Storytelling is a codified, public strategy. It is often used opportunistically, as a psycho-social trope aimed toward a predetermined result—a schema selling a product or a pitch or a persona, a therapeutic process, a technique to persuade the public to favor a politician’s hairball agenda. Television conservatives, amply backed by parties and think tanks and strategists, don’t do anything by accident—unless it’s a mistake. Crafting their ideology as narrative is a studious marketing ploy. How best to sell this agenda, this tax cut, this Democrat demonization?
Tell a tale. Campfire stories about Commie boogeyman and welfare cheats, bedtime stories about how things used to be, once upon a time. To dip even your littlest toe into the river of conservative media is to hear stories, stories of evil homosexuals, beatific soldiers, heroic Republican presidents, and halcyon days of law, order, authority and traditional values.
The problem is, leftists do not tell stories—whether true or fabricated—that involve the past. Progressives opine for the practical future, a future that they aim to create free of turmoil or injustice. That is, a future without stories. Stories require conflict, emotional desire, heroes and villains.
What kind of story could a liberal tell about an unconflicted and equitable tomorrow? Unless you are able to invoke an idealized past, which you can mythify as narrative, your hands will be tied.For progressives, the past, as a tale told, is not on the docket.
We’re talking about presentation, not laws and rights and actions. As long as American politics remain a matter of simulacra—of rhetoric and persona—the storytellers will dominate the discussion, doing what myth has always done—supply order in place of chaos and uncertainty. This is our modern tragedy: Recent history offers a parade of evil fabulists, from Hitler to Karl Rove to Kim Jong-Il, all of them bewitching storytellers.
The Tea Party movement is nothing more than a cycle of antique fictions told over and over again, distorting themselves as they go.
While conservatives such as Beck and Palin point to a time past when America had honor, I am puzzled. Presumably, Beck and Palin mean America had honor in the eyes of God. Presumably, this honor was due to our limited government and desire for individual liberty. But if we assume this to be true, was God also honored with the systematic displacement of native peoples; the enslavement, lynching, and raping of African women, children and men forcibly brought to our “blessed” shores; and the continual repression of women’s votes just to name a few? Was God being honored when those atrocities were not only permitted, but nationally sanctioned? Is God not honored because millions more have healthcare? Is God not honored because I do not keep what I rightfully earned? Is America’s Honor, a Christian’s Honor? Thoughts on Glenn Beck and the “Restoring Honor” Rally ☀
There’s always been a big audience in the United States for conspiracy theories and religious melodrama. The apocalyptic theology of the hard-shell denominations where hucksters like Beck and his costar Sarah Palin have their biggest following basically demands it. It’s Satan worship one year, secular humanism the next. The latest bogeyman is Islamic fundamentalist Shariah law, an almost purely theoretical threat in the USA. Which actually constitutes progress. Back in Mencken’s day the enemies were Catholics and Jews. Glenn Beck’s religious rally nothing new ☀
Welcome to Berkeley, probably still the best public university in the world. Meet your classmates, the best group of partners you can find anywhere. The percentages for grades on exams, papers, etc. in my courses always add up to 110% because that’s what I’ve learned to expect from you, over twenty years in the best job in the world.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that you have been the victims of a terrible swindle, denied an inheritance you deserve by contract and by your merits. And you aren’t the only ones; victims of this ripoff include the students who were on your left and on your right in high school but didn’t get into Cal, a whole generation stiffed by mine. This letter is an apology, and more usefully, perhaps a signal to start demanding what’s been taken from you so you can pass it on with interest.
Swindle–what happened? Well, before you were born, Californians now dead or in nursing homes made a remarkable deal with the future. (Not from California? Keep reading, lots of this applies to you, with variations.) They agreed to invest money they could have spent on bigger houses, vacations, clothes, and cars into the world’s greatest educational system, and into building and operating water systems, roads, parks, and other public facilities, an infrastructure that was the envy of the world. They didn’t get everything right: too much highway and not enough public transportation. But they did a pretty good job.
Young people who enjoyed these ‘loans’ grew up smarter, healthier, and richer than they otherwise would have, and understood that they were supposed to “pay it forward” to future generations, for example by keeping the educational system staffed with lots of dedicated, well-trained teachers, in good buildings and in small classes, with college counselors and up-to-date books. California schools had physical education, art for everyone, music and theater, buildings that looked as though people cared about them, modern languages and ancient languages, advanced science courses with labs where the equipment worked, and more. They were the envy of the world, and they paid off better than Microsoft stock. Same with our parks, coastal zone protection, and social services.
This deal held until about thirty years ago, when for a variety of reasons, California voters realized that while they had done very well from the existing contract, they could do even better by walking away from their obligations and spending what they had inherited on themselves. “My kids are finished with school; why should I pay taxes for someone else’s? Posterity never did anything for me!” An army of fake ‘leaders’ sprang up to pull the moral and fiscal wool over their eyes, and again and again, your parents and their parents lashed out at government (as though there were something else that could replace it) with tax limits, term limits, safe districts, throw-away-the-key imprisonment no matter the cost, smoke-and-mirrors budgeting, and a rule never to use the words taxes and services in the same paragraph.
Now, your infrastructure is falling to pieces under your feet, and as citizens you are responsible for crudities like closing parks, and inhumanities like closing battered women’s shelters. It’s outrageous, inexcusable, that you can’t get into the courses you need, but much worse that Oakland police have stopped taking 911 calls for burglaries and runaway children. If you read what your elected officials say about the state today, you’ll see things like “California can’t afford” this or that basic government function, and that “we need to make hard choices” to shut down one or another public service, or starve it even more (like your university). Can’t afford? The budget deficit that’s paralyzing Sacramento is about $500 per person; add another $500 to get back to a public sector we don’t have to be ashamed of, and our average income is almost forty times that. Of course we can afford a government that actually works: the fact is that your parents have simply chosen not to have it.
The problem with American civil religion is that it reduces faith to a particular brand of nationalism, which is precisely the opposite of the message preached by Jesus and the prophets of the Hebrew Bible. By ignoring passages about social justice and community and highlighting appeals to individual liberties, Deuteronomistic theology, the Exodus, and conquest narratives, Beck attempted to weave together a generic, nationalistic religion that he hopes will appeal to the lowest common denominator of both faith and politics – personal ‘salvation’ via individual liberties – and overlook the more pervasive themes of social justice, equality, and community – which all people of faith are called to do! We are called to live together in community together as one body, not as rugged individuals. Bob Cargill ☀
For years prohibitionists, including our own Drug Enforcement Administration, have claimed — falsely — that the tolerant marijuana policies of the Netherlands have made that nation a nest of crime and drug abuse. They may have trouble wrapping their little brains around this:
The Dutch government is getting ready to close eight prisons because they don’t have enough criminals to fill them. Officials attribute the shortage of prisoners to a declining crime rate.
Just for fun, let’s compare the Netherlands to California. With a population of 16.6 million, the Dutch prison population is about 12,000. With its population of 36.7 million, California should have a bit more than double the Dutch prison population. California’s actual prison population is 171,000.
So, whose drug policies are keeping the streets safer?
(via adailyriot)
Tumblr Queue Post Order Annoyance ☀
Since yesterday, for some unbeknownst reason, post ordering here has gone awry. Posts are not showing up in the order I placed them in the queue, nor are they displayed in the same procession on my Tumblr dashboard.
It’s not just that Fox totally (and intentionally, of course) misread Cusack’s thing – there’s a difference between calling for the opening of a “satanic death cult center” at Fox News and calling for the “satanic death” of Dick Armey. It’s that a parade of bozo talking heads, even tenth-rate, cardboard-PhD talking-heads of the sort Fox tends to patronize, could be prevailed upon to take this nonsense seriously, and that masses of real human beings who are probably licensed to drive automobiles and may even have procreated instantly bought this as a real call to violence. Exactly how absurd do you have to be before this crowd can perceive that you’re kidding about something? If Cusack had called for every registered Republican in Arkansas to be forced to wear hot asphalt underpants, would Carole Lieberman be telling people in Little Rock to lock their doors? I get that some of these folks are dying to find an example of a “liberal” inciting people to violence in the manner of oft-criticized right-wing heroes like Glenn Beck, but even taking that anxiousness into consideration, you’d have to be in virtual brain-death to take something like this seriously. Anyway, not the biggest story in the world, but funny nonetheless. I still shudder for humanity this midterm season, but leaving the depressing real consequences of all this madness out of the equation, the humor factor of this political season promises to be extremely high. Matt Taibbi ☀
He could not say, for instance, that the Iraqis are broadly resentful of the U.S. presence in their country and have wished to see us go for years. He could not say what even the most enthusiastic supporters of the Iraq war have been forced to admit: namely that peace in Iraq is tenuous and bloody civil conflict could soon break out again.
He could not say that the predictions of the war’s proponents, both within and outside government, proved to be entirely wrong — from their claim that weapons of mass destruction would be discovered to their claim that Iraqi oil would pay the costs of the invasion and pacification to their claim that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein would result in a wave of democratic reform across the region.
He could not say that U.S. prestige and influence in the Mideast have declined sharply, or that our capacity to criticize human rights violations in other countries — ruled by thugs like Saddam — has suffered lasting damage due to our own illegal and brutal mistreatment of detainees in Iraq.
He could not say that the war and occupation resulted in historic levels of corruption, wasting hundreds of billions of dollars on ghost projects, phony public relations scams, and crooked Iraqi politicians and American contractors — not to mention all the money that simply vanished in pallets of cash, without a trace.
He could not say that the misconduct and irresponsibility of the previous administration’s officials, including former Vice President Dick Cheney, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, former proconsul Paul Bremer, and many others who botched the occupation so lethally, were a disgrace to the United States.
(via sunsmudge)
This whole hunter thing, for Sarah? That is the biggest fallacy,” says one longtime friend of the family. “That woman has never hunted. The picture of her with the caribou she says she shot? She got out of the R.V. to pose for a picture. She never helps with the fishing either. It’s all a joke.” The friend goes on to recall that when Greta Van Susteren came to the house to interview Palin “[Sarah] cooked moose chili and whatnot. Todd was calling everyone he knew the day before—‘Do you got any moose?’ Desperate. Sarah Palin the Sound and the Fury (via apsies) ☀
Google’s AdSense [click solicitation] policy of Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell is hypocritical, but then so too are most of Google’s other opaque policies. Everything with Google is algorithmic yet the algorithm is never defined. Enforcement, too, follows yet another unpublished algorithm. Google seems open to the idea of its partners being a little bad while never defining exactly how much bad is too much bad. Presumably we’re deemed not smart enough to understand. Google benefits from click fraud so it tolerates it to some degree, with that degree never being fully defined, either. Cringely (via marco) ☀
A GNT creation ©2007–2010
