up with her when our daughter was so jung. I still envision that dreadful day that can never be taken back...my daughter's crying, her pleading two year old baby face savaging me in that awfulest moment when I stepped out of Maria's VW for the final time, my little grrl wailing in the rain as her mother sped off angrily and left me to my own desserts.
I saw Maria again, first time in decades at our daughters wedding awhile back...she's remarried, serious, middle aged, matronly, together. Married to an old skkkool Southern gentleman as far from me as La. is from LA.
I was nervous about the meeting but Frau Tale took to her immediately, liked her right away. I stood off to the side with Maria's husband, awkwardly sharing an Italian beer or two mostly in silence, while our two wives kibbitzed happily.
="Pete never changed".
Frau Tale reported Maria's candid assessment later in the hotel room with the commanding view of the massive Jackie Robinson Apartment complex which they built after they tore down Ebbetts Field on the day Amerikkka died.
=She feels very, very sorry for you. How everythings turned out.
Once upon a time, back in the day on Daily Kos, I attempted some internet activism. Now, of course, I should have known better, but this was 2004-5, or wtf, (not goona get too date precise here, because I'll be accused of "lying" again, haha) before anybody really knew better, pre-pie fight, pre-Kos Kop Konvention sell-out to the Demotards in Las Vegas. Pre- mass bannings at the Gestapoesque bidding of HickDead in my Intestines. (h/t Pinche Boitano)
My theory was simple, elegant and proven by experience: institute vote only by mail a la Oregon, where vote percentages were up, drastically in local and off-year elections and especially among the poor and dispossessed, the trend was left, the convenience factor was high, and the ability of the PTB to rig the elections was negated.
This, fakelefties, is what yur dissent from the Demotardic Party buys you: an even deeper hole in which to bury even more worthless BS.
Money walks and bullshit talks.
Where are the real populists now? The notion of right-wing "populism" is suddenly fashionable following last Tuesday's special election in Massachusetts, when even stiff millionaire suit Mitt Romney could be heard braying about the "royalists" who rule Washington. But all such fakery was exposed today by an event of far greater moment. The Supreme Court's narrow, poorly argued and highly political decision in the Citizens United case -- which removes century-old restrictions on corporate influence-buying -- is the culmination of a Republican dream. From this moment forward, what the original American populists once called "the money power" will be enabled to overwhelm all other forces in American democracy using sheer wealth -- and that includes every "tea party" activist with a dissenting opinion about bank bailouts, executive abuses or crooked contracting.
Since you have no movement of yur own FakeLefties, why not sign on with the Tea Party and make yur dissatisfaction heard where it actually will matter!!!!
You can pretend the "tea" is some other green herb that is currently illegal...
Otvos is just another narrow-minded adherent following some other man's road to nowhere. In this, he is no different from any one of billions of unenlightened souls, including you and me.
Like me and you, he confuses plastic phenomena such as "religion", "science" and "atheism" with the inherent nature that exists behind his eyes. "Atheistic" illusions are to be valued as much and as little as "religious" and "scientific" illusions and we would do well to properly regard Otvos, as all "atheists," with a deeply felt caring and concern for his well-being, for his illusions are also our own, no more and no less. His concepts and his terminology may utilize different symbolism but his reality is the same.
Bet on it.
Buddha's non-plastic view of reality encompasses, assimilates and makes perfectly logical sense, in fact makes observably scientific sense, out of the man-made terms and concepts known as "religion," "science" and "atheism."
Buddha's path is right here and now for all of us to realize but requires us to get beyond our learned blindness and stop following some other man's road to nowhere.
"Atheists" often express their pain and suffering through petulant, angry ridicule. In doing so, "atheists" are merely expressing revulsion of their own non-substantiality. The atheist lashes out vainly in the attempt to exorcise the chimeras of his reflected fear. "Religion" to this narrow level of conscience consists solely of supernatural beings, totems, symbols, myths and fairy tales, and it is the desire of the atheist to destroy these self-induced outre conceptions like children throwing tantrums and toys at the very God who gifted them, at the bemused and indulgent parent who knows better, at themselves.
Otvos, like the rest of us who are condemned to imperfect awareness by evolutionary processes beyond our comprehension, can't get past his pathos, his vanity, his unsatisfied hunger and his pain to the reality which exists behind his eyes.
As has been pointed out, all things appear and disappear because of a series of causes and conditions. Nothing ever exists entirely alone; everything exists only in relation to everything else. By the same reasoning, enlightenment cannot exist apart from ignorance, nor ignorance apart from enlightenment. Since things do not differ in their essential nature, there can be no duality.
People habitually think of themselves as being connected with birth and death, but in reality there are no such conceptions. When people are able to realize this truth, they have realized the non-duality of birth and death.
The Massachusetts special election has electrified the moribund Demotards in more ways than one.
Too bad, eh "lefties," that the impetus for this sudden windshift blew in entirely from the "centrist" "independents" who elected a right-tilting Republikkkan in the so-called liberal bastion of the US of A-Holes?
I know, I know......Failreft, of course, predicted this outcome....man, that guy is the fucking Nostradamus of the Whiteysphere.
So, who you taking anyway, dude? Aints (-3.5) vs Viqueens and Dolts (-7.5) vs. (Bennie and the) Jets? Spill it.... I need the dinero, bad, to cover my losses on the Haiti earthquake. Forever the bleeding heart MSM-believing optimist, I took the under....
Brown, by virtue of his nifty work from the freethrow line has instantly become the defacto front runner for the Republikkkan Presiditzial nomination in 2012. The nomination is now his to loooose. Bet on it.
*************************
Today, Senators Boxer and Feingold called for the dumping of Bernanke as Fed Reserve Chief, stating that he represented the failed policies of the past. Bernie Sanders has also objected from the left, along with Merkley of Oregon, who joined with several right wing Senators of the R'ist-persuausion to put the confirmation in doubt.
Wall Street, which dislikes uncertainty more than it favors the policies of either political machine, has watched the Dow drop like a rock since Tuesday, which not coincidentally, was also the day the World Ended for demotardic dreams of national healthcare.
Stu Piddy, in one of his many moments of lucidity, made a remark on FSZ (h/t Socrates for the cut/paste) as startling in its wisdom as it was prophetic:
I believe the world is not real. And neither are most of the people in it. History is all lies and he who controls the past controls the present and the past is all lies and therefore so is the present.
We are in the midst of 1984...it's just not like it was imagined to be.
It's all very unreal. It's interesting though....but it's getting and is going to get much worse.
Stu's remark was very much in line with the Buddhist conception of reality/illusion, in fact.
[Editor's note: The blog from which this article is taken appears to be a CIA front. Obviously]
Recently, Alborz, an Iran-based site devoted to a critique of political economy, has published articles which represent differing views among socialists inside Iran concerning the future of the Green Movement. Below are excerpts from two articles which represent some of these differing views.
The New York Times is reporting four deadGuardian UK New York Times (Dec 29) reports nine at least 13 dead, including a nephew of Moussavi, along with as many as 1500 arrested after security forces opened fire Sunday on the protestors thronging Tehran and other Iranian cities during Shia holy day demonstrations. A second day of clashes erupted Monday as plainclothesman confiscated bodies of some of the dead from local hospitals to prevent another round of mourning protest rallies and arrested several prominent activists and/or their family members.
Ebadi - winner of the 2003 Nobel peace prize - said her sister, Dr Noushin Ebadi, a lecturer in medicine at Tehran Azad university, was arrested at her home last night by four intelligence agents. She was taken to an unknown location. Shirin Ebadi, who is currently in London, said the arrest was intended to pressure her into giving up her human rights work.
"During the past two months, [my sister] has been summoned by the intelligence ministry several times and ordered to persuade me to stop my human rights activities," Ebadi said in a statement posted on the reformist website Rah-e Sabz. "She was also ordered to vacate her home, which adjoins my apartment. She was threatened that if she failed to comply with these two demands, she would be arrested."
The arrest coincided with the detentions of relatives of other prominent figures, including Shapour Kazemi, brother-in-law of the reformist leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, and Leila Tavassoli, niece of the former foreign minister Ebrahim Yazdi, who has also been detained. It was the second time Kazemi, the brother of Mousavi's wife, Zahra Rahnavard, has been arrested since June's disputed presidential election.
The latest detention came after Mousavi's nephew, Ali Mousavi Khamane, was killed on Sunday in what his family allege was an assassination by security forces. At least 20 prominent figures, including journalists, have been arrested since Sunday's clashes, which took place on the Shia holy day of Ashura.
It started as just another Friday night, as so many of those Friday nights did, with nothing to do, nowhere to go, but an insistent adolescent libido pulsing through my veiny joy stick until it drove me crazy and I became frenzied with desperation, like a dog chasing its own tail.
Houston Rollett lived a half mile or so from my parents' house. Rollett was a recent arrival from the projects of East St. Louis. His family, like so many others back in the day, had been lured west by the sunshine, the Hollywood movies, the beach, the mountains, the desert and the easy terms on the food stamps and welfare checks, which were decidedly more generous in the golden state than in more godforsaken places like Illinois or Missouri, or wtf.
Rollett's step dad even found a job, with the phone company no less, and the family was able to move out of the two room rented airstream hard by the freeway trailer park on Garvey, and into a rented two bedroom crackerbox in my northside neighbourhood.
Good commentary in Foreign Policy regarding the predictable failure at Hopenhagen, which has proven one more time the dichotomy of the "half empty" "half full" conundrum in spades for Obama's politics during his first semi-unsuccessful year in office.
Of course, Hopenhagen is merely symptomatic of the unreality of Pwoggiedom's most cherished dreams and goals. Again.
Nothing substantive will ever be done to save the environment until the environment collapses on our headz.
You read it here first. Global warming is not a scientific problem at all. The science of cause and effect are beyond reproach according to pwoggiedom. However, the cause and the effect are beside the point.
Like virtually everything of importance in pwoggiedom, the solution, which is political in nature, is also beyond approach: it aint happening, dude. Sorry. Here, have a free blog on which to register your complaint.
Political movements cannot be built organically. Someone has to catch a wave and ride it. Astroturf will always be with us. The PTB will always be with us. The names may change, the causes may change, but the hierarchy is forever ingrained as "power corrupts." George knows this. He's a sociologist social theorist.
Bloggers bitching in anonymous impotence will always be with us, too, but the effect will likewise be the diffusion of any meaningful dissent into singular bytes of individual nothingness. Cacaphonous white noise is the same as nothing. Everything = nothing.
And no one has to pay anybody to render the whiteysphere irrelevant. It just is. By design. We are the ones paying the price, individually, to prop it up for cheap thrills and second rate infotainment value.
I disagree. None of it swears enough or uses the word "Nazi" enough for my tastes. However, be that as it may, just because it is written down somewhere and assuming we take this "nothing new under the sun" concept of yours seriously, education is mostly about repetition not being correct or pithy.
"Someone has to catch a wave and ride it."
The beach bum view of history? I think if the wave is there and the board is there then the surfer dude will necessarily appear and is therefore the slack variable of the equation.
