“Isn't it odd that so many foundations, big businesses, newspapers and colleges that once called themselves patriotic and pro-free market –- even some that still do -- fund their declared culture-war opponents? Once upon a bloodstain the size of several continents, Lenin said that we Americans would sell our enemies the rope with which they’d hang us. As usual he was wrong.
“We don’t sell rope to our enemies. We don’t even give it to them for free. We pay them to take it, and then we send advisors to teach them how to make a hangman’s noose.”
These are the views of a couple of pretty smart fellows from Indiana, who don’t wish to reveal their real names as yet because they like their jobs. We will call them, for simplicity’s sake, Indiana Smith and (you knew this was coming) Indiana Jones. Smith and Jones have started an e-mail “newsletter” to publicize their mix of conservative and libertarian views, and are in the process of building a newfangled “point/counterpoint” website with some friends of the liberal persuasion.
A different yardstick
Wait a minute: Can people with opposing views really be friends?
“How sad that it has come to that,” says Indy Smith, “as if politics was the most important thing in life, the only reason people banded together.” Smith says he has all kinds of friends, for all kinds of reasons, and that there are more important things to agree on than to argue over. Smith, Jones and what they call their “loony left buddies” have decided to band together in common cause, to fight a common enemy: bad thinking.
“That’s the new yardstick,” Indy Jones asserts. “More important than the belief itself is the process by which you came to it. For many people, TV soundbites and bumper stickers have replaced thinking. We are advocates, from the left and right and center, for good thinking.”
A member of the loose consortium overseen by Smith and Jones wrote an article, "Putting Descartes Before the Hordes," concerning critical thinking and the famed philosopher's Procedural Rule. Although the Indy Boys liked it, they disagreed with the notion that Americans would take to critical thinking by the example of a 17th century European smart aleck. The “proper thinker to put before middlebrow America may not be René Descartes,” Jones intones. It was Smith who wrote the most instructive passage, however.
Bart Simpson, philosopher
"We wholeheartedly agree with the ‘Descartes’ article. However, we have to reach the hordes on the level of Bart Simpson. When Nikita Kruschev told the United States, ‘We will bury you,’ he meant from within, not from without. How do you do that? You have to get control of the media, the education establishment, and privately owned guns. Uncle Sam has succeeded in the first two and is working on the last.
"We work in management at a steel mill in America’s heartland. [Understand why they use pseudonyms now?] Our concern is how to reach the guy out on the floor, who only watches the first ten minutes of the evening news, reads the front page of the local newspaper and believes he is being presented with an unbiased version of truth?
“It appears the masses that work on the floor are content with their paycheck and the government taking on their responsibilities so that they don't have to. Debunking political myths one person at a time is too slow, and it can always be counteracted by the evening news. Perhaps some rich conservative guy needs to purchase a major network or cable channel and present the news with their own biases, to counter the existing biases."
Crunched numbers
That’s what Smith and Jones think, anyway. What first comes to mind is that, besides a network, they would still need to battle it out among the decision-makers, leaders, politicians, the Fourth Estate – which means they’d still need the print media. Then, too, there’s the Internet (Fifth Estate? Sixth?), e-mail, which they’re already using, and other alternative delivery methods. They need what's called “bandwidth” –- and plenty of it.
Here's an angle on the publishing side of the equation: For political mags, a hundred thou is a lot of subscribers, but most of the mags lose money unless they're owned by a conglomerate or do some kind of fundraising on the side. But among the non-leftist (and non-conglomerate) periodicals, American Spectator has, I think, 200,000+ subscribers and National Review has 175,000 or so, and if you add in Reason, Insights on Liberty, Human Events, Liberty, St. Croix Review, The Independent Review, Insight, American Enterprise, Weekly Standard, etc., you get maybe three-quarters of a million, total.
These are so-so numbers for magazines, especially considering that, between them, TV Guide and Reader’s Digest have a circulation of over 20 million. For direct communication with 300 million Americans, or even just the 25 million voting-age ones to whom Smith and Jones would provide remedial critical thinking classes and civics lessons, the 11 mags listed above are next to worthless.
Change is inside out
The indirect, gradual changes that actually take place in societies and civilizations work from top to bottom, and inside out. That means that the larger social impact of influential, persuasive, consequential ideas upon the "cognitive elite" is diluted and delayed, as those ideas move through layers of society, as well as through time and space, creating their own resistance, friction and drag. And don’t forget that this ameliorative motion is against a current of PC blather and high-tech hogwash, professionally wrought to mislead and distract, at least according to Smith and Jones.
Now, Indy Boys, for argument's sake, let’s say you’ve got your large, well-funded, perhaps even profitable multimedia enterprise –- a few TV stations, some radio, a strong web presence, movies, publishing. Okay, then what?
Then you're still dealing with people whose minds you wish to change. How do you do that in a (still somewhat) free market with ubiquitous TV remote controls? How do you keep on proselytizing while losing viewers and consequent ad revenue? Face it, Indy Boys, “clear thinking” is a niche market with, at best, a few million Americans who are hip to what's happening. And hard truths alienate people, especially when they’re on pay-TV; folks just wanna have fun, y’know? As any good “marketer” will tell you, the trick is to make people both think and feel that they need what you have –- and feel strongly enough about it to part with hard-earned dough.
Like most of life, the Indy Boys insist, the process involves a seller, a buyer, a contract and a consummating transaction. The real business of America, President Coolidge said, is business; some 70-odd (some very odd) years later, restoring the power and reach of the American government to something approximating the Coolidge administration’s, one of Smith’s and Jones’s pet projects, should be the business of all real Americans. That’s what the Indy Boys say, anyway.
Issues of the future
Some folks say that America is a conservative nation. That would so completely depend on definitions –- semantics -– that commenting on the notion would take another whole article. But, starting with Bill Clinton in the 1990s, it does appear that mushy conservatism teamed up with pennypinching liberalism to create those great, gooey centrist positions that still poll well and sound sort of, well, mushily conservative and pennypinchingly liberal.
But GOP-Demo goo like charter schools and 2% tax cuts are hardly cutting edge with true believers, who prefer to tackle fundamental issues like, say, deleting half the cabinet departments and bringing every American serviceman home. Smith and Jones are likewise concerned with high-tech “assaults on our freedom” like video surveillance, e-mail and phone tapping, GPS-equipped license plates and other Big Brother moves.
“It’s starting to look like London in some big American cities,” Jones claims. “It started with surveillance cameras for catching speeders, a real soccer-mom kind of end-run around privacy concerns.” He goes on to say that, every time he hears a politician talk about “video security” in terms of fighting crime and protecting citizens, he knows it’s “really something else they mean” -– video surveillance of the populace.
These Indy Boys just do not trust their elected officials. “We don’t trust the government, either,” Smith adds cryptically, “which is a separate thing, of course.” Now, see, Indy Boys, you’ve got to watch what you say and how you say it. If you take this terminology, and these angles on the issues, to a GOP platform committee in any state of the union you will be sorely disappointed. If you’re not used to being called wackos, get used to it.
The reason is simple. The fact is, as a nation, we're really not that conservative. We’re complicated, capricious, complacent and comfy. And a lot of us just don’t want to think clearly about things, because that will put the multimedia show of modern life on hold.
How do you fight that? How do you convince spoiled kids of all ages, who live in Disneyland on a subsidized ticket, to grow up? This is what the Indy Boys are wondering.
I trust you're not in a hurry for the answer.
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Don’t Toss That TV
The common-sense observation that the tool is not responsible for the carpenter's poor use of it has been enlisted to great effect in political debates, such as the one over gun control. Although the bumper sticker reductionism of "Guns don't kill people, people kill people" is at once trite and true, the notion that people are indeed responsible for their actions, as well as the actions of the hammers and electric drills and handguns and SUV's under their control, seems like nothing so much as plain old common sense.
Of course, common sense is now quite uncommon. And so we find a surprisingly large number of otherwise sensible “personal responsibility boosters” rejecting this straightforward thinking when the target of their ire is the mass media, specifically television. All of a sudden one starts hearing the sort of all-encompassing generalizations and one-size-fits-all thinking that typifies the average politician: “TV is a wasteland, a cesspool, that teaches our kids violence and mindless consumerism.” There’s no room for grey in this kind of thinking; it’s as black-and-white as the original Milton Berle series. And the chorus of voices is growing.
“Offending contraptions”
Recently, at his Glendale, California church’s weekly men’s meeting, Jerry Bray listened as a traveling evangelist beseeched the assemblage to toss their television sets, CD's and other "offending contraptions" in the garbage. Apparently, recycling them into toasters or space heaters would be acceptable, but they should most assuredly not be sold at a garage sale. "You can protect your family from TV poison without selling it to someone else, bargain price or otherwise," according to the brochure the evangelist distributes with cookies after his presentations.
If you “kill the devices that bring that filth into your home,” the brochure goes on to say, apparently you won't be missing a thing. In this abolitionist view, "there is no downside" to getting rid of the electronic multimedia funnels that pipe the sick and savage products of a “perverse and Godless” entertainment industry into the home. That’s pretty heady stuff there.
Yet, somehow, that sounds just like a poor carpenter blaming the tools again. We don't like what others are building with them, so out go the hammers and screwdrivers and belt sanders. We don’t like a few, or even a lot, of the programs, so out goes the TV. Hold on a second!
Puerile and perverted?
Over the last several years a growing number of concerned parents have opted to dump the TV set. Millions of well-meaning Moms and dedicated Dads have apparently decided that American TV fare today is 100% (im)pure, unalloyed crud. It's a wasteland “out there,” the argument goes, but you don’t have to bring it “into the family sanctuary.” The operative word here is “it,” which stands for all TV programming, from Homer Simpson smoking pot to the impressionist masterpieces of Seurat. “It” is all “worthless.”
Or is it? Certainly the most popular sit-coms, cop shows, reality TV and game shows are puerile and perverted pap, if not outright propaganda from “the unreconstructed sensualists of Hollywood-on-the-Volga” (that evangelist can turn a phrase!). But right there in TV Guide, sandwiched between channel listings for Buffy the Vampire Slayer and a Marilyn Manson paean to the joys of demonic possession, is a fabulous documentary on the Lewis and Clark expedition. Just change the channel and there you go.
And look, on the next page of program listings -- floating above the blurb for the hot reality TV show of the moment (cops and hookers living in a car?), alongside the listing for an exposé of fascist cannibals in the Catholic Church –- is an invitation to watch Jesus of Nazareth and Moses, the Lawgiver back-to-back later in the week. That’s quite a spread, isn’t it?
Part-time parents
One semi-doting dad told me recently that he just doesn’t have time to monitor his 12-year-old son's viewing habits. What occurred to me, of course, is that he might as well have said that he just doesn’t have time to raise his son, to instill values in him, to teach him how to monitor himself. So the easy answer for this dad was to dump the TV altogether, a classic example of tossing the baby out with the bath water –- and the soap, washcloth, towel and tub, too. This young man will now be spared The Real Housewives of Atlanta even as he misses the opportunity to learn about the U.S. astronaut training program.
Certainly, I put it to the father, there is a way to avoid the former and take advantage of the latter, isn't there?
"Too much work and takes too long," he said. "It's easier just to get rid of it, all of it."
Yikes. Scary!
With hundreds of channels, there truly is something for everyone in the information-age cafeteria of "custom" TV, with the seemingly limitless choices of cable and satellite receivers now complemented by a bevy of new technologies for recording, delaying, replaying, taping, splicing, slicing and dicing the programs. With the capabilities come a torrent of content; in my area, the cable company gives me high-speed internet access and a TV package comprising all the channels I need, all for about $90 a month.
Still, I don't watch a whole lot of TV, and I never just plop down in front of it and scan channels. I get a Sunday paper primarily for the TV listings, and if something I want to watch is on during the coming week, I can make time to watch it (rare) or set the DVR to record it (common). My wife and I will unwind with the cooking shows (God bless Emeril Lagasse -– bam!); watch the various political spin squadrons twirl, thrust, parry and obfuscate on the talking-head cable shows; and occasionally deduce along with Sherlock Holmes just who did the dirty deed this time. These are not wasteland experiences, I assure you.
Acceptable alternatives
It is far too facile simply to relegate an entire technology to unimportance in one's life, and dangerous, too; you will miss a lot of what is happening around you. If you have children, you might be able to limit the damage done to your kids via TV programming by dumping the set, but you will also limit enriching experiences. They will see Miley Cyrus’s musical soap opera or Shannon Doherty's latest snotty Gen-whatever character anyway, whether at friends' homes or the mall or even school; but they won't see it with your play-by-play commentary, followed by a channel switch to the acceptable alternative you have investigated and provided.
Yes, TV is a non-stop, pervasive influence in our society. But a TV is just another tool; to rid your home of it may be a powerful statement, but in the end it is a self-defeating one. The challenge –- for parents particularly, but for the rest of us, too, who desire edification and intellectual stimulation, as well as occasional escapist fare (and that's okay too!) –- is to control this massively powerful technology. It is so powerful, in fact, that George Orwell populated 1984 with as many big, propaganda-spewing monitors as characters. Big Brother wouldn’t have been big without TV.
Interestingly, however, it wasn’t the fear of TV as a non-stop pitchman for an authoritarian state that stuck with people. No, it was TV turned the other way ’round, as a full-time silent snoop, that took hold as the technology matured into the 1950s and beyond. With the proliferation of video surveillance cameras in the UK (there are over 4 million in London alone), and their gradual introduction in the U.S. in the almost-benign form of “traffic cams,” perhaps we should not be too quick to view Orwellian paranoia as overheated and baseless.
Use vs. abuse
It is too early to tell how the public use and abuse of TV, video security systems and related technologies will all play out. It is true that a tool can be quickly transformed into a weapon; some things, like axes, are arguably both to begin with. It might help to view TV in this light. Ultimately, it is up to each one of us, acting for ourselves as well as for our children, to use our home's trusty axe to chop the wood that warms the hearth that heats the house and lights the room – so we can, in safety and comfort, read a story and see the accompanying illustrations.
An intruder, one who may even wish us harm, is always watching for us to let our guard down, so he can break in and grab that axe and use it against us. He may wish to sell sugar-coated nothingness to our kids when we’re not watching, swear a blue streak in a cable movie or otherwise foul our safe haven. But we are not powerless here. We are wide awake and diligent, and remember, when we go to sleep we can turn on the surveillance cameras and bolt the doors, both figuratively and literally. Still, as that traveling evangelist said, there are evildoers who are plotting to assault you and your kids across the airwaves and over the cable connection.
There is no good reason to miss out on DaVinci himself just because you want to keep The DaVinci Code out of your house. Sure, your “enemies” may try to take over the entire entertainment industry so that, one day, there will be no quality choices at all.
But just whose fault is it if you let that happen? And why would you want to hasten the day? Don’t do it. Don’t help the wrong side.
Don’t toss that TV.
Of course, common sense is now quite uncommon. And so we find a surprisingly large number of otherwise sensible “personal responsibility boosters” rejecting this straightforward thinking when the target of their ire is the mass media, specifically television. All of a sudden one starts hearing the sort of all-encompassing generalizations and one-size-fits-all thinking that typifies the average politician: “TV is a wasteland, a cesspool, that teaches our kids violence and mindless consumerism.” There’s no room for grey in this kind of thinking; it’s as black-and-white as the original Milton Berle series. And the chorus of voices is growing.
“Offending contraptions”
Recently, at his Glendale, California church’s weekly men’s meeting, Jerry Bray listened as a traveling evangelist beseeched the assemblage to toss their television sets, CD's and other "offending contraptions" in the garbage. Apparently, recycling them into toasters or space heaters would be acceptable, but they should most assuredly not be sold at a garage sale. "You can protect your family from TV poison without selling it to someone else, bargain price or otherwise," according to the brochure the evangelist distributes with cookies after his presentations.
If you “kill the devices that bring that filth into your home,” the brochure goes on to say, apparently you won't be missing a thing. In this abolitionist view, "there is no downside" to getting rid of the electronic multimedia funnels that pipe the sick and savage products of a “perverse and Godless” entertainment industry into the home. That’s pretty heady stuff there.
Yet, somehow, that sounds just like a poor carpenter blaming the tools again. We don't like what others are building with them, so out go the hammers and screwdrivers and belt sanders. We don’t like a few, or even a lot, of the programs, so out goes the TV. Hold on a second!
Puerile and perverted?
Over the last several years a growing number of concerned parents have opted to dump the TV set. Millions of well-meaning Moms and dedicated Dads have apparently decided that American TV fare today is 100% (im)pure, unalloyed crud. It's a wasteland “out there,” the argument goes, but you don’t have to bring it “into the family sanctuary.” The operative word here is “it,” which stands for all TV programming, from Homer Simpson smoking pot to the impressionist masterpieces of Seurat. “It” is all “worthless.”
Or is it? Certainly the most popular sit-coms, cop shows, reality TV and game shows are puerile and perverted pap, if not outright propaganda from “the unreconstructed sensualists of Hollywood-on-the-Volga” (that evangelist can turn a phrase!). But right there in TV Guide, sandwiched between channel listings for Buffy the Vampire Slayer and a Marilyn Manson paean to the joys of demonic possession, is a fabulous documentary on the Lewis and Clark expedition. Just change the channel and there you go.
And look, on the next page of program listings -- floating above the blurb for the hot reality TV show of the moment (cops and hookers living in a car?), alongside the listing for an exposé of fascist cannibals in the Catholic Church –- is an invitation to watch Jesus of Nazareth and Moses, the Lawgiver back-to-back later in the week. That’s quite a spread, isn’t it?
Part-time parents
One semi-doting dad told me recently that he just doesn’t have time to monitor his 12-year-old son's viewing habits. What occurred to me, of course, is that he might as well have said that he just doesn’t have time to raise his son, to instill values in him, to teach him how to monitor himself. So the easy answer for this dad was to dump the TV altogether, a classic example of tossing the baby out with the bath water –- and the soap, washcloth, towel and tub, too. This young man will now be spared The Real Housewives of Atlanta even as he misses the opportunity to learn about the U.S. astronaut training program.
Certainly, I put it to the father, there is a way to avoid the former and take advantage of the latter, isn't there?
"Too much work and takes too long," he said. "It's easier just to get rid of it, all of it."
Yikes. Scary!
With hundreds of channels, there truly is something for everyone in the information-age cafeteria of "custom" TV, with the seemingly limitless choices of cable and satellite receivers now complemented by a bevy of new technologies for recording, delaying, replaying, taping, splicing, slicing and dicing the programs. With the capabilities come a torrent of content; in my area, the cable company gives me high-speed internet access and a TV package comprising all the channels I need, all for about $90 a month.
Still, I don't watch a whole lot of TV, and I never just plop down in front of it and scan channels. I get a Sunday paper primarily for the TV listings, and if something I want to watch is on during the coming week, I can make time to watch it (rare) or set the DVR to record it (common). My wife and I will unwind with the cooking shows (God bless Emeril Lagasse -– bam!); watch the various political spin squadrons twirl, thrust, parry and obfuscate on the talking-head cable shows; and occasionally deduce along with Sherlock Holmes just who did the dirty deed this time. These are not wasteland experiences, I assure you.
Acceptable alternatives
It is far too facile simply to relegate an entire technology to unimportance in one's life, and dangerous, too; you will miss a lot of what is happening around you. If you have children, you might be able to limit the damage done to your kids via TV programming by dumping the set, but you will also limit enriching experiences. They will see Miley Cyrus’s musical soap opera or Shannon Doherty's latest snotty Gen-whatever character anyway, whether at friends' homes or the mall or even school; but they won't see it with your play-by-play commentary, followed by a channel switch to the acceptable alternative you have investigated and provided.
Yes, TV is a non-stop, pervasive influence in our society. But a TV is just another tool; to rid your home of it may be a powerful statement, but in the end it is a self-defeating one. The challenge –- for parents particularly, but for the rest of us, too, who desire edification and intellectual stimulation, as well as occasional escapist fare (and that's okay too!) –- is to control this massively powerful technology. It is so powerful, in fact, that George Orwell populated 1984 with as many big, propaganda-spewing monitors as characters. Big Brother wouldn’t have been big without TV.
Interestingly, however, it wasn’t the fear of TV as a non-stop pitchman for an authoritarian state that stuck with people. No, it was TV turned the other way ’round, as a full-time silent snoop, that took hold as the technology matured into the 1950s and beyond. With the proliferation of video surveillance cameras in the UK (there are over 4 million in London alone), and their gradual introduction in the U.S. in the almost-benign form of “traffic cams,” perhaps we should not be too quick to view Orwellian paranoia as overheated and baseless.
Use vs. abuse
It is too early to tell how the public use and abuse of TV, video security systems and related technologies will all play out. It is true that a tool can be quickly transformed into a weapon; some things, like axes, are arguably both to begin with. It might help to view TV in this light. Ultimately, it is up to each one of us, acting for ourselves as well as for our children, to use our home's trusty axe to chop the wood that warms the hearth that heats the house and lights the room – so we can, in safety and comfort, read a story and see the accompanying illustrations.
An intruder, one who may even wish us harm, is always watching for us to let our guard down, so he can break in and grab that axe and use it against us. He may wish to sell sugar-coated nothingness to our kids when we’re not watching, swear a blue streak in a cable movie or otherwise foul our safe haven. But we are not powerless here. We are wide awake and diligent, and remember, when we go to sleep we can turn on the surveillance cameras and bolt the doors, both figuratively and literally. Still, as that traveling evangelist said, there are evildoers who are plotting to assault you and your kids across the airwaves and over the cable connection.
There is no good reason to miss out on DaVinci himself just because you want to keep The DaVinci Code out of your house. Sure, your “enemies” may try to take over the entire entertainment industry so that, one day, there will be no quality choices at all.
But just whose fault is it if you let that happen? And why would you want to hasten the day? Don’t do it. Don’t help the wrong side.
Don’t toss that TV.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Life in a Surveillance Society
Governments throughout history have maximized their power by pointing to threats, internal and external, as justifications for “increased security measures” -- also known to some as “diminishing freedoms.” The issue is not whether the threats are real or not – there are plenty of real threats in the world, from malignant bacteria to nuclear weapons – but the way in which we respond to them. Does battening down society’s hatches by limiting mobility and surveilling the populace even work? Does it make us “safer”?
One of the consequences of the 9/11 attack was to bring issues of freedom vs. security to the fore once again. The international boogeyman of communism having been half-slain with the demise of the USSR (China, once the junior partner, is holding on by a thread), the Islamofascist threat ratcheted up the terror to provide yet another common enemy. Let’s take a look at how two Western nations, Britain and the U.S., responded to the threat.
You’re on TV!
The British can now exclaim with egalitarian glee that all of its subjects (they aren’t “citizens,” you know) are TV stars. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say that they are all on TV. London, by various accounts, has some four to six million close-circuit television (CCTV) cameras keeping tabs on its 7.5 million inhabitants. They are getting close to having one camera for each person. Now there’s equality!
But has the constant surveillance of the general public helped keep crime and terrorism in check? Apparently, in a few “terrorism cases and several high-profile murders, London’s ubiquitous CCTV cameras have played a key role” -- but only in “reconstructing what happened,” and only “after the fact.”
“CCTV was originally seen as a preventative measure,” according to Detective Chief Inspector Mike Neville, head of the Visual Images, Identifications and Detections Office of Scotland Yard. According to his speech at a London conference last May, Neville considers the entire CCTV project to have been “an utter fiasco: Only 3% of crimes were solved by CCTV.” Not very good results for a system that was sold as video security for “law-abiding citizens.”
People not “fearful” enough
In an unintended bit of Orwellian candor, the Inspector admitted that Londoners have “no fear of CCTV.” Instead of being on their best behavior for the eagle-eyed constables working in the numerous “monitoring stations” in the city, people appear to be going about their usual business, whether felonious or innocent. Neville says they do so because they know that “the cameras are not working.”
Actual camera failures are soon corrected, so in that sense they are “working.” What the good Inspector meant was that, in court, the quality of the images is often less than what is required for a positive identification. In addition, investigators are not willing to slog through hours of video to prosecute petty crimes.
The verdict? London’s CCTV experiment has failed in its stated goal, but has mitigated the particular failure by having a general effect with which the government is quite pleased. There is little discussion of the principle at stake -- that is, liberty -- and the tension between it and security that has been at the root of Americans’ distrust of government surveillance efforts.
North American inroads
That innate distrust may be a North American trait, as our neighbors to the north, the Canadians, are still individualistic enough (or enough of them are) to at least stoke a national debate on the topic. The Toronto police are experimenting with CCTV right now, and the city’s Transit Commission is completing work on an $18 million camera system it claims will “capture every one” of its “2.5 million daily users on video.” And the op-ed columns and letters to the editor are fairly blazing with controversy. Well, a small, polite blaze, at any rate.
Americans, of course, are another breed entirely, a breed of a thousand contrarian bloodlines. As the asylum and haven of the world, our national character has a wide streak of individualism, and an instinctive distrust of power and people who like wielding it. Still, surveillance cameras, traffic cams and other CCTV installations are proliferating here, too, and are sold as examples of “Yankee ingenuity” and the natural evolution of “good government.”
Refining the terms of debate
The important thing for supporters of privacy rights to recognize is that video security technology has not reached the power-to-price ratio that would allow widespread installation in any Western country. Higher-resolution cameras and better lenses raise the cost substantially, while the low-end optics used in police surveillance cameras, at least in London, capture images that usually don’t help capture the crooks.
Opponents of government snooping can use utilitarian arguments now, as well as philosophical ones. The fact is, the cameras don’t do what they’re advertised to do, notwithstanding that, in America, what they are asked to do seems quite Constitutionally questionable. And the utilitarian argument that the cameras don’t work anyway does not counter the pro-surveillance argument that newer, better, more powerful and even cheaper technology is becoming available.
Therefore, opposing surveillance on merely utilitarian grounds is a losing proposition, especially with the pace of technological progress today. Principled opposition is required. Benjamin Franklin’s great insight on freedom vs. security, having been mauled and misquoted by so many writers and politicos in the last few years, is here in its original form for your consideration:
A thousand or a million or even 20 million CCTV cameras installed in the U.S., hither and yon and under the control of a vast range of different people, shouldn’t raise a single hair on the back of a dedicated civil libertarian’s neck. It’s when all of the cameras are centralized and controlled by one entity that people, and not just civil rights activists, should get concerned.
As long as we can still “agree to disagree” there is hope. But if it takes the courts disagreeing with the executive branch -- here with a lower case “e” as it deserves -- to stop police-state BS in its tracks, well, hey! That would give me a little bit of hope. Indeed it would.
One of the consequences of the 9/11 attack was to bring issues of freedom vs. security to the fore once again. The international boogeyman of communism having been half-slain with the demise of the USSR (China, once the junior partner, is holding on by a thread), the Islamofascist threat ratcheted up the terror to provide yet another common enemy. Let’s take a look at how two Western nations, Britain and the U.S., responded to the threat.
You’re on TV!
The British can now exclaim with egalitarian glee that all of its subjects (they aren’t “citizens,” you know) are TV stars. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say that they are all on TV. London, by various accounts, has some four to six million close-circuit television (CCTV) cameras keeping tabs on its 7.5 million inhabitants. They are getting close to having one camera for each person. Now there’s equality!
But has the constant surveillance of the general public helped keep crime and terrorism in check? Apparently, in a few “terrorism cases and several high-profile murders, London’s ubiquitous CCTV cameras have played a key role” -- but only in “reconstructing what happened,” and only “after the fact.”
“CCTV was originally seen as a preventative measure,” according to Detective Chief Inspector Mike Neville, head of the Visual Images, Identifications and Detections Office of Scotland Yard. According to his speech at a London conference last May, Neville considers the entire CCTV project to have been “an utter fiasco: Only 3% of crimes were solved by CCTV.” Not very good results for a system that was sold as video security for “law-abiding citizens.”
People not “fearful” enough
In an unintended bit of Orwellian candor, the Inspector admitted that Londoners have “no fear of CCTV.” Instead of being on their best behavior for the eagle-eyed constables working in the numerous “monitoring stations” in the city, people appear to be going about their usual business, whether felonious or innocent. Neville says they do so because they know that “the cameras are not working.”
Actual camera failures are soon corrected, so in that sense they are “working.” What the good Inspector meant was that, in court, the quality of the images is often less than what is required for a positive identification. In addition, investigators are not willing to slog through hours of video to prosecute petty crimes.
The verdict? London’s CCTV experiment has failed in its stated goal, but has mitigated the particular failure by having a general effect with which the government is quite pleased. There is little discussion of the principle at stake -- that is, liberty -- and the tension between it and security that has been at the root of Americans’ distrust of government surveillance efforts.
North American inroads
That innate distrust may be a North American trait, as our neighbors to the north, the Canadians, are still individualistic enough (or enough of them are) to at least stoke a national debate on the topic. The Toronto police are experimenting with CCTV right now, and the city’s Transit Commission is completing work on an $18 million camera system it claims will “capture every one” of its “2.5 million daily users on video.” And the op-ed columns and letters to the editor are fairly blazing with controversy. Well, a small, polite blaze, at any rate.
Unfortunately, judging from the column inches devoted to each side of the issue, it appears that Canadians in general, and the “privileged press” in particular, are solidly behind the notion of surveillance. Apparently they believe that they will find a “nice Canadian way” of doing it that respects rights, uses renewable resources and takes flattering portraits.
Americans, of course, are another breed entirely, a breed of a thousand contrarian bloodlines. As the asylum and haven of the world, our national character has a wide streak of individualism, and an instinctive distrust of power and people who like wielding it. Still, surveillance cameras, traffic cams and other CCTV installations are proliferating here, too, and are sold as examples of “Yankee ingenuity” and the natural evolution of “good government.”
Refining the terms of debate
The important thing for supporters of privacy rights to recognize is that video security technology has not reached the power-to-price ratio that would allow widespread installation in any Western country. Higher-resolution cameras and better lenses raise the cost substantially, while the low-end optics used in police surveillance cameras, at least in London, capture images that usually don’t help capture the crooks.
Opponents of government snooping can use utilitarian arguments now, as well as philosophical ones. The fact is, the cameras don’t do what they’re advertised to do, notwithstanding that, in America, what they are asked to do seems quite Constitutionally questionable. And the utilitarian argument that the cameras don’t work anyway does not counter the pro-surveillance argument that newer, better, more powerful and even cheaper technology is becoming available.
Therefore, opposing surveillance on merely utilitarian grounds is a losing proposition, especially with the pace of technological progress today. Principled opposition is required. Benjamin Franklin’s great insight on freedom vs. security, having been mauled and misquoted by so many writers and politicos in the last few years, is here in its original form for your consideration:
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either.
Compromise is not always possible. That is the challenging subtext here, a message that speaks to the sense of personal responsibility that is fast vanishing in the world. Of course, video surveillance itself is neither good nor evil. It is the application that counts. In the hands of government, surveillance cameras will end up doing damage, great and small. In the hands of individuals, however, they can be a true boon and have various uses.
A thousand or a million or even 20 million CCTV cameras installed in the U.S., hither and yon and under the control of a vast range of different people, shouldn’t raise a single hair on the back of a dedicated civil libertarian’s neck. It’s when all of the cameras are centralized and controlled by one entity that people, and not just civil rights activists, should get concerned.
From concern, one should move to education. Read all you can about the subject and stay informed on what local, regional and state governments are doing in this regard, in addition to the ongoing shenanigans in Washington, D.C. Whatever you ultimately decide in this matter --and you may or may not agree with everything in this article -- you will at least be an informed participant in an important national discussion. We have to be able to hash out all these issues without reaching for our opponents’ throats.
As long as we can still “agree to disagree” there is hope. But if it takes the courts disagreeing with the executive branch -- here with a lower case “e” as it deserves -- to stop police-state BS in its tracks, well, hey! That would give me a little bit of hope. Indeed it would.
Monday, October 20, 2008
A Big Staff Doing Big Stuff with a Big Stick
You’re in power – in a democratic or social democratic nation, a socialist or "soft authoritarian" one-party state, an out-of-touch monarchy, pretty much anywhere but an out-and-out fratricidal dictatorship – and you like it, so you want to stay in power. Whatever the form of government, the method is the same: Make people dependent upon you, and you’ll have control over them. Exert control for long enough, and the social sinews of a free society – responsibility, industriousness, creativity, perseverance, initiative – go flaccid in decaying nations and never develop in oppressed ones, and many people prefer to “go along to get along” wherever they are, anyhow.
In America today, set up by astutely manipulative PR and roped in by the brain-numbing verbal bonbons of Demopublican robocandidates, people obligingly vote themselves into as comfy a cocoon as their 50-plus-percent overall tax rate will buy them, with costs ever spiraling due to inflation, imputed interest, corporate welfare, a laundry list of kickbacks and the general economic wear and tear that results from foisting an overlarge, labyrinthine protection racket such as the U.S. government onto 300 million people who, in large part (and in the service of a large number of diverse ideologies, religions and philosophies) wish to be left alone to devise their own best lives and maybe hold on to a buck or two, okay, can you dig that?
Whoa. Yep, that was one sentence, all right. Your brain may be out of breath. Check now.
You all right?
Okay, then, back to the harangue: Dependent people lose their freedom skills. When that happens, the government becomes central to people’s lives, exerting life-controlling powers as it aims to know everything about everyone and handle every detail of daily life. Did I say “benignly”? Benignly, of course, because the intent, not the result, is the measure of success. Our wanna-be rulers wanna be nice rulers. Mostly nice, anyway. This is the kind of “nice” I mean:
“We put people first. We even give them money. We need them in our corner when we shake down the tobacco companies. Of course, some backward types don’t like the fact that the U. S. government is litigating against legal corporations selling legal products that the state, at several levels, subsidizes – but, hey, there’s no accounting for taste. Which is okay, because in this Administration we have no taste for accounting, either! We figure we owe the money to ourselves anyway, right? So not only can we use the power of the state to bend people to our will and dispense the most crass patronage – we can charge it!”
This is, without fanciful slogans and multimedia soundtrack, the Democratic Party platform. But the regnant Republicans have been just as bad the last eight years. They are not even quite an opposition party; more like unindicted co-conspirators.
So, the heck with the two institutionalized parties, and their orchestrated media squabbles, their sound bites and their news-screwing. The chance of either major party adding a “Leave People Alone” plank to its platform is zero, I’m afraid. From a recognized, revered trait of Americans, acknowledged in Supreme Court opinions, the desire to be left alone has gone from quite laudable to almost illegal in two or three generations. The sheer weight, breadth and depth of state intrusion into our everyday lives, unconscionably vast and pervasive, cannot but smother initiative and spontaneity, cripple industry and industriousness, and either engender resistance or develop dependence in people.
But now, just to move the paradigm forward and to the right a tad, forget intentions, good or otherwise; forget policy pronouncements and political posturing; let’s talk simple, crushing weight. Sheer bulk, and sheer bulk alone. Might may not make right, but it certainly can be counted on to make trouble, just by its nature – its large nature.
First off, everyone of every political flavor should be able to agree on a few very basic statements of fact – plain and simple facts, not interpretations, not policy implications or political imprecations. Two of those, certainly, are that the U. S. government is (1) big and (2) powerful.
Add up the employees of the federal and state and local governments, and the budgets, and the buildings, and the company cars, and the copiers, coffee machines, and dusty banker boxes that dot the bureaucratic landscape, and you’ve got a big bunch of – well, staff and stuff, I suppose. Really quite large quantities of staff and stuff, frankly.
Who could argue with that? On top of that hardware heap you have, what? – three-and-a-half million federal employees alone, not counting the armed services? Plus a few million more state and local clerks, councilmen, sheriffs and wardens. So it’s not a value judgment or a political position to say merely that the U. S. government is big. As for this latter part of the proposition – defining “powerful” – we offer up just a few words. Hiroshima. Gulf War. Kosovo. Iraq. No analysis, interpretation, spin or B.S. Whatever your viewpoint, the U. S. has had some big-time, first-place bombfests, and some are still underway.
Big and powerful. A big staff doing big stuff with a big stick. No matter how much the national greatness neocons want to claim him, I don’t think Teddy Roosevelt would sign on to their Bismarckian program.
I’m not sure Bismarck would.
In America today, set up by astutely manipulative PR and roped in by the brain-numbing verbal bonbons of Demopublican robocandidates, people obligingly vote themselves into as comfy a cocoon as their 50-plus-percent overall tax rate will buy them, with costs ever spiraling due to inflation, imputed interest, corporate welfare, a laundry list of kickbacks and the general economic wear and tear that results from foisting an overlarge, labyrinthine protection racket such as the U.S. government onto 300 million people who, in large part (and in the service of a large number of diverse ideologies, religions and philosophies) wish to be left alone to devise their own best lives and maybe hold on to a buck or two, okay, can you dig that?
Whoa. Yep, that was one sentence, all right. Your brain may be out of breath. Check now.
You all right?
Okay, then, back to the harangue: Dependent people lose their freedom skills. When that happens, the government becomes central to people’s lives, exerting life-controlling powers as it aims to know everything about everyone and handle every detail of daily life. Did I say “benignly”? Benignly, of course, because the intent, not the result, is the measure of success. Our wanna-be rulers wanna be nice rulers. Mostly nice, anyway. This is the kind of “nice” I mean:
“We put people first. We even give them money. We need them in our corner when we shake down the tobacco companies. Of course, some backward types don’t like the fact that the U. S. government is litigating against legal corporations selling legal products that the state, at several levels, subsidizes – but, hey, there’s no accounting for taste. Which is okay, because in this Administration we have no taste for accounting, either! We figure we owe the money to ourselves anyway, right? So not only can we use the power of the state to bend people to our will and dispense the most crass patronage – we can charge it!”
This is, without fanciful slogans and multimedia soundtrack, the Democratic Party platform. But the regnant Republicans have been just as bad the last eight years. They are not even quite an opposition party; more like unindicted co-conspirators.
So, the heck with the two institutionalized parties, and their orchestrated media squabbles, their sound bites and their news-screwing. The chance of either major party adding a “Leave People Alone” plank to its platform is zero, I’m afraid. From a recognized, revered trait of Americans, acknowledged in Supreme Court opinions, the desire to be left alone has gone from quite laudable to almost illegal in two or three generations. The sheer weight, breadth and depth of state intrusion into our everyday lives, unconscionably vast and pervasive, cannot but smother initiative and spontaneity, cripple industry and industriousness, and either engender resistance or develop dependence in people.
But now, just to move the paradigm forward and to the right a tad, forget intentions, good or otherwise; forget policy pronouncements and political posturing; let’s talk simple, crushing weight. Sheer bulk, and sheer bulk alone. Might may not make right, but it certainly can be counted on to make trouble, just by its nature – its large nature.
First off, everyone of every political flavor should be able to agree on a few very basic statements of fact – plain and simple facts, not interpretations, not policy implications or political imprecations. Two of those, certainly, are that the U. S. government is (1) big and (2) powerful.
Add up the employees of the federal and state and local governments, and the budgets, and the buildings, and the company cars, and the copiers, coffee machines, and dusty banker boxes that dot the bureaucratic landscape, and you’ve got a big bunch of – well, staff and stuff, I suppose. Really quite large quantities of staff and stuff, frankly.
Who could argue with that? On top of that hardware heap you have, what? – three-and-a-half million federal employees alone, not counting the armed services? Plus a few million more state and local clerks, councilmen, sheriffs and wardens. So it’s not a value judgment or a political position to say merely that the U. S. government is big. As for this latter part of the proposition – defining “powerful” – we offer up just a few words. Hiroshima. Gulf War. Kosovo. Iraq. No analysis, interpretation, spin or B.S. Whatever your viewpoint, the U. S. has had some big-time, first-place bombfests, and some are still underway.
Big and powerful. A big staff doing big stuff with a big stick. No matter how much the national greatness neocons want to claim him, I don’t think Teddy Roosevelt would sign on to their Bismarckian program.
I’m not sure Bismarck would.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Enough Already with the Groupthink
Just to take a rest from the faux profundity of Campaign/Damn Pain 2008, I thought I would ruminate on how lazy people can be in attributing blame to groups – nations, cultures, races – that should properly fall on individuals. If you think race, racism, racialism, and race-baiting may be playing a role in the current presidential race, you won't be wasting the next few minutes, promise.
So, well, anyway ... I got an e-mail recently in which the writer, T, broached among other subjects that of Lenin's financiers, the money men who not only conspired (yes, the 'c' word) with the Bolsheviks but paid all the bills. He was wondering whether anyone was brave enough to tell the truth, to wit, that "the Jews...bankrolled and led the communist takeover of Russia."
I wrote back, saying much of what you see here under a headline now. About 300 words into the letter, I told T that he'd have to wait for the rest of it; my quick reply was quickly turning into an essay. I was starting to warm to the topic of group identities, and what sloppy labels they were for attributing praise or blame when it is particular, individual actions that, in sum, make the world turn.
I, for one, never appreciated Dan Rather saying "America bombed Kosovo today" when that hotspot was hot, as I, for one, was nowhere near the place. America didn’t do that. Russians in general didn’t overthrow the Czar; certain Russians, and certain foreigners, did. Likewise, "the Jews" didn’t bankroll Lenin, although I did understand and agree with T’s underlying position. But conflating the Jewish race with specific Jewish financiers achieves a sweeping generalization that fairly begs to be dismissed out of hand. Nevertheless, despite some rhetorical laxness, there was no indication of racial animosity whatsoever in T's letter; it was all quite matter of fact.
There is a distinction between (a) the Jews as a group committing some remarkable act, like, say, crossing the parted Red Sea and (b) certain elite Jewish people, not representative of the average Jew, being integrally involved in some other remarkable act, in this case the financing of the Bolsheviks. Frankly, following their flight from Egypt, I don't know how many more times "the Jews" acted with such unanimity; "the Jews" didn't even found Israel, inasmuch as in 1948 there were more Jews outside that new nation than inside.
And back in 1918? Yes, of course Lenin had Jewish financiers among his international, internationalist cadres. He never mobilized the working class in what became the numerous slave states of the Soviet Union, but he certainly managed to mobilize legions of the rich and disaffected around the world. Including, of course, some Jews.
However, I don't think the internationalists held any convention to gauge, debate or build support among world Jewry for their financing of Lenin's power grab in Russia. The very fact that Lenin's sealed train passed unmolested across borders of bloodsoaked adversaries, during a dangerously anarchic period at the end of World War I hostilities, suggests influence and power available to very, very few. Behind Lenin were some of the richest, most powerful, most organized, most ruthless, most focused men of the last several centuries. And, yes, some were Jews. And many were not.
The real common denominators here are, as in most of man's egregious escapades, the creed of greed. A creed of rapacious greed, powermongering, coercion and control unites totalitarians of all self-descriptions. Dictatorship is amenable to the trappings of either racialist nationalism (Nazi Germany) or revolutionary internationalism (Soviet Union) without deviating from the standard formula: central planning, total regulation, nationalized property controlled in various degrees and manners, pervasive secret police apparatus, paramilitary law enforcement, wars on poverty and hoarding and overpopulation and drugs and hateful thinking... Hmmm. I had better move on before I get depressed.
Anyway, race and religion can also unite people. But right thinking still has to be in evidence, and deviation is not tolerated. So, group actions, both in tribal cultures and contemporary America, are still predicated on shared creed; absent that, groups dissolve. It is true that some movements add healthy doses of nationalism or ethnicity -- the Puerto Rican "terrorists" recently in the news profess a strange brew of socialism, anti-Americanism, get-whitey resentment and ethnic solidarity -- but this demonstrates that one's creed can be fervently held, and effectively preached, even if it's as simple as, "Okay, it's you and me against the world."
One could argue, I suppose, that "you and me against the world" has historically been the most effective motivating creed for aggressive social movements and conqueror nations. But it is still individuals who respond to demagogues, cult leaders, celebrities and heroes, and who are motivated to group action through a variety of methods. If groups acted monolithically, there would be no need for leaders; but history is replete with stories of exceptional people galvanizing enough of their contemporaries to accomplish things on a truly grand scale -- not all good, necessarily. But behind the acts of what seems a race or a nation are thousands or millions of individual decisions; specific conspiracies for personal gain, like financing coups, must by definition be ascribed to individuals, acting in concert or not.
We must always think in terms of individuals, NOT groups. The inability and unwillingness to do so in American society, jurisprudence and culture is at the root of many of our ills. Groupthink is deadening, to the individual spirit and thence to the nation; individualism brings the liberty of independent action balanced by the social contract of individual responsibility. And from independent action come new ideas, astonishing works of art, amazing acts of generosity, true sacrifice and compassion, competition and cooperation.
Progress, in other words.
As my correspondent suggested in that letter, we should name names, first among yesteryear’s Soviet elite, then among today's corporate-statist media elite, and see what's what, who's who and, most importantly to some people, who is what. T believes many will be Jewish.
I'm not so sure. But I am sure that it doesn't matter much; when gauging threats to my well-being, race is a far less accurate predictor than ideology. Tell me that there's a Jew looking for me, and that could mean anyone from the likes of Milton Friedman (yay) to Mickey Cohen (yikes).
But if Agents of the Republicratic New World Order are after me, it does't matter if these brain police are Catholic, Jewish, atheist or animist.
They will lock me up.
And, yep, they will take my wallet.
Campaign/Damn Pain 2008
There is some legitimate concern – which is another way of saying that at least one or two high-profile liberals are concerned – as to whether or not Barry H. Obama's mother was an American citizen. Dual citizenship may be problematic, as well.
John-Boy McCain, old authoritarian gasbag that he is, was born in U.S. territory, so he passes the geography part of the test. However, isn't there something in the Constitution about being born in the same geologic age as the election year? Is a Jurassic President legit?
Getting back to the Hero of a Thousand Races (hey, it's a Joseph Campbell joke, go Google it or something), there's one particularly funny thing about Obie-One's candidacy, and it proves a point I've been trying to make for years. Collectivists by and large don't believe in religion – but they certainly believe in saviors. And how nice for them that the White Knight is black! The large contingent of self-flagellating guilt-trippers among the ranks of the Neu Left (spelling intentional) are going to be positively orgasmic on November 5th.
I predict a wave of shuddering, ecstatic, essentially spiritual experiences as American liberals unite in one big, communal climax. They've peed in their pants so many times in the past that it should prove a refreshing change of pace.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
A Campaign 2000 Prediction About John McCain
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Originally published in Enter Stage Right, 21 February 2000.
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The Democrats' favorite Republican, Arizona Senator John McCain, picked up considerable steam during January and February, which his campaign sorely needed. Sen. McCain expends so much hot air making his "conservatism" palatable to liberals that he needs to pick up steam continuously and in geometrically increasing volume just to maintain the amazing momentum of his political metamorphosis.
Now it's certainly the Senator's right to hold any opinion he chooses, even several on the same subject, as he has availed himself of in the cases of abortion, gays in the military, and Social Security. However, the Senator goes through amazing semantic and logical contortions to make gagging the electorate with the McCain-Feingold campaign reform plan sound "non-partisan"; essentially, Sen. McCain would put the press on the honor system, trusting in their fairness during elections.
I'll give you a moment to catch your breath and steady yourself. It's hard to read when you're doubled over in laughter.
Okay now? To reiterate, Sen. McCain can believe whatever he wants. But he reminds me of the yuppie members of mainstream Protestant denominations; they want gay marriage, political activism, rock music, relevant sermons, chanting in Sanskrit. They want everything, in fact, except to believe the Bible and follow Jesus. Why do they insist on rejecting everything in the doctrine just as firmly as they insist on referring to their own melange of paganism, crystal gazing, and gender-neutral (redacted) Bible-era stories as "Christianity"? Why don't they just go start their own church, or get with some folks who are already doing the same stuff?
Some do that. However, many others stay -- and I'll tell you why if you haven't already figured it out. They are there to change the nature of the institution, the way the 60's activists changed the nature of the modern university, for just one culture-war example.
So, whether McCain himself even really believes the strange admixture of views that his unique form of Republican conservatism comprises is entirely beside the point; the McCain movement, media-stoked and media-sustained, is upon us. If successful -- which doesn't necessarily mean getting McCain elected president in 2000, by the way -- this movement will forever alter the American political vocabulary and accelerate the bowdlerization of political terminology. If McCain successfully portrays his views as "conservative" it will make mid-century Democrats like Hubert Humphrey and Scoop Jackson part of the new right-wing fringe. Individuals and groups to the right of John McCain will be defined out of the political debate -- tens of millions of Americans marginalized by the cynical political machinations of John McCain, a Republican black-hole that tries to snuff the life and suck the light out of every shining conservative principle.
Oh, my, does all this suggest the "C" word -- conspiracy? Well, duh, but whether McCain's the writer-director-star, or just a supporting actor, is uncertain. Certainly there are people in every generation, in every hemisphere, intent on wreaking havoc, sowing discord, selling out their country. Throughout the century that is now slipping into history -- pick any year, any continent -- there were countless dastardly men and women, beneficiaries of the liberty and prosperity of the free(er) West, who were willing to sell their countrymen down the drain, or try to at every opportunity. But is this plausible in McCain's case? I don't think so.
In thrall to a hideous and bloody ideology of class warfare that masqueraded as the "Friend of the Common Man," traitors were as diverse in their motives as their callings: Hollywood types flirting with danger, intellectuals crafting a secular religion to fill their empty spirits, frustrated bureaucrats longing for a license to kill, sex addicts and big-spenders dealing for women and cash -- and soldiers brainwashed by the Red Armies. Some have tried to write McCain into a remake of "Manchurian candidate" while others have suggested his experience left him "touched" and unbalanced. Possible, but I doubt it.
I have a folder full of facts, quotes, questions concerning McCain, but I ended up skipping the investigative report and distilling what I know into my usual 1,000 tendentious words. I never did see or hear of any evidence that McCain is a "Manchurian candidate" from Hanoi, but there is a discernible tenor to the information that others are discussing at great length and with great specificity. The McCain dam, built by his happy legions of press beaver true believers, is starting to spring leaks.
Richard Viguerie, for one -- a conservative institution unto himself regardless of whether you agree with his strain of conservatism -- has put serious pen to widely distributed paper to voice deep and distressing doubts about McCain's shabby treatment, oddly enough, of POW-MIA activists.
There are correlative revelations being aired by any number of writers, on web sites and in the print media, that suggest McCain's official biography is false, particularly with concern to his service record. Several of the Senator's former training officers have come forward to write quite unflattering accounts of McCain's conduct and abilities. Finally, I leave it to those who were there, the veterans and the POW's themselves, to sort out the disturbing questions surrounding McCain's POW conduct. Suffice it to say that the higher McCain towers over the media horizon, the more vociferous will become his most ardent opponents.
And now we count among their ranks Mr. Viguerie's kindred spirit, Paul Weyrich, another veteran conservative activist, organizer, and underwriter. He states he will not support any Republican ticket that includes McCain. The opposition from conservatives and libertarians to John McCain is near universal, much of it visceral, some of it fanatical, yet not everyone is aware of the greatest threat posed by John McCain: his being anointed by the media as the conservative standard bearer in American politics.
It is highly unlikely that the Republicans will nominate John McCain for president this year. But he may succeed, abetted by a fully cognizant and giddily cooperative press, in redefining key terms of our common political parlance, thus erasing real conservatives, including many of you reading this article, from the pages of American politics.
And then he'll be back. Oh, you can count on that -- he'll be back.
Originally published in Enter Stage Right, 21 February 2000.
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The Democrats' favorite Republican, Arizona Senator John McCain, picked up considerable steam during January and February, which his campaign sorely needed. Sen. McCain expends so much hot air making his "conservatism" palatable to liberals that he needs to pick up steam continuously and in geometrically increasing volume just to maintain the amazing momentum of his political metamorphosis.
Now it's certainly the Senator's right to hold any opinion he chooses, even several on the same subject, as he has availed himself of in the cases of abortion, gays in the military, and Social Security. However, the Senator goes through amazing semantic and logical contortions to make gagging the electorate with the McCain-Feingold campaign reform plan sound "non-partisan"; essentially, Sen. McCain would put the press on the honor system, trusting in their fairness during elections.
I'll give you a moment to catch your breath and steady yourself. It's hard to read when you're doubled over in laughter.
Okay now? To reiterate, Sen. McCain can believe whatever he wants. But he reminds me of the yuppie members of mainstream Protestant denominations; they want gay marriage, political activism, rock music, relevant sermons, chanting in Sanskrit. They want everything, in fact, except to believe the Bible and follow Jesus. Why do they insist on rejecting everything in the doctrine just as firmly as they insist on referring to their own melange of paganism, crystal gazing, and gender-neutral (redacted) Bible-era stories as "Christianity"? Why don't they just go start their own church, or get with some folks who are already doing the same stuff?
Some do that. However, many others stay -- and I'll tell you why if you haven't already figured it out. They are there to change the nature of the institution, the way the 60's activists changed the nature of the modern university, for just one culture-war example.
So, whether McCain himself even really believes the strange admixture of views that his unique form of Republican conservatism comprises is entirely beside the point; the McCain movement, media-stoked and media-sustained, is upon us. If successful -- which doesn't necessarily mean getting McCain elected president in 2000, by the way -- this movement will forever alter the American political vocabulary and accelerate the bowdlerization of political terminology. If McCain successfully portrays his views as "conservative" it will make mid-century Democrats like Hubert Humphrey and Scoop Jackson part of the new right-wing fringe. Individuals and groups to the right of John McCain will be defined out of the political debate -- tens of millions of Americans marginalized by the cynical political machinations of John McCain, a Republican black-hole that tries to snuff the life and suck the light out of every shining conservative principle.
Oh, my, does all this suggest the "C" word -- conspiracy? Well, duh, but whether McCain's the writer-director-star, or just a supporting actor, is uncertain. Certainly there are people in every generation, in every hemisphere, intent on wreaking havoc, sowing discord, selling out their country. Throughout the century that is now slipping into history -- pick any year, any continent -- there were countless dastardly men and women, beneficiaries of the liberty and prosperity of the free(er) West, who were willing to sell their countrymen down the drain, or try to at every opportunity. But is this plausible in McCain's case? I don't think so.
In thrall to a hideous and bloody ideology of class warfare that masqueraded as the "Friend of the Common Man," traitors were as diverse in their motives as their callings: Hollywood types flirting with danger, intellectuals crafting a secular religion to fill their empty spirits, frustrated bureaucrats longing for a license to kill, sex addicts and big-spenders dealing for women and cash -- and soldiers brainwashed by the Red Armies. Some have tried to write McCain into a remake of "Manchurian candidate" while others have suggested his experience left him "touched" and unbalanced. Possible, but I doubt it.
I have a folder full of facts, quotes, questions concerning McCain, but I ended up skipping the investigative report and distilling what I know into my usual 1,000 tendentious words. I never did see or hear of any evidence that McCain is a "Manchurian candidate" from Hanoi, but there is a discernible tenor to the information that others are discussing at great length and with great specificity. The McCain dam, built by his happy legions of press beaver true believers, is starting to spring leaks.
Richard Viguerie, for one -- a conservative institution unto himself regardless of whether you agree with his strain of conservatism -- has put serious pen to widely distributed paper to voice deep and distressing doubts about McCain's shabby treatment, oddly enough, of POW-MIA activists.
There are correlative revelations being aired by any number of writers, on web sites and in the print media, that suggest McCain's official biography is false, particularly with concern to his service record. Several of the Senator's former training officers have come forward to write quite unflattering accounts of McCain's conduct and abilities. Finally, I leave it to those who were there, the veterans and the POW's themselves, to sort out the disturbing questions surrounding McCain's POW conduct. Suffice it to say that the higher McCain towers over the media horizon, the more vociferous will become his most ardent opponents.
And now we count among their ranks Mr. Viguerie's kindred spirit, Paul Weyrich, another veteran conservative activist, organizer, and underwriter. He states he will not support any Republican ticket that includes McCain. The opposition from conservatives and libertarians to John McCain is near universal, much of it visceral, some of it fanatical, yet not everyone is aware of the greatest threat posed by John McCain: his being anointed by the media as the conservative standard bearer in American politics.
It is highly unlikely that the Republicans will nominate John McCain for president this year. But he may succeed, abetted by a fully cognizant and giddily cooperative press, in redefining key terms of our common political parlance, thus erasing real conservatives, including many of you reading this article, from the pages of American politics.
And then he'll be back. Oh, you can count on that -- he'll be back.
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