Television’s role in Politics

Speaking about Labor Day, do you realize that without the Labor reformers and activists of the late 19th and early 20th century, what some might ostensibly call Anarchists and Socialists and Communists, instead of cooking out your hamburgers with your kids and drinking beer and watching football today, you’d be putting in another 14 hour day, working next to your 14 year-old kid?  I think we ought to remember that as much as our American pride rests on Capitalism and Apple Pie, it’s the struggle of people who work for a living against the cigar-chomping, money-hungry people in the Corporate Office that makes it possible to have a restful weekend off.  There is this contempt for communism and socialism in our public discourse these days.  I would venture a guess that this is fostered by people who are at the upper levels of the societal food chain.  Those who point their fingers and waggle them at Communists just aren’t aware of the choking feeling of working and working and working and never getting ahead.  I suppose.  On that note…

A friend of mine asked me about Van Jones the other day. I piped in and said “Intelligent guy, my brother in law used to work for him in San Francisco.”

There’s more to it than that, of course. Looking back on it now, I realize the only reason the issue came up is because of Glen Beck (Glenn? Gleek?). I thought it odd that I heard Mr. Jones’ name mentioned, as I know my friend to be a rather conservative person who regularly listens to Rush and Beck. “Why,” I thought, “does Van Jones appear as a blip on my friend’s radar?” Well, apparently my friend thinks that Jones is full of bad ideas.

Well, leaving beside the truth or falsehood of Glenn Beck’s, or Van Jones’, or Rush Limbaugh’s statements, I find it interesting that what we think of as democracy these days amounts to who can get the most people to listen to them on their prime-time soap box. I for one don’t give a rat’s ass whether you happen to watch Beck or FOX or the Daily Show or MSNBC or CNN or the Home Shopping Network. I confess that I miss the Daily Show as the humor appeals to my malicious sense of calling people out on bullshit.

But please, dear God O Please, don’t make all your decisions about the world based on what some paranoid, overweight douchebag on the idiot box tells you. On the obverse, don’t base your views strictly on what John Stewart or Stephen Colbert tells you. If you can’t watch the show and understand that tongue in cheek entertainment (infotainment!) is NOT the news and that before you decide on things you ought to look into it a little more, then you ought to turn in your voter’s registration card now. If you sit in one spot and listen to tirades by the same pair of talking heads all day, then you are no better than “They” are, whoever they are. Seriously, get informed. And don’t listen to me, either. I’m no expert.

Back to Van Jones. Well, I for one happen to think he is an intelligent, capable man. I’ve heard him speak, and I like the idea of employing people to turn this country around and do it through “Green” (god I hate that adjective these days) means. Hey whatever, all those unemployed manufacturers need to be doing something besides collecting unemployment and eating Ramen, right? You need to wonder what kind of scared, over-reactive nuts smear a dude for what seems to be a reasonable solution to the problem.

I don’t hate Glenn Beck or Rush or any of that. What I do posit is that the idea of a Black Dude running any part of the show gives them the willies. Once the guns of xenophobia and foam-at-the-mouth paranoia are aimed, the cleverest people duck and cover. Alternet seems to think Beck has done us a favor. I won’t post links to any of Beck’s stuff, here, as I’m sure it’ll be easy to find.  It’s FOX, after all.  I invite arguments to this post, as I can reasonably accept the premise that Beck and Limbaugh make good points.  I should note that I highly doubt this to be true, as I’ve seen the way they operate in the past.  All I’ve heard from them is some shaky logic and a final, smarmy appeal to peoples’ sense of fear and outrage.

Ho hum.  I feel like we’re slipping into some scary period of our history, here.

Maybe I should have stuck to Labor Day.  Happy Labor Day, you ingrates.  It was some Commie Red Pinko asshole that got you your day off today.

Who is John Galt, really?

I have been reading Atlas Shrugged.  Sadly, or perhaps fortunately, it has made me see flaws in the logic of almost every person I talk to, and every event I see on the news.  In theory, rational self-interest ought to work.  And Platonic thinking tells me that in some sense the objective truth and hard and fast ideals may in some sense exist.  And it’s made me think long and hard about what “liberal” and “conservative” mean.  I draw the conclusion (and perhaps I will take this up at a later date) that the terms we use to make arguments in our public discourse are meaningless and confusing obfuscations of actual fact.  What about the term “Conservative” suggests that most of those who subscribe (in their own minds) to this way of thinking would hold that unrestricted capitalism and de-regulation of industry is a moral and ethical good?  And what about “Liberal” hints that, broadly speaking, those who stand on the left side of the line might support the idea that all people ought to be given the same “chance” and that the playing field should be levelled by the Government’s obligations?

The more I think about it, the more I begin to suspect that Chomsky is on to something, and that it is our imprecise use of language that drives our thinking.  As a counselor, I recognize that people don’t often say what they mean.  But add to this melting pot of ours the fact that what they mean has no relation to what is said or done and what we are told, then I think the results are clear.  You gave one big, gooey, mess to be mired in.  We are flailing about in the mud of our own language, and in some sense those people outside the puddle are adding more mud to weigh us down.

Now, back to Ayn Rand.  I have not yet finished Atlas Shrugged.  I think I see where it’s going.  I put aside for now the weird sexual politics, and the almost Aryan/Ubermensch imagery.  These things are fine in a literary sense – heck, I love the modified supersoldiers of Warhammer 40K, for instance.  Reading the book does highlight to me that the language of the “right” and “left” is awful and the appeal to reason that both make is really an appeal to fear and self-loathing.  Let that sink in, if you like, but I will continue.

I found out that Alan Greenspan was a close friend of Ayn Rand.  Objectivist thinking has guided the course of our history.  You may shrug and say that Rand was a heavy-handed and unskilled writer and that her prose is inelegant and tedious.  Rather, I assert this, and recognize that I should not sway your thinking by giving you imprecise language to start with.  Ahem.  This begs the question – is Objectivist thinking (i.e. rational self-interest) flawed, or did the system unravel recently because Greenspan did not have the moral fortitude to apply those principles in full?  Was he constrained by circumstance?  Does Greenspan have a place in the utopia of Midas Mulligan’s Colorado now that he has left the scene?  Would any Objectivist thinker brand Greenspan one of Rand’s heros, struggling against the masses of inferior men to Do What Is Right, or did he amount to another Washington Bureacrat who fucked things up because they ultimately failed to live up to their potential?

Recent history suggests to me that if has been Rand’s thinking driving our financial policies, then it has not been done well, or else it is flawed and ought to be scrutinized rather more closely.  Money is a central theme and image in the book.  The characters measure, in some sense, their worth and success by it.  Those who have money have been doing something correctly and are justly rewarded.  But the other side of the coin is the fat-cats who sponge off the others and scheme and steal.  I assert that if Rand’s book is a model, and if it is a model that ought to guide our way, then it is highly illustrative of how we have let the villains of literature come to life and settle into the real world.  Look at what has become of our economics?  Rand’s ideas do not imply, I think, that sheer greed and manipulation are to be condoned.  Rather, they suggest that should everyone work in their rational self-interest, from the lowest level to the highest, then amazing things are theoretically possible.  I think the most amazing thing about what is happening these days is that underhanded thieves have taken the reigns of our fine land and screwed many people out of their just due.

I note right now, with some irony, that I sound here like one of the disagreeable, spineless lesser men of Rand’s book.  I may have only a very rudimentary sense of what Objectivism means.  I admit this.  I’ll need to think on it some more, I suppose, but the feeling of “jiltedness” that I see everywhere these days, and the mild tongue-in-cheek irony that I note in every mouth suggest that we all know something is up but we feel powerless to act on our knowledge.  A close reading of Ayn Rand suggests that this is not in fact the case.

Enough!  Maybe there will be a twist in the end and everything will turn out right.  Only 23,245 pages to go!