Amidst all the kerfuffle over the possible political machinations of Jared Loughner in respect to his mass shooting and killing, there are a few sane voices crying out amidst a morass of manipulative cynics whose latest tactic is to simply write the guy off as a psycho and done. And, typical of either -or thinking, if he's a psycho there can be no political dynamic or motivations....case closed! Or so the nattering nabobs who insinuate false consciousness among our citizens believe!
Let's hear out some of the conspicuous rational voices in the blogosphere:
Cenk Uygur ('Was Jared Loughner's Act Political'?):
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/cenk-uygur/33602/was-jared-loughners-act-political
observes:
"Was Jared Loughner's act in shooting Rep. Giffords political? Apparently this is what's being debated with a straight face now. Is this a joke? He shot a politician in the head. He called it an "assassination." What part of that was unclear?
He didn't shoot Gabrielle Giffords randomly and it turned out she just happened to be a politician. He sought her out, targeted her and then tried to kill her based on the fact that she was a politician. He thought the government was the problem and it was unresponsive to his psychotic demands on grammar and currency.
So, is Loughner a psycho? Obviously. And that's not just because he shot all of those innocent people, but also because it is abundantly clear from his writings and videos that he has significant mental issues. But why does the act have to be either psychotic or political? It's obviously both. It was a psychotic act driven by his political beliefs. What's so hard to understand about that?
Then, the next question is whether both sides are equally at fault. Again, I'm confused by this question. What the hell did the Democrats or liberals do here? Nothing, except get shot. How can the media possibly attach false equivalency to this? Are the Democrats equally culpable for getting shot as the conservatives are for shooting them?
Loughner shot a Democrat. Gee, I wonder which side he was on? He hated the government and thought they were out to get us. Gee, I wonder which side he was on?
....Come on, this is all a smoke screen to make sure people don't see what's going on here. In the last two years, there have been dozens of attacks and shootings aimed at government officials and political organizations. Every single one of them was directed at liberals, Democrats or the government."
Let's hear out some of the conspicuous rational voices in the blogosphere:
Cenk Uygur ('Was Jared Loughner's Act Political'?):
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/cenk-uygur/33602/was-jared-loughners-act-political
observes:
"Was Jared Loughner's act in shooting Rep. Giffords political? Apparently this is what's being debated with a straight face now. Is this a joke? He shot a politician in the head. He called it an "assassination." What part of that was unclear?
He didn't shoot Gabrielle Giffords randomly and it turned out she just happened to be a politician. He sought her out, targeted her and then tried to kill her based on the fact that she was a politician. He thought the government was the problem and it was unresponsive to his psychotic demands on grammar and currency.
So, is Loughner a psycho? Obviously. And that's not just because he shot all of those innocent people, but also because it is abundantly clear from his writings and videos that he has significant mental issues. But why does the act have to be either psychotic or political? It's obviously both. It was a psychotic act driven by his political beliefs. What's so hard to understand about that?
Then, the next question is whether both sides are equally at fault. Again, I'm confused by this question. What the hell did the Democrats or liberals do here? Nothing, except get shot. How can the media possibly attach false equivalency to this? Are the Democrats equally culpable for getting shot as the conservatives are for shooting them?
Loughner shot a Democrat. Gee, I wonder which side he was on? He hated the government and thought they were out to get us. Gee, I wonder which side he was on?
....Come on, this is all a smoke screen to make sure people don't see what's going on here. In the last two years, there have been dozens of attacks and shootings aimed at government officials and political organizations. Every single one of them was directed at liberals, Democrats or the government."
To which I say 'BRAVO!' For having the pluck and courage to call a spade a spade instead of providing false cover for the Far Right and its faux outrage at .....oh me, oh my, being tagged as responsible for heating up the rhetoric with talk of "government overthrow", or "overthrowing the Socialists". But too many in this country remain in denial and at heart this is due to false consciousness sown by the media itself. (I refer here to the corporate media, not to the lonely denizens of the blogosphere dedicated to getting the truth out).
So, let's sidetrack briefly to brush up on this concept. In addition, I want to show the media is not some lily white bystander above it all, as their very shtick often fanned the flames as they played two sides against one another, awaiting the next brawl with bated breath.
'False consciousness' is the term given to a false information system that's been absorbed in part or whole, osmotically or via direct mental ingestion, by the majority of a population. It has specific uses in the Corporatocracy to mislead a population about how things actually work. The political system ('democracy' is the rhetoric, but corporate dictatorship the reality), the economy ('free market' the rhetoric, but controlled markets the reality) and so on. If their understanding can be obfuscated, and attention deflected to specious distractions and titillation, then the people can be disempowered. And even cooperate in their own economic (or social, political) subjugation.
The tactic, therefore, is to blind the bulk of the populace, and exert propaganda (PR) pressure so they willingly (if possible) cooperate in their own destruction.
It's conceivable, but we can't be completely certain, that Loughner had a vague inkling his consciousness was being manipulated and falsified via the use of language. (He queried Gabby Giffords concerning "grammar" and mind control - but grammar wasn't the pivot issue). However, we do know that there is such a thing as "collateral language" which has been described as "gutting the brain" to make it more malleable and receptive to certain PR manipulations. Space and time are at a premium here, but for anyone interested in this, I suggest getting the book: Collateral Language (2002). The authors note that once language is deformed and corrupted, thought is next- then consent. It's followed the same exact causal arc since Nazi Germany.
A number of examples have been seen merely in the past 10 years: the use of the term "war on terror" - which is preposterous because one can't make war on a method of war, "Patriot Act" - which actually contains methodical means to weaken the Bill of Rights, and calling the Afghan and Iraqi occupations, "wars". A lesser collateral language example is naming estate taxes, "death taxes", and asserting that repealing a tax cut is a "tax hike".
Since 2008 and the presidential campaign for the election that year, the media have been complicit in stoking flames of false consciousness as if one whole section of the nation ("Red states") are against another ("Blue states"). Indeed, every time an electoral map was depicted, blue and red colors marked out the opposing camps' territories or so many were led to believe. No one informed them, certainly not the media, that many red areas exist in the blue states and vice versa.
Beyond this, the 2008 election itself was portrayed as akin to a boxing match or fight between the contenders. Would Obama KO Hillary, or the converse? Could Sarah Palin "out gun" Joe Biden in their debate? Every zinger out of the bag was broadcast to the hoi polloi, and each time it added to the cumulative false consciousness of strife, endless battles and polarization. Is it any wonder then that a mental map of polarization has been absorbed by much of the population, almost by osmosis? Added to this, we had the 24 hr. cable channels zeroing in on over the top behavior such as at Sarah Palin rallies for McCain, when effigies of Obama were actually strung up, and at one of them a nutcase actually screamed out "Kill him!" All this was reported by the media, so it's kind of lame for one of the media herd (Joanne Ostrow, of The Denver Post) to proclaim:
“It is worth noting, between the lines, the reflexive scape-goating of the media. But the media didn’t invent inflammatory rhetoric. Political partisans do"
But while this may be technically true, it doesn't mean the media is blameless! The media, whether newspapers or cable networks, still exercises the choice of sounds, events, and names on which it confers attention! Thus, the media can still be blamed for conferring extravagant attention on the violent images, sounds, etc. The same media also were the ones to highlight her rifle “cross hair” targeting of D-congressional districts during the mid-terms last year!
Thus, the media is certainly still accountable though it may not originate the rhetoric, and if it lends attention to these incidents and language it's certainly equally to blame as those who exploit inflammatory acts or rhetoric in the first place! To therefore behold media pundits squealing like stuck pigs on account of being included for blame, is absurd. As blogger William Rivers Pitt tells it:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/william-rivers-pitt/33600/the-wrath-of-fools-an-open-letter-to-the-far-right
"All the crazy crap he (Loughner) spewed about the gold standard (a favorite of Glenn Beck, the master of Fox "News" fearmongering...so he can sell his gold scam to suckers) and government mind control and everything else before going on his rampage, is straight out of the Right-Wing Insanity Handbook. His personal YouTube ramblings were a mishmash of right-wing anti-government nonsense...the kind that attracts sick minds like Loughner, the kind that only reinforces their paranoia, the kind that finally pushes them over the brink and into the frenzy of violence that took place on Saturday.
The kind that the likes of you MEDIA have been happily spreading by the day.
He did not act alone. You were right there with him. You helped! I'm talking to you, "mainstream" media people, who created this atmosphere of desperate rage and total paranoia out of whole cloth because of your unstoppable adoration for spectacle, and ratings, and because the companies that own your sorry asses agree with the deranged cretins you helped make so famous and powerful. It was sickeningly amusing on Sunday to watch Wolf Blitzer bluster and bluff on CNN about how the media owns no responsibility for this disaster. It was like watching a ten-year-old try to explain how a lamp got broken while he was running through the living room, but no, it wasn't him"
Examining the basic template of the MSM the past two plus years, it conforms to what Project Censored Editor Carl Jensen once referred to as "the Crossfire Syndrome" (after that famed CNN show in which two partisans from the left and right squared off at each other and hollered for a half hour).
Michael Crichton noted ('Project Censored Yearbook - 1995'):
"We are all assumed these days, to reside at one extreme position of the opinion spectrum, or another. We are pro-abortion or anti-abortion. We are free traders or protectionist. We are pro-private sector or pro big-government. We are feminists or chauvinists. But in the real world few of us hold these extreme views. There is, instead - a spectrum of opinion.
Further (ibid.):
The extreme positions of the 'Crossfire Syndrome' require extreme simplification - framing the debate in terms which ignore the real issues.....the real issue isn't term limits, its campaign finance reform. The real issue isn't whether a gasoline tax is regressive, it's national security - whether we'd prefer to go back to war in the Gulf instead of reducing oil consumption by taxing it more heavily, as every other nation does. The real issue isn't whether the U.S. should have an industrial policy, it is whether the one we have - because no policy is a policy - serves us well.
This polarization of the issues has contributed greatly to our national paralysis because it posits false choices which stifle debate that is essential for change to occur."
In other words, the MSM by its harping on opposing forces, dustups and "fights" - while always declaring "winners" and "losers" - has contributed directly to the polarization of the country by imposing and sustaining a polarity "news" landscape. This is precisely why the corporate monopoly of public voice - in their media organs- is so detrimental to the practice of citizenship. Because their control skews debate toward the false choices, and ends up dampening it by intimidating people who do not wish to be associated or labeled as holding one of the extreme positions.
At the other end, when an outrage such as the Arizona shootings does occur, we can expect the MSM and its hired corporo-talking heads to try to protect its own interests by dodging its own accountability. William Rivers Pitt again (ibid.), breaking through the smokescreen of collateral language and manipulation which the Overclass mind -rulers seek to try to impose:
"Mainstream" news personalities like David Gergen and John King bent over backwards warning people not to blame Sarah Palin and her ilk for this calamity. It was a sick man who did this, they said. Bollocks to that. I hate to break this to the "mainstream" media know-betters, but words matter. When people like Palin spray the airwaves with calls to violence and incantations of imminent doom, people like Loughner are listening, and prepared to act. The "mainstream" media lets it fly without any questions or rebuttal, because it's good for ratings, and here we are. Words matter. Play Russian Roulette long enough, and someone inevitably winds up dead."
What we have then in this dynamic is a two way cycling between the MSM and those it favors via attention. The perverse thing is once the dynamic is underway it becomes almost a self-perpetuating deus ex machina. The media confers its megawatt focus on the loudmouths and trouble makers (hence the arrival of the "Tea Party" - a pure confection of media hype and over attention which doubtless wouldn't exist had the clueless bozos in it been ignored- or at least made aware they were being exploited as useful idiots by the Koch brothers!) and those trouble makers create more nuisance acts in return to garner more attention. The media then complies once more, and so it goes! We're now at a stage where the troublemakers are so addicted to media attention, and the media to the troublemakers (since they help generate copy or cable time- to fill the 24/7 news cycle) that it's nearly impossible to break.
Financial Times columnist Gideon Rachman ('Paranoia Disfigures the Tea Party') offers this observation:
"While it is .. unfair to blame the act of a violent lunatic on an entire political movement, the Tea Party and the forces of the radical Right in America do have a broader case to answer. They have contributed mightily to an increase in the paranoia and rage of political debate in America.
Once you move beyond the central demand for 'limited government' that holds the Tea Party together, you quickly discover a fog of conspiracy theories, much of it expressed in wild language and backed up with violent imagery.
There is said to be betrayal and manipulation at the heart of government. Barack Obama is said to be a foreigner, who is ineligible to be president. He is also a socialist, or perhaps a fascist. Sharia law is being practiced in part of Michigan...etc.
These accusations are not simply made on the crazier fringes of the internet."
Once more, the false consciousness feedback loop here is that these crazies enunciate their theories, the MSM gives credence to them by their attention and focus (even if it's to putatively try to debunk them - the very act of broadcasting them confers a level of gravitas, since "it got on the tube") and then the crazies go even more all out to gain more attention.
What we need to do, in order to return to some semblance of more permanent sanity, is to break the Gordian knot between the troublemakers pandering for attention, and the MSM which confers it unthinkingly.
More long term, it's time this country finally seriously consider enabling and validating a true third party which would compete with the corporate-fed duopoly that exists. In other nations, such as Germany and the UK, the existence of multiple political parties diminishes the "left-right" polarity and this is further helped by methods of voting that reinforce it. For example, "preference voting" where one is offered a choice of the top three contenders and one lists them in order of preference.
Such preference voting would have eliminated the close election results, and unnecessary intervention of the Supreme Court, in the 2000 presidential election.
Somehow or some way we need to make new systemic moves. Easing the laws and rules for third party existence would go a long way toward a true multi-polar condition, as opposed to the polarized one in existence. It should not be necessary, for example, for a third party to field 2,000 candidates or more (and pay their campaign expenses) every year to have them on school boards. This sort of thing dissuades those who otherwise might be third -party inclined. It's time the powers that be who make the rules consider changes, for their own long term sakes.
So, let's sidetrack briefly to brush up on this concept. In addition, I want to show the media is not some lily white bystander above it all, as their very shtick often fanned the flames as they played two sides against one another, awaiting the next brawl with bated breath.
'False consciousness' is the term given to a false information system that's been absorbed in part or whole, osmotically or via direct mental ingestion, by the majority of a population. It has specific uses in the Corporatocracy to mislead a population about how things actually work. The political system ('democracy' is the rhetoric, but corporate dictatorship the reality), the economy ('free market' the rhetoric, but controlled markets the reality) and so on. If their understanding can be obfuscated, and attention deflected to specious distractions and titillation, then the people can be disempowered. And even cooperate in their own economic (or social, political) subjugation.
The tactic, therefore, is to blind the bulk of the populace, and exert propaganda (PR) pressure so they willingly (if possible) cooperate in their own destruction.
It's conceivable, but we can't be completely certain, that Loughner had a vague inkling his consciousness was being manipulated and falsified via the use of language. (He queried Gabby Giffords concerning "grammar" and mind control - but grammar wasn't the pivot issue). However, we do know that there is such a thing as "collateral language" which has been described as "gutting the brain" to make it more malleable and receptive to certain PR manipulations. Space and time are at a premium here, but for anyone interested in this, I suggest getting the book: Collateral Language (2002). The authors note that once language is deformed and corrupted, thought is next- then consent. It's followed the same exact causal arc since Nazi Germany.
A number of examples have been seen merely in the past 10 years: the use of the term "war on terror" - which is preposterous because one can't make war on a method of war, "Patriot Act" - which actually contains methodical means to weaken the Bill of Rights, and calling the Afghan and Iraqi occupations, "wars". A lesser collateral language example is naming estate taxes, "death taxes", and asserting that repealing a tax cut is a "tax hike".
Since 2008 and the presidential campaign for the election that year, the media have been complicit in stoking flames of false consciousness as if one whole section of the nation ("Red states") are against another ("Blue states"). Indeed, every time an electoral map was depicted, blue and red colors marked out the opposing camps' territories or so many were led to believe. No one informed them, certainly not the media, that many red areas exist in the blue states and vice versa.
Beyond this, the 2008 election itself was portrayed as akin to a boxing match or fight between the contenders. Would Obama KO Hillary, or the converse? Could Sarah Palin "out gun" Joe Biden in their debate? Every zinger out of the bag was broadcast to the hoi polloi, and each time it added to the cumulative false consciousness of strife, endless battles and polarization. Is it any wonder then that a mental map of polarization has been absorbed by much of the population, almost by osmosis? Added to this, we had the 24 hr. cable channels zeroing in on over the top behavior such as at Sarah Palin rallies for McCain, when effigies of Obama were actually strung up, and at one of them a nutcase actually screamed out "Kill him!" All this was reported by the media, so it's kind of lame for one of the media herd (Joanne Ostrow, of The Denver Post) to proclaim:
“It is worth noting, between the lines, the reflexive scape-goating of the media. But the media didn’t invent inflammatory rhetoric. Political partisans do"
But while this may be technically true, it doesn't mean the media is blameless! The media, whether newspapers or cable networks, still exercises the choice of sounds, events, and names on which it confers attention! Thus, the media can still be blamed for conferring extravagant attention on the violent images, sounds, etc. The same media also were the ones to highlight her rifle “cross hair” targeting of D-congressional districts during the mid-terms last year!
Thus, the media is certainly still accountable though it may not originate the rhetoric, and if it lends attention to these incidents and language it's certainly equally to blame as those who exploit inflammatory acts or rhetoric in the first place! To therefore behold media pundits squealing like stuck pigs on account of being included for blame, is absurd. As blogger William Rivers Pitt tells it:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/william-rivers-pitt/33600/the-wrath-of-fools-an-open-letter-to-the-far-right
"All the crazy crap he (Loughner) spewed about the gold standard (a favorite of Glenn Beck, the master of Fox "News" fearmongering...so he can sell his gold scam to suckers) and government mind control and everything else before going on his rampage, is straight out of the Right-Wing Insanity Handbook. His personal YouTube ramblings were a mishmash of right-wing anti-government nonsense...the kind that attracts sick minds like Loughner, the kind that only reinforces their paranoia, the kind that finally pushes them over the brink and into the frenzy of violence that took place on Saturday.
The kind that the likes of you MEDIA have been happily spreading by the day.
He did not act alone. You were right there with him. You helped! I'm talking to you, "mainstream" media people, who created this atmosphere of desperate rage and total paranoia out of whole cloth because of your unstoppable adoration for spectacle, and ratings, and because the companies that own your sorry asses agree with the deranged cretins you helped make so famous and powerful. It was sickeningly amusing on Sunday to watch Wolf Blitzer bluster and bluff on CNN about how the media owns no responsibility for this disaster. It was like watching a ten-year-old try to explain how a lamp got broken while he was running through the living room, but no, it wasn't him"
Examining the basic template of the MSM the past two plus years, it conforms to what Project Censored Editor Carl Jensen once referred to as "the Crossfire Syndrome" (after that famed CNN show in which two partisans from the left and right squared off at each other and hollered for a half hour).
Michael Crichton noted ('Project Censored Yearbook - 1995'):
"We are all assumed these days, to reside at one extreme position of the opinion spectrum, or another. We are pro-abortion or anti-abortion. We are free traders or protectionist. We are pro-private sector or pro big-government. We are feminists or chauvinists. But in the real world few of us hold these extreme views. There is, instead - a spectrum of opinion.
Further (ibid.):
The extreme positions of the 'Crossfire Syndrome' require extreme simplification - framing the debate in terms which ignore the real issues.....the real issue isn't term limits, its campaign finance reform. The real issue isn't whether a gasoline tax is regressive, it's national security - whether we'd prefer to go back to war in the Gulf instead of reducing oil consumption by taxing it more heavily, as every other nation does. The real issue isn't whether the U.S. should have an industrial policy, it is whether the one we have - because no policy is a policy - serves us well.
This polarization of the issues has contributed greatly to our national paralysis because it posits false choices which stifle debate that is essential for change to occur."
In other words, the MSM by its harping on opposing forces, dustups and "fights" - while always declaring "winners" and "losers" - has contributed directly to the polarization of the country by imposing and sustaining a polarity "news" landscape. This is precisely why the corporate monopoly of public voice - in their media organs- is so detrimental to the practice of citizenship. Because their control skews debate toward the false choices, and ends up dampening it by intimidating people who do not wish to be associated or labeled as holding one of the extreme positions.
At the other end, when an outrage such as the Arizona shootings does occur, we can expect the MSM and its hired corporo-talking heads to try to protect its own interests by dodging its own accountability. William Rivers Pitt again (ibid.), breaking through the smokescreen of collateral language and manipulation which the Overclass mind -rulers seek to try to impose:
"Mainstream" news personalities like David Gergen and John King bent over backwards warning people not to blame Sarah Palin and her ilk for this calamity. It was a sick man who did this, they said. Bollocks to that. I hate to break this to the "mainstream" media know-betters, but words matter. When people like Palin spray the airwaves with calls to violence and incantations of imminent doom, people like Loughner are listening, and prepared to act. The "mainstream" media lets it fly without any questions or rebuttal, because it's good for ratings, and here we are. Words matter. Play Russian Roulette long enough, and someone inevitably winds up dead."
What we have then in this dynamic is a two way cycling between the MSM and those it favors via attention. The perverse thing is once the dynamic is underway it becomes almost a self-perpetuating deus ex machina. The media confers its megawatt focus on the loudmouths and trouble makers (hence the arrival of the "Tea Party" - a pure confection of media hype and over attention which doubtless wouldn't exist had the clueless bozos in it been ignored- or at least made aware they were being exploited as useful idiots by the Koch brothers!) and those trouble makers create more nuisance acts in return to garner more attention. The media then complies once more, and so it goes! We're now at a stage where the troublemakers are so addicted to media attention, and the media to the troublemakers (since they help generate copy or cable time- to fill the 24/7 news cycle) that it's nearly impossible to break.
Financial Times columnist Gideon Rachman ('Paranoia Disfigures the Tea Party') offers this observation:
"While it is .. unfair to blame the act of a violent lunatic on an entire political movement, the Tea Party and the forces of the radical Right in America do have a broader case to answer. They have contributed mightily to an increase in the paranoia and rage of political debate in America.
Once you move beyond the central demand for 'limited government' that holds the Tea Party together, you quickly discover a fog of conspiracy theories, much of it expressed in wild language and backed up with violent imagery.
There is said to be betrayal and manipulation at the heart of government. Barack Obama is said to be a foreigner, who is ineligible to be president. He is also a socialist, or perhaps a fascist. Sharia law is being practiced in part of Michigan...etc.
These accusations are not simply made on the crazier fringes of the internet."
Once more, the false consciousness feedback loop here is that these crazies enunciate their theories, the MSM gives credence to them by their attention and focus (even if it's to putatively try to debunk them - the very act of broadcasting them confers a level of gravitas, since "it got on the tube") and then the crazies go even more all out to gain more attention.
What we need to do, in order to return to some semblance of more permanent sanity, is to break the Gordian knot between the troublemakers pandering for attention, and the MSM which confers it unthinkingly.
More long term, it's time this country finally seriously consider enabling and validating a true third party which would compete with the corporate-fed duopoly that exists. In other nations, such as Germany and the UK, the existence of multiple political parties diminishes the "left-right" polarity and this is further helped by methods of voting that reinforce it. For example, "preference voting" where one is offered a choice of the top three contenders and one lists them in order of preference.
Such preference voting would have eliminated the close election results, and unnecessary intervention of the Supreme Court, in the 2000 presidential election.
Somehow or some way we need to make new systemic moves. Easing the laws and rules for third party existence would go a long way toward a true multi-polar condition, as opposed to the polarized one in existence. It should not be necessary, for example, for a third party to field 2,000 candidates or more (and pay their campaign expenses) every year to have them on school boards. This sort of thing dissuades those who otherwise might be third -party inclined. It's time the powers that be who make the rules consider changes, for their own long term sakes.
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