I have to say I loathe Ben Stein, so I was pleased to hear the New York Times has fired him for conflict of interest. Dispensing financial advice from the Sunday Business Section while being a spokesman for Freescore.com which offers free monthly credit reports for only $359 seems reason enough, but of course there was the financial advice itself. Ben gets his prognostications from the same source on Neptune that Jim Cramer does.
"I’m writing this on Aug. 13, 2007… the stock market is cheap on a price-earnings basis, profits are fabulous… and in the long run, both here and abroad, stocks are a lovely place to be." [emphasis mine]
That's classic Ben Stein bad advice and bad enough to suggest seppuku to a more honorable man. In fact, it closely mirrors the bad advice of his close friend Cramer and to the point where Stein was willing to tell us all that Jon Stewart had "yelled and cursed" at him when in fact, it was not true. That's classic Ben Stein projection -- or outright lie, if you prefer. I did mention that I loathe him, didn't I?
For anyone who still thinks Ben has ever had much to offer beyond the faux elitism, the wildly dishonest defense of Creationism and enduring belief that Richard Nixon was not a crook, I will refer you to the Ben Stein Watch archives; about to close it's "doors" now that the mission has been accomplished. Let's hope it really has been.
It was only a matter of time before demonstrations staged by town hall hooligans turned violent. Hours ago, a group of angry protestors clashed with healthcare reform supporters at the Children’s Board of Hillsborough County near Tampa, Florida. There were accounts of fistfights, minor injuries, and at least one handicapped woman knocked to the ground. It is time to investigate and indict those responsible for inciting mob violence … starting with Rick Scott, Dick Armey, Steve Forbes, and the other thugs at FreedomWorks.
Before Octopus inks the aquarium, let me start this diatribe with a quote from Noam Chomsky:
“Personally I'm in favor of democracy, which means that the central institutions in the society have to be under popular control. Now, under capitalism we can't have democracy by definition. Capitalism is a system in which the central institutions of society are in principle under autocratic control. Thus, a corporation or an industry is, if we were to think of it in political terms, fascist; that is, it has tight control at the top and strict obedience has to be established at every level (…) Just as I'm opposed to political fascism, I'm opposed to economic fascism. I think that until major institutions of society are under the popular control of participants and communities, it's pointless to talk about democracy.”
Before the seas turn black from enraged cephalopod ink, let me quote myself from this comment thread under Captain Fogg’s recent post, Regulation is bad for business:
All too often we forget that cable news is a product of media conglomerates … in other words “corporatists” … that depend upon other corporations for their advertising revenues. Thus, our news services do not serve the interests of citizens and voters, merely the interests of corporate advertisers.
Americans United for Change [UAC], a top White House ally in the health care wars, tried to book time on CNN and MSNBC for the ad, which hits the insurance industry for wanting to preserve the status quo and levels harsh criticism at insurance giant Cigna’s CEO, Ed Hanway.
“Why do insurance companies and Republicans want to kill health insurance reform? Because they like things the way they are now,” the ad says, and then slams Hanway’s annual salary of over $12 million and golden parachute retirement package of over $70 million.
Jeremy Funk, the spokesperson for AUC, points out that CNN would be more than willing to accept paid advertising from Cigna; yet CNN turns down paid advertising critical of the company for their role in trying to kill health insurance reform.
See where I am going? Last year, we worked hard to elect a new president who promised change, who promised healthcare reform, who promised investments in alternative energy to free us from dependence on OPEC.
This year, the Empire strikes back. Our health management insurers want to protect their greedy franchises. Our fossil fuel suppliers want to preserve their filthy energy infrastructure. Corporations don’t vote but citizens do. Yet, corporations have the means to manipulate public opinion, and there are always idiots ready and willing to oblige.
Manipulating public opinion is easy … when you are the CEO of a corporation with lots of money and lobbyists and crooked politicians in your pocket ... and you can always count on an ignorant rabble all too willing to sell themselves short, sell-out their own interests, and serve as sycophants on behalf of their corporate masters.
Corporations need not dirty themselves when they can hire proxies like Dick Armey to do their dirty work, when their proxies can recruit goons, malcontents, and nut jobs to stifle public debate. This is how corporations assert their interests, nullify the popular will, and derail democracy.
The hooligans have taken over; the corporations have won. The American experiment in democracy is dead. Does anyone reading this diatribe doubt what I say?
In a way, we might look at the vast, seemingly endless and profoundly deep ignorance of Americans as a resource. Certainly many people make a good living from it. People who have less than an intelligent 4 year old's grasp of reality are willing to spend money to have their pathetic fantasies upheld in places like Dinosaur Adventure Land where you can view fake animals in a fake surroundings made to resemble fake history and pretend that the most certain things can be less certain than baseless conjecture.
Yes, I'm talking about Florida where for decades fake was like a second name for the state and sleazy roadside attractions and amusement parks made it a Mecca for kitsch enthusiasts and carloads full of rubes and hicks percolating down from Dixie. Much of it is still here, like the Weeki Wachee Mermaids and alligator wrestling and Lion Country Safari but as far as I know nobody is claiming that the mermaids are real or the lions were dropped off in Florida by Noah on his way to Turkey.
The fake history park in Florida flaunts things on their website like the idea that "the more is known about DNA the more difficult it is to escape the conclusion that all things have a personal creator." Of course there's no way around calling this a complete lie and if there is anything ineluctable about what's taught in Dinosaur Adventure Land is that nothing they say has any basis in fact whatever. Evolution as the origin of species and indeed as the origin of life from natural algorithms and natural law is not on its way out, isn't "just a theory" that Science is moving away from in the light of new data. Of course, the age of the Earth and of the universe is very accurately known and sorry, our planet is more than 4 billion years old and no man ever saw a trilobite or a Gorgonopsid or a Sauropod.
It's more than possible to escape the conclusion that existence of living organisms demands the existence of a deity and all their miracles and all the attempts to demonstrate otherwise have been shown to be fallacious and fraudulent. Yet, the Creationists persist in marketing their perverted epistemology demanding that unwillingness or inability to understand opens a window into understanding -- as though ignorance and stupidity were virtues. Wisdom through ignorance certainly winds through Christianity's bowels like a tapeworm but particularly through the kind of cartoonish fundamentalism sold like tawdry talismans at a flea market to tourists in T shirts.
It must be apparent that I view this kind of militant superstition as a cancer threatening any progress in learning and perhaps the safety of civilization itself and so you won't be surprised that I have to smile a bit to hear that an amusement park built on lies and the mockery of truth is in big trouble with the IRS for not paying employee withholding taxes and is due to be seized. Hardly surprising is it, that people who make a living telling lies and attacking the truth are dishonest?
Hardly surprising either that Kent Hovind, who founded the park and a ministry, Creation Science Evangelism, simply to profit by lying, would forget that Jesus told his followers to pay their taxes: “Ἀπόδοτε οὖν τὰ Καίσαρος Καίσαρι καὶ τὰ τοῦ Θεοῦ τῷ Θεῷ” or "Render unto Caesar. . ." Matthew 22:21
Hovind's position was that since he and his brothers in dishonesty worked for God, they didn't owe any taxes to the Government at all. I don't know what Jesus' position on obstruction of justice or last minute, back-dated, illegal transfers of property to avoid seizure was, but of course anything Jesus is supposed to have said is "just a theory" right? The argument was persuasive enough to get him 10 years in the slammer. For once Jesus and the Law -- and I -- seem to agree.
Normally, the rescue of captured Americans gets tremendous coverage; launching over-dramatized movies and mini-series and giving politicians a platform for unrestrained self adulation and patriotic buffoonery -- but not always. Sometimes we puff up a story until, like Jessica Lynch, the hero has enough of the lies and walks away. Sometimes we make the hero look like a traitor. Welcome to the ugliness of American tribalism.
When the rescue is facilitated by someone the Republicans need as a symbol of inaction and incompetence; when a political enemy walks into the lion's den and returns with two young women many had given up for lost, it becomes necessary to bring in the creeps. That starts with C and that rhymes with B and that stands for Bolton.
Perhaps it was the short notice that explains it. John Bolton went on the air almost instantly after Fox's report that Clinton along with Center for American Progress President and CEO John Podesta had pulled off a rather John Wayne gambit and had secured the immediate release of journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee who had been arrested for espionage and sentenced to hard labor in a very nasty North Korean prison. Perhaps it was simply the desperation one feels when one's enemy leaves one on the sidelines throwing tantrums like Yosemite Sam while the damsels in distress are rescued from the dragon. Perhaps the Republicans are simply jealous of the international prestige of Clinton when compared to any president since Eisenhower. Perhaps Bolton just had no other tools with which to try to dismantle the story and rebuild it as a straw man, but that's just what he did.
It's "rewarding bad behavior" said he. It's "negotiating with terrorists" said he. It's "legitimizing the regime." It's going to make them kidnap more Americans so they can get visits from ex-presidents. It's pathetic and childish and disgusting and embarrassing to listen to him, but then, he's only repeating the line the GOP has used for decades -- even while Saint Ronald was selling arms to someone at war with us.
Whatever one might say about Clinton and his liberal commandos, we got our fellow Americans out of there without beating our chests like impotent apes, waving our dicks and threatening nuclear annihilation unless the country disbands and turns its assets over to Halliburton. What could be more emasculating and humiliating to Republicans?
Never in my life could I imagine this taking place in OUR country: hooligans disrupting town hall meetings, intimidating elected officials, shouting down citizens and driving them from the room … hands cupped over ears. What’s next? Fist fights? Violence in the streets?
We can blame these ugly brownshirt tactics on former GOP Majority Leader Dick Armey and Freedom Works for “astroturfing” these events. And we can blame corporate lobbyists for employing these thugs to protect their filthy franchises and ambush reform. If readers find this post uncharacteristically aggressive, lets just say I am feeling uncharacteristically livid. I have nothing more to say tonight, but I want to keep this topic on the front burner … and leave you with this reading list:
George W. Bush may have looked good in his tailored flight suit with the sock stuffed in his pants when he pretended to have just made a carrier landing all by himself, but in terms of courage, the guy who denied having got drunk and crashed his car and walked away from National Guard duty couldn't, as Charles Bukowski used to say, carry Bill Clinton's balls in a paper bag.
President Clinton is now returning home with the two young American reporters being held at hard labor in that stinkhole North Korea. Mission Accomplished.
There are those -- a lot of those, for whom any hint of apology for or embarrassment about the United States of its actions is treason and unforgivable. That's unforgivable and perhaps sometimes treasonous since it tends not only to reward, but promote our bad behavior.
Of course there is no way that I can apologize to the world for the "Birther" phenomenon, its psychotic proponents and demented followers, but it's surely embarrassing to contemplate the way the world sees us, which must be very much how we would see some naked savages from Papua New Guinea who happened to have nuclear weapons they were constantly threatening us with. Pardon my unforgivable frankness, but I'm embarrassed to be an American -- once again.
Of course it's worse in the South, the former Slave States where segregation, lynching and Jim Crow policies were only stopped with great effort and physical force in my youth and where even NASCAR and college football take a back seat to believing as a popular sport. Believing without evidence generates disbelieving despite the evidence and so early poll data in Virginia seems to show that almost half of Virginians believe Barak Obama was born in Kenya and that the official State data showing he wasn't, was planted over 40 years earlier in the hopes that he could one day run for president.
". . . a result making me want to bang my head against the table, the first round of calls for our Virginia poll this afternoon founds voters in the state almost evenly split on whether they thought the President was born in the US"
said PPP communications director Tom Jensen. I can well imagine.
Whether Public Policy Polling, who is conducting this poll is or is not a good prognosticator or data gatherer, responses to their announcement at their web site were centered around personal attacks and obscene comments about the snottiness of elite liberals rather than the data or the apparent insanity and delusional condition of the Birthers. Not one of them gives a damn about facts. Not one is capable of self doubt.
Of course believers rarely if ever choose what to believe without assistance and an examination of the obviously mental inventors of the libel such as Orly Taitz can make you want to put a noose around your neck -- or hers depending on your proclivities. If this woman gave you a used Rolls, would you even sit in it without a hazmat suit? None of the "birthers" would be imaginative enough to cook up this story, they got it the way Germany got Fascism: from a band of brownshirt organizers and disruptors and hooligans.
No problem for the bigots, for the believers, for the people who equate fact and reason, law and decency with fascism: Southern Whites, who for over 150 years have stood on their beliefs, on what they have been told by hatemongers to use against freedom for anyone but white males. No problem at all. If it feels good, believe it. If challenged by facts, slime the challengers, but never give up, never surrender, never stop hating.
"Okay, so it ain't Bertrand Russell – but whaddya want? I'm a lizard." (adapted from Peter Boyle as The Wizard in Taxi Driver)
I'd like to think the Birther tinfoilers are harmless, what with their delusions and/or their patent frauds and lies. Some are obviously flat-out insane people who cling to delusions because they give meaning to their unhappy, fearful lives, while others are just as obviously going along for the ride for their own dark reasons. "Le coeur à ses raisons que la raison ne connaît pas."
But the numbers, if accurate, are jaw-dropping amongst the Republican Party. "Shameful" is another word we might use. And what about the 7% of Democrats and 13% of Independents who aren't sure Barack Obama ist ein Amerikaner? (At least, those are the numbers I recall from a column this morning -- subject to correction.)
It's fair to say that there have always been people who believe crazy things and that crazy beliefs thrive in numbers. We probably don't need Nietzsche to tell us that a large amount of information-gathering and transmission has a lot to do with establishing community and asserting rank, etc. and not a whole lot to do with a genuine appreciation for truth. So in this sense, there's nothing surprising about foolish people giving vent to their foolish ideas in common and then, on that basis, feeling that they have been engrafted into a community of right-thinking citizens.
Still, this dino finds it hard to shake the feeling that the numbers indicated may be a harbinger of something more sinister – perhaps as dreadful as the approaching end of our long, mostly successful experiment with self-governance. I've long felt that we are in something of a late-Roman-Republic decline, wherein our leaders increasingly apprehend the majority of the citizenry's utter incapacity to think beyond an elementary-school level on any subject, no matter how important or fraught with peril it may be, for us and for others subject to our massive military and economic power. And have we not begun to be cynical about the very possibility of thinking beyond this level? And have our politicians not begun to understand this from the cynical sneer on our collective face whenever someone dares set forth a rational proposal to solve our problems or alleviate our misery? Forms of government die when those who dwell within and by them no longer believe they are worthy of them. We may be reaching that point. I hope not, but the feeling is often with me that we are – it persists in spite of the healthy results of the 2008 election, wherein a clear majority rejected a continuation in power of a party that had obviously compromised our institutions and betrayed our ideals. For that result, at least, I am thankful: there may be a few of Lincoln's "better angels of our nature" hovering about us yet.
Still, it doesn't take a majority of goons to wreak havoc in a community – a relatively small number of crazies who come to work 100% prepared to cause mayhem will do. Would a city be liveable if, say, even 15% of its inhabitants were hell-bent upon causing trouble for the peaceable, sane 85%? I doubt it. I don't see how a republic is sustainable if 30% of its citizens are hopelessly and determinedly misinformed, often disruptive and even potentially violent. We forget that civilization itself – quite aside from democracy or republican self-governance – is a fragile thing, that its strength and perpetuity must not be taken for granted, and that it demands patient cultivation and education if it is to remain viable from one generation to the next. The so-called "birthers" are an ominous piece of evidence that we have in fact forgotten this truth.
What Rachel Maddow describes is called “astroturfing,” the subject of this hastily prepared post. I say “hasty” because this is an important topic deserving of immediate and sustained discussion in the blogosphere.
The goal of astroturfing is to create the illusion of public opposition to pending legislation or reform. Astroturfing is organized by professional public relations firms financed by corporations, their lobbyists, and trade associations to oppose any legislation that threatens corporate interests. Astroturfing creates the illusion of a popular and spontaneous uprising but, in fact, is a carefully orchestrated and covert operation that utilizes deception, disinformation, scare tactics, fear-mongering, and outright forgery to achieve its goals.
Examples of astroturfing are the recent Tea Bag protests; the “Death to Seniors” campaign designed to sabotage healthcare reform; and the “Birther” movement that seeks to undermine the legitimacy of an elected president.
Astroturfing is sometimes called “stealth” marketing, “viral” marketing, or “ambush” marketing. Cynical and unethical in the extreme, it is specifically banned in the Code of Ethics published by the Public Relations Society of America and the International Association of Business Communicators. However, ethics never bothered former House Majority Leader Dick Armey or the billionaire lobbyists who pay him to sabotage pending legislation and reform.
Recently, astroturfing has taken a more sinister form reminiscent of the violent street tactics that gave rise to the Third Reich. A rightwing organization called Right Principles has published a “political action” memo that shows supporters how to disrupt town hall meetings, harass and heckle members of congress, and shout down and drown the opposition:
"pack the hall... spread out" to make their numbers seem more significant, and to "rock-the-boat early in the Rep's presentation...to yell out and challenge the Rep's statements early ... to rattle him, get him off his prepared script and agenda ... stand up and shout ... "
According to Rachel Maddow, this memo is a prescription for hooliganism and intimidation. Dick Armey’s client list includes major pharmaceutical firms such as Bristol-Myers Squibb, a trade group representing major insurance companies, a front company representing fossil fuel interests, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum (Prime Minister of the UAE), and Freedom Works (the tea bag protest organizers), among others. Astroturfing represents a threat to democracy because it serves the interests of corporations but NOT the interests of citizens and voters, thus undermining the meaning and purpose of elections.
This is my greatest fear: A rabble minority employs stealth and guile to thwart the will of the majority. Better to rule in Hell than serve in a democracy.
Sometimes when I lay awake at night, I think of how our culture pushes the boundaries of taste and decorum further into the wilderness, and wonder about the tipping point beyond which there is no return, like those who cross an abyss and sink forever into tyranny, the point where “the falcon can longer hear the falconer.”
When my daughters were growing up, I taught them this: Freedom and responsibility are two sides of the same coin. Responsibility earns freedom, not the reverse. I am afraid we are reaching a tipping point where we lose both.
