Down With the People

[1gobluedem]

From Newsweek: http://www.newsweek.com/id/233158

Interesting read.

[LiberalLoner]

1. GREAT article. Wish everyone in the country would read it and think about it.

[Warpy]

2. I call BULLSHIT

Prime example, "At the root of this contradiction is our national-characterological{sic} ambivalence about government. We want Washington and the states to fix our problems."

Hey, moron, it's "characteristic," and the problem is morons like you who are lying to the public about everything from the Iraq war on down through the tax cuts they actually got this year plus the stimulus plan that likely saved their jobs.

The problem is a lazy and corrupt corporate mass media that has failed the general public completely, misinforming, uninforming, and actively disinforming them instead of giving them the information they need in order to make wise choices.

Asshole.

[Caliman73]

4. I have to agree though not as passionately.

The heart of the matter is that the people with the money and power do not want an educated and motivated constituency. The media is more interested in making money than in providing a public service, which they are not even required to do. The public school system is not really teaching history and civic anymore, and if they do it is typically very slanted and simplistic.

Given a choice between subsisting and "forming a more perfect Union" the average citizen chooses subsistence every time. Granted, there is a general dissatisfaction with what government is doing, you are correct that that anger is being slanted by the right and by the media towards a general problem with government, when the problem is not with government, but with lack of government due to politics.

[kenny blankenship]

3. The people of this country are propagandized as thoroughly as citizens of the old USSR

and they are propagandized much more effectively than Soviet citizens were I would say. In the USSR there was one source for news and opinion and everyone knew what it was, and everyone knew that it was lying, and why it was lying.

But in this country news media say the same thing, have the same underlying ideological intent, for which they lie frequently and omit relevant truth constantly. But because the propaganda emanates from what appear to be multiple sources in competition with one another, the people are blinded to the way that it lies to them. "If there was any undiscovered truth out there, one of the networks would surely reveal it to gain an advantage on the others," we're conditioned to believe. But on substantive issues of economics and class power, the ostensibly competing channels share a uniform interest - to keep people powerless and uninformed- and they share a mutual blindspot, enforced by their own separate self interest to 100% effectiveness, all without an industry board of censors, or even the threat of state control.

And so when the people realize that there is a need for a certain policy (like an employment policy, say, because the economy is falling apart from a deflationary spiral of widespread job losses leading to loan defaults, leading to more job loss, and so on), but this policy conflicts with the full spectrum domination of elites, in which elites alone decide in their private wisdom how capital should be allocated, the news media will condition the people to believe that the employment policy can be tolerated only if it does not infringe against an accepted principle which is antithetical to the needed policy. The new policy goes forward because of the urgency of the jobs situation, but then the media start to incubate the seeds of this abstract principle "which everyone knows is of paramount importance!" They jump on the new policy with their abstract principle as if it hadn't already been invalidated by the conditions which provoked the new policy response. Hasn't the new policy been given enough time to work already? they ask the confused public. In reality the new policy has probably been in effect for only a few weeks. Isn't it in danger of contravening our cherished abstract principle which everyone knows is of paramount importance? they begin to ask. Hasn't it all gone too far? They neglect to remind the public that it had in effect abandoned this abstract principle when it embarked on the new policy, and when it elected new leadership, because long term adherence to this principle, and policies derived from it, is what brought on the crisis in which it now fights for its life.

Thus the people, lashed this way and that by an ideologically motivated and lying news media that is always acting in service to its corporate ownership and sponsors, are led to self-contradictions and confusion. Bewilderment is the charm elites exert upon the people to keep them from seizing control of the state and directing it to a common good. That's all they need to rule.

[Caliman73]

5. Good analysis.

When the motivation of an entity is to ensure profits, they are certainly not going to provide accurate information that would incite the populace to want to have a fundamental change in how business is conducted. The status quo is a very powerful motivator for most.

[tom_paine]

6. Well said and true