Best subscription I ever had. And most efficient one too. For years, ever since the vampire squid piece, I subscribed to Rolling Stone just to read MT. And a bit of Dickinson too. But mainly Matt. Can’t help it. The combo of accurate info and biting satire is rare. Can’t afford not to subscribe to it. Respect man.
I myself am a sucker for the beautifully written word. I adore Shakespeare, Twain, et. al. because of their choice of language, no matter how brutal the subject matter, (here I am lookin' at *you, Macbeth & Mrs.), no matter how ostensibly boring (Twain's European Travelogues).
People who master the English language like that just leave me with a *long lasting high.
I do not look to Matt for those same stratospheric highs linguistic luxury, but what Matt does for me, better than any living writer, is to TEACH me, even as his language, his asides, and his pithy and well chosen anecdotes buttress and expand my understanding.
I am 72 yrs old. A mere 22 years older than Matt. I was introduced to Chief White Halfoat, for instance, while *I was in the military during that Vietnam gig. And yet, what other writer do I encounter today who not only *knows of Chief White Halfoat, but understands *precisely how to use the character as an exemplar for the writer's presently described character? Matt is also my instructor regarding things I have never HEARD of, but for $5 a month, he instructs me with honesty, integrity, class *and humor ??? I cannot tell you the hours I spend looking for anyone writing in English, Foreign or Domestic whom I can even enjoy, much less trust. Matt is not only the real deal, he is the *full package as well.
Matt, you are a GOLD MINE ! Thank you for having the stones to come to an idea like Substack with full understanding of the freedom it gives *you, and the absolute delight it gives *us !
Except now, what we look at online is tracked and stored in mega servers in the desert -waiting for indexing when you become a person of interest.
All they need to do is plug in your name, sift the results and then find you in there... then, they can see EVERYTHING you browsed, typed, said on a cell phone, said in PROXIMITY to your cell phone, did in front of the camera of your phone, (whether or not you were using the camera app,) and all of your locations.
Lets say you decide to tell your friends some nugget of truth and word gets around. You make a website. You have reach now. You gain an audience and become a threat to an established part or the whole of the system and then... you're being brought before a judge with everything they have on you going back to when data collecting began.
The same with all media, including books: once upon a time you could buy a book by walking into a storage and paying cash and none the wiser. Today that is rather more difficult to achieve, and with online media the "authorities" know even which pages you read or reread, and how often.
«You gain an audience and become a threat»
And that is big difference between totalitarian and authoritarian ones: in the totalitarian ones every step out of line is prevented or punished, in "managed democracies" only when that becomes popular or otherwise a threat (see Corbyn, Trump, Sanders), plus there is a narrow band of permitted variation around the "best" opinion.
What I have noticed is that in the recent couple of decades the range of opinion not considered a threat has considerably narrowed down in both the USA and UK.
As the years go by, I find I have more and more sympathy for Pontius Pilate. Truth is easy in physics and in math. Or at least it can be proved. Truth in Roman politics? ha! Or even in ours, sadly. We're getting more and more that way. Like Cicero and Cataline there in the senate . . .
Speaking of truth, I like the quote from the German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss about proofs, "I mean the word proof not in the sense of the lawyers, who set two half proofs equal to a whole one, but in the sense of a mathematician, where ½ proof = 0, and it is demanded for proof that every doubt becomes impossible." If only truth were that easy.
Those Russians sound like really tough dudes. Holy smokes! It seems that "proofs" of things in politics are kaleidescopes of "maybe"s strung together into star-like constellations that are pointed at with a shaking hand and vexatious face screaming "SEE, SEE!" As if it's obvious Orion is a hunter and the star Serius is his dog. How could you not admit it!
Journalists of course have to trust sources, and those sources have to trust their confidants and their judgments. At what point does even a serious journalist -- digging into something politically big -- engage in pointing at stars and saying SEE, SEE!
It's hard to say. Certainly for me, personally, I can't say with any confidence what is true -- except in math and physics, where at least there are standards that anyone who seriously looks into it is forced to acknowledge.
What brings this all to mind -- or shakes it anyway, in the mind -- is the strange case of Sidney Powell, who has made some very incredible claims about the 2020 election. To me, frankly, she seemed sincere and credible in her demeanor. Were I a juror, I'd have been inclined to view her testimony sympathetically. We'll see if she delivers any goods.
I don't have any idea what to think about all this election stuff. I do know humans conspire and they can do incredibly awful things. I am not sure that happened in this case. Who is wrong and who is right. I wonder if we'll ever know. I wonder if any journalist who seriously tried to find out would ever truly know. I wonder if it's even possible to know. That's how weird it all is -- almost all of reality gets that way if you think about it long enough. Almost all reality is constellations in the sky of the mind and you are the one who says, "It's a hunter and a dog". Almost, but not quite. It's the "not quite" that keeps us sane.
Yup. So one way to keep things going when all you have is a lie is to play Pilate: "What is truth?"
A bottomless rabbit hole that unfortunately appeals to intelligent people.
Maybe our saving grace really are the people who, if you say that to them repeatedly, in seriousness, trying to "have a difficult conversation," will finally simply punch you in the nose and walk away.
Anyway, tangent. On topic, thanks for this. I'm not (wasn't at least), all that thoughtful about journalism outside of my inate cynicism. Your articles on it (ethics, economics, logistics, history etc of it) are really enlightening.
Yup. So one way to keep things going when all you have is a lie is to play Pilate: "What is truth?" A bottomless rabbit hole that unfortunately appeals to intelligent people.»
Well many people know that "truth" is not a black-and-white matter in most cases, as most statements have exceptions and ambiguities, so "applicability" is a word that I prefer to use.
Related to that, "truth" in the abstract is a bit of an empty concept without "verifiability", and most of what we know is actually hearsay that cannot be verified by us (is the moon really not made of cheese? Well, I cannot say).
And "verifiability" bring to George Orwell, two of my usual quotes:
"As I Please", 1944-02-04: “During the Spanish civil war I found myself feeling very strongly that a true history of this war never would or could be written. Accurate figures, objective accounts of what was happening, simply did not exist. And if I felt that even in 1937, when the Spanish Government was still in being, and the lies which the various Republican factions were telling about each other and about the enemy were relatively small ones, how does the case stand now? Even if Franco is overthrown, what kind of records will the future historian have to go upon? And if Franco or anyone at all resembling him remains in power, the history of the war will consist quite largely of "facts" which millions of people now living know to be lies.
[...] During part of 1941 and 1942, when the Luftwaffe was busy in Russia, the German radio regaled its home audience with stories of devastating air raids on London. Now, we are aware that those raids did not happen. But what use would our knowledge be if the Germans conquered Britain? For the purpose of a future historian, did those raids happen, or didn't they? The answer is: If Hitler survives, they happened, and if he falls they didn't happen.
So with innumerable other events of the past ten or twenty years. Is the Protocols of the Elders of Zion a genuine document? Did Trotsky plot with the Nazis? How many German aeroplanes were shot down in the Battle of Britain? Does Europe welcome the New Order? In no case do you get one answer which is universally accepted because it is true: in each case you get a number of totally incompatible answers, one of which is finally adopted as the result of a physical struggle. History is written by the winners. [...] The really frightening thing about totalitarianism is not that it commits 'atrocities' but that it attacks the concept of objective truth; it claims to control the past as well as the future.”
"As I Please", 1945-01-26: “The Daily Worker disapproves of dictatorship in Athens, the Catholic Herald disapproves of dictatorship in Belgrade. There is no one who is able to say - at least, no one who has the chance to say in a newspaper of big circulation - that this whole dirty game of spheres of influence, quislings, purges, deportation, one-party elections and hundred per cent plebiscites is morally the same whether it is done by ourselves, the Russians or the Nazis. Even in the case of such frank returns to barbarism as the use of hostages, disapproval is only felt when it happens to be the enemy and not ourselves who is doing it.”
And another apposite quote:
Chuck Palahniuk "Lullaby" (2002): “Old George Orwell got it backward. Big Brother isn't watching. He's singing and dancing. He's pulling rabbits out of a hat. Big Brother's holding your attention every moment you're awake. He's making sure you're always distracted. He's making sure you're fully absorbed... and this [act of] being fed, it's worse than being watched. With the world always filling you, no one has to worry about what's in your mind. With everyone's imagination atrophied, no one will ever be a threat to the world.”
«Even in the case of such frank returns to barbarism as the use of hostages, disapproval is only felt when it happens to be the enemy and not ourselves who is doing it.»
In currently politics returns to barbarism like government death squads snatching "enemies of the people" off the streets, or torturing suspects, or eliminating "potential criminals" (and their families as collateral damage), have been boasted of by GW Bush, BH Obama, D Trump (and most likely J Biden eventually) to win more votes. And instead of being outraged by that the "bienpensants" holler about the corrupting influence over a billionaire of a few stays in hotels to which he has licensed his brand, and similar "bombshells".
Wasn't that Huxley's dystopian future? A world tranquilized by pleasure & drugs & completely sex obsessed.
In my opinion we have a melding of both Orwell & Huxley. Pleasure & distraction for the middle classes. The boot heel & prison for the lower classes. It seems to be working quite well for the upper classes.
As much as people say they ache for change, it doesn't appear to be very hard to get them to vote for everything but change.
And then bullshit themselves about what they really voted for.
I heard a local liberal talk show host actually say that the country needs someone like Joe Biden, who can think outside the box.
Joe Biden is a lot of things, but an original thinker isn't one of them. He's had 47 years sucking at the public tit. I don't think he's had a good idea in those 47 years.
&, in my opinion, anyone who uses phrases like "think outside the box," don't really even know where "the box" is at let alone how to think outside of it.
If anything, the real prophet of dystopia was Edward Bernays who said,
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”
That was written almost a hundred years ago.
Not much has changed since then & I doubt that much will change anytime soon.
E Bernays as you write was and is an essential part of the story of our modern times. But the tone of what he writes is vastly exaggerated: after all he was a propagandists, and so obviously would blow his own trumpet as loudly as possible. Those described later as the "Hidden persuaders" (V Packard, 1957) are not as powerful as he describes, and neither are the media; they have influence, but very prone to failure too.
JM Keynes wrote something similar but different from E Bernays:
“Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back”
My personal impression is that both underestimate the ultimate source of hold over people's thoughts: theologians and in particular their theories of eschatology. My cod-philosophical reasoning why this happens is that most people are dominated by fear of death which creates anxiety about purpose, and that is rationalized into eschatological theology, one perhaps non-obvious example of which is for example social darwinism, "God/evolution/... wills it" is a powerful way to cope with justifying ourselves. Note: this is an expanded version of M Weber's "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" :-).
It is ancient theologians who inspire the theories of those "defunct economist" and "academic scribbler of a few years back", and who provide the mental buttons that propagandists push.
I'd be more prone to agree if I didn't know so many folk who are consumed by irrational Trump hate. I've started asking them to name Trump's crime. No one can seem to do that simple task. It just appears that they've been manipulated towards this irrational Trump hate by the media they consume.
If any religious idea is holding sway here I think it's the idea of the ritual scapegoat.
Trump has become that ritual scapegoat.
There's this entirely irrational idea floating through the Democrat controlled media that alludes to the idea that there will be some huge national epiphany of cooperation now that Trump is gone.
Michael Moore goes on the Stephen Colbert Show and rambles on about how Joe will save our national soul because he went to Catholic school.
Huh?
Priests went to Catholic school. Didn't stop them from diddling altar boys.
Meanwhile Joe's stocking his cabinet with corporate lobbyists & corporate yes men.
One would think Moore would be outraged since the story broke last week that Democrats like Pelosi & Schumer were meeting with Wall Street folk during the primary, strategizing about how to derail Sander's primary momentum.
Meanwhile, in reality, a Texas food bank handed out 600,000 lbs. of food to 25,000 cars a few days ago.
Yet no checks are forthcoming.
We're just at the outer edges of a horror show.
And Joe Biden isn't going to stop it.
I should point out that I don't particularly like Trump.
I mostly agree with what you say (which is the same as Matt Taibbi usually says) as to the substance of the Trump Derangement Syndrome, but I disagree with your thinking that it is media propaganda that created it.
Instead (and Matt Taibbi's writings like "Hate Inc." and academic studies support this) most media don't *change* opinions, but they pander to them. The TDS pandemic has not been created by media propaganda: those infected by TDS were already anti-Trump, they just loved their prejudices to be amplified and stroked by the media propaganda. Same as on the right. It is not so much that the media leads/creates public opinion, but they follow/pander to it.
Sometimes I think that some of the media propaganda in the recent years has been a "deep state" experiment to see just how gullible so many can be when fed deliberately ridiculous and ever-changing conspiracy theories like "russian collusion" and "Salisbury's novichok attack". If so, the wild success of that experiment must have amused them a lot.
Agreed-- I would add to the theories -- that there is a virus that is MUCH worse than anything we have ever seen 🙄-- so we have to lockdown and wait until it goes away (never?). Gullibility and constantly living in a fear state from constant propaganda is being tested -- a giant experiment to see where we can be controlled easily. Or as a medical colleague of mine said " A perfect experiment in natural selection".
I always thought it was gonna be more Huxley than Orwell, but I'm increasingly convinced that it's gonna be more Bradbury/F451, right down to the Boston Dynamics robot dogs hunting you.
"You'll stink like a bobcat for a couple days, but that's all right."
I love Orwell's writings. He's so spot on that it's... emotional.
IMO an issue is the difference between journalism (now) and history (the past). I adore history - it's what I read more than anything. History is not journalism. It's why I've come to distrust lots of long form journalism; the presentation of "context" (ie, history) as cover for drawing ideological conclusions about what current events "mean". It's actually not journalism, it's propaganda. True/false is a lens that's not in use there.
One thing I like about Taibi's journalism is that when he gives "context" it's not in the service of an ideology, or anything other than trying to present whatever as accurately and honestly as he can. I might be wrong, snowed. Don't think so tho because of the number of "you're too wishy washy!" or "you're not being serious enough!" or the like posts. Ideologs hate gray, hate history that doesn't support what they're saying today.
I made the mistake of looking at Twitter for about a month recently... I can't cite examples, because that site is specifically designed to destroy one's short-term memory, but I recall a distinct trend among self-identified "left"-idpol types to "cancel" Orwell not on the grounds of anything he actually wrote, but because he is too often quoted by conservatives and therefore ideologically suspect. Take my hazy, unsupportable assessment for what it's worth: =$0.
IMO a lot of what he wrote about is as true now as it was in his time, particularly and especially the language policing.
Someone-I have no idea who-maybe a college prof of mine said “Good journalism is the first edition of history”. Quality history goes beyond the party line-any party-in it’s quest for the broadest picture of events, the same is true of journalism.
"'With the world always filling you, no one has to worry about what's in your mind. With everyone's imagination atrophied, no one will ever be a threat to the world.'"
Welcome, my son.... to the machine.
"What did you dream? It's alright, we told you what to dream."
The truth is like the universe, its there whether you believe in it or not, history is just an account of whats happened and can be either true or lie.
Koppel was spot on. Still... things changed and here we are: in the land of politicized bullshit. Can't even do a google search without results being sorted for you based on "your private information" -or more specifically, what your private information reveals about your own susceptibilities to programming and being steered along and worse: what someone would like you to see, period.
That's control. We are all subject to the whims of the gatekeepers now and the path back is grown over with trash, debris and lunacy.
Best subscription I ever had. And most efficient one too. For years, ever since the vampire squid piece, I subscribed to Rolling Stone just to read MT. And a bit of Dickinson too. But mainly Matt. Can’t help it. The combo of accurate info and biting satire is rare. Can’t afford not to subscribe to it. Respect man.
Ditto 💗
I myself am a sucker for the beautifully written word. I adore Shakespeare, Twain, et. al. because of their choice of language, no matter how brutal the subject matter, (here I am lookin' at *you, Macbeth & Mrs.), no matter how ostensibly boring (Twain's European Travelogues).
People who master the English language like that just leave me with a *long lasting high.
I do not look to Matt for those same stratospheric highs linguistic luxury, but what Matt does for me, better than any living writer, is to TEACH me, even as his language, his asides, and his pithy and well chosen anecdotes buttress and expand my understanding.
I am 72 yrs old. A mere 22 years older than Matt. I was introduced to Chief White Halfoat, for instance, while *I was in the military during that Vietnam gig. And yet, what other writer do I encounter today who not only *knows of Chief White Halfoat, but understands *precisely how to use the character as an exemplar for the writer's presently described character? Matt is also my instructor regarding things I have never HEARD of, but for $5 a month, he instructs me with honesty, integrity, class *and humor ??? I cannot tell you the hours I spend looking for anyone writing in English, Foreign or Domestic whom I can even enjoy, much less trust. Matt is not only the real deal, he is the *full package as well.
Matt, you are a GOLD MINE ! Thank you for having the stones to come to an idea like Substack with full understanding of the freedom it gives *you, and the absolute delight it gives *us !
in the 40s and 50s, my parents subscribed to IF Stone's Weekly. They had to keep the subscription secret for fear of being subject to witch hunts.
Except now, what we look at online is tracked and stored in mega servers in the desert -waiting for indexing when you become a person of interest.
All they need to do is plug in your name, sift the results and then find you in there... then, they can see EVERYTHING you browsed, typed, said on a cell phone, said in PROXIMITY to your cell phone, did in front of the camera of your phone, (whether or not you were using the camera app,) and all of your locations.
Lets say you decide to tell your friends some nugget of truth and word gets around. You make a website. You have reach now. You gain an audience and become a threat to an established part or the whole of the system and then... you're being brought before a judge with everything they have on you going back to when data collecting began.
You're toast.
The same with all media, including books: once upon a time you could buy a book by walking into a storage and paying cash and none the wiser. Today that is rather more difficult to achieve, and with online media the "authorities" know even which pages you read or reread, and how often.
«You gain an audience and become a threat»
And that is big difference between totalitarian and authoritarian ones: in the totalitarian ones every step out of line is prevented or punished, in "managed democracies" only when that becomes popular or otherwise a threat (see Corbyn, Trump, Sanders), plus there is a narrow band of permitted variation around the "best" opinion.
What I have noticed is that in the recent couple of decades the range of opinion not considered a threat has considerably narrowed down in both the USA and UK.
A good point.
As the years go by, I find I have more and more sympathy for Pontius Pilate. Truth is easy in physics and in math. Or at least it can be proved. Truth in Roman politics? ha! Or even in ours, sadly. We're getting more and more that way. Like Cicero and Cataline there in the senate . . .
Speaking of truth, I like the quote from the German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss about proofs, "I mean the word proof not in the sense of the lawyers, who set two half proofs equal to a whole one, but in the sense of a mathematician, where ½ proof = 0, and it is demanded for proof that every doubt becomes impossible." If only truth were that easy.
Those Russians sound like really tough dudes. Holy smokes! It seems that "proofs" of things in politics are kaleidescopes of "maybe"s strung together into star-like constellations that are pointed at with a shaking hand and vexatious face screaming "SEE, SEE!" As if it's obvious Orion is a hunter and the star Serius is his dog. How could you not admit it!
Journalists of course have to trust sources, and those sources have to trust their confidants and their judgments. At what point does even a serious journalist -- digging into something politically big -- engage in pointing at stars and saying SEE, SEE!
It's hard to say. Certainly for me, personally, I can't say with any confidence what is true -- except in math and physics, where at least there are standards that anyone who seriously looks into it is forced to acknowledge.
What brings this all to mind -- or shakes it anyway, in the mind -- is the strange case of Sidney Powell, who has made some very incredible claims about the 2020 election. To me, frankly, she seemed sincere and credible in her demeanor. Were I a juror, I'd have been inclined to view her testimony sympathetically. We'll see if she delivers any goods.
I don't have any idea what to think about all this election stuff. I do know humans conspire and they can do incredibly awful things. I am not sure that happened in this case. Who is wrong and who is right. I wonder if we'll ever know. I wonder if any journalist who seriously tried to find out would ever truly know. I wonder if it's even possible to know. That's how weird it all is -- almost all of reality gets that way if you think about it long enough. Almost all reality is constellations in the sky of the mind and you are the one who says, "It's a hunter and a dog". Almost, but not quite. It's the "not quite" that keeps us sane.
Congrats Matt Taibbi on sharing the 2020 Izzy Award! Well deserved, in my humble opinion.
"No amount of money will make a lie true..."
Yup. So one way to keep things going when all you have is a lie is to play Pilate: "What is truth?"
A bottomless rabbit hole that unfortunately appeals to intelligent people.
Maybe our saving grace really are the people who, if you say that to them repeatedly, in seriousness, trying to "have a difficult conversation," will finally simply punch you in the nose and walk away.
Anyway, tangent. On topic, thanks for this. I'm not (wasn't at least), all that thoughtful about journalism outside of my inate cynicism. Your articles on it (ethics, economics, logistics, history etc of it) are really enlightening.
«No amount of money will make a lie true..."
Yup. So one way to keep things going when all you have is a lie is to play Pilate: "What is truth?" A bottomless rabbit hole that unfortunately appeals to intelligent people.»
Well many people know that "truth" is not a black-and-white matter in most cases, as most statements have exceptions and ambiguities, so "applicability" is a word that I prefer to use.
Related to that, "truth" in the abstract is a bit of an empty concept without "verifiability", and most of what we know is actually hearsay that cannot be verified by us (is the moon really not made of cheese? Well, I cannot say).
And "verifiability" bring to George Orwell, two of my usual quotes:
"As I Please", 1944-02-04: “During the Spanish civil war I found myself feeling very strongly that a true history of this war never would or could be written. Accurate figures, objective accounts of what was happening, simply did not exist. And if I felt that even in 1937, when the Spanish Government was still in being, and the lies which the various Republican factions were telling about each other and about the enemy were relatively small ones, how does the case stand now? Even if Franco is overthrown, what kind of records will the future historian have to go upon? And if Franco or anyone at all resembling him remains in power, the history of the war will consist quite largely of "facts" which millions of people now living know to be lies.
[...] During part of 1941 and 1942, when the Luftwaffe was busy in Russia, the German radio regaled its home audience with stories of devastating air raids on London. Now, we are aware that those raids did not happen. But what use would our knowledge be if the Germans conquered Britain? For the purpose of a future historian, did those raids happen, or didn't they? The answer is: If Hitler survives, they happened, and if he falls they didn't happen.
So with innumerable other events of the past ten or twenty years. Is the Protocols of the Elders of Zion a genuine document? Did Trotsky plot with the Nazis? How many German aeroplanes were shot down in the Battle of Britain? Does Europe welcome the New Order? In no case do you get one answer which is universally accepted because it is true: in each case you get a number of totally incompatible answers, one of which is finally adopted as the result of a physical struggle. History is written by the winners. [...] The really frightening thing about totalitarianism is not that it commits 'atrocities' but that it attacks the concept of objective truth; it claims to control the past as well as the future.”
"As I Please", 1945-01-26: “The Daily Worker disapproves of dictatorship in Athens, the Catholic Herald disapproves of dictatorship in Belgrade. There is no one who is able to say - at least, no one who has the chance to say in a newspaper of big circulation - that this whole dirty game of spheres of influence, quislings, purges, deportation, one-party elections and hundred per cent plebiscites is morally the same whether it is done by ourselves, the Russians or the Nazis. Even in the case of such frank returns to barbarism as the use of hostages, disapproval is only felt when it happens to be the enemy and not ourselves who is doing it.”
And another apposite quote:
Chuck Palahniuk "Lullaby" (2002): “Old George Orwell got it backward. Big Brother isn't watching. He's singing and dancing. He's pulling rabbits out of a hat. Big Brother's holding your attention every moment you're awake. He's making sure you're always distracted. He's making sure you're fully absorbed... and this [act of] being fed, it's worse than being watched. With the world always filling you, no one has to worry about what's in your mind. With everyone's imagination atrophied, no one will ever be a threat to the world.”
«Even in the case of such frank returns to barbarism as the use of hostages, disapproval is only felt when it happens to be the enemy and not ourselves who is doing it.»
In currently politics returns to barbarism like government death squads snatching "enemies of the people" off the streets, or torturing suspects, or eliminating "potential criminals" (and their families as collateral damage), have been boasted of by GW Bush, BH Obama, D Trump (and most likely J Biden eventually) to win more votes. And instead of being outraged by that the "bienpensants" holler about the corrupting influence over a billionaire of a few stays in hotels to which he has licensed his brand, and similar "bombshells".
Wasn't that Huxley's dystopian future? A world tranquilized by pleasure & drugs & completely sex obsessed.
In my opinion we have a melding of both Orwell & Huxley. Pleasure & distraction for the middle classes. The boot heel & prison for the lower classes. It seems to be working quite well for the upper classes.
As much as people say they ache for change, it doesn't appear to be very hard to get them to vote for everything but change.
And then bullshit themselves about what they really voted for.
I heard a local liberal talk show host actually say that the country needs someone like Joe Biden, who can think outside the box.
Joe Biden is a lot of things, but an original thinker isn't one of them. He's had 47 years sucking at the public tit. I don't think he's had a good idea in those 47 years.
&, in my opinion, anyone who uses phrases like "think outside the box," don't really even know where "the box" is at let alone how to think outside of it.
If anything, the real prophet of dystopia was Edward Bernays who said,
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”
That was written almost a hundred years ago.
Not much has changed since then & I doubt that much will change anytime soon.
Outside the box-🤣🤣🤣-a box of Depends....
E Bernays as you write was and is an essential part of the story of our modern times. But the tone of what he writes is vastly exaggerated: after all he was a propagandists, and so obviously would blow his own trumpet as loudly as possible. Those described later as the "Hidden persuaders" (V Packard, 1957) are not as powerful as he describes, and neither are the media; they have influence, but very prone to failure too.
JM Keynes wrote something similar but different from E Bernays:
“Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back”
My personal impression is that both underestimate the ultimate source of hold over people's thoughts: theologians and in particular their theories of eschatology. My cod-philosophical reasoning why this happens is that most people are dominated by fear of death which creates anxiety about purpose, and that is rationalized into eschatological theology, one perhaps non-obvious example of which is for example social darwinism, "God/evolution/... wills it" is a powerful way to cope with justifying ourselves. Note: this is an expanded version of M Weber's "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" :-).
It is ancient theologians who inspire the theories of those "defunct economist" and "academic scribbler of a few years back", and who provide the mental buttons that propagandists push.
I'd be more prone to agree if I didn't know so many folk who are consumed by irrational Trump hate. I've started asking them to name Trump's crime. No one can seem to do that simple task. It just appears that they've been manipulated towards this irrational Trump hate by the media they consume.
If any religious idea is holding sway here I think it's the idea of the ritual scapegoat.
Trump has become that ritual scapegoat.
There's this entirely irrational idea floating through the Democrat controlled media that alludes to the idea that there will be some huge national epiphany of cooperation now that Trump is gone.
Michael Moore goes on the Stephen Colbert Show and rambles on about how Joe will save our national soul because he went to Catholic school.
Huh?
Priests went to Catholic school. Didn't stop them from diddling altar boys.
Meanwhile Joe's stocking his cabinet with corporate lobbyists & corporate yes men.
One would think Moore would be outraged since the story broke last week that Democrats like Pelosi & Schumer were meeting with Wall Street folk during the primary, strategizing about how to derail Sander's primary momentum.
Meanwhile, in reality, a Texas food bank handed out 600,000 lbs. of food to 25,000 cars a few days ago.
Yet no checks are forthcoming.
We're just at the outer edges of a horror show.
And Joe Biden isn't going to stop it.
I should point out that I don't particularly like Trump.
Didn't vote for Trump.
Or Biden for that matter.
Just trying to be as non-partisan as I can be.
As a product of a Jesuit HS, I say dioscesan Catholic schools are the biggest peddlers of idiocy out there.......
I mostly agree with what you say (which is the same as Matt Taibbi usually says) as to the substance of the Trump Derangement Syndrome, but I disagree with your thinking that it is media propaganda that created it.
Instead (and Matt Taibbi's writings like "Hate Inc." and academic studies support this) most media don't *change* opinions, but they pander to them. The TDS pandemic has not been created by media propaganda: those infected by TDS were already anti-Trump, they just loved their prejudices to be amplified and stroked by the media propaganda. Same as on the right. It is not so much that the media leads/creates public opinion, but they follow/pander to it.
Sometimes I think that some of the media propaganda in the recent years has been a "deep state" experiment to see just how gullible so many can be when fed deliberately ridiculous and ever-changing conspiracy theories like "russian collusion" and "Salisbury's novichok attack". If so, the wild success of that experiment must have amused them a lot.
We can agree to disagree.
Although I'm behind your last paragraph 100%.
Maybe I'm personalizing this too much.
I didn't like Trump but, as a general rule, I don't watch television.
Or troll through social media.
So my dislike never reached hysterical proportions.
I even started defending him towards the end of his run even though I don't like him or agree with him.
Having said that I'm beginning to think I agree with you more than I think.
Agreed-- I would add to the theories -- that there is a virus that is MUCH worse than anything we have ever seen 🙄-- so we have to lockdown and wait until it goes away (never?). Gullibility and constantly living in a fear state from constant propaganda is being tested -- a giant experiment to see where we can be controlled easily. Or as a medical colleague of mine said " A perfect experiment in natural selection".
I always thought it was gonna be more Huxley than Orwell, but I'm increasingly convinced that it's gonna be more Bradbury/F451, right down to the Boston Dynamics robot dogs hunting you.
"You'll stink like a bobcat for a couple days, but that's all right."
I love Orwell's writings. He's so spot on that it's... emotional.
IMO an issue is the difference between journalism (now) and history (the past). I adore history - it's what I read more than anything. History is not journalism. It's why I've come to distrust lots of long form journalism; the presentation of "context" (ie, history) as cover for drawing ideological conclusions about what current events "mean". It's actually not journalism, it's propaganda. True/false is a lens that's not in use there.
One thing I like about Taibi's journalism is that when he gives "context" it's not in the service of an ideology, or anything other than trying to present whatever as accurately and honestly as he can. I might be wrong, snowed. Don't think so tho because of the number of "you're too wishy washy!" or "you're not being serious enough!" or the like posts. Ideologs hate gray, hate history that doesn't support what they're saying today.
Current online efforts to trash Orwell are telling. Honest journalists evolve into honest historians over time, long after they're dead.
Who is trashing Orwell? That’s like trashing Richard Pryor or Johnny Cash-it can’t be done in seriousness, imo......
I made the mistake of looking at Twitter for about a month recently... I can't cite examples, because that site is specifically designed to destroy one's short-term memory, but I recall a distinct trend among self-identified "left"-idpol types to "cancel" Orwell not on the grounds of anything he actually wrote, but because he is too often quoted by conservatives and therefore ideologically suspect. Take my hazy, unsupportable assessment for what it's worth: =$0.
IMO a lot of what he wrote about is as true now as it was in his time, particularly and especially the language policing.
Someone-I have no idea who-maybe a college prof of mine said “Good journalism is the first edition of history”. Quality history goes beyond the party line-any party-in it’s quest for the broadest picture of events, the same is true of journalism.
Palahniuk is obviously more of an Aldous Huxley fan than an Orwell man. Both authors raise prescient and valid points.
I will say that YouTube/online gaming/door dash have ushered in a disturbing and unprecedented level of sloth......
"'With the world always filling you, no one has to worry about what's in your mind. With everyone's imagination atrophied, no one will ever be a threat to the world.'"
Welcome, my son.... to the machine.
"What did you dream? It's alright, we told you what to dream."
It’s all in the name of the game, boy/it’s called riding the gravy train....
"No amount of money will make a lie true..."
If you can keep the charade up long enough that it gets into history books, that isn't entirely true....
The truth is like the universe, its there whether you believe in it or not, history is just an account of whats happened and can be either true or lie.
True. Once it's all said and done... and the aims are achieved, the only records will be those that made it.
We're kind of fucked there.
I wish you, Matt, or someone here, would write about Koppel's point about democratization of Journalism. see this: https://kapwi.ng/c/KvTWQeGz
Koppel was spot on. Still... things changed and here we are: in the land of politicized bullshit. Can't even do a google search without results being sorted for you based on "your private information" -or more specifically, what your private information reveals about your own susceptibilities to programming and being steered along and worse: what someone would like you to see, period.
That's control. We are all subject to the whims of the gatekeepers now and the path back is grown over with trash, debris and lunacy.