Saturday, January 9, 2010
"Shouting at the TeeVee"
Network was made in 1976; plus ça change, eh? And yet, in 1976, Paddy Chayefsky, Sidney Lumet and Peter Finch radically suggested that you turn off your teevee, go to the window and SHOUT your rage at the way things are, let the rest of creation know that you're mad as hell and you're not going to take it any more. Not that you'll actually do anything beyond the SHOUT, but that's another issue.
Now today, of course, the theory is you should never turn off your teevee (or your computer, for that matter) 'cause you might miss something important that Chris Matthews has to say, and if you bother to do any shouting, then do it AT your teevee and your monitor. Brilliant!
Interactivity, don'tchaknow. Shout at your teevee, sign another online petition, call your representative in Congress assembled and give them a piece of your mind (you bet!), post another furious blog entry, send money to one of the Progressive causes, call it a day.
And repeat.
Endlessly.
This loop has been playing without let up since the Impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton, the event that triggered the creation of the Online Progressive Movement. "MoveON", eh?
But it never does move on. It goes around and around and around on a Mobius Strip. Endlessly. Repeating the same actions and reactions, (peacefully) protesting the same wrongs, petitioning for the same redress of the same grievances over and over and over again. The only way to sustain it, of course, is to endlessly recruit newcomers who never knew what was "wrong" or what they could "do."
There are changes to be sure, but they are not changes brought about by shouting at the teevee, nor do many of those shouting and protesting recognize the radical changes being instituted right in their faces.
The Bush Regime, for example, was the most radical and destructive imposition of authority by the White House and Washington, DC, without popular support, in our nation's history. The Bushevik radicalism proceeded with lightning like speed, transforming our economy into a kleptocracy and our government into an Autocracy in only eight years, shredding the Constitution and pissing on the remnants, while people continued shouting at their teevees and computer monitors.
To no effect.
And as long as your shouting and venting and ranting has no effect, what is there for the Powers That Be to worry about?
The lesson of the failure of the anti-Iraq War demonstrations in 2002 and 2003 should be stark and learned well. They were, after all, the largest physical movements of humanity in a cause the nation and the world had ever seen. Well, if they were seen. And here's the clue: the 2002 demonstrations weren't covered at all by the mass media and the 2003 demonstrations, though covered, were continuously mocked and denounced by the Powerful, at home and abroad, and declared "failures" (and CommiePlots, since their organizers were (at least ostensibly) the handful of actual Communists still in existence) despite their numbers -- which were never honestly reported anyway.
Tens of millions marched and carried signs all around the world. It had no effect at all.
But for all indifference of the Powerful to the mobilization of tens of millions against the Iraq War, their utter disdain for the pathetic shouting and petitioning of the masses that passes for "activism" today is even more instructive.
You see, the Powerful have determined through repeated experiment that the masses will do nothing they need pay attention to to thwart the plots and plans and designs of those who rule and rob us.
Nothing.
They will simply continue to shout at their teevees, sign online petitions, send money to "Progressive" causes, candidates and enterpreneurs, and wonder why things keep getting worse, why Congress doesn't pay any attention to them, and why the White House acts as if the Busheviks are still in charge.
They'll lose their jobs, their houses will be foreclosed, their retirement savings pilfered, they'll wind up in bankruptcy -- and they still won't be relieved of debt. This has already happened to millions upon millions of Americans, and millions upon millions more are in the pipeline for the same treatment.
And still they do nothing those in Power need pay any attention to.
Instead, a phony pseudo-populist "Movement" is channeling "resistance" energy into the same Corporatist Power the Teabagger "Movement" is ostensibly "resisting." Participants, for the most part, being none the wiser. Teabagging is a brilliant ploy by the Powers That Be to ensure that no popular movement can arise to interfere with or thwart them. The whole idea of "movement" and "resistance" has been co-opted right out of the gate.
The Teabaggers will have a General Strike, to boot, to protest "giving" the Wrong People "health care." They will probably have another one to protest "giving" old folks Social Security and Medicare.
Is this a great country, or what?
There is no "movement" on the Left, and given the co-option of the terminology and much of the action of protest and resistance by Rightist Teabagger mobs, there can't be one on the Left, not that there ever would have been anyway. So-called Progressives do not "progress." They are locked in place, kind of like that protest "march" in New York that was not allowed to actually... march but had to stay in place, each block of protesters separated from every other, surrounded by police, and forbidden to move in any direction -- defiance being met with overwhelming (and often horse mounted) force.
Under the circumstances, the apparent victory of the Globalists and Corporatists is a lock.
I've mentioned Democracy and specifically Social Democracy as the real and ultimately successful counter to Corporatist/Globalist Autocracy, but then the question is whether a Social Democracy can even begin to come into being in the context of Corporatist Victory. If we accept that Victory is real, then how can you get to Social Democracy?
In other words, can the victorious Corporatists be induced to sponsor Social Democratic alternatives?
According to my Magic 8 Ball, "Absolutely!"
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Oh, this is so bleak. But your narrative is quite the way it is and has been. So maddening and despairing. How on earth do we break out?
ReplyDelete"How do we break out..?"
ReplyDeleteThe situation will keep getting bleaker as long as there is this -- apparent -- stalemate between the Powers That Be and their critics/opponents, and most especially as long as the rituals and routines of a functional civil democracy are rigidly adhered to by the "opposition," while a version of Radical Reconstruction is practiced by the Corporate victors.
I've been maintaining for years that the functional civil democracy no longer exists. The Republic of the Founders is inoperative, and there is no getting it back. We can't keep repeating the same futile actions and expect different results.
Ain't gonna happen.
So I checked my Magic 8 Ball, and it said that the Victorious Corporatists can be convinced ("Absolutely!") to sponsor Social Democratic alternatives to the mess they've made of things.
FDR pulled it off. Sure, many plutocrats opposed him fiercely, but don't forget, he was of their own class of wealth and privilege, he'd been in government since dirt was new, and many if not most of his closest advisors and cabinet members were of the same upper crust he was. They didn't go far enough, but they did use their power in the government and their sway among their own class to institute Social Democratic reforms. A considerable number of Corporatists of that era went along with it or actually helped make it happen if only to save their own asses.
It will have to be something like that again. Trouble is, right now, we're still in the Hoover Phase.