Reality TV and the Republican Ethos-- Harper's article [View All]

[carolinayellowdog]

by Francine Prose. That's the subtitle; the title is "Voting Democracy Off the Island" which doesn't capture the import as well and since this is not in LBN I hope it's OK to use the subtitle as header instead. This is in the March issue. Here's an incisive quote:

Observant readers may already have noted that the guiding principles to which I've alluded-- flinty individualism, the vision of a zero-sum society in which no one can win unless someone else loses, the conviction that altruism and compassion are signs of folly and weakness, the exaltation of solitary striving above the illusory benefits of cooperative mutual aid, the belief that certain circumstances justify secrecy and deception, the invocation of a reviled common enemy to solidify group loyalty-- are the exact same themes that underlie the rhetoric we have been hearing and continue to hear from the Republican Congress and our current administration.