Dredd discusses dementia, personal and social

Is America suffering through a period of social dementia? Have we all lost contact with reality as a group? That is an implication of Max Blumenthal's discussion of Secular Salvation Narratives. Dredd discusses this. Dredd's discussion goes further than Blumenthal's by suggesting that America as a society has culturally lost contact with reality. If that's true, then it goes to the very core of our culture, and that hinges on the nature of narratives. So first let's briefly look at what Dredd suggests.

Dredd is describing America as a society in which certain elites wanted to take control of the population, but instead of using the brute force techniques of government (which they concluded would not work) they developed a set of propaganda narratives to control how Americans think. Go read Dredd's article. Propaganda that works does so by creating a preferred narrative that shifts the culture. "Preferred?" Well, "Propaganda" naturally means that the narrative desired by the propagandists is the goal.

The psychologists say that the human memory is physically laid down in a narrative framework. That, it seems to me, is the basis for the way culture is passed on from one generation to another and probably the way information used to be transmitted between families and communities before humans developed technologies to transmit information. In other words, we learn what is important about how society is ordered through the stories we are told.

So exactly what is a narrative? Well, it's a story. That is, it is a set of characters who undergo a series of events, and the events are connected through the means of cause-and-effect. Narratives fit into an overall pattern of beginning, middle and end, and each of those categories has different characteristics and different purposes. I speculate that the human capacity to think in narrative may be the origin of the human ability to recognize time. (The discipline of General Semantics calls this Time Binding.)

The difference between history and a fable is that when one is telling history the details of the events are verified by sources other than just trust in the veracity, memory and accuracy of the story-teller. The tales told by minstrels when they passed from one community to another were generally dependent on the memory of the minstrel. Minstrels seem to have developed poetic techniques as memory aids so that they could remember the details well enough so that when they told the same tale several times, they actually did tell roughly the same story. Remember those poetic techniques. They were methods of using quirks of the brain to better remember details.

Those same narrative techniques that transmit culture also transmit propaganda. The two American business disciplines most closely associated with creating propaganda are Public Relations and Advertising. Both say to the public that they don't change anything, and yet they both sell their services to many businesses and individuals who are investing good money in what they do with the intent of making a profit. Is it reasonable to believe that those businesses exist but do nothing effective? Nope.

I wouldn't dismiss Dredd's description of modern America as a culture that has lost contact with reality. His proposal regarding how it might have happened is missing only a good description of who the culprits who did it are. The social mechanics are certainly in place, and the evidence for the sanity of American culture is weak at best.

Max Blumenthal's description of a secular narrative built up by Obama in order to win the election as President and now dashed in the chaos of the health care reform legislation in the Senate looks like a good explanation for the mass depression currently being felt by disappointed liberals and progressives.

Anyway, these are my current thoughts on the subject.

Hardball pundits excuse McCain as too "out of it" to know what his campaign is doing in his name

The McCain campaign is getting so slimy and incoherent that his media supporters simply can't credit that the "honorable straight-shooting maverick" could possibly be aware of what is happening in his name. Here's his media supporters on MSNBC expressing their dismay at his campaign and trying to rationalize the obvious horror of it with their firmly held image of the most honorable St. John McCain.



This should be entitled "When pundits face cognitive dissonance." They just can't accept that the man they know by his media persona actually realizes how rotten his campaign for President is.

OK. So that leaves us with a choice. We have to decide whether McCain is too out of it to know what is going on in the Presidential campaign he is in charge of, or whether he is a lying opportunist who will say anything, do anything his immediate audience wants to hear while pretending to be whoever they want him to be just as long as they will vote him into the office of President.

Of course, nothing stops McCain from being both at once. But I'm not part of his media base of support, either. I can abandon the media narrative and feel no cognitive dissonance at all.

Neither choice presents a candidate that America wants to follow the incompetent George Bush.

[H/T to TPM.]

How deeply in the tank can the media get?

This is what the media has reported recently about McCain's lies, distortions and smears (from Media Matters):

FactCheck.org, for example, has called one McCain attack ad "false," said another contains a "false" insinuation, described another as misleading, called another "ridiculous" and added, "That's absurd, and McCain knows it." FactCheck said the attacks in yet another McCain ad are "oversimplified to the point of being seriously misleading," noting that by the standards of evidence the McCain campaign used in the ad, the Arizona senator himself could be criticized precisely the same way. FactCheck called criticisms McCain has leveled against Obama's tax plans "bunk," adding, "He's wrong," and stating that McCain is using a "false and preposterously inflated figure" to attack Obama. They called another McCain attack "simply wrong" and "not true." They said yet another McCain ad "gets nearly all its facts wrong. ... [E]very number in the ad is wrong, except one. ... And even that number is rounded upward so generously as to flunk third-grade arithmetic." And FactCheck called yet another McCain attack "trickery" based on an "inflated and misleading" number that was the result of "Double, Triple and Quadruple Counting."

Sounds like the media is on top of this election and doing a good job of reporting, right?

Well, no.

also from Media Matters:

All week, McCain's attacks have been driving news coverage. Those same news organizations that have declared McCain's charges false have given them an extraordinary amount of attention, repeating them over and over. They have adopted the premises of the McCain attacks even as they acknowledge the attacks are based on false claims. The media narrative of the week has not been, as you might expect, that John McCain's apparent dishonesty may hurt him with voters. Instead, the media's basic approach has been to debunk McCain's attacks once, then run a dozen stories about how the attacks are sticking, how the "emerging narrative" will hurt Obama.

But attacks don't just stick and narratives don't just emerge. The only reason that the topic of the week was whether Obama is presumptuous instead of whether McCain is a liar who will do anything to get elected is that the news media decided to make Obama's purported flaws the topic of the week -- even after debunking the charges upon which the characterization is based. It's as though the news media -- so concerned about lies (that weren't really lies) in 2000 -- have suddenly decided that it doesn't matter that the McCain campaign is launching false attack after false attack. That it's the kind of thing you note once, then adopt the premise of the attack.

What the media is doing is covering its ass. When accused of being in the tank for McCain, they are going to point to the debunking of his lies they have performed, but they will never admit to or address the way they have been giving his lies free exposure repeatedly.

Why? Because their bosses in the media are bought and paid for by the Republican Party and the underlings are doing what they have to do to keep their jobs and try to reach to heights achieved by Chris Matthews, Brian Williams and Katie Couric. That's why.

Progressives effecting media narrative of candidates but not media view of policy.

This is an interesting observation. dday writing at Digby's Hullabaloo point out how the media narrative on the Republician candidates has become pretty much the same narrative that progressives have been pushing since the various candidates for nomination began campaigning. Here's the transcript that he published as his example:

BLITZER: It wasn't exactly a shocker today, Jack, that Fred Thompson announced he's dropping out of this race. But let's take a look at the political fallout.

Among the Republicans, who gains, who loses?

CAFFERTY: Well, if he hadn't announced it, I'm not sure anybody would have noticed.

(LAUGHTER)

CAFFERTY: I mean I -- you know, it's like he hasn't -- he's only been here what -- you know, he wasn't that interested in campaigning. I think he would have liked it if somebody would have said you can be president. But he didn't want to work to get the job. And I'm not sure it means a heck of a lot for anybody. Somebody said that he might be trying to position himself to be vice president. He'll deny that.

BORGER: ...So watch for Mitt Romney, who is also running as a social conservative, to go after those six or seven Thompson voters that are out there.

(LAUGHTER)

BORGER: And he'll try -- he'll try and get them.

TOOBIN: You know, Wolf, you have to go all the way back to Rudolph Giuliani to find a campaign that has been singularly as unsuccessful as Fred Thompson's has been.

(LAUGHTER)

BORGER: That far back?

TOOBIN: You know, I just don't think it will have any impact at all, his departure...

BLITZER: Well, it could have a...

TOOBIN: ...just as his arrival didn't.

BORGER: You know...

BLITZER: It could have an impact in new episodes of "Law and Order," though.

BORGER: It could. It could. But, you know, this was such an interesting candidacy. It was created by the Republican establishment in Washington, who felt that they needed a new horse. They needed someone else. So they created this. They took a guy who was television. They said let's turn him into a presidential candidate. He will clearly appeal to the American public. And it totally flopped [...]

TOOBIN: That was the ultimate problem.

CAFFERTY: Take a look at all the other ideas the Republican establishment in Washington has had for the last seven years.

(LAUGHTER)

CAFFERTY: It's no surprise to me the Fred Thompson thing didn't go anywhere.

BLITZER: I can't tell you how many people in that Republican establishment -- especially here in Washington, the beltway, you know, the Republican lobbyists...

BORGER: Right.

BLITZER: ...the so-called elite, when they were even thinking of getting him in, they said this is the new Ronald Reagan. He's an actor.

CAFFERTY: Yes.

BLITZER: He's media-genic. He's powerful. And he's really going to turn things around.

(CROSSTALK) CAFFERTY: If you want to look at the definition of irrelevant, look up the Republican establishment in Washington, D.C.

BORGER: Right.

CAFFERTY: That's irrelevant.

(LAUGHTER)

TOOBIN: Fred Thompson definitely was the tallest candidate.

BORGER: Right.

(LAUGHTER)

BORGER: But, you know, it's so...

CAFFERTY: And the baldest.

BORGER: ...it's so arrogant, though, you know, to think that you can be anointed in Washington and you're pretty good on television and you look pretty good and you -- and you have great name recognition because you're in "Law and Order," and, gee, I can then become president.

And I think they talked him into it. And I think they said to him, you know, you don't have to work that hard.

(LAUGHTER)

BORGER: You can actually just get this job, get in late, let the public take a look at you. You're different. You're going to win. It didn't work out that way.

CAFFERTY: He bought that part about not having to work very hard. He liked that part.

(LAUGHTER)

CAFFERTY: You can sit in the trailer until it's time for your close-up, Fred.

(LAUGHTER)

[dday's comment on the transcript.] It has the usual Village cattiness, but these are themes that progressives pushed from the moment Thompson entered the race. He's lazy, he's an actor who wants to play the role of the President, he was pushed upon people by the establishment. And this is true across the line: Romney's an insincere flip-flopper, Rudy's a homicidal maniac, Huckabee's a Jesus freak, McCain wants to bomb the whole world (this narrative took hold until McCain dropped off the map and we stopped pressuring him), etc.

Now, we're aided by a really terrible slate of candidates. But it's clear that progressives have shot these narratives into the media bloodstream. Initially, Thompson was the guy you could smell the Aqua Velva on, and Romney was a guy who has shoulders on which you can land a 747. I really think the movement is maturing and deserves a lot of credit.

dday then goes on to point out that this is only the media narrative, and not a set of policy arguments. Progressive policy arguments have not yet taken root in the media, so they are still reported as "extremist." (My word, not dday's.)

I suspect that this is a function of two factors. First, the Progressive Movement is very new, and still finding its way. There are not yet a lot of media-accepted spokespersons the media can quickly call on for "the other side of the issue." That is purely a matter of time and getting the right names onto TV Producer's and reporter's Rolodexes. Second, and probably more significant, the Republican candidates are clearly a poor bunch who demand explanation, and there is no entrenched explanation that has to be overcome. Since each of the candidates is working hard to establish an image nationally, it is relatively easy to point to the candidate himself and supply a reasonable but alternative image.

Most of the planks on the Progressive agenda do not have clear faces like the Republican candidates do. What is the "face" of a broken healthcare system? It is difficult to point to a clear image, so the no longer accurate entrenched existing ideas about the "greatest health care system in the world" is much more difficult to overcome. The facts no longer support that entrenched idea, but the insurance companies have a vested interest in maintaining it and they spend a lot of money on both advertising and lobbying to do exactly that.

It's no surprise, then, that the newly recreated progressive movement has made a lot less progress on getting the media to accept progressive policies as mainstream than they have in getting the media to accept the Progressive narratives on the Republican candidates for President. Both are true, both are really mainstream, but the media investment in the older policy prescriptions is a lot more entrenched deeper than are the images of the current crop of Republican candidates for nomination as President.

That would account for the slower adoption by the media of progressive prescriptions. It shouldn't take too long to bring the media into line, though. A majority of the American public is already there, and the media is caught between a large and growing portion of their public on the one side and the progressive movement on the other, while the reality of the economy is clearly closer to that described by the Progressives than that described by the conservatives. The media will be forced into line. It's just going to take more time and effort.