The Establishment's Sanders' Hysteria, False Consciousness - And Political -Ideological Ignorance

One example of the batshit insane hysteria surrounding Sanders, which conflated his democratic socialism with communism.

"Because we are perpetually battling for self-preservation. Life has become a kind of brutal combat to the death. For jobs, for healthcare, for money, for the tiniest shreds of resources necessary to live. We wake up and fight one another for these things, over and over again. That is what our lives amount to now — gladiatorial combat. Meanwhile, elites and billionaires sit back and enjoy not just the spectacle — but the winnings.  People who are battling for self-preservation can’t take care of anyone else. If I ask the average American to consider paying for their society’s healthcare,education, elderly care, childcare, increasingly, the answer is: LOL.   

What does the average American aspire to be, do, have? To be rich, powerful, careless, selfish, and dumb, now, mostly. We don’t, as societies or cultures, value learning or knowledge or magnanimity or great and noble things, anymore. We shower millions on reality TV stars and billions on “investment bankers.” The average person has become a tiny microcosm of the aspirations and norms of elites — they’re not curious, empathetic, decent, humane, noble, kind, in pursuit of wisdom, truth, beauty, meaning, purpose. We’ve become cruel, indecent, obscene, comically shallow, and astonishingly foolish people. That’s not some kind of jeremiad. It’s an objective, easily observed truth. "  -  Umair Haque, essay, 'This Is How A Society Dies'

"I personally believe Bernie is as far left as you can go, but hey, it's for the greater good!"   Jessica Slovak, an RN who caucused for Bernie Sanders 4 years ago, as reported in Denver Post, Sunday,  Feb. 16th, p. 5A.


"Someone has to stop Bernie Sanders!"  "No one is doing enough to stop Sanders!"   "Republicans are salivating over a Sanders' nomination!"   "Bernie is going to burn the house down!"

It appears now that the  mind virus of Sanders hysteria is almost as prevalent as Co-VID 19, the coronavirus. The litany of anti-Sanders complaints from the pundits, last night post-debate and in the papers, has my head spinning. Like, WTF happened to the WILL OF THE PEOPLE?  Does that not count any more in a supposedly democratic process?  If the votes and will of the majority of primary voters are with Sanders then what the hell are all these gloomy Gusses and Nervous Nellies yelping about?

Oh it's the socialism thing!  Americans are terrified of socialism and will never vote for a socialist candidate!  Says who?   And if there are Americans that "think" that way, 75 percent according to Claire McCaskill and one debate moderator (Chuck Todd) then it shows their political education is wanting and they need to be more fully informed. I would add that IF indeed so many 'Muricans are averse to the democratic socialism advocated by Bernie Sanders then they are victims of false consciousness.   And only such victims could be swayed during a hard campaign when Dotard begins to call Sanders a "communist".

How did so many become victims of this mindrot? I suspect much of the malady derives from the victims'  own economic and political ignorance.  For example, as a first test, ask ten Americans off the street what economic  class they belong to. Nine of ten, or more likely all ten, will say "middle class" - even if unemployed for a year, on food stamps, and about to have a home foreclosed.

A more concrete study of class in relation to income level was a (2003) survey conducted by The Economic Policy Institute. It asked generally where people thought they were in the economic spectrum: upper 1% (earning $320,000 year or more); upper 5% (> $80,000) or where?

A full 19% in this random survey claimed they were in the privileged class of the top 1%. A virtual statistical impossibility in any random study.  If those pathetic stats don't show clearly how too many Americans aspire to be "rich and powerful" - like the elites (as pointed out in the essay This Is How A Society Dies'  by Umair Haque (see top quote) I don't know what does.  Our very materialist aspirations corrupt and undermine our rational, realistic assessments of our own station.  And paves the way for the brutal, incomprehensible way we distrust and seek to denigrate others - especially immigrants - who threaten (we believe) a piece of our pie.  By extension it shows also how so many could have voted for a plutocratic con man swine like Trump.

In fact, internal survey cross-check questions on income category showed many of these working at a little above minimum wage, and even the highest were at barely $44,000/yr. Nowhere near the 1% threshold! Other commentators on this study (e.g. Froma Harrop, Ellen Goodman) pointed to this ignorance as a basis for supporting such crap as the Bush tax cuts, which overwhelmingly favored the rich elites. Thus:

A) They didn't know where they themselves fit, and indeed inflated their wealth and positions and

B) they actually believed they'd be millionaires one fine day and be able to partake of the tax cuts. (Or 'death tax' benefits).

In fact, they were deliriously out of touch with reality. As author Michael Parenti has noted ('The Dirty Truth') 94% of all wealth comes by way of inheritance, not paid work. So, they are fooling themselves. Unless they have a rich elder relative hidden away with a vast fortune, they'd be better off thinking they may have to work until they're 70 or 80 and even that may not be enough to stay in place.

But sadly, the Overclass and its minions (including the GOP Party, a basic "sub-division") consistently get working class folk to act against their own vested interests by distracting them with moralism ploys - raising "moral" issues like abortion, porn, gays and what not - just long enough so that many working class voters keep they're eyes off the ball when election day arrives. Then these workers wonder why they never get ahead. 

 Trump used the same ruse or con (in 2016)  in getting working class voters to believe he'd deliver millions of jobs for them, or let them keep old line,  retreating fare like coal mining.  They fell for this ploy hook, line and sinker and even appear in some states (e.g. Wisconsin)  prepared to fall for it again.  Guess they never heard of the old 'fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice, shame on you' etc. routine.

 The  combination of economic ignorance and falling prey to moralism ploys  has paved the way for Overclass propagandizers to succeed in sowing false consciousness.  First we need to know what false consciousness is.

'False consciousness' is the term given to a false information system that's been absorbed in part or whole, either osmotically or via direct mental ingestion, by the majority of a population. It has specific uses in our Corporatocracy to mislead a population about how things actually work, and also on the basic economic and other data which are used to formulate policies. I touched on a number of the inherent economic lies and disinformation ploys in my earlier blog:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/09/economic-lies-distortions-and.html

But realize these distortions are just the tip of the iceberg.

For example, the effects of language and PR debasement of reality extend to the whole political system which can best be described as one of legally sanctioned, corporate-fuelled bribery. While citizens do get to vote every two or four years, in reality it's only to choose their next set of Overseers, errr....Overclass masters.

In the case of the current resistance to Sanders, it's clear a lot of it is led and promoted by cable news gasbags...errrr... anchors with nothing more edifying to do, e.g.

2020 Elections | Bernie Sanders | Media

The Resistance to Sanders Is Led by Cable News Anchors

Thus one reads from the above blog post:

"The real resistance by Democratic leaders, of course, is to its own base of anti-Establishment voters, candidates and office-holders, a resistance that's been too well documented to be repeated here. One of those candidates, Bernie Sanders, is right now making a credible threat to take over the Party in the name of that anti-Establishment base — an outcome that all donor-defending Democrats look upon with horror.

But what can they do, aside from the odd and opportune tilting of the balance? If they declare outright war — instead of the obvious but pretend-covert war they're now waging — they risk making a mockery of their own battle cries, Blue No Matter Who and Unity Unity Unity.

Enter the next line of defense, the Party-supporting mainstream press, including and especially cable news channels CNN and MSNBC. The real resistance for now against the Sanders-led revolt against the swamp in which they all swim has been handed off to Chuck Todd, Jake Tapper and all the colleagues and "analysts" who occupy million-dollar seats on TV's cable news stations."

Two other examples on display, this time from MSNBC,  of the anti-Sanders hysteria from the same piece:

"Chris Matthews waxed apoplectic about what electing a socialist could mean for America. “I have an attitude towards [Fidel] Castro,” he said. “I believe if Castro and the Reds had won the Cold War there would have been executions in Central Park, and I might have been one of the ones getting executed. And certain other people would be there cheering, OK?” Matthews’s colleagues pointed out that Sanders was more of a Danish type of socialist than a Castro type of socialist, but to little avail.

Two days later, James Carville, Bill Clinton’s former campaign guru, went on Morning Joe to rant about how a Sanders nomination would bring about the apocalypse. Literally. “The only thing between the United States and the abyss is the Democratic Party,” he said. “That’s it. If we go the way of the British Labour Party, if we nominate Jeremy Corbyn, it’s going to be the end of days.”

So when I hear comments like that offered by Real Clear Politics' pundit A.B. Stoddard last night, that "no one tried to stop Bernie", it tells me she has zero comprehension of the democratic process.  Also, that she is more an overclass tool than an objective observer. IF a majority of primary voters opt for Bernie then, why the fuss? That is the will of the plurality of voters at least for now,  so deal with it.

The hair on fire screeching by the cable gasbags is also egregious because it doesn't recognize that socialism isn't the problem - but rather the 'dog eat dog' form of capitalism that is holding away.  The one so many in our land now embrace, and described to a tee by Umair Haque in the top most quote.  The Democrats, supposedly the party of the little guy and greater social justice, had better grasp this and pull their heads out of their collective,  residual "overclass' asses before Super Tuesday.  By which I mean finally acknowledging Sen. Sanders has every right to be the front runner and without being vilified, i.e. being accused of "burning down the house", demolishing any chance to remove the human excrement from the WH -  or any other bullshit. Especially if he has a plurality of primary voters backing him.

Ezra Klein on Real Time a week ago put it best when he noted the best way to get the Trumpists and Repukes "on their back feet " in defensive mode.  That is, for the Dems to make their campaign about Medicare, Social Security and Trump's record in attempting to destroy them. This, coincidentally, is also Bernie Sanders forte given he is the best fighter for these already established and accepted forms of socialism.  Klein also agrees this motif- and Sanders' consistent associated refrains to do with it -  may be the best way to render Doturd a one term wonder.

Get the hell behind him, Dems, or get the hell out of the way!


See also:

2020 Elections | Bernie Sanders | Democrats

Sanders Gives the Democrats Legitimacy

And:

Bernie Sanders

Paul Krugman on This Bernie Sanders and Socialism Thing

And:

2020 Elections | Democrats

Here Are 3 Winners and 3 Losers from the 2020 Democratic Presidential Primary Debate

Is The U.S. Political And Culture War Really A Class War?

Scene of one scuffle at Charlottesville between a racist (right) and Antifa member. Are such battles really based on class wars?

The author James Davidson Hunter, in a piece ('How America's Culture Wars Have Evolved Into A Class War', in The Denver Post (p. 1D, Sept. 17) makes a compelling case that the ongoing battle between Trumpites and the rest of us is actually a class war, not so much a "culture war" any longer.

He writes:

"The rally of white nationalists in Charlottesville, Va., reveals how the culture wars have evolved and metastasized into a class war with several sprawling components, far different from the one Karl Marx might have predicted. Much of this evolution has to do with a widening gap between members of America’s middle class."

Adding:

"The cultural conflict of the last four decades has mostly taken place within the white middle class, mainly between the aspiring lower-middle and the comfortable upper-middle classes. But the cleavage between highly educated professionals and the less educated, nonprofessional, lower middle and working classes has widened in recent years, producing new tensions"

Make no mistake that this is a powerful observation and insight, since it means the nation is much more class conscious and class oriented than most have been led to believe.   It also interjects a powerful economic basis responsible for the class conflict because one class (upper middle, professional) is clearly making gains the other class isn't.   Making the case for this economic split, Hunter writes:

"What’s driving the wedge between these separate segments of the middle class? While the professional class has fared well in the recovery from the Great Recession, the lower middle class has lost ground. Wages are stagnating for middle and low wage workers, union membership and its traditional benefits are on the decline, income inequality is on the rise, and manufacturing jobs have been lost to technology and other countries. Thus those in the lower end of the middle class have grown increasingly estranged from their counterparts in the professional class as they have watched their opportunities and hopes for a better life grow more distant and, in some cases, disappear."

Adding:

"What is more, these members of the lower middle class see many of the values and beliefs they live by — once perceived as honorable in their own communities — ridiculed as bigoted, homophobic, misogynist, xenophobic and backward by a relatively privileged and powerful elite. According to a study entitled “The Vanishing Center of American Democracy” conducted by the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture (which I lead), about 8 of 10 Americans with less than a college degree believe that “political correctness is a serious problem in our country, making it hard for people to say what they really think” compared with 5 of 10 of the well-educated. Likewise, 7 of 10 of the less educated believe that “the most educated and successful people in America are more interested in serving themselves than in serving the common good”


The last is especially serious as it discloses a gulf in perceptions that perhaps not even education can resolve or reduce.    Thus, it seems the more people (especially white, less educated males)  veer away from college education, the more "political correctness" is likely to be seen as the problem as opposed to economic disparity.


Added to this is the expectation of even greater distrust of government becoming an increasing attribute of the aggrieved class, as Hunter observes:

"A growing majority of Americans believe that their government cannot be trusted, that its leaders (and the leadership class more broadly) are incompetent and self-interested, and that as citizens they personally have little power to influence the powerful institutions or circumstances that shape their lives. Survey research shows that this distrust has grown and even hardened.

Unsurprisingly, this crisis, too, follows a class pattern. The poorly educated are one and a half times more likely than the college educated to hold the highest levels of distrust of the government; nearly three times more likely to be highly cynical of politicians; and over twice as likely to express the highest levels of alienation from the political process. Among the poorly educated who are religiously conservative, the levels of distrust, cynicism and alienation are even higher."

Note the correlation set out in the last sentence above, which is very worrisome.  As Hunter emphasizes:

"Yet the candidacy and presidency of Donald Trump are not an aberration, but a reflection of the political estrangement of our times. So is the authoritarian impulse we see bubbling up from the fringes"


This elicits the question of whether Trump's ascension to power hints at an ongoing class conflict and I believe it does, as well as being an indicator of a revival of white supremacy predicated on class. (And let's grasp that African-Americans suffer most at the hands of growing economic inequality.) Thus,  John Caldara of the Independence Institute names economic inequality as "public enemy number one" in our continuing political battles (Denver Post, p. 3D, Sept. 17) . Caldara writes:

" I have warning to my friends on the political right: Economic inequality is real. And the blowback from it could blindside us and cause a seismic leap to the left from which we may not return.

Or let me try it another way. We’re all feeling it: a political tribalism rippling through the country. People are not talking, but rather yelling past each other. Tensions are rising. Scapegoating has become the rage: Mexicans are taking our jobs, big banks control the system, Trump is causing hurricanes, neo-Nazis say it’s the Jews, Black Lives Matter say it’s the cops …

There is a root cause for this polarization. And no, it’s not racism, Obamacare or Trump. It’s economic stagnation. People are not getting ahead, and we feel it in our bones. Economic opportunity is passing us by. It scares us to the core. It makes us act out. It turns us into victims in search of the right oppressor to blame."

He has a point, and I brought it up earlier in a Labor Day post. This has to do with the economic  growth "rate" seeming  to be stuck at 2 percent per year and no more.  Caldara argues, and he is correct, the difference between 3 % growth (which used to be the case over decades) and 2 percent is not 1 percent but 33 percent, e.g.

(2- 1)/ 3 x 100 %  = 1/ 3  x 100% = 33 %

And he argues this makes a huge difference as to whether we live amicably with one another or are at each other's throats.    The implication is that those having to live with less will be filled with grievance and likely xenophobia that blames others for their plight. As he puts it:

"Compound that over a decade and you get an idea what was lost. Lost was what gave past generations their first real job, a first home, a college education without crippling debt, a savings for retirement and the sense of security that everything happening around them wasn’t a risk, a threat to their livelihood"

Left unsaid, at the heart of all the class conflict and discontent,  is that false consciousness may play a huge role in exacerbating class divisions.  False consciousness is an illegitimate basis for economic perceptions often fed by PR from media sources, in this case including fake news outlets. It serves to distort a population's own class position relative to others and thereby mutes any reasonable response to being made an underclass.

The Economic Policy Institute in 2003 asked generally where people thought they were in the economic spectrum: upper 1% (earning $320,000 year or more); upper 5% (> $80,000) or where?

A full 19% in this random survey claimed they were in the privileged class of the top 1%. A virtual statistical impossibility in any random study.

In fact, internal survey cross-check questions on income category showed many of these working at a little above minimum wage, and even the highest were at barely $44,000/yr. Nowhere near the 1% threshold! Other commentators on this study (e.g. Froma Harrop, Ellen Goodman) pointed to this ignorance as a basis for lower economic classes supporting the Bush tax cuts, which overwhelmingly favored the rich elites. Thus:

A) They didn't know where they themselves fit, and indeed inflated their wealth and positions relative to the whole.  Hence they were more likely to support the Bush tax cuts that predominantly benefited the rich.


B) As author Michael Parenti has noted ('The Dirty Truth') 94% of all wealth comes by way of inheritance, not paid work.  Why do you suppose the top of Trump's tax "reform" plan is to eliminate the estate tax? So, the working class Trump supporters are fooling themselves. Unless they have a rich elder relative hidden away with a vast fortune, they'd be better off thinking they may have to work until they're 70 or 80 and even that may not be enough to financially stay in place. (46 percent of Americans can barely scrape together $400 in case of a minor emergency, according to Federal Reserve stats. Two thirds of the working underclass live on $2 a day or less.)

But sadly, the Overclass and its minions (including the GOP, a basic "sub-division" of the Kochs) consistently get working class folk to act against their own vested interests by distracting them with moralism ploys - raising "moral" issues like abortion, transgender rest rooms, gay wedding cakes and what not - just long enough so that many working class voters keep their eyes off the ball when election day arrives. Then these workers wonder why they never get ahead.  Watch it happen again with Trump's proposed tax cuts which mainly benefit the wealthiest - like him.

Thus, the primary directive of the Overclass propagandizers - to divide and conquer - is to succeed in sowing a fictitious system based on false consciousness. That is to say,  a persistently class-less system or false equality world view at variance with reality.  To grasp the strategy one must  first know what false consciousness is.

'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 (fake news), by the majority of a population. It has specific uses in our Corporatocracy to mislead a population about how things actually work, and also on the basic economic and other data which are used to formulate policies. I touched on a number of the inherent economic lies and disinformation ploys in a 2011 blog post:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/09/economic-lies-distortions-and.html

But realize these ploys are just the tip of the iceberg.

For example, the effects of language and PR debasement of reality extend to the whole political system which can best be described as one of legalized, corporate-fuelled bribery. While citizens do get to vote every two or four years, in reality it's only to choose their next set of Overseers, errr....Overclass masters. Once the votes are in, the true powers - the corporate ones- take over and direct (via their money and lobbyists) the real choices and possibilities. Any pol can thus say "Yes, we can!"  or "Make America great again!" all he or she wants, but the truth is that it's more: "Yes we can- make America great -  IF the corporations and the wealthy agree our 'great' is the same as theirs!"

This dynamic is certainly in play now with the Trumpies (Dotard voters, supporters) believing they really were doing better, until shocked into economic reality by the "elites" perceived as lording it over them.  The ironic fact? Many of the white nationalists parading in Charlottesville in July actually hailed from upper middle class, entitled families. Go figure!

This spectacle interjects yet another political fact: archconservatives in both parties have always - or nearly always- defeated their Left and Center Left opponents by dividing their natural constituency: the bottom two thirds of the nation's economic pyramid.  This division is mainly along racial or ethnic lines and many of those divided still get by on barely two dollars a day.

Those Democrats who've successfully countered this 'divide and conquer' strategy used by the Koch brothers, Trump and others didn't turn their backs on the civil rights of African - Americans or Mexican Americans. Rather they emphasized a fundamental interest in prosperity that unites the working and middle classes.  This is something to bear in mind as Dems seek to overthrow the Trump Imperium moving forward.

The New "Four Freedoms" - What They Mean In A Political Tribal Era

It was none other than Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his Four Freedoms speech (technically the 1941 State of the Union address), who proposed four fundamental freedoms that people "everywhere in the world" ought to enjoy:

1. Freedom of speech
2. Freedom of worship
3. Freedom from want
4. Freedom from fear

None of these should be controversial although (3) has typically been problematic for conservatives who felt Roosevelt went way too far.   Most conservatives, indeed, are adamant that "freedom from want" ought not be in any proper freedom category. In fact, as the AHCA was being pushed through the House one often heard the refrain that "if people can't afford their health care they shouldn't have any."  Alabama's Mo Brooks even insisted that "good people don't get pre-existing conditions".

Given that lack of decent healthcare often precedes serious illness or disability, it also paves the way for want. It means the people affected are not able to work to pay for their lodging or daily bread, and hence reside in a state of continuing want. Do the Reepos, conservatives care? Evidently most do not. Why not? Because as I described in a previous post (May 5); they all adhere to the "loopy, quasi-religious trope that noble and goodly people prosper on account of their 'goodness' and hence can afford their health care because they 'earned' the jobs to pay for it via their righteousness."

If this trope were the least bit valid, and not a canard, then no one would be able to justify a freedom from want - because want is needed to show who the bad guys or non-believers are in relation to the good. (Unwilling to concede that some of the best people can get fatal illnesses - or be seriously disabled  by a terror attack - such as occurred in Manchester. )

Now, a "new Four Freedoms" has been proposed by Karl Albrecht in his brilliant Mensa Bulletin essay 'The New Four Freedoms - Staying Sane In The Post -Rockwell Culture'. (April/ May, p. 21).

Albrecht references that classic American artist Norman Rockwell did a series of four paintings entitled "The Four Freedoms" based on  FDR's 1941 address.  These appeared in a series of Saturday Evening Post issues.

Albrecht argued that the Rockwell images embody a critical cultural, iconic reference mark and that "for more than half a century Americans have carried the Rockwell images in their minds but have seen them slowly fade."    He adds that they have been "displaced by the relentless onslaught of modernity".   But I'd also add they've been superseded by a loathsome mutation of conservatism that now sees freedom from want as no longer valid, given it may spawn too many "entitlements".

Meanwhile, "modernity" for Albrecht translates into "television, movies, blaring music virtually everywhere, ever present video screens, relentless commercials, shocking news stories, computers, electronic games and cellphones".  Each of which, he insists, claims part or all of our senses. This leads him to ask if "fifty years from now Rockwell icons will still be a part of American cultural memory". Or, will they have faded from our collective consciousness?

He leans to the latter given the "digital environment we've created is now creating us". Hence he argues we need to define, claim and celebrate "four additional freedoms".   These he posits as follows (ibid.):

- Freedom from media

- Freedom from Commerce

- Freedom from Politics

- Freedom from religion

In respect of freedom from media, Albrecht means "exercising the right to choose when to tune in to the all pervasive electronic culture and when to switch it off.."   He adds that "media addiction or media habituation much more prevalent than techno-advocates realize."

In terms of current explosive events in the 24/7 cable news cycle he's correct. The craven attack at the Ariane Grande concert, for example, immediately sucked up nearly all air time on all media outlets. Not to say the vicious, cowardly act wasn't newsworthy, but rather was it that newsworthy?  Could it not be true that the endless repetition of the victim horrors played right into the terror vermin's hands and gratified the sick bastards? This is the argument of columnist Froma Harrop, who maintains giving so much air time to this terror filth and Isis spawn merely pumps them up to do more attacks. Hence, less attention is better.

Ditto now with the new story on Jared Kushner, seeking "secure back channel communications" with the Russians and conducting confabs with them that were at least "out of the norm" and definitely "violations of the Espionage Act" in the words of security specialist Malcolm Nance. But after you've watched ''x" programs on it - all reciting the same aspects  - you are merely habituating or addicting yourself to redundancy and overkill. Hence, as in the Manchester attack, I've just tuned out and refuse to even post any more about the latest Trump "bombshells" until the subjects are actually frog marched into courts or prisons. (Janice, by contrast, can't get enough and immerses herself in as many news shows as she can. I've even kidded her for being "addicted").

But this is what Albrecht means, when he speaks of freedom from the media. He means the freedom of each of us to liberate ourselves from the 24/7 "latest, latest news" and not feel the least guilty about it.  My niece Vanessa is at the other pole, where she disallows any cable news entering her home, period. She refuses to view "anything negative" because it can affect her  in a negative way. She is at the extreme that Albrecht refers to as a "media vegetarian".  I'm not there yet by I am becoming much more parsimonious in what I watch and when.

"Freedom from commerce" in Albrecht's view means "exempting yourself from the never ending onslaught of selling messages, 24/ 7, everywhere you go"  And indeed, for anyone who's read the book, A Nation Of Salesman: The Tyranny Of The Market And The Subversion Of Culture, this would mark an obvious freedom given we've literally become a nation of hustlers - out to sell, sell, sell.  Hence, no surprise the arguments of author Earl Shorris and Albrecht dovetail in terms of the U.S. evolving into a society where "citizens are automatically deemed to produce and consume at the maximum possible rate". 

Shorris argues this has lead to a cheapened, culturally deprived nation governed more by rank commercialism than higher values. And if one really wants an example of the weasel salesman, Donald Trump is it, now trying to convert the whole nation into a satellite of Trump Tower and Mar-a-Lago.  Shorris' other point is because of the supreme emphasis on selling there has been little potential for more meaningful work to open up.  Unless a college grad now is lucky enough to get in with Google, or some research institute , he or she will be reduced to selling crap that most people don't need, can't afford and don't want.  No surprise then that an Accenture survey found that of college grads from 2014 and 2015, only 50 percent found jobs for which a college degree was required.

Albrecht also argues - like Shorris - that in the end we "needn't feel guilty about reducing our levels of consumption and discretionary spending: the economy will adjust as it always has."  Besides, pulling the plug on wanton consumption -whether of Starbucks coffee or the latest smart phone -will free the economy up for other pursuits in other directions.   But as Albrecht writes,  this requires:  "we declare our independence from the constant mind programming that urges us to buy more and have more."

"Freedom from politics"  in Albrecht's opinion means "letting go of emotional attachment to any brand name political party, ideology, tribe or hero figure."    He goes on to aver that "many people have deluded themselves into thinking they're independent, self-made thinkers, even though they've voluntarily enslaved themselves to one of the competing political brands".   That may well be so, but alas, it is identification with one or other of those "brands" that is the basis of voting, elections. And there is simply no way one can simply cease voting, unless there is no care concerning the future direction and policies of one's country.

Further, if one is intellectually committed to voting a certain way, whether for a candidate or referendum, it almost always entails some form of ideology. If I vote in a referendum to expand health services in Colorado, such as last year with the "Colorado Care" initiative, I am ineluctably backing an ideology. In this case that all citizens have a right to affordable, accessible health care, one of the fundamental precepts of democratic socialism. If on the other hand my neighbor voted against it, because he believes the market should determine access, that also is ideology, i.e. neoliberalism - or that the market must decide outcomes.

Where Albrecht is more correct is when he writes (ibid.):

"The quintessential irony of American political discourse seems to be the fusion of willful ignorance with absolute conviction."

The "willful ignorance" refers to voters not even possessing the basics of knowledge before entering the voting booths.  As I've posted before, this willful ignorance has proven costly in our elections because too many vote blindly.  More than two of five registered voters can't name their state Senators and representatives (in the House).  These voters, by any standard, ought to be disallowed from pulling a lever. Another one in three are unable to name even four of the Bill of Rights.  4 in 5 aren't aware of "unenumerated rights" - as ensconced in the Ninth amendment, and an equal number can't recite the general welfare clause in the Preamble of the Constitution.  Why is this level of ignorance bad? Because it plays directly into the fake news dynamic and worse, reinforces it on the basis that the same ignorant people buying fake news are often 100 percent convinced they are right, or at least proud in their profound ignorance.

Albrecht refers to the writings of Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton and others such as set out in Jefferson's 'Notes on Virginia" and The Federalist Papers. When one reads those, as he advocates and I do as well, one sees "how far our culture has descended on the monkey bars of intellectual discourse".  With arrogant, dumbass Trumpism now in the ascendant that discourse is right at the bottom rung.

Albrecht concedes that "freedom from religion" likely involves a bigger challenge for some Americans than others. This is because Americans are outliers in their belief vis-a-vis other western developed nations.. The graphic below shows this:

Showing successful societies in relation to degree of religious beliefs (from Free Inquiry, Vol. 29, No. 1 Jan. 2009). Basically, for  18 out of 19 of the most prosperous democracies,  the share of population reporting absolute belief in a god or gods ranges from between as little as a few percent to at most one-half. In some of these nations, mainly in western Europe, two-thirds proclaim to be either atheists or agnostics. Compare this to the outlier U.S. (U) where 83 percent express solid belief- and this is for the patriarchal, personal version of a hyper-engaged deity.

Albrecht argues, and I concur, that because of this excess religiosity and affiliation the U.S. "remains firmly a pre-scientific society, and the popular culture an anti-intellectual one."  This is seen in everything from rejection of current climate science (nearly 50 percent reject it) to Darwinian evolution - which "30 percent of Americans completely reject".  

By contrast, "Americans are willing to embrace supernatural explanations for reality".    Thus, the long, arduous and algorithmic process of evolution didn't produce the different species it was God making everything 6,000 years ago.

Nevertheless, Albrecht displays more optimism than I can summon, as when he writes (ibid.):

"I surmise that about half or more of Americans may be getting close to the emotional tipping point at which they can let go of the last traces of the religious stories and superstitions that were implanted in their brains as impressionable children.

As they reflect on the grandeur of the universe and come to peace with the idea that their own existence is a cosmic crapshoot, they can evolve to a new kind of faith. That is the faith of not knowing."

A bold statement, for sure, but I will be interested to see the replies of other Mensans in future issues of the Bulletin.

Let's Admit It: If You Succumb To "Fake News" You're A Dummy

We are, to put it bluntly, immersed in an information cornucopia. There is simply no excuse for anyone of normal intelligence to get things wrong or be misled. Hence, the reports of "fake news" posted at Facebook taking gullible people in is beyond belief.  Anyone with a grain of sense knows that news outside authorized sources, like Facebook posts, has to be cross-checked. If a person then is still taken in, as in one FB post during the election campaign that "Pope Francis endorsed Donald Trump" then that person must be a dummy.

Reinforcing this was Froma Harrop's recent astounding findings - appearing in her Nov. 20 Denver Post column('I'm Leaving Facebook, Won't You Follow Me?'), that nearly all the Facebook fake news items were generated outside the U.S. and often by kids - playing the American public. She wrote:

"Kids in a town in Macedonia (that’s near Greece) created over 100 pro-Trump websites, spreading phony reports such as FBI plans to indict Hillary Clinton. The Make America Great page outsources the writing of fraudulent news to a couple in the Philippines."


Did they know something most pollsters don't? Yeppers, that too many Americans are dumb as rocks and don't check their facts, or dismiss them as incredible.

Harrop adds:

"Compounding the evil, Facebook’s design makes fake stories from fake sites such as the nonexistent Denver Guardian look like stories from the very real Denver Post. And no, blocking fake news sites from ad revenues is not going to stop politically motivated lying.Facebook further degrades the national conversation by creating echo chambers. Its algorithm directs the “news” people like to their like-minded friends."

With travesties like this no surprise the Oxford Dictionary's choice of post- truth as 2016's "word of the year". It defines post -truth as "relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping pubic opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief"


 Stanford's  Robert N.  Proctor recently asked (NY Times, 'Climate Change In Trump's Age Of Ignorance'):

"People like to think of us as living in an age of information, but a better descriptor might be “the age of ignorance.”

How did we get into this predicament? Why are we about to inaugurate the most anti-science administration in American history?"

I noted in an earlier post that deniers and believers in codswallop merit no tolerance, because in this age of Google and abundant knowledge it's inexcusable not to have the right material at your hands, if you make even a modest effort. But denialists especially aren't so invested, as Proctor pinpoints the key issue:

"We now live in a world where ignorance of a very dangerous sort is being deliberately manufactured, to protect certain kinds of unfettered corporate enterprise. The global climate catastrophe gets short shrift, largely because powerful fossil fuel producers still have enormous political clout, following decades-long campaigns to sow doubt about whether anthropogenic emissions are really causing planetary warming. Trust in science suffers, but also trust in government. And that is not an accident. Climate deniers are not so much anti-science as anti-regulation and anti-government."

Auden Schendler writing in the Sunday Denver Post exposes one major consequence of Trump's minority election:

"Trump’s election almost certainly dooms us to warming beyond the 2 degrees Celsius threshold identified by scientists, because many of the rules put into place by President Barack Obama — the Clean Power Plan, the Paris treaty, even mileage standards on cars — can be undermined by a new president. Beyond two degrees, feedback loops like forest die-off, ice-melt and methane-release take us to an ever warmer world"

This is something I've complained about before in terms of the pernicious mind virus inherent in agnotology, the deliberate cultivation of skepticism for economic, political ends.. But it goes beyond that in the willingness of too many of our fellow citizens to treat information and actual, verifiable knowledge like food choices in a cafeteria - where you just pick what you want and it's all relative to one's preferences.. No it is not.

The libertarian climate denier who disavows the data from ice core analysis and satellite sea ice mappings does himself no favors. Worse, if he invests his gray matter into beliefs that there is a "global warming alarmist conspiracy" and controversial scientific papers are deliberately excluded from publication..

As I noted before, most of these "skeptics" are really pseudo-skeptics: they adopt the venerable verbal mantle of skeptic but in fact do so in an unfounded, unaccountable way. They actually possess the necessary intellect to ferret out the truth and DO the research but are too damned lazy to do it. They don't want to read 15 or 20 papers that thoroughly debunk their idiotic beliefs, they'd rather just go to climate denier websites, imbibe the misinformation and repeat it. Especially with the conspiracy aspect.

One of the best exposes of their methods and dynamics has come from Yale Law school prof and science communication researcher Dan Kahan.  He has concluded that their information processing is almost entirely determined by their deep-seated political values and cultural identities. Thus, a white libertarian member of  Intertel, for example, will see global warming science as just one more vehicle of  subversive force backed  by the "untermenschen"  to be used against his precious economic values and Eurocentric ideals. All of this is then attributed to "global warming alarmism", as an expeditious cover for his own abysmal laziness, ignorance and cynicism. At this point, his thinking is already so corrupted and contaminated it's almost impossible to break through on any rational or critical thinking level.

At the other end of the post-truth spectrum are those who can't even be bothered to invoke rationalizations, they simply believe whatever nonsense is expelled from a moron's mouth. Especially a moron full of himself with pretensions to national leadership like Donald Trump. Hence, Atlantic columnist David Frum's reference to Trump's dishonesty as "qualitatively different than anything before seen in a major party nominee".

Such as saying Mexicans coming to the States were "rapists", Ted Cruz' dad was involved in the Kennedy assassination and climate change was a "hoax invented by the Chinese."  (See my next post, however, as Trump appears to have changed his position on this).

But what has gotten the attention of those like Frum, David Brooks, and others is that none of his idiotic spoutings mattered to those who supported him. It was as if truth was dead, all facts passe. If the Trumpster said it, especially with gusto, it has to be true. As my German sister-in-law put it, the only example she ever recalled that came close was Adolf Hitler.. He could repeat a lie often and via about ten different versions, getting the masses to believe each merely by the passion injected.

But it goes beyond passion, also involving the medium used, and in Trump's case, Twitter. Or what I refer to as a "mini medium" allowing for only 140 characters and hence an absolute minimum of complex thought. One is basically reduced to the equivalent of a series of language cartoons.  This also harkens back to the medium used  constituting the basis of the message, as Marshall McLuhan first pointed out in Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. 

If then Twitter is essentially a cartoon language medium it will be most deftly exploited by a cartoon persona, which is precisely what Trump is when you dissect him: Bigger than life, believes he can actually be a President and billionaire businessman simultaneously (he can't) and capable of spouting any nonsense that erupts within his synapses realizing a lot of receptive brains will simply imbibe it in unthinking fashion. Those brains themselves the equivalent of cartoons if they receive his tweeting expulsions  and absorb them uncritically. So, little wonder there is no parsing of the messages or analytical processing. Tweets do not lend themselves to any critical processing.  Hence, there is much greater probability of taking them literally.

A big question that arises now is whether Trump will continue his tweeting as President. There is a good case to be made that this would be akin to hiring a 12 year old as his speech writer. Bottom line is we expect more gravitas in our Presidents and the office itself - if one is going to insist on ""respect" - demands a certain level of decorum. This simply can't be achieved by tweets, unless one is willing to be viewed as an unreconstructed adolescent. So, like it or not, Trump- if he wishes to be taken seriously by those beyond his cartoon tweet and re-tweet community - will have to put on his big boy pants and put the Twitter away. Better yet, give his phone to Melania for safe keeping.

That will be a good thing because it will open him up to the potential for really, finally addressing his millions of daffy supporters in a serious way. Also, using media less likely to be hijacked by 14 year olds in Macedonia to create fake news posts on Facebook.

At least one can hope!

See also:

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/neal-gabler/70096/who-s-really-to-blame-for-fake-news-look-in-the-mirror-america

Excerpt:

"Fake news thrives because there is a lazy, incurious, self-satisfied public that wants it to thrive; because large swaths of that public don’t want news in any traditional sense,. So much as they want vindication of their preconceptions and prejudices; because in this post-modernist age, every alleged fact is supposed to be a politico-economic construct, and nothing can possibly be true; and because even rationality now is passé. Above all else, fake news is a lazy person’s news. It provides passive entertainment, demanding nothing of us. And that is a major reason we now have a fake news president."