April 19, 2018: Lessons from Rwanda, Hot and Cold Mediums, Clear and Present Danger

"The Medium is the Message" ----Marshall McLuhan.

I was listening to Morning Edition on NPR this morning, and they had a segment on the civil war in Rwanda in the 1990's. The war began with hate radio and led to the destruction of social norms. In the aftermath, radio adopted a sitcom involving intermarriage between the tribes. Studies done by a professor at Princeton reveal that while the media didn't change the prejudice, it did change norms restoring the nation to more civilized behavior. Behavior is, apparently, determined much more by social norms than by prejudice. There are lessons here. Talk radio--hate radio--Limbaugh, Alex Jones et. al., have been eroding social and political norms for decades resulting not only in the explosion in the number of hate groups in this country but in the elevation of Caesar Disgustus to the throne. In this sense tRUMP is not an aberration but a symptom of the illness inflicted by hate radio and fixed noise.

Impeaching and imprisoning our Caesar Disgustus is a necessary act because he is a clear and present danger. But it is not enough. We must clean up our public discourse by shutting down talk radio and bringing objective reporting back into the forum.

It is no mere coincidence that radio brought Hitler to power as it did the genocide in Africa. Radio is a 'hot' medium, that is, it is one-directional and involves minimum participation by the audience as a lecture differs from a dialogue. McLuhan included film and photography (especially high resolution photography) as 'hot mediums. He identified as 'cool' mediums such as television, newsprint and cartoons because they were low resolution, drawing the participant or audience into them rather than shouting at them. In our age ,with high definition, television is becoming a hot medium. For the implications of this read Marshall McLuhan's "Understanding Media", in which he concludes that the rise of fascism would not have occurred in the age of television because while radio is conducive to expressing anger and rage (because it is a hot medium), Hitler and Mussolini would have come across a laughable cartoon, albeit dangerous figures, on television in low definition black and white. It is no coincidence then, that Nixon, who had a face and voice for radio--and indeed, those who listened to the debates on radio thought Nixon had won-- would lose to Kennedy in 1960 but win in 1968 because television has gained higher resolution with the addition of color. With the advent of high definition, television now poses the same threat as radio for being a medium conducive to the transmission of rage and discontent. Enter Faux News.

It is not benign, and it is not neutral for, as McCluhan taught us so many years ago, media is the message. That is, it is not content that determines the message but the media itself. In this case it is the media that amplifies and legitimizes rage. Therefore, how it is used becomes critical and the the greater society has every right to insist that it be used responsibly.

The other lesson from the Rwandan experience is that it isn't prejudice that produces the genocide. It is the destruction of social norms, which the "Idiot Wrong" have been celebrating for nearly a half-century. Caesar Disgustus is all about destroying norms and therefore is an existential threat not only to the republic but to civilization itself.

"An Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh"

Impeach and Imprison

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(1). NPR. "Morning Edition", Thursday April 19, 2018

(2). See McLuhan, Marshall. "Understanding Media: The Extension of Man" Also see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan

November 30, 2015: Slave Trade Agreements, Instruments of Exploitation, Controlling the Debate

"The British and Americans, as all nations, have always been adept at covering the basest crimes with a coat of righteousness"
                                 ---from "The Quotations of Chairman Joe"

 

There were two postings on my Facebook page this morning on different but highly relevant and connected issues.  Both by Senator Bernie Sanders. The first questioned why, under the pending trade deals, we are moving to further the importation of all kinds of cheap goods into this country but we cannot bring ourselves to do the same thing when it comes to importing cheaper pharmaceuticals from abroad.  I commented that I agree with the Senator, but that we should remind ourselves that the entire ‘principle’ of “Free Trade” was largely the invention of the British and to a lesser extent the other western European powers, later followed by the United States, to enforce first the British Mercantile System and slave trade, and later to impose and maintain the drug trade, principally the production of opium in India for sale in China. This, by degrees led to the use of military force to suppress insurrections as, famously, in the case of the Boxer Rebellion and the Opium wars, conflicts in which the United States, not yet a world power, played a secondary, albeit supporting role. 

I raised this point to demonstrate that the lofty ‘principle’ of “Free” trade was, at its origin, nothing less than a ruse for exploitation leading speedily to the oppression and colonization of the rest of the world.  A “noble” principle assuaging the consciences of expanding wealth; a veneer of righteous ‘principle’ covering, however transparently, the base instincts of human avarice, gluttony and greed.
The British and Americans, as all nations, have always been adept at covering the basest crimes with a coat of righteousness. 

 

 The proclamation of “Free Trade” is, perhaps for us, the most mendacious of the use of Orwellian language.  More accurately, one would presume, what we are truly witnessing is the emergence, or rather re-emergence, of a modern form of the ‘slave’ trade; and, accordingly we might better refer to the pending group of agreements as slave trade agreements inasmuch as the effect, if not the outright intent, of these instruments is to drive down the standard of living around the globe and make more universal the misery of the human race. 

The second posting by the Senator asked why the media is not covering the issue.  As seen in a previous column the White House had promised a full-fledged public discussion and debate. (1)

Given the secrecy surrounding the negotiations and the reluctance—indeed the refusal—of this administration to be forthcoming concerning the contents of these trade agreements, I had my doubts.  Granting the president ‘fast-track’ authority in which the treaties would not be subject to committee hearings, or any hearing, and their would be no amendments allowed to these agreements, but rather a simple up and down vote, it was clear that we—the people—were about to be railroaded.

 Accordingly, I submitted this comment to the Senator’s post:

“The conspiracy of silence. The last thing the national and multinational corporations want is a full-fledged discussion of this travesty against the peoples of the world. It follows, then, that the media will do the bidding of their corporate paymasters and remain silent. MSNBC's dismissal of Ed Schultz was the shot across the bow and the rest of the so-called 'journalists' wet themselves to their socks.”

 

And so it goes.  He that has the gold makes the rules; he that controls the forum and the language controls the debate. 
___________


(1).  See blog posting:

May 22, 2015: Response from the White House, Shroud of Secrecy, Deep Suspicions

September 6, 2011: Towers of Babble, Narrow- Casting, Mr. Peepers on Drugs.

These trends, in industrial and academic specialization and fragmentation of knowledge, have been further exasperated by the fragmentation of the mediums of communication creating, in effect, modern Towers of Babel.

Previously, there were only three major television and radio networks.  What passed for “news” concerning the unfolding of contemporary events was filtered each weeknight into three separate evening half-hour broadcasts.  Because one could only fit a certain number of “stories” into the twenty-odd allotted minutes, the network newscasts quickly began to resemble each other, each covering the main stories of the day and, because of strict “equal time” provisions imposed by the F.C.C., requiring equal air time for opposing points of view.  Great effort was made to keep commentary out of the evening news.   The result was a rather bland but straightforward presentation of the day’s events.

No matter.  The idiot wrong,  and their “libertarian” fellow-travelers, soon began to give voice to the criticism (originating from the bowels of organizations like the John Birch Society) that the media had a liberal “bias”.   So pervasive did this view become that I can remember that when working for a local pharmacist in the mid sixties that Bob would regularly complain of David Brinkley’s so-called liberalism.  After Brinkley passed it was revealed that he was in fact not a liberal at all, but a libertarian.  For those of us on the left, one could sense in Brinkley’s occasional snide remarks about the workings of social programs that he was no liberal, but for the national audience prodded by the rumblings on the wrong, it was quite otherwise.  So began our national confusion over media and politics.

Then, just in time for the Regan “Revolution”, came cable T.V. and with it not only an explosion in the number of television channels but Ted Turner’s idea of having a 24 hour news broadcast.  At first it was bland enough but as CNN spun off CNN Headline News, and as Rupert Murdock, given citizenship and entry into the American media market, bought out Fox News major corporate moguls, and the ideologues in their pay, began to envision a means by which an alternate reality could be imposed upon the body politic.  And so, broadcast journalism began to morph into a more entertaining but also more vitriolic and ideologically driven enterprise.  The consequences of increasing the number of broadcast channels as well as the number of news outlets is that the industry went from being a broadcast to becoming a “narrow-cast” industry.  That is, the national audience was now broken up into increasingly smaller subsets or fragments.  What followed was that to be successful each broadcast had to be “tailored” to meet the needs of an increasingly narrow and smaller niche of the larger community.  Enter ideology.

The same phenomenon had already been occurring in radio over the previous decade.  Previously F.M. radio was limited by the number of radio receivers that could pick up their broadcasts.  Accordingly, in my youth, F.M. had few broadcast channels and was known primarily for broadcasting classical music and, later, National Public Radio.  Only a few “highbrows” invested in the technology because the content was so limited.  Then sometime in the early 1970's auto manufacturers began to install radios in automobiles that would receive not only A.M. but F.M. broadcasts and, because of the superiority of sound  that F.M. produced, there was an explosion of the number of F.M. stations across the country.   The joke at the time was that previously if a station-owner wanted to compliment his A.M. facility with an F.M. tower he would only need fifty cents and two box tops to get an F.M. license.  Back in the “day”, as it were, A.M. was top dog and F.M. was just an afterthought.  No more.

By the mid 1970's newly emerging F.M. stations began to take over virtually every major market leaving the old A.M. stations with almost nothing.  Why, after all, would one chose to listen to A.M. when the alternative sound was so clearly superior, begging the question: “why was the industry built around A.M. in the first place?  To answer the problem of how one could keep the A.M. end of the operation profitable enough to at least pay it’s bills, the industry fell upon the palliative of “talk” radio.  Soon across the nation major figures began to emerge like Larry King who would fill the airwaves with talk, talk, talk.

By the time Cable T.V. began to emerge as a major new industry the path had already been blazed in the much older radio format.  With the emergence of over 100 new cable programing outlets soon television began to reconfigure itself along the “narrow-casting” model.  Programs appealing to specialized, rather than broad, demographics began to appear.  Children’s networks, music networks, sports channels, talk channels, health and fitness channels, each designed for a special “segment” of the audience determined by income, age, sex, ethnicity.

Let us stand back and draw the contrast.  Previously, for instance, each broadcast morning was given over to first the “Today” show or another network’s version of it, then to children’s programing like “Captain Kangaroo” or some other network’s version of that.  As the day progressed came the noon news, then the afternoon soaps, then the kids programming in time for the return home from school, soon to give way to the nightly news broadcasts.  You could change channels, but you could rarely change content, for the broadcast industry, as any industry, is imitative.  In any case no network wanted to be the first to abandon the “national” audience.  The result was that through the oft-cursed “media” we experienced the equivalent of being almost constantly drawn into a huge “town-hall”.  Our experience was a collective experience.

To put this into perspective one has only to reflect upon a typical Saturday morning.  In those days it was nearly impossible to turn on the television before noon on Saturday and not see a childrens cartoon program.  One simply had no alternatives.  Now you may object, and point out how stultifying this could be.  Perhaps, but there was also another side to the equation.  I remember as I was emerging from advanced adolescence into young manhood that I would come downstairs to sit before the television with my then little brother Stevie who was, at the time, all of about 3 or 4 years of age.  We would turn to our favorite program “Underdog” and sit down and watch it together and, as the program would begin, go through the orations of the opening lines: “...not bird, nor plane, nor even frog...just little-‘ol-me...Underdog”.  This was duly recited the way my young brother then pronounced “Underdog” as “Underdawd”.  We would both end the oration with a big laugh.

Programing was structured to appeal to the largest possible audience.  In this case to the youth it was an action cartoon, to the emerging adult the spectre of Wally Cox (who had already made a reputation on television as “Mr. Peepers”) as a Super Hero was, of course, delicious.  But to a “Boomer” in his emerging prime the idea that our hero would gain his power only by taking a “magic super-energy pill” was simply grand.  Here truly was, as they said at the time, “better living through chemistry”.  What we had here was a concept called “broadcasting” in which the nation daily gathered around the television in hopes of catching a glimpse of it’s own reflection and, perhaps, to occasionally peer out unto the world.

All of this was undone by the re-applications of previous technologies and the introduction of new technologies in the seventies and eighties.  With the re-introduction of F.M. radio and the emergence of Cable Television the broadcast industry began an evolution, or devolution if you will, from a “broadcast” to a “narrow-cast” industry fragmenting the national audience into it’s thousands of constituent parts.  Sitting before the “Tube”, the modern “light of the world, no longer a “community” experience.  Nor, for that matter was tuning in the radio.  Increasingly the broadcast medium no longer brought us together, but began to drive us apart.  The broadcast towers were becoming Towers of Babel. 
                              

January 25, 2011: Dictatorship of Corporate America, Truth and Power, No One Left

The Dictatorship of Capital. It sounds strange to our ears in this land of liberty, but it shouldn’t. We have a long history of censorship in this country going back to the very earliest days of the Republic. During the administration of our second president, John Adams, the congress passed the Alien and Sedition acts which, among other things, made it illegal to speak badly of the president or the government. During the civil war a United States Congressman, Clement Vallandingham of Ohio if memory serves, was seized and transported into confederate territory for his opposition to the war. The Palmer Raids in the wake of World War I and the McCarthy era at the beginning of the Cold War, in which such performers as the “Weavers” were banned from Television and actors like Lloyd Bridges were blackballed. Then came Vietnam which saw the cancellation of the “Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” because of their pointed political commentaries in opposition to the war. When performers and, at times, regular citizens have spoken truth to power the consequences have all too often been unpleasant.

It comes as little surprise, then, to see the strongest voice of progressive criticism on the airways silenced. While his audience was growing, and he paved the way for others—Rachel Maddow, Ed Schultz, Lawrence O’Donnell to follow, Keith Olbermann was fast becoming a bur under the saddle to Corporate interests. Lets be clear about this, here was not a demonstrated case of government but corporate censorship. As with the cases of Bridges, the Smothers Brothers, Ed Asner and others, this was not the first such action by Corporate America to reign in free speech; nor will it be the last.

I have not been understood: It is not government dictatorship that we need fear. It is corporate dictatorship. Lest it appear that this be a bit of hyperbole, a bit over the top, let’s review a few facts.

First we spend more money in this country on private security than on the public police. This has been true for some time now. I’ve run across the truth of this statement not only by reading the works of Robert Reich but also having worked in the security industry where they speak with pride about society placing greater value upon the Pinkerton’s than the police. The Pinkerton’s, incidentally, don’t have to read you your rights upon arrest, nor give you access to an attorney.

Secondly, the intrusiveness of corporate America monitoring your every financial transaction, your every physical move is astounding. Imagine the demonstrations in the streets if the government were to so monitor you. Yes the government does more monitoring of its citizens than it has any right or need, but it pales in comparison to the “big brother” that is Corporate America. As a case in point: I once new a person who sat on a jury in an arson trial. The defendant was confronted with all kinds of financial records. Was he late on some utility bills? Of course. Was he late on some credit card payments. Of Course. You draw the verdict. If confronted with a phalanx of corporate attorney’s you can depend on the records of whatever you do—and records are kept on everything—being dragged out to demonstrate this or that motive. Further, Corporate America has installed video cameras in every parking lot, every apartment complex, every hallway, every sidewalk, every supermarket and department store. Capital monitors your every move. In the wake of the citizens united case Capital now buys your every election. As noted above Capital censors what you see and hear.

Thirdly, with the exception of a few rare appearances by labor leaders and environmentalists on the old MSNBC—that is on Maddow and Schultz during the Olbermann era—when was the last time they appeared on national television or radio? In my youth when Lawrence Spivak hosted NB C’s “Meet the Press” one would see labor leaders like Walter Reuther and George Meany, at least once a month. So it was on all the other network interview programs. One also saw environmentalists, peace activists, civil rights leaders. In short, under the “fairness doctrine” voice was given to alternate points of view. A reflection of the “counterveiling power” to use professor Galbraith’s terminology that existed to balance the power of Corporate America. Beginning with the Reagan years, Corporate America began to confuse itself with the genuine article to the point now where it dominates—indeed nearly monopolizes—everything. One’s own personal space: look at that logo you have emblazoned on your shirt. Look at all that advertising that comes into your home. The workplace: where are your unions? Who protects you now from capricious and arbitrary behavior? The public forums: When was the last time you saw the President of the AFL-CIO on the air. Do you even know who he is much less what he represents?

Olbermann, although strident, was hardly a radical. Here was no socialist. Here was no firebrand. He functioned primarily as a voice of reason and sanity calling out the idiot wrong for all its misrepresentations and outright lies. News, on “Countdown” was covered by way of picking up on how the Wrong-Wing was covering it—Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, and famously O”Reilly, and setting the record straight. It was universally seen as an exhausting work for there are over 450 such howlers out there and it takes herculean effort to shovel so much shit. But for all the nonsense that has been said about the so-called “Liberal” press since the Nixon era, wherein lies truth to the charge? Has there been a call to reinstate progressive taxation? Has there been a call to reinstate the tax code of Jerry Ford much less Dwight Eisenhower? Has there been a call to vigorously enforce anti-trust law? No. Corporate America would never tolerate it. It could not tolerate even Olbermann who proposed no such thing. Olbermann’s crime was to simply demand some honesty in the debate, but Corporate America would have none of it. The media now, such as it is, is fast becoming a house of mirrors fashioned by capital to worship its own reflection.

With the shouting down of political discourse at “town hall meetings” by the brown-shirt tactics of corporate shills representing themselves as modern minutemen, with corporate America increasingly assuming the police powers of the state, with the print and electronic media in the hands of a very few corporate giants we are left to ponder “who speaks for us now”. Increasingly, we stand alone now before our corporate paymasters, just like on the shop floor. Separate but equal? It’s beginning to look a lot like Jim Crow to me, with no one left to call them out.

January 22, 2011: The Dictatorship of Capital, Paradise Lost, Silence of the Lambs

“Where once we feared the dictatorship of the Proletariat; we now embrace the dictatorship of Capital.”

From the “Quotations of Chairman Joe”

My brother, who in an earlier incarnation was a regional Vice-President of the Machinists Union will tell you, if you ask, “the truth is that capitalism doesn’t work, communism doesn’t work, what works is a combination”, in a word a hybrid or what used be called a “mixed” economy.

In high school my old government teacher instructed us that what made America great was that we refused to adopt ideologies. The concept of “isms” are foreign to us. The litmus test, as it was then applied, was not whether an action was ideologically correct or pure, right or wrong but whether or not it worked. To that end we in the United States, as in the liberal democratic states of Western Europe, went about constructing in the twentieth century democratic societies with decidedly hybrid or “Mixed” economies. This arrangement combined a free market economy with a vigorous regimen of corporate regulation, anti-trust actions, graduated income taxes worthy of the name, and a host of state-sponsored entitlement programs. Known generally as the “Welfare State”, in Gunnar Myrdal’s terminology, the new order provided a more level playing field, a more healthy distribution of wealth, a better education for nearly all citizens and a so-called “safety net” for those who fell through the cracks. Meeting the demanding standard of “does it work?” the greatest generation came home from war and built a social order that brought peace and economic progress to every class of Americans—including the wealthiest Americans.


The emerging consensus wrought by the New Deal gave us, a robust and growing middle class. Prosperity in the form of the “boom” years of the early 50’s and the 60’s was a near universally shared experience with all classes benefiting by the improvements in economic production and therefore wealth.

The great unraveling began with the emergence of Barry Goldwater in 1964 spawning in his wake a cadre of determined disciples who would, in ensuing years, labor in the political vineyards and the conservative stink tanks to launch a determined assault on paradise. After nearly 40 years of Republican and Republican-lite we are left with a situation wherein we begin to resemble to classic Banana Republic, where even our national elections are monitored by international agencies.

Just a few salient facts: Today the middle class commands less of the national wealth than before 1929. Six of our largest banks control 66% of the economy. The top ten percent controls 60% of the national wealth; conversely, the bottom 50% controls a mere 1%.
With organized labor representing a mere 12% of the workforce, a fraction of the laboring class less now than before the Wagner Act was passed in the 1930’s the scales have been heavily tipped in favor of Capital. To many of us who have watched with dismay the developments of recent decades our fears have not been unfounded. With the Supreme Court decision last years in the Citizens United Case, in which the Court, overturning long established legal precedent, held that Corporations and Unions can spend unlimited amounts of money, the specter of near corporate monopoly of political discourse becomes palpable. It did not take long to confirm our worst suspicions as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, soliciting tens of millions of dollars in foreign contributions, spent heavily to engineer a right-wing take-over of the United States Congress. Karl Rove’s political action committee raised millions from a handful of fat-cats. Similarly the Tea Party shenanigans were funded by a relative handful of billionaires funneling money through Dick Army’s political action committee.

As the unions decline in relative strength, the tepid efforts of those on the so-called “progressive” side of the argument pale by comparison and will, in all likelihood, fall far behind. It’s not because we on this side of the aisle don’t have right on our side, its that we don’t have near the money. Soon nothing will be left but the echo chamber fashioned by capital to worship its own reflection

On that note yesterday Keith Olbermann left MSNBC and his “Countdown” program is no more. Olbermann had built the program into a serious challenge to Fox Noise, leading MSNBC past CNN to second place in the cable news business. Evidently this is not a market decision but a political one taken by the corporate paymasters. The press release said that it was a mutual parting of ways, but the network had all too quickly announced its new programming line-up. Sources close to the scene say that he was almost fired last fall for contributing to three democratic campaigns and that one of MSNBC’s executives who had protected Olbermann was leaving. Both departures, it appears to this commentator, have everything to do with the pending purchase of NBC by Comcast, who evidently have no interest in a “countervailing power”. “Let us silence this bleating of the sheep” said the corporate paymasters. Corporate America has, once again, spoken. Capital has Dictated.

Welcome to the Dictatorship of Capital.