Anecdotally, NYC has had three one-way "STEP-DOWNS" for the people, from which it has NEVER quite bounced back "to what was before". (1) ask any cab driver, small business owner, street vendor etc,...post 9/11 human-life-traffic was never coming back to pre 9/11 stage, (2) the "Financial Crash" 2008, (3) Covid. Every time, a one way diminishment to the downside of the commoner.
I agree that the media, once competitive and diverse, now speaks with a single voice. But I wouldn’t call that voice “tranquilizing” though it does, to be sure, have a numbing effect. I reckon it creates anxiety. It always has – though previously in a fragmented way (oh the good old days!) Brian Eno once compared this “low level” psycho-terrorism to a fire hose where the water has to be kept at a certain pressure so that it is ready for use. Granted that Eno was talking about the US but it was also prevalent to a degree in the UK and throughout most of the Western world.
Actually Gore Vidal has an excellent essay (significantly titled “The Last Empire”) detailing the origin of what he called The National Security State whose entire aim was to grudgingly throw some fairly large crumbs to the plebs (the largest any civilian population had ever received) whilst working carefully to manufacture an air of all-pervasive fear centred mostly of course on “the commies”.
But, as Vidal observed, the Soviet Union’s greatest crime was to go out of business. The Evil Old Russian Bear was no longer dancing and the media thrashed around in agitation for something to take its place. The grand theatre of 9/11 was frankly inevitable to this parasitical mindset. After which “Islamofascism” strikes the requisite pose amongst the smoke bombs and thundering music. (And how interesting that Roger Scruton would have eagerly seized on the new term as something which “could unite us” i.e. “Left” and “Right”, thus shrewdly realising the propagandist manoeuvre at work.)
“even as things fall apart, people don’t talk to each other.”
Sadly true. As I said before, my mother intends to have her injections next week. My impulse is to tell her no. But she lives in isolation and I fear that my views (which she already knows anyway) would only increase her insecurity as it would cause cracks in what little community she has left to believe in.
Similarly with my wife who also knows my views. I’m not afraid to air these views again but I know they will be ignored or laughed at or, more likely at this late stage, wearily “tolerated”. As Michael Parenti said, it’s all about changing the “tone” of a society, introducing a new habit of conversation which then becomes a habit of thought. And the truth ends up as whatever the most universal habit is. Thorstein Veblen once pointed out that even in “science” (and do I dare use that word without the scare quotes?) one theory tends to give way to another through changing habits, changing points of view – which changes are also of course fuelled by who is supplying the cash. And quite often one line of research is abandoned not due to being disproved but simply because those who have the outlook behind it eventually die out. Of course the rulers are perfectly aware of all this.
And while there will be some ongoing dispute at the margins about what covid is or even whether covid is real, the world has shifted into “Covidland”.
“The common good” is what it is all about now. No more of that glamorously rainbow / peacock consumer culture of dramatically competitive individuals. Which was all bullshit anyway but the ideology was there to serve the insatiable ends of keeping up an endless throughput of plastic disposable pap. No time or money or resources for that now!
It’s as if some great voice now booms: “Alright you lot! You’ve had your fun! Now it’s time to knuckle down and think of poor 90 year old Deirdre, kids who were born into the wrong gender, ethnic outsiders who YOU YOURSELF have been stealing from! Above all: think of the poor suffering planet itself! Think of that great deified lump of rock spinning in space! Give up your heating, your food, even your life for this NATURE that is everywhere .... but just doesn’t include YOU!”
Things like 9/11 happen to a country when they spend 75 years going around the world killing millions of people for no good reason.
Anecdotally, NYC has had three one-way "STEP-DOWNS" for the people, from which it has NEVER quite bounced back "to what was before". (1) ask any cab driver, small business owner, street vendor etc,...post 9/11 human-life-traffic was never coming back to pre 9/11 stage, (2) the "Financial Crash" 2008, (3) Covid. Every time, a one way diminishment to the downside of the commoner.
I agree that the media, once competitive and diverse, now speaks with a single voice. But I wouldn’t call that voice “tranquilizing” though it does, to be sure, have a numbing effect. I reckon it creates anxiety. It always has – though previously in a fragmented way (oh the good old days!) Brian Eno once compared this “low level” psycho-terrorism to a fire hose where the water has to be kept at a certain pressure so that it is ready for use. Granted that Eno was talking about the US but it was also prevalent to a degree in the UK and throughout most of the Western world.
Actually Gore Vidal has an excellent essay (significantly titled “The Last Empire”) detailing the origin of what he called The National Security State whose entire aim was to grudgingly throw some fairly large crumbs to the plebs (the largest any civilian population had ever received) whilst working carefully to manufacture an air of all-pervasive fear centred mostly of course on “the commies”.
But, as Vidal observed, the Soviet Union’s greatest crime was to go out of business. The Evil Old Russian Bear was no longer dancing and the media thrashed around in agitation for something to take its place. The grand theatre of 9/11 was frankly inevitable to this parasitical mindset. After which “Islamofascism” strikes the requisite pose amongst the smoke bombs and thundering music. (And how interesting that Roger Scruton would have eagerly seized on the new term as something which “could unite us” i.e. “Left” and “Right”, thus shrewdly realising the propagandist manoeuvre at work.)
You state it very well. The USSR's final offence was to collapse.
“even as things fall apart, people don’t talk to each other.”
Sadly true. As I said before, my mother intends to have her injections next week. My impulse is to tell her no. But she lives in isolation and I fear that my views (which she already knows anyway) would only increase her insecurity as it would cause cracks in what little community she has left to believe in.
Similarly with my wife who also knows my views. I’m not afraid to air these views again but I know they will be ignored or laughed at or, more likely at this late stage, wearily “tolerated”. As Michael Parenti said, it’s all about changing the “tone” of a society, introducing a new habit of conversation which then becomes a habit of thought. And the truth ends up as whatever the most universal habit is. Thorstein Veblen once pointed out that even in “science” (and do I dare use that word without the scare quotes?) one theory tends to give way to another through changing habits, changing points of view – which changes are also of course fuelled by who is supplying the cash. And quite often one line of research is abandoned not due to being disproved but simply because those who have the outlook behind it eventually die out. Of course the rulers are perfectly aware of all this.
And while there will be some ongoing dispute at the margins about what covid is or even whether covid is real, the world has shifted into “Covidland”.
“The common good” is what it is all about now. No more of that glamorously rainbow / peacock consumer culture of dramatically competitive individuals. Which was all bullshit anyway but the ideology was there to serve the insatiable ends of keeping up an endless throughput of plastic disposable pap. No time or money or resources for that now!
It’s as if some great voice now booms: “Alright you lot! You’ve had your fun! Now it’s time to knuckle down and think of poor 90 year old Deirdre, kids who were born into the wrong gender, ethnic outsiders who YOU YOURSELF have been stealing from! Above all: think of the poor suffering planet itself! Think of that great deified lump of rock spinning in space! Give up your heating, your food, even your life for this NATURE that is everywhere .... but just doesn’t include YOU!”
The great voice - that's exactly it. The man behind the green curtain.
""Seven countries in five years” in the words of Gen Wesley Clark: Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Lebanon and Iran."
Sure he wasn't deflecting that it was the G7 in a longer timeframe?
Perhaps. I hadn't thought of that!