The Power of Political Satire

Political satire is the tip of the spear in combating the trump crisis, according to Carlos Maza of Vox. I posted the video that Maza made to contrast late night comedians treatment of this political theater of the absurd we find ourselves in with the supposedly serious news media to this blog's Facebook page but I didn't have a chance to comment on its significance. I am not sure how to actually embed the video but here's a link that should prove durable enough to last a while if for some reason you don't use the actual Vox link. Drawing on Professor of International Affairs and Comparative Literature at the Pennsylvania State University Sophia A. McClennen's work on the subject, Maza lays bare why it is that watching cable news especially can oftentimes leave the viewer more confused on a particular issue.

It is not easy to cut through the crap. A reporter or anchor needs to present context and adheres to the 
journalism standards of balance. Which means they have to treat peer-reviewed science and conspiracy theory as equally valid sides of a story. Satirists and comedians do not. They can get right to the point, obviously ridiculous ideas and the people regurgitating them should be ridiculed. When the republicans are caught blatantly and obviously lying people like Stephen Colbert, Samantha Bee, John Oliver, everyone on Saturday Night Live, Bill Maher, and Seth Meyers have no reason to pull punches. The late night comedians can call it the straight bullshit that it is and do it with humor so the average American who can only process about fifteen minutes of news will actually pay attention.

And it is being done on boring old cable television. Despite the telecommunications and technological leaps made since George W. Bush was taking a giant dump on democracy and the rule of law, these shows are anchored in a medium that hasn't changed much in almost four decades. That said, it is great to be able to catch a video clip of Colbert, Oliver, and Maher through Facebook or Twitter when I have a free minute. So the social media revolution that is responsible for so many of our ills, ideological clustering, trolling, decimation of attention spans, fake news, and so on can actually also be used for good. Though Mark Twain's apocryphal quote about lies shooting around the world while truth is putting on its shoes may still be appropriate for the second decade of the twenty-first century.

Satire is powerful and comforting at the same time. I would not have made it through the bush hell without my copy of Al Franken's Lies and the lying liars who tell them among other titles. Now Senator Franken's voice was about the only one I could find that helped understand what was happening and to find the courage to resist. To refuse to accept the right wing version of reality, in short, to call bullshit on them. Jello Biafra used to call building critical thinking skills "cultivating bullshit detectors" and told a simple anecdote about his dad laughing at TV commercials. "Son, that woman jumping up and down about how great her laundry detergent isn't really that happy because detergent isn't that exciting, she's just trying to sell you laundry detergent."

Unfortunately, critical thinking isn't something culturally transmitted from generation to generation anymore if it ever was. Each person has to hone and sharpen their bullshit detectors on their own it seems. Why that is could be several doctoral or post doctoral programs, but it comes down to this: the very wealthy and business people are always waging a bitter class war for their own benefit. The political right carries water for them and duly "works the refs" who are supposed to be watching the goalposts of truth. They did so by furiously attacking "bias" in the news media through boycotts, direct mail campaigns, buying a single share of stock in a media company to raise hell at their annual meetings and other stuff detailed a decade ago by Eric Alterman and others. Reporters and editors all the way up the food chain of news became so intimidated by these relentless attacks that they abandoned the search for truth in favor of balance. Then there is the fact that political discussion has gotten so toxic that most parents just prefer not to talk to their kids about it. When those kids get to college age or so and start taking an interest in the world around them, they are often without political socialization and have to start from scratch. That is where the cowed media and propaganda machine really fails the republic.

Watching the late night political satire can correct this. Tune in any night to any program and you will see a host shooting all kinds of holes in whatever the lies of the day are. This does two things, first it helps you see the lies and see through them, second it gives you the confidence that you are not alone and are under no obligation to treat the nonsense and vicious cruelty as anything but a ridiculous scam. And it is important to be able to resist while laughing. The trump crisis, president shithead himself, his cronies, the servile minions in the media, and his insane supporters are such a laughing stock that they make themselves easy targets for talented satirists.

The road back to a functioning democracy and a healthy republic with responsible discourse is going to be long and difficult. But it doesn't have to be all grim struggle as more sober commentators like Keith Olbermann present this quest. There is plenty of room for laughs. I hope you check out the link back to Vox, I know I will be looking into Prof. McClennen's findings more closely.

Resistance Will Continue

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My biggest fear when Doughface Donny took
office was that the "Second Amendment People" would immediately start a reign of terror to match their violent rhetoric because he could just pardon anyone who killed, beat up, or intimidated any activist, organizer, or journalist. So far that has not come to pass. But it could happen at any time, a coordinated assassination campaign against any individual or group deemed "leftist." The possibility has skyrocketed in the wake of a white, male baby boomer shooting up Congress members at the baseball diamond.

See what I did there? Normally you have to go to a top rated journalism school to pull that off. Everything in that description is correct, but the wording activates frames that a gun-control advocate can appreciate. It just so happens that this violent male baby boomer with a history of domestic abuse was also the worst possible Bernie Bro. It doesn't matter that he hated Hillary Clinton and the DNC at least as much as he hated republicans, he must be a liberal. And like all liberals, he burned with white-hot passion to gun down republicans. Right? Because that happens all the time. In the delusions of republicans at least.

What happens in just about every comment thread where authoritarian maga people provoke and

 provoke and provoke until a liberal says "I hate you!" Exactly, "Oh, what about those tolerant, compassionate liberals?" As though the previous nine comments of "fuck you loser, sissy LIEberal, libtard, moocher parasite" never happened. Or just don't count. I know I have been holding back like crazy. Apparently all but one of us silly leftists have the Yoda mindset towards aggression. Compassion, non-violence, empathy... "once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny." How has that been working out for the children of light?

Before inauguration day I wrote about Doughface Donny activating the primitive honor systems in so many white people. Weakness was to be despised, as was not standing up for your honor. A comment made on my last post about the shooting said my wording struck a chord that he always instinctively knew:

So the trick for both social dominators and the right wing followers is how to set up the dehumanized liberal that is both all-powerful and threatening but weak and helpless at the same time. All good scapegoats have this characteristic...

There's no good way to respond to bullying. But dollars to donuts if the victim just goes limp the bully will just keep beating them and lose any fear of a response. Taking the non-violent approach to politics when the other side is 100% committed to beating you by whatever means, is almost guaranteed to continue. They have nothing to fear. The maga people and crazy uncle liberty know you cannot or will not hurt them, and they can shoot out any length of insults and non sequiturs to drown any rational argument. As driftglass always says: they want to make liberals cry, that is the only part of "conservatism" left. Aggression is synonymous with authoritarianism, but it is the violence that can be done with impunity that followers are more predisposed to. The victim must be despised, but also incapable of fighting back. So when liberals unilaterally disarm, literally or metaphorically, they leave themselves open to attack.

This is what Doughface Donny had in mind when he said he would pay the legal fees of anyone who beat up protesters at his rallies. It may be old hat by now, but when you put a bunch of authoritarian followers together who are burning with hatred of all kinds in a room where they outnumber the protesters by a large margin, there is going to be violence. The same holds true online. One troll can derail an entire discussion, and they know it. They also know that there is nothing we can do to them.

I'm trying to keep in mind two axioms of Reinhold Niebuhr. War is never inevitable, as long as it hasn't happened, any war can be prevented. The maga people want us to be afraid, but we're not. Despite controlling everything, they still pretend to be outsiders, rebels. Perhaps they realize how fragile that control is, and that the republican elites they put in power (with lots of help from Russia, et al.) really do not care about them. They surrendered their American identity and values for what? They got nothing out of the bargain, just a feeling of victory. A feeling that will turn more and more towards the stuff of nightmares

Second is the Niebuhrian defense of democracy. Today is not like yesterday, conditions and society constantly change. Therefore democracy is the best way of responding to the needs of today and tomorrow. Attitudes change and society needs to adapt to changing circumstances all the time. There should be no set in stone ideals, non-violence is a fine idea but it can get you killed. So, objective reality check: Republicans were putting cross-hairs on Democrats for years, a Democratic congress member was shot along with others, tea baggers were violent and disruptive for years, so-called conservatives' rhetoric has been way over the top for years. and the same congress members who got shot at were bragging about shooting government officials when they didn't get their way. One side is incorrigibly violent in word and deed. Niebuhr knew that tyranny had to be resisted, he would not sit idly by as tyranny takes hold in America no matter how much the tyrants claimed they loved freedom. He would not be fooled, he would not allow others to be fooled by these man-children. Americans who love democracy and freedom, not the oppression and prejudice masquerading as American ideals.

Permanent Rebels

One of the purposes of political parties is to consolidate the almost infinite variations of the people's wants and needs for and from self-government. Another is to educate the electorate about competing visions for our collective future and decide on a program that has the broadest possible appeal to their side. Then to persuade as many voters to support that platform. It never works perfectly, certain things can help in the process such as including as many different people in building the party as possible and maintaining trust between leaders and members. We are as far from those as we can possibly be and therefore we have a barely coherent party system. The republicans are busy ripping their party apart with the members supporting Donald Trump while their leaders fret about not being able to control the hideous beast they created. But that is a subject for another time, today it is the disconnect between Hillary Clinton and an unknown percentage of leftist voters.

The percentage may be small, but they are stubborn and they are loud. These #NeverHillary people or whatever they are calling themselves now are so angry now that the Secretary has been cleared by the FBI. They are also angry that their hero has "sold out" and endorsed her. It is almost impossible to distinguish between the vicious smears coming from republicans and the cries from these silly dead enders. There may be a lot of overlap there too, a lot of the people hooked on Ron Paul last time have mysteriously become democratic socialists this time. And there's no shortage of right wing trolls playing at attacking Hillary Clinton from what they believe the left looks like. But the true believers that I know are definitely of the ideologically schizophrenic variety.

Who are these people who are so selfish and insulated from the hurt that He, Trump can and will put on America? In my unit in the Army being an individual was a grave offense and being a selfish one was worse. Yet these #neverhillary people have convinced themselves that echoing right wing talking points loudly is somehow noble and pat each other on the back for their imagined integrity. 

Wisconsin's Republican Woes

"As for the long slog, we know how long it takes because Scott Walker won his election in November 2010 and it was not until February of 2011 that our state will be forever changed.  Four whole months to end collective bargaining and make public employees rights to assemble a page in the history books." 

This assertion from Jeff Simpson's litany of betrayals and let downs from progressive media that I began analyzing in a previous post fails to look at the long game practiced by the authoritarian right. The long slog starting in the 1970s with the formation of the Heritage foundation and the other right wing think tanks who pump out ways to manipulate the media and the electorate. Then the elaborate plans for stripping the middle class of their rights and hard won quality of life. The monied special interests that dragged the fifty yard line so far to the right, nor those same corporations taking over the mainstream media and systematically removing any vestige of progressive opinion aren't mentioned anywhere in your article. And finally the long slog of taking over the Republican Party and public offices at low levels that proceeded the takeover by Scott Walker.  

So sure, if you don't count those decades of patient preparation and planning that took place before the Koch brothers implanted their goggle-eyed homunculus in the governor's mansion it was only four months.

The so-called "conservative movement" that spawned the culture wars and free market fundamentalism did not metastasize overnight either. 

https://cognidissidence.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-end-of-progressive-media.html?showComment=1462547061759&m=1#c6234940611106512609

Oh Goody...

I had just sat down to really delve into Firewall, which I had actually picked up from the library before Charles P. Pierce recently profiled the book, when I heard on the news coming from the other room that somebody just shot up a republican baseball practice.

Oh goody.

Now, I have been decrying violence on this blog since 2010, especially politically-motivated violence, and this is no exception. The first thought I had that sent a chill down my spine was that this shooting incident, unlike the 153 that came before it in just this year, will prove to be the amorphous Reichstag fire event that further enables republican tyranny. Time will tell but there has already been a 155th incident in San Francisco. America seems to be packing in a year's worth of stories into each day. Under whatever could be called normal in 2017 we, the engaged public, would have at least a few hours to reflect before the next catastrophe but alas, there is nothing remotely like "normal" in America anymore.

My second thought was "was this politically-motivated?" Then, "was the shooter partisan?" And it appears that yes to both and OH MY GOD we actually have that most rare of species, a left-wing shooter. Now, we can all do the "thoughts and prayers are with the victims" spiel but who does that actually help? Just optics. If it had been a white male baby boomer from some long-ignored heartland town right-winger who had just popped off fifty rounds at the Democratic Congressional baseball team I imagine the message boards at 4chan and twitter would be offering much more inflamed rhetoric than "thoughts and prayers." Why? Because optics only matter if you are capable of self-reflection and self-awareness, IOKIYAR.

Goddammit, the Second American Civil War seems completely inevitable now. Until this morning it has been a low intensity guerrilla campaign of "lone wolves" egged on by right wing media figures.There is a reason I blog under a pseudonym and it's not just everyday average American paranoia. If a right wing authoritarian follower can hurt someone without punishment, they will do it.

The keyboard warriors of the so-called "alt right" loved to spread this one around like herpes after the Russians stole the election for low-information authoritarianism:

 Put aside the facts that more people stayed home than voted for either candidate in that sea of red. Or that most of the people in the country live in those blue areas. This is what they want, this is the burning passion that drives certain 'wingers to spend all their money on guns, ammo, and Oxycontin. So the trick for both social dominators and the right wing followers is how to set up the dehumanized liberal that is both all-powerful and threatening but weak and helpless at the same time. All good scapegoats have this characteristic, not just the Jewish banking cabal that stole Christian children but crushed so easily under the Aryan jackboot.

So now, someone did "poke the bear", someone who has all the right characteristics of a trumper, white, male, baby boomer from the heartland. Now what? The wild card is these meme-generating 4chan trolls who certainly seem aggressive enough and autonomous enough from Central Command at Fox News to make a real mess of things. Are the trolls who made these propaganda posters brave enough to pull a real trigger?

Seriously, if you guys weren't compensating bigly, we'd know.

I especially like these two above. I'm sure the teenager on the far right is very politically motivated. And the fellas in pink, surely that is their battle dress uniform of choice. The dickheads who made these are probably guys who would say "I would have joined up but I don't like people telling me what to do."

For years now the attitude from the right is worse than the guns they wield as phallic substitutions. Today was the first time someone from the far left shot back. Will the assholes on the right finally realize that threatening and dehumanizing their fellow Americans with all of this pointless posturing and eliminationist rhetoric is not really worth it? Or will they merely ratchet everything up a notch? I didn't tell James Hodgkinson to visit the republicans' baseball field and I repudiate his every action, but that won't make a bit of difference to the man children in their mom's basement trying to incite the next guy to go down in a blaze of glory fighting the liberals.

One Day at a Time

It had really gotten to the point that I had a hard time wading through the hour-by-hour insanity out of doughface donny's White House. At some point I threw my hands up in dismay and turned to other avenues of a less stressful variety. I kept posting stuff on the facebook page and occasionally on twitter but this is the first time in two months that I've sat down to write an actual blog entry. It isn't likely to get any easier in the days ahead so I figured now is as good as any a time to get back into it. Two things gave me a bit of a kick, first was hearing Driftglass talk about the United States as an "occupied country" on their podcast yesterday, second was reading the basically insufferable Andrew O'Hehir's follow-up to his epic troll last week of his (and Salon's) audience.

Now, I don't interact with Driftglass often and I'm sure he wouldn't even know who I am much less have gotten the idea of America being an occupied country from my skribblings, but it still felt good to hear an idea that I've been advocating since before inauguration. Not that it's even an original idea or anything, heck I probably heard it from him. Still, hearing it from another commentator makes me think maybe I'm not beating a dead horse or totally off-base by mentioning it. There have been a rash of articles in the last day or so asking why no one is afraid of Hillary Clinton supporters, and why to be taken seriously a special prosecutor or national security officer has to be a republican. The first is in response to the breathless coverage of every reporter heading off into the heart of darkness and interviewing trump voters. Why is it, they ask, did the white working class back, and continue to back, a transparent con man over a very qualified public servant who happens to be a woman?

The answer is of course self-evident. But why was Hillary Clinton, and by extension her supporters and Democrats generally, held to such a high standard while the doughface skated on every. damn. thing. under. the. sun. Why are republicans treated so deferentially and Democrats as scurrilous outsiders by the supposedly liberal media? And why oh why does history disappear so damn quickly? If you take a step back and look objectively it is pretty easy to see that we have been an occupied country for a long time, doughface donny is not the first tyrant and probably not the last to occupy the federal government though he is the first to so blatantly shrug off even the appearance of being in charge. The Democrats only get a half-hearted turn at running things when the dopey republicans hired by the true owners of America screw things up so badly that it threatens long term profit potential.

Which is why O'Hehir's article was so maddening:

Wake up, liberals: There will be no 2018 “blue wave,” no Democratic majority and no impeachment

He claims to be the executive editor of Salon, so it seems likely that he either wrote or approved of this title. Now he may be entirely correct in this prediction, or he may not be, that is beside the point. His analysis; that "we" are placing entirely too much emphasis on these local but national proxy elections, symbolic victories or defeats are just that and "we" should not get too wrapped up in it. So I guess all of "you" who were out there doing it should be ashamed of yourselves or something. The first comment I read was something to the effect of "thanks jerk, I guess I won't bother voting or even trying." 

Really, enough with the clickbait headlines. If you can't attract readers with top line talent or hard hitting investigative journalism maybe "you" should get out of the way. This kind of analysis is almost the definition of Arthur M. Schlesinger's "wailer" in that Mr. O'Hehir claims no responsibility to anyone or anything, if he did then he wouldn't use this kind of tone. I, speaking for myself was not trying to glean national symbolic importance in these special elections, I just wanted to see a victory. Knowledge of the limitations is pretty important but on any given Sunday... Yes, David Daley makes a strong case for how sealed up the gerrymandering and voter suppression has gone but knowing that ahead of time could make a difference if organizers and GOTV efforts operated with with the depths of republican lying, cheating, and stealing in mind and planned accordingly. Also, those maps are now in their penultimate use, people come of age, die, move away, move in, and have their motivation to vote swing up and down all the time.

So then we get to his follow up last Saturday, where O'Hehir claims he wasn't just shamelessly trolling his readers. He then makes the case that he was just trolling the Democratic Party; great, the wailing kicks in by the fourth paragraph.

I can only agree: I didn’t answer that question because I don’t know the answer. What I do know, or at least fervently believe, is that American democracy is in a state of profound and potentially terminal decay, and that if President Donald Trump is the most glaring symptom he is definitely not the cause. Of course I don’t know for sure what will happen in the 2018 midterms, but I can see no possible outcome that makes everything suddenly OK again, and I think investing too much hope in a flailing political party, a rigged congressional map and a miracle comeback is a really good way to drain the Trump resistance of its power and meaning.

That was a response to criticism that O'Hehir doesn't have any answers, other than to rag on the Democrats and condescend to the millions of energized liberals trying their best to kick and drag their neighbors and the party into some kind of action. What follows is a lengthy digression into how both parties are working on the same failed assumptions, you know, complete nonsense. We have one party interested in governing a decent society, however timidly and certainly not committed to real equality or the dignity of a middle class life for the poorly-educated. But the other is actively committed to an out-and-out traitor to this country, an incompetent buffoon, all in the name of wrecking the government and cracking open the state to drain it's wealth. They are not the same and are not operating under the same rules no matter what lengths O'Hehir goes to in order to denigrate the Democratic Party.

Gotta take this one day at a time. There's no silver bullet, no white knight to ride in and fix everything. And the day that O'Hehir gets off his high horse to either surgically install spines in the Democrats we have or build something that can replace them I might start to take him seriously. But we're not going to get there tomorrow.