We have met the enemy and he is us.
– Pogo
Long, long ago (the past few days), in a galaxy far, far away (fish’s blog):
fish posted a selection from the more worrisome quotes of the Democratic Presidential candidates concerning their respective approaches to national security. AG and BP commented on that post to the effect that making worrisome statements about national security is an apparently unavoidable aspect of campaigning for president in the US.
In reply to these comments, fish made the argument that polling shows Americans are less pro-war than the national security positions of our candidates and Presidents would indicate, writing:
We are told over and over again that America wants a strong military and a dominant world presence, but the reality is that Americans want peace and prosperity, really just to be left alone. The lust for war and destruction is manufactured by our elite discourse it is not part of our national psyche. It is not middle America who loves war, it is the corporate machine. Obama and Clinton are just the newest messengers for that old machine. This is why they are now the ones getting the money hand-over-fist from the war pigs. After months and months of being barraged with news that Iran is now TEH MOST SCARIEST COUNTRY ON TEH PLANET, it is to be expected that Americans will respond with fear, but this fear is manufactured, just like it was for Iraq, just like it was for Vietnam, Korea, WW I, the Philippines, and on and on.
I reject the notion that it takes baptizing a leader in the blood of war to be elected president. I wish everyone would.
Presumably due to a congenital inability to leave well enough alone, I posted the following comment.
* * * * *
The American people may, presented with an abstract choice, choose peace. American voters (not quite the same group), presented with candidates, choose whichever one pushes their buttons.
More Americans may have the button “peace is good” than the button “war is good”, but most people also have a large, easily accessible button that says “defending the country is important”. Wiring connecting the “defending the country is important” button to the “peace is good” button is not standard equipment, and thus the logical consequences are often treated separately. Not acknowledging this reality is pretty much political suicide in national politics (cf. Kucinich).
It is probably almost impossible to overestimate the mental compartmentalization of a good chunk of voters. (A quite separate issue from their intelligence.)
Now, whether acknowledging that reality has to look like what we see in politics today is another question. I’d like to see a politician who can open up the minuscule range of language available to talk about security issues on the national stage. At the moment, the best you’re likely to get is broad statements whose ambiguities you could drive a truck through.
I, too, “reject the notion that it takes baptizing a leader in the blood of war to be elected president”, and “wish everyone would.” But believing such a thing is possible and knowing how to implement it, are two different things. Even if a plausible implementation existed, convincing an actual politician with ego-needs for winning to use it is yet another problem.
A useful article on the inconsistencies of voters:
The undecideds I spoke to didn’t seem to have any intuitive grasp of what kinds of grievances qualify as political grievances. Often, once I would engage undecided voters, they would list concerns, such as the rising cost of health care; but when I would tell them that Kerry had a plan to lower health-care premiums, they would respond in disbelief–not in disbelief that he had a plan, but that the cost of health care was a political issue. It was as if you were telling them that Kerry was promising to extend summer into December.
That campaign finance article is terrible. There are at least a half-dozen issues that it ignores which would be required to make sense of the numbers there. For example: how many of the people making donations in the Democratic primaries made donations in the last cycle, and to whom? It might be said to show that the defense industry prefers Hillary, and she is the most obviously pro-war Dem, but she was also the anointed front-runner at the time and industry sucks up to winners. Who have they been donating to in the past few months? Do people trying to ensure the most pro-war Dem wins the primaries also turn around and support the Republican in the general election?
* * * * *
In a second comment, I posted the following caveat to that final paragraph: “As regards the campaign finance article: I’m annoyed with it for using figures sloppily, not for the point it’s making. For various reasons, there’s a good chance defense people are giving more to Dems this year.” I realize now that a further caveat is necessary: while I expect the basic premise of the article is likely to be true, I don’t think that it makes for strong evidence that Dems are receiving money “hand-over-fist from the war pigs” because of their national security policies. (I can elaborate more if anyone cares.)
fish posted a comment in response to mine:
The American people may, presented with an abstract choice, choose peace. American voters (not quite the same group), presented with candidates, choose whichever one pushes their buttons.
I guess this is my point, although I believe that it is more than the politicians pushing the buttons, their opinions are being shaped by the corporate interests funding them. Essentially the fix is in. Kucinich was slaughtered by the media and was universally mocked even though his policies are essentially in direct alignment with the majority of Americans across the board. It was a corporate takedown. GE and Raytheon are not interested in peace, so neither are our corporate shill politicians. I just wish they would wear logos on their clothes like NASCAR drivers so we knew which corporations we are voting for.
Which mostly brings us up to the point at which I started creating this post. My response to fish’s comment follows, however I’d first like to note what the rest of this post is not about. In a comment to BP, fish wrote:
BP, for me the post wasn’t really about ideological purity or even about election victories, just venting my deep frustration that our choices are: A) 100 years in Iraq McCain, B) nuke Iran Clinton, or C) invade Pakistan Obama. War, war, fucking war. The war machine must be fed at all costs.
The game is rigged, and I am tired of it.
It is not this sentiment that my arguments are directed against. Imperialism is fun like depleted uranium is a vegetable. Replacing White-Man’s Burden with Yankee-Man’s Burden was pretty much a cosmetic change at best. Yeah, I’m sick of it.
* * * * *
fish:
I guess this is my point, although I believe that it is more than the politicians pushing the buttons, their opinions are being shaped by the corporate interests funding them.
You sidestepped most of my argument. That first paragraph isn’t meant to stand on its own.
Politicians’ opinions are shaped by many things — obviously including checks with lots of zeros, but also the opinions of their constituents. People have an interest in national security. The discourse about national security functions in a certain way based on long term cultural trends, on what narratives have been created by the media, politicians, and other sources, on the information people have at a given time. The latter two are subject to manipulation in various ways, but all of them have dynamics which would continue to operate regardless of any attempt at manipulation. There is no master plan.
People are not tabulas rasa to be imprinted with corporate messages. Or, from the other direction, there is no “true consciousness” to which you have the key and “media dupes” do not.
I’m fairly sure you do not think you are saying that, but I’m also unsure how what you are saying — at least in the form you are saying it — functions without it.
Michael Bérubé recently posted this quote from Stuart Hall:
Though there are people willing enough to deploy the false consciousness explanation to account for the illusory behavior of others, there are very few who are ever willing to own up that they are themselves living in false consciousness! It seems to be (like corruption by pornography) a state always reserved for others.
And as Bérubé himself wrote:
There is no question that mass media can and do dupe people: witness the extraordinary number of Americans who believe, having been misled by Bush/ Cheney and their propagandists at Fox News, that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11 and that U.S. troops discovered weapons of mass destruction in the course of their invasion of Iraq. But that does not mean that the “media dupe people” theory should stand in for sustained left analysis of how the winning of popular consent actually works in civil society; for when it becomes axiomatic, it degenerates into an all-purpose excuse for the left’s many strategies of self-marginalization.
In short: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
Essentially the fix is in.
You say this fairly often. It’s a nice agency-free phrase. Who precisely has fixed what precisely, and what precisely ensures the fix stays “in”? How is this process coordinated and kept secret across the obviously thousands of people necessary to maintain it?
Given the range of phenomena this phrase seems intended to cover, why should I not think it would require an Illuminati level conspiracy theory to back it up?
I hope it goes without saying that I’m not disputing the documentable facts this analysis tries to explain. I’m saying that I don’t see how this analysis works without introducing an unnecessary level of mystification.
As a biologist, you are quite aware that complex homeostatic effects can be produced without any hand guiding the process. I think its even possible that you may think about the processes you are describing in ways that do not require such a guiding hand. However, I think your rhetoric does not convey that.
Kucinich was slaughtered by the media and was universally mocked even though his policies are essentially in direct alignment with the majority of Americans across the board. It was a corporate takedown. GE and Raytheon are not interested in peace, so neither are our corporate shill politicians.
The corporations do not create their messages out of whole cloth. They use the materials that are out there, such as already existing cultural expectations and discourse. Those materials could be used to create other messages, but Kucinich does not do that; he makes no attempt to translate his message into a form most people will listen to.
One can say that the media marginalized him and prevented him from getting his message out, and that would be true. However, it is also true that he made no attempt to use the tools available to him in an effective way.
The first of those analyses is important to note, but does little toward the end of solving how to actually get messages out in the media environment we are faced with.
Thinking “the media (or public opinion) ought to function like X” and treating it as if it does, when it actually does not, is pretty much a guarantee that your message won’t get across.
You enter the race for president with the country you have, not the country you wish you had. Presuming that wish has a real connection to why people support you, your job as a candidate and as president is to try transform the one into the other, but as with any other complex task, you need a keen understanding of where you’re starting from.
It is not middle America who loves war, it is the corporate machine.
I don’t think either middle America or the corporate machine loves war — only martial fundamentalists like Michael Ledeen. The corporate machine loves profits. For defense contractors, war can often help that goal. For other types of corporations, it’s not necessarily helpful.
Middle America loves the perception they live in a secure, stable nation that is a beacon of freedom and not a rapacious empire. To all appearances, many of them love it more than facts, and it is an illusion they will fight wars to defend — however much they prefer peace in abstract polls.
Any attempt to say “Americans want peace” without addressing what Americans are willing to do — and expect their president to do — in the name of national security (at least before they’ve experienced the downside) is missing half the equation.
* * * * *
Since I started working on this post, there has been further conversation in the comment thread at fish’s.
My responses to a couple of those comments:
fish wrote (in response to AG): This isn’t just about the politicians, it is the whole system, see this recent/old Chris Floyd piece to see just how depraved our discourse is in the NYT.
I remain puzzled as to why you might think AG, myself, or anyone else who has participated in this conversation have any illusions about this.
You seem to be implying that the circumstances you cite require some kind of conscious and organized effort on the part of those who benefit from the situation in order to function. I won’t speak for the others, but I’m arguing that our media degradation is possible without coordination. For example, the NYT military analysts story seems to make pretty clear that the media doesn’t need to collude with government in order to come up with ways to act like propaganda outlets.
Which leads me to the next quote (from the same comment as the previous one): Why were Americans behind the Iraq war? Someone told them that Saddam was responsible for 9/11. Since the evidence obviously was not there for such a claim, the media had to be complicit in the deception…
All Americans are complicit in the Iraq war. Being opposed to the war doesn’t make a person less guilty, just part of the atonement.
The evidence isn’t there that McCain understands foreign policy either. The press corps that follows him around doesn’t fawn over him because they were ordered to make him look good. They really believe he’s a straight-talkin’ maverick.
The evidence isn’t there that Obama condescends to people in small towns.
The evidence isn’t there that most Jews in either Israel or the US agree with AIPAC.
The evidence isn’t there that there’s a controversy among scientists about the truth of evolution.
The evidence isn’t there that markets always produce the best outcomes.
The list could go on until there are boat moorings on the 10th floor of the Empire State Building.
It would be nice if media discourse in America were about evidence, but the evidence isn’t there that that is the case.
This is not about people being stupid, it is about the vastness of our institutions, the complexity of the world, and the limitations of the human brain.
Is it not hubris to conclude that just because one has seen through some of the lies that one has thereby cracked the code? That one even knows there is a code? That one has accounted for the vertiginous capacity of the human brain for delusion and self-justification? Never believe your own press.
There is no master plan. Just people consolidating power when they see the chance. And the rest of us failing to stop them.
When you say that you don’t believe that there needs to be collusion for the media to become a propaganda outlet, I agree. But I don’t see how it justifies either of these points:
It’s quite possible for The Media *not* to be believe he’s a straight-talking maverick AND present him as such. In fact, I think that’s specifically the case here. It’s also possible for the media to believe that AND collude. The point is that the media is aware of the side on which their bread is buttered. It doesn’t require explicit marching orders. People know who pays what bill.
As for the Obama and the small towns, there’s lots of people who have good reason to beg to differ. “Cling to” and all that.
[quote]I don’t think either middle America or the corporate machine loves war — only martial fundamentalists like Michael Ledeen. The corporate machine loves profits. For defense contractors, war can often help that goal. For other types of corporations, it’s not necessarily helpful.[/quote]
Ledeen and his inexplicable prominence do not come out of thin air. I find this to be, forgive me, a terribly naïve thing to say. Nowadays, both kind of corporation is owned by the same people, and the capitalist system does love and need war as a whole. I do think that the corporate machine loves and depends on war, despite the fact that a small number of its members may suffer its effects.
It’s quite possible for The Media *not* to be believe he’s a straight-talking maverick AND present him as such. In fact, I think that’s specifically the case here. The point is that the media is aware of the side on which their bread is buttered. It doesn’t require explicit marching orders. People know who pays what bill.
Of course, your scenario is possible. But as LaPlace said: I had no need of that hypothesis. I think you underestimate the power of social and media narratives and groupthink. It is necessary, as I noted, to account for the “vertiginous capacity of the human brain for delusion and self-justification”. There’s a lot of science on this stuff at this point. The book I linked to is the tip of the iceberg.
I also think the kind of position you’re taking sounds like what Foucault is arguing against in passages like this (from the 1975 interview “Body/Power”, found in Power/Knowledge, 1980, p 59):
As for the Obama and the small towns, there’s lots of people who have good reason to beg to differ. “Cling to” and all that.
Why so lenient on this particular media narrative? You know (or should) it’s not that simple. In any case, it’s apparently not that simple to the people of Pennsylvania:
Ledeen and his inexplicable prominence do not come out of thin air. I find this to be, forgive me, a terribly naïve thing to say. Nowadays, both kind of corporation is owned by the same people, and the capitalist system does love and need war as a whole. I do think that the corporate machine loves and depends on war, despite the fact that a small number of its members may suffer its effects.
I’m saying war is a means not an end. Statements of the form “capitalism requires X to survive” have a historical track record of being proven wrong. It would be nice if they didn’t, we might have been more successful in curbing it by now. I don’t expect that X=”the war economy” will be any different.
I’ll quote from my earlier post:
War is also in fashion. The other plutocrats get jealous and pouty when people at Halliburton and Blackwater and ExxonMobil have all the fun. Corporate culture also dictates that if war is what we’re doing, they should find a way to profit from it, whether war is their business or not.
What does a model with collusion and secret cabals buy you anyway?
We’ll have to agree to disagree on the Obama point. Obama massively outspent Clinton, and advertising works. The real question is why Obama still couldn’t overtake Clinton. I generally feel that the media narrative against Clinton is a lot stronger and more enthusiastic than that against Obama. (I’m simultaneously in fish and AG’s camp on this question. I’ve come to disprefer Clinton less than I disprefer Obama.)
See, that’s the wrong characterization and the wrong question. It’s not a question of “collusion” and “secret cabals”. It’s a question of people who aren’t stupid and have a clear understand of, as I put it, the side on which their bread is buttered.
To me, it’s rather absurd to attribute the ongoing survival enlargement, and enrichment of such large and unwieldy entities without the efficiency of clear self-interested thinking that leads them to come to similar conclusions about what favours their bottom line. GE (military-industrial complex) owns NBC. Do you think they can’t put two-and-two together?
Of course, like anyone else from time to time they get it wrong (for instance, in the long, complex chain of events that is leading to the subprime meltdown and rising food prices). That doesn’t allow you to imply,
Too much of anything is not a good thing, and no one prognosticates perfectly.
Sure, fashion exists and fads exist and memes (depending on what you mean by that) exist. But they all exist within very narrow bands of discourse. American imperialism in the MidEast and elsewhere is not a passing fad and not the result of Chris Matthews getting his jollies. It’s really well thought out. The memes around it are not: Tuckemu Orangeson is not a member of a Sekrit Cabal, and neither are the people paying him, but sufficient among them know, well, on which side their bread is buttered.
The unwillingness of American liberals to confront this, and the desire of liberals to attribute large-scale patterns to trivial processes, is why they fail.
See, that’s the wrong characterization and the wrong question.
That was not the most well thought out question I’ve ever written. My impression at this point is that we are both talking past each other. I won’t be able to write a real reply until later though.
Already late to the party I see. I think Mandos and I are close on this issue, so I think I will just use my words and see if they are describing the same phenomena.
While the arguments and the words I use to describe the situation often sound like this is a secret cabal of 5 guys with cigars sitting in a smokey room making all the big decisions, this is not what I am trying to describe (I am sure my lazy language and argumentation is at the heart of this). There is a hierarchical power structure in the US, primarily defined by concentration of wealth (this is no special arrangement, but essentially true everywhere). In the US, the most powerful entities outside of the government are the corporations. Political dialog, as it exists, is controlled through a fairly limited number of avenues, primarily at the interface between the government and the news media, which means an interface between government and corporations. People theoretically have a say, primarily by voting, but also petitions, protests, independent media, etc., but they don’t have control of the flow of information, so their ability to set the agenda for discussion is severely limited. As Mandos points out, GE makes bombs and makes TV news. If GE wants the new bomb contract, they sure as hell better get behind the gov position on war. Under those conditions, pro-war news is inevitable. If ATT wants that new telecom bill passed allowing for wider ownership across the country, same thing, let the gov do what they want to do. Reporters don’t have to realize they are colluding (in fact most would vehemently deny it). Success and failure of reporters is controlled by editors, success and failure of editors by owners, owners are controlled by boards of directors. It is highly unlikely that a really good reporter that consistently caused big problems for the government would move up the ranks. Thus restriction of the dialog gets internalized by everyone in the food chain. News therefore will naturally reflect the interests of the government, the corporations, and the power elite, but not (necessarily) the majority of Americans.
Noam Chomsky writes a syndicated column for the NY Times. Chomsky is never published in the US newspapers. Why is that? His books sell incredibly well. He is highly regarded (and published) throughout Europe. But there is no interest by the NYT or any other news outlet to mainstream his views in the US. It can only be viewed as suppression of a point of view, I can’t see any other interpretation that I find convincing.
You said:
I don’t think either middle America or the corporate machine loves war — only martial fundamentalists like Michael Ledeen. The corporate machine loves profits. For defense contractors, war can often help that goal. For other types of corporations, it’s not necessarily helpful.
The discretionary part of the Federal budget:
That is a lot of coin, generating an overwhelming desire to keep the bombs coming. What is the best way to keep that gravy train going? Empire! To keep the fires of empire burning, the gov merely needs to have friendly press, which is not hard to maintain, and lots of corporate support, and when a corporation owns both the means to make bombs and the means to distribute news, double-plus-good! Andy Card described delaying the Iraq War thus: “From a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August.” The gov knows it needs to manipulate the people into supporting war (Gulf of Tonkin, Operation Northwoods, USS Maine) and it always has help.
There is a range of discussion, I believe universal healthcare is on the table not because it is the right thing to do for 40 million uninsured Americans, but because many corporations recognize the huge benefits of it (GM’s Canadian CEO famously lobbied for expanded universal healtcare). The debate we are seeing on healthcare is a debate between powerful business interests.
This obviously isn’t an airtight system, and it doesn’t have to be. All you have to imagine is powerful interests will often work together to maintain the power structure and it essentially becomes self-organizing. There will be rifts and disagreements within the elite and the rabble will occasionally demand to be noticed (Suffragettes, civil rights, Vietnam protests, and of course labor battles), suppression is usually violent when they do, but progress is always made outside of the system. For example, the New Deal was a panicked reaction to massive organization and protests of agricultural and industrial workers.
When I say the game is rigged, I mean that voting Dem or Republican will not change the fundamentals, because they are vetted by power interests. Our successes in moving the country in a more progressive direction is despite the institutionalized powers, not because of them.
fish, I agree with you and I disagree with the others about the inherent violent tendencies of Americans in general.
we may all have plenty of personal acquaintances of pacifistic bent, but those may not be representative samples, as has been pointed out. in any case, I’d find polls about opposition to war like polls about racism; fewer people are going to answer how they really feel, especially in the privacy of a voting booth. Also, dislike for war may not also indicate pacifism; the respondent may be perfectly fine with civilizing the wogs or burning out a few rice paddies, or whatever the current Empirical mission is.
But I disagree with your dismissal of voting Dem vs Republican. I agree that it is not a solution to the structural problems; but voting for an idiot warmongering chuckletrousers like McCain is simply going to make things incalculably worse. Some idiots say that Gore would have been as big a disaster as Bush in the WH, but I have seen no compelling arguments how this is so, apart from silly arguments about elimination of all commerce to save polar bears, and other wingnut bugaboos.
Certainly we need to defeat the corporate lockdown on the political system, and reduce capitalism from an unchallenged religion to a role more secondary to people and society in general. and it won’t happen easily, because the oligarchy will certainly defend its position.
But discarding the Democratic Party on the same rubbish heap as the Republicans destroys the only method to achieve the leverage necessary to effect such changes, while ceding political power to Republicans because the ‘Dems are just as bad’ allows them to continue to incrementally shift the playing field in their favor, as they have been doing since Reagan.
I don’t think anybody here is under any illusions that a Dem president will be a magic freedom pixie and make everything magically better like this was some inane C.S. Lewis morality tale. But they can be used to forestall further appalling damage and maybe even move the chains a bit.
And it doesn’t eliminate the need to continue to fight for progressive interest in general, but allows the breathing room to do so rather than spending all our efforts fighting defenses and just trying to prevent continuing disaster.
Mandos:
We’ll have to agree to disagree on the Obama point. Obama massively outspent Clinton, and advertising works. The real question is why Obama still couldn’t overtake Clinton. I generally feel that the media narrative against Clinton is a lot stronger and more enthusiastic than that against Obama. (I’m simultaneously in fish and AG’s camp on this question. I’ve come to disprefer Clinton less than I disprefer Obama.)
We may very well have to agree to disagree, but I’m not convinced we’re talking about the same thing. What I think the data I cited shows is that, whatever happened in Pennsylvania, it is hard to characterize as people in small towns finding Obama condescending — whether or not people in Philly voted against him because they thought people in small towns found him condescending. Whether or not “the evidence is there” that Obama is condescending to people in small towns is a separate question of the role played in the primary by the media narrative which said he is. I would also note that people who are far more knowledgeable of campaign dynamics than you or I never thought it likely he would win.
Overall, considering the past year, I agree that the “media narrative against Clinton [has been] a lot stronger and more enthusiastic than that against Obama”. There are several reasons for that: there are prominent media figures with a thing about her; there was a pre-existing anti-Clinton smear apparatus; it is generally somewhat easier to get away with overt sexism in the media than overt racism. The chief reason though is probably that she was the front runner for most of that time and her ascension was treated as inevitable. Now that Obama is the front runner the knives have come out against him.
They campaigned for 6 weeks in Pennsylvania. Obama moved the gap between them from about 20 points to about 10. During that time Obama also received the worst press he’s had during the campaign, and was often singled out in a way that was usually reserved for Clinton in earlier months. Why is that result weird?
You do not say why you currently prefer Clinton, but if your views are as Chomskyesque as this current discussion would indicate, I’m curious as to what drives that. One of the main reasons I’ve never favored Clinton is due to her being the most determined warmonger in the Democratic field. Is there an argument that she isn’t?
See, that’s the wrong characterization and the wrong question. It’s not a question of “collusion” and “secret cabals”. It’s a question of people who aren’t stupid and have a clear understand of, as I put it, the side on which their bread is buttered.
This is, of course, a reasonable description as far as it goes. My impression, however, is that it gets applied in ways that require a model of how human beings act that does not fit the evidence. It ends up demanding far more consistency and calculated instrumental thinking than nearly anyone sustains for any length of time — similar to how economic models presume perfectly rational behavior by individuals. To the degree it demands such a “homo imperialus”, a theoretical framework seems likely to produce similarly dangerous results to “homo economicus”.
To me, it’s rather absurd to attribute the ongoing survival enlargement, and enrichment of such large and unwieldy entities without the efficiency of clear self-interested thinking that leads them to come to similar conclusions about what favours their bottom line. GE (military-industrial complex) owns NBC. Do you think they can’t put two-and-two together?
How familiar are you with ideas about self-organization?
It is useful to keep in mind that the largest, most complex, most unwieldy, and yet often phenomenally efficient entities on the planet — ecosystems — have no guiding hand.
“Clear self-interested thinking” obviously plays a role in things — ideas have to originate somewhere. However, you seem to de-emphasize unclear self-interested thinking, human limitations, and self-perpetuating structural and institutional elements. There are also, to further strain an already stretched metaphor, a lot of spandrels out there.
Of course, like anyone else from time to time they get it wrong … Too much of anything is not a good thing, and no one prognosticates perfectly.
I’m afraid I don’t follow what you’re saying in this paragraph. Too much of what? I didn’t say anything about individuals prognosticating. I said that a certain form of prediction, which has been historically important to left politics, has, as a rule, been a bust. I hope you didn’t read that as some kind of defense of capitalism?
Sure, fashion exists and fads exist … etc.
I have no idea what you think my position is, but this paragraph does not appear to address it.
Did you take my use of “fashion” as an analytic term rather than as snark against the war profiteers?
The unwillingness of American liberals to confront this, and the desire of liberals to attribute large-scale patterns to trivial processes, is why they fail.
I’ve already noted that I’m not buying false consciousness theories.
I have no idea how you might have come to the conclusion that I’m some kind of generic “American liberal” (if that is the case).
You appear to have a taken a severely wrong turn in your reading of me at some point. If this is due to me being unclear, I apologize. However, at the moment, I’m baffled as to what position you even think I’m taking, let alone what premise you might have drawn from my comments that would have caused that perception.
fish:
I may not be able to get to answer your comment until sometime Monday. For now, I’ll just say that I mostly agree with BP/jrosf in terms of the pragmatics of the situation, but I have more to say about what I think is going on.
BP:
I agree with you and I disagree with the others about the inherent violent tendencies of Americans in general.
Just to be clear: I never made an argument about inherent violent tendencies. I said that one needs to take into account what people think is necessary in the name of national security.
I agree with your next paragraph about the complexities of interpreting attitudes about pacifism. It’s pretty much the same thing I was implying by “Wiring connecting the ‘defending the country is important’ button to the ‘peace is good’ button is not standard equipment, and thus the logical consequences are often treated separately.”
It’s not weird at all, and I’m not sure what the point is here. If you spend a lot more than your opponent, you are likely to regain some ground. The press he got was nothing compared to what he’ll get when/if Hillary is finally out of the race, whoa boy.
Certainly not. But, my analysis being Chomskyesque and all, I have no confidence that the structure of US politics permits any of the front-runners to be very different in the practice of imperialism, except in the matter of competence. And that’s no small thing. Small variations in competence produce predictable casualties. Even Chomsky says that Bush is a disaster beyond his expectations, IIRC.
The place where they differentiate themselves in practice is in the slightly larger variations in domestic policy that they represent. Small variations in domestic policy have enough of an effect on real people to matter, and I’m not sure that Obama has proven himself on this front, at least compare to Clinton. With the usual caveats about the interests they serve.
And, well, I think that despite her primary losses (the primary not being a general election), Clinton is more likely to beat McCain.
Saw your comment at feministe
re: the feministe Vogue bitching about Vogue cover
If you were basketball fans, instead of women, you’d know that far from being a put up job by racist Vogue editors, LeBron probably made the face himself, naturally. Its one of his signature “grimaces” after he scores or makes a big play:
Lebron photo
that was on the first page of google images, I’ll wager there are 50 more where that came from. I’ve seen him do it dozens of times, and they don’t telecast Cavs games down here very often, I’m a transplanted Ohioan in Florida. He’s becoming such a big star, they might start, though, thankfully.
But still, if you want to make something out of nothing, or assign motives where they don’t exist, I’m sure this won’t stop you.
Nice reading skillz you got doc.
Hmm, maybe I mixed up your comment with someone else’s. Heh, if I did, sorry, I thought you had agreed with them it was purposeful and calculated and looked like King Kong and was set up that way. If I read the name over or under the wrong comment, my bad, sorry. You can delete my comment if you like, sorry to trouble you.
I was going to answer the shorebird in greater detail but got distracted by other internetular goings-on. Anyway, here’s a little bit more dribbling out from the corner of my keyboard:
Then later…
So not only do I believe in self-organization, I am effectively claiming that it is the means by which we obtain homo imperialus, as you call it. Yes, individual human beings have a lot of variation in their behaviour, but it happens that some organizations form that have a greater ability to smooth out individual variation and error, for the sustenance of these organzations.
Then it also happens that most of these organizations are hierarchical, and you see how, paradoxically, this kind of self-organization benefits a small few the most.
Couple that with the selection processes through the hierarchy at an individual level (the values that get weeded out via MBA school, and so on), and, well, it’s not a contradiction to say that there is a quantity of self-organization in the system AND that organization is sustained by the ability of a small number of people to put two-and-two together and make deliberate choices.
And they make mistakes, but there are more than enough of these organizations to keep the whole system going even through an enormous crisis.
But ultimately, at some level, deliberate, intelligent, and conscious action is required to sustain them, just as it is required to oppose them.
I do and don’t, at the same time. I can do that!
I don’t deny “unclear” thinking, etc, etc. I mean, neither fish nor I believe that journalists all necessarily in deliberate cahoots with the Powers of Darkness. It’s just that the design and setup of large private institutions in our society—such as those that operate the mass media—happens, for whatever reason*, to smooth out a lot of the unclear thinking.
It’s a chicken and egg sort of thing, I guess. I *do* believe that these systems are self-organizing, and their action is not entirely due to some enormous conspiracy. But I also believe that the growth medium, so to speak, wherein the self-organization takes place is one in which the kinds of thinking that produce a power-colluding mass media are able to compete and survive more effectively than resistance is able to do so.
And that there is nothing inevitable about any of this—merely that someone less lazy than I needs to help change the characteristics of the growth medium.
* Enough people had enough clear thinking to set them up this way.