Hurrah for revolution and more cannon-shot!A beggar on horseback lashes a beggar on foot.Hurrah for revolution and cannon come again!The beggars have changed places, but the lash goes on.(W.B. Yeats)
This weekend, your intrepid Octopus stirred up controversy within our ranks. It started with this post by our friend and colleague, Captain Fogg, who invoked this post from our friend and colleague, Lindsay of Majikthise, about the latest Glenn Beckism. As Lindsay states:
“In the clip, Beck claims that Americorps has "just received half a trillion dollars in funding." What the hell is he talking about? […] It's even funnier that Beck's guests played along with the half-trillion claim. Surely they knew it was false. This wasn't just an incidental mistake, it was the hook for Beck's crazy conspiracy theory.”
No argument! Except that Glenn Dreck can spin lies and deceptions until the cows come home. Does this mean we should preoccupy ourselves with confutations every night after sunset? And what of Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh and the other dissemblers? Do we redouble our efforts and counter every lie from every dissembler in the Milky Way?
No doubt, Beck, Hannity, and Limbaugh offend us on many levels. Deceptions offend us. Sneers and jeers offend us. Ridiculing a popular actor with Parkinson’s disease offends us. Accusing 9/11 widows of profiting from their husbands’ deaths offends us. They offend by invoking a deep emotional response within us: They remind us of schoolyard bullies who torment victims for sadistic pleasure. They push the boundaries of uncivil discourse deeper into unchartered cesspools. Outrageous people say outrageous things ... just to grab attention.
Here is my question: Do we allow fools to lead us by the nose when we pay too much attention? Do we aid and abet the viral spread of these messages? Lindsay offers a reasonable albeit expected response (August 29, 2009 at 06:50 PM):
“It's a very tough question. I think it's one of those strategic decisions that can only be evaluated retrospectively … John Kerry initially ignored the Swift Boat Liars. In retrospect, it seems like he should have hit back hard and early ….
In the face of uncertainty, my instinct is to counter the lies because I think that's an inherently worthwhile pursuit. I think it's worth knowing what these people are up to, even if the exposure gives them a little extra notoriety
Captain Fogg agrees:
”I don't think we can say Beck would go away if we ignored him. I think history proves over and over again that hate and bigotry have to be confronted.”
Yet, I can’t help but ask this nagging question: If we pay too much attention to the puppet, do we ignore the puppet masters behind the puppet? Does the court jester divert our attention from the secret usurpers who plot against the throne with stealth and guile?
Here is a little noticed footnote in American history. In 1934, retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler testified before Congress about a alleged plot to overthrow President Roosevelt. Although no prosecutions followed his testimony, one Gerald McGuire did attempt to recruit Butler to lead a 500,000 man march on Washington that would topple the President. Other alleged conspirators were members of the Liberty League, which slandered FDR as a Communist who surrounded himself with Jews. Members of the Liberty League included the plutocrats of American industry: U.S. Steel, General Motors, General Foods, Standard Oil, Colgate, Heinz Foods, Chase National Bank, and Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. Names that figured prominently in the conspiracy: J. P. Morgan, Irénée DuPont, the Mellon and Remington families, and Prescott Bush.
Rightwing Republicanism was born in 1934 and their aim was to dismantle the New Deal and restore laissez-faire economics. Today, we are witnessing the same struggle against powerful interests, or as John Hoefle states in The Fascists Versus FDR, Then And Now: “This battle is not, as some would have us believe, a historical artifact, but an ongoing fight between a world which desires to be free, and a parasitic oligarchy [that] wishes to rule over us as if we were cattle.” The oligarchs of the 1930s may be long gone but their heirs and assigns live among us. Who are they?
Maybe we should start with William McGuire of UnitedHealth Group, the nation’s leading health insurer. According to Forbes’ list of highest paid CEOs, his pay of $124.8 million would cover the average health insurance premiums of 34,000 people. Two years earlier, William McGuire received $1.7 Billion in pay and bonuses … roughly the health insurance premiums of 463,000 people. Why should one man be worth 463,000 Les Miserables!
How about the Walton family, perhaps the most influential family in America with a combined net worth of more than $100 billion. They have used their Wal-Mart PAC to avoid paying taxes, block environmental regulations, resist corporate transparency, hinder workers rights, stop port security, thwart tighter regulations on food safety, oppose estate taxes, and kill universal healthcare. They are the quintessential state capitalists whose self-aggrandizing exercise of power leaves us poorer.
In contrast, Glenn Beck is the quintessential shlameil who spins malapropisms and misspelled words from an alcohol-addled brain. When we focus on the village idiot of Pottersville, we ignore Mr. Potter at our peril. If Glenn Beck ever had booze on his breath, William McGuire and the Walton family have blood on their hands.
Thus, your tentacle-entangled Octopus would like to see the progressive blogosphere spend more time investigating the puppet masters and less time head-butting circus clowns.
Update: A nifty YouTube video from our good friend. Matt Osborne.
"They remind us of schoolyard bullies who torment victims for sadistic pleasure...." and as they were tormenting victims everyone else in the schoolyard stood by either in shock doing nothing or stood by thankful that it was not them getting tormented...
ReplyDeleteBoone Pickens funded the Swift Boat Vets and now he is off in Washington attempting to seek out funding and tax breaks for his windmills...
The Swift Boat Vets were an eye opener for me...and what it represented to me was what got me back on the voter rolls after 28 years. Hate is a very strong emotion and one very easily manipulated especially among those who feel overwhelmed with the drudgery of their existence.
Just look at the number of viewers for Fox News; these are people who come home from work, turn on Fox News and then watch nothing but Fox News until they go to bed...
Hour after hour, night after night, day after day, month after month...the monotony of anger.
With hypnosis, which is what this is, does it matter who the doctor is? Does exposing hypnosis for quakery free those hypnotized from the spell? You might limit their ability to reach new recruits...
Thank you for the link!
ReplyDeleteBeck is just a part of Roger Ailes's campaign to bring the fringe into the mainstream, BUT I have to say his career arc is turning into a spectacular flameout. The desperation is palpable. What I want to see, and expect very soon, is an epic onscreen breakdown of babbling inanity.
Brilliant post. I have to remind all that angry as I may be, I have little hope of this country restoring itself to sanity. In the 30's we did have the same kind of sound and fury, but we didn't have more than a tiny bit of the communications ability we have today and we had a fortuitous war against proponents of this insanity which made the public turn against domestic loonies - for a while.
ReplyDeleteI don't try to expose Glennbeckery in order to enlighten anyone, I do it because I have to. of course it would be better to go after the Don than the hit man, but will the average person, much less the hypnotized idiots really understand why Rupert Murdoch is the devil?
Some months ago, our good friend Spocko and I shared a conversation about Rush Limbaugh. There was an elderly gentleman, I mentioned, who listened to Limbaugh not in sympathy but for amusement. Limbaugh’s clown antics, the gentleman told me, made him laugh.
ReplyDeleteOne can surmise that some folks who listen to Limbaugh are the same audiences who watch demolition derbies, pro wrestling, and the Jerry Springer Show … and buy junk tabloids at the checkout counter.
Limbaugh and Beck are chameleons. Sometimes they claim to be pundits, sometimes entertainers. When we assail them as pundits, it is easy for them to lay claim as entertainers. Thats when they invoke their first amendment rights, play the victim card, and accuse us of suppression.
Spocko acknowledged that there are liberals who listen to Limbaugh while commuting to work. As Spocko explained, folks listen to Limbaugh for the adrenalin rush … it makes them more aggressive and ready to do battle at their place of work.
What points do we score against circus clowns? Perhaps not as much as we think. OTOH, when we expose excessive CEO compensation, and show how one man rakes in more money than 463,000 citizens without health insurance, then we have a powerful message. When we show how a plutocratic family blocks port security in an age of terrorism and thwarts food safety regulations, citizens get the message.
These were some of my thoughts behind this post ... and why I question our tactics. Maybe we target the wrong bad actors and are not reaching people as we should.
There is an old adage that "there is no such thing as bad publicity."
ReplyDeleteThis is very, very true.
Great post, Octo. If memory serves me correctly I myself raised this issue months ago in a comment thread - and received an equally resistant response.
Folks - Octo is right. I understand your resistance - it's an emotional response to rottenness - I feel it too - BUT we are fueling their fire. We are part of their equation. They KNOW we will give them "air time" - and they love it! We screaming liberals have NO DOUBT helped A. Coulter sell books for years. We are part of her book-dialogues with her supporters. She talks about us constantly. She mocks us. We are great material for her - a woman with nothing to sell but venom. Seriously. And when we go after her and others we embolden them to their followers. Remember the Palin campaign? The screaming controversy about her made her relevant. And she isn't.
Arguing against Palin was the right thing to do. The stakes were high. Tao - stopping bullies in the school yard beating up on someone is the right thing to do. But we need to pick our battles wisely - chasing every fly they flick in our direction allows them to reel us in to their marketing campaign which I guarantee you all includes us. As Fogg rightly points out - they have many forms of media at their disposal never known to past generations.
I know I've mentioned this before - for years the Southern Poverty Law Center (Klanwatch) has counseled its supporters to NOT show up and protest Klan and/or Nazi parades. They argue that it gives the Klan and/ or Nazi's the audience they want.
Surely Morris Dees knows where of he speaks.
No?
In my younger days I desired to change the world...
ReplyDeleteThen at the onset of middle age I desired to change the world a person at a time...
Now, I sit back and realize that some people just love being unhappy and miserable. They would rather wallow in their fear and bask in their anger....
Let them if that is all their lives offer them. Let them beat upon others for their own shortcomings.
If you ignore them then they will just go away.....
Let them stew in their own juices and they will eventually become even distateful to their own kind.
I have followed right wing delusions since the sixties. In that time, I have seen many discussions about whether and how to engage the perpetrators of these lies.
ReplyDeleteA couple of decades ago, I never would have believed that these idiotic, malevolent beliefs could ever attract more than a small cadre of believers.
I was wrong. Whatever we do about these claimed beliefs, I think that, when we see them gaining real traction with a significant number of people, we cannot afford to simply stand on the sidelines and watch. We may never be able to rescue the people who have allowed themselves to fall under the spell of hatred that produces this sort of thing; but I think it is our duty as decent citizens to speak out, and not simply allow demagogues a free ride to spread their malignant claims.
Sometimes a healthy skepticism forces us to scrutinize our beliefs and assumptions and subject ourselves to a validity test.
ReplyDeleteDid our community stop the “Birther” conspiracies, or the “Death Panel” deceptions? Do our self-validating posts and comments carry any weight beyond our own community? Can we use the Internet more effectively? These, in my opinion, are important and worthwhile questions.
Do you wonder why right-leaning Middle Americans vote against their own economic self-interest? Why wage earners without health insurance do not support a public option? Perhaps we focus too much on circus clowns and lose the opportunity to shape our message.
Well, I guess I’ll have to return to the dino default on this issue: life is short. It’s true that somebody has to counter the worst of the hateful nonsense we see and hear every day. But I think commentators like Keith Olbermann already do a fine, high-profile job of ridiculing those who most deserve it, so I’m happy to leave it to them and others who do it so well. When you engage with leering, vicious idiots or even with the well-meaning but hopelessly misguided, there’s always the risk of getting boxed in by their “style,” so to speak. And it takes a hell of a lot of energy, so on the whole I prefer to avoid dealing with them.
ReplyDeleteAnyhow, the truth is probably that only a generation or so of better education for the American public would really make for an improvement in our collective political conversation. It is astonishing just how ignorant and wrong-headed some of the people that the public routinely sends to congress are – they seem to know almost nothing about anything. Worse yet, they are quite sure it doesn’t matter whether they know anything. I’m fond of citing John Stuart Mill on this dark possibility at the heart of republicanism/democracy: we can be as “individualist” as we want, but when the ordinary person loses all respect for any standard of excellence or even for a minimum acceptable level of intellectual and moral integrity, what we get is mediocre conformity in many areas of life and, I should add, utter foolishness in politics -- to the point where modest attempts to improve health care are processed by millions of raving chowderheads as a genocidal communist takeover. There is no way to reason with these people; all you can do is pass the damn bill and let them learn to appreciate its benefits by positive experience. People can change for the better, but I suspect that it takes a long time for them to undergo such positive transformation. I don’t think too many people are going to be easily weaned from the lunacy of right-wing talk radio or cable programs. But some might lose interest eventually in that kind of talk when “Obama-Care” helps pay for a much-needed surgery for them or someone they value.
Finally, bearing witness to the truth is always valuable, whether the aforementioned chowderheads are enlightened by such bearing witness or not. And it can often be done in a constructive manner.
"They argue that it gives the Klan and/ or Nazi's the audience they want."
ReplyDeleteSometimes yes, sometimes no. It's gratifying to have the Klan show up and march around alone, but (in defiance of that damned Godwin) I have to bring up the fact that they can force an audience, just like the Nazis did - and as they are doing now by showing up armed and threatening murder. Sometimes they have to be met with numbers and with force: the force of law, that is.
As to whether we are effective in countering disinformation -- not very and not in those who do not read or those crippled by irrational anger, but a book, Square One by one Arnold Forster of the Anti Defamation League points out convincingly, going after groups legally as a form of direct confrontation is effective and necessary. I agree. After all it was the ACLU and its allies that forced the Klan nearly to bankruptcy and nearly off the stage.
There aren't enough Keith Olbermanns and besides, the righties don't listen and make him into a straw man as easily as they do with us. He cannot convince anyone who doesn't listen. I agree with the Eagle that we shouldn't just let them rage unopposed. I think that the public will not get tired of it at all and I think that the most successful opposition would come in the form of court cases and convictions for incitement, for slander and libel against such evil empires as News Corporation -- and wouldn't it be nice if we could get a conviction for interfering with the civil rights of the public?
It can only be done with lots of money and a dedicated crew of lawyers and responsible Bloggers don't have that while the wingnuts do.
Yes, if we somehow do get real health care reform it will eventually become as beloved here as it is abroad, although as with Social Security, school desegregation and other right wing shibboleths, opposition will endure. It's a big if, I'm afraid.
Fogg - Morris Dees and the Southern Poverty Law Center has spent many years doing precisely that - legally going after the klan and many hate groups. This is what I meant about choosing battles. The SPLC has never advocated not doing anything. They have simply advocated choosing battles - and paths of resistance - wisely.
ReplyDeleteThey have a lenghthy and mighty impressive legal track record against hate.
I know and that's why I send them a check every year. They are also well hated by the extremists which alone is sufficient reason to support them -- the ACLU too.
ReplyDelete