Mass Media Constitute One Big Selfie?

Update: on Feb 27, 2016, I posted this book review, minus the hyperlinks, to Amazon. The next day I received the following reply via email: 

Your review could not be posted. Thanks for submitting a customer review on Amazon. Your review could not be posted to the website in its current form. While we appreciate your time and comments, reviews must adhere to the following guidelines: http://www.amazon.com/review-guidelines  

No specifics were given regarding my violation of the guidelines. After reading the guidelines, my best guess is that, because my review included the word, "turd," Amazon’s filterbot flagged the review as obscene or somehow otherwise objectionable. 

So I removed the offending syllable and re-posted the review. I changed the phrase, "turd duly polished" to "spin duly spun" -- not sure if that makes sense, if spin can be spun, but it's no less coherent than much of what circumvents the filters and gets posted. In any case, I hoped that that might do it. 

Well, spinning the turd did no good. The next day, March 3, I got another rejection email from Amazon, a duplicate of the original. The revised review still violated some undisclosed aspect of Amazon's Customer Review Creation Guidelines. Amazon provides zero guidance as to what precisely violated what in those guidelines, so I am (as are, I suppose, other reviewers in the same boat) left guessing as to how to remedy the situation. 

Having said that, I have to wonder if the sentiments I expressed in the review were the real cause of the censorship.  Here's what I attempted to post:
 ________________________________________________

The author of The Influencing Machine, Brooke Gladstone, works for National Public Radio (NPR), which means that she is linked financially to the patronage of grant-bequeathing foundations, those social-engineering tools wielded by the wealthy, who have an interest in maintaining the status quo, which explains why the author of this psy-op artifact (which is delivered in dumbed-down comic book format for easy digestion by the semi-literate) is so intent on defending and rationalizing and justifying things as they are, on leaving an ostensible well enough alone.

The book is a transparent apologia for mainstream media and the media’s version of journalism (namely, the parroting of pronouncements of politicians and bureaucrats and their agents). But anyone who dives into today's online alt media with a mind toward objectivity (an elusive thing that the author seems to think is forever out of reach) will find plenty of primary documentation and reasoned analysis and skilled presentation of political, economic and cultural occurrences—and outright plots—that the mainstream media and its government cohorts would rather keep from public view. And the curious delver into alt media also will find plenty of garbage. And so one has to keep one’s wits about one. But underscoring such a practical approach is no part of this author’s agenda. Her mission is to provide cover for the powers that be.

Dear friends, when you imbibe mass media you are not gazing into a mirror, as author Gladstone contends. You are internalizing an image of the world and a set of concerns manufactured by the wealthy for the purpose of maintaining a certain socioeconomic distance between themselves and you. They are the guys who, in effect, employ this author, and they are interested in nurturing, so as to maintain, class distinctions.

The book kicks off with a familiar bromide, namely that if you suspect an organized malfeasance lurking, then you're mentally ill. This is the takeaway implied by the story of Natalija A. a turn-of-the-(20th)-century psychiatric patient who happened to be deaf and mute and is said to have written about a machine that used some kind of broadcast signal to influence her thoughts and behaviors. If you suspect that mass media constitute such an influencing machine, then you're not just a reasonably observant person. No. You are damaged goods and psychological kin of Natalija and in need of psychiatric attention. You fail to understand that when you amuse yourself with media you are absorbing your own neuroses projected outward, creating a tightening gyre that you have no business complaining about. Your suspicions about someone else writing the script and zooming the camera can be swept aside with a broad brushstroke of watered-down psychobabble.

So advances the argument of this book, in effect.

The Pagan States of America

The United States is a Christian nation, right? That's what the TV preachers tell us. Christianity might be good enough for the masses who toil in the private sector, but their masters who rule from the public sector look to the classical world for inspiration.

This struck me during a visit to the Minnesota state capitol building in St. Paul. The artwork inside the building's rotunda is uniformly and inescapably pagan. I take responsibility for the poor quality of the photos that follow, but the inherent pagan imagery is clear. Nothing Christian to be gleaned.

Outside the capitol building is the iconic gold-leafed copper and steel statuary group, "Progress of the State." According to the Minnesota Historical Society, "The four horses represent the power of nature: earth, wind, fire and water. The women symbolize civilization and the man standing on the chariot represents prosperity." Why should secular government pay homage to the elementals?  (image from the MN Historical Society web site)

And if you're visiting Minnesota's twin cities, be sure the check out the lower level of the old Hennepin County courthouse in downtown Minneapolis. There you'll find this impressive statue of the Father of Waters, a personification of that venerable elemental force, the Mighty Mississippi. 

 

A visit to the Wisconsin state capitol, in Madison, confronted me with similar imagery in the form of statuary, shown below.  

Where in all this are Adam and Eve? Noah and the ark? The exodus from Egypt? The arrival at the promised land?

Where's the immaculate conception? The loaves and fishes? The crucifixion and the ressurrection?

Isn't the United States a Christian nation?.     

I suppose that the dearth of Biblical imagery in seats of government has something to do with the notion of a Constitutional wall that separates church and state. And the reason pagans get a free ride might have to do with that word, "church," as opposed to, say, "temple." Curiously, Mormons maintain both churches and temples, covering the bases, I suppose.

In any case, it's clear that Christianity is good enough for Joe and Josephine Blow, but paganism the elite retains to itself for its own veneration.

The Official Story: Narrating Public Myth, from PsyOps to NeurOps

August 4, 2013, update to this post: Narrative Science is a company that helps businesses communicate by turning data into stories. The company's software program, Quill, "is an artificial intelligence engine that generates, evaluates and gives voice to ideas as it discovers them in data." The company's website elaborates:

"Quill imports your data and builds an appropriate narrative structure to meet the goals of your audience. Using complex Artificial Intelligence algorithms, Quill extracts and organizes key facts and insights and transforms them into stories, at scale. Quill uses data to answer important questions, provide advice and deliver powerful insight in a precise, clear narrative."

That ability could come in handy. For the CIA. 

The intelligence agency's business-investment arm, In-Q-Tel, has contributed an undisclosed amount of funding to Narrative Science. My original post, below, might explain why the CIA is pursuing the engineering of stories. The agency is out to weaponize narrative.

* * *

Once upon a time, there was a public policy think tank at the University of Virginia, called the Miller Center. In October 1998, the Center invited historians, editors and journalists to mull over “the state of the art” in political history. There was a problem to be addressed, which apparently was that historical narrative had slipped through the hands of its rightful authors. And with it went those failing authors’ control of public sentiment. Implied in the conference’s mission was the felt need to figure out not only how this situation came about, but also how history’s rightful authors could recapture the historical narrative. Controlling narratives, people in high places seem to believe, facilitates controlling mass behavior, making it a subject worth study.

The Conference on Contemporary Political History kicked off with remarks from then director of the Miller Center, Philip Zelikow. (A few years later, during a leave from his directorship, Zelikow kept on a short leash the Kean-Hamilton Commission, also known as the 911 Commission, which he steered as its staff executive director.) In his opening remarks to the history conference, Zelikow laid out his concerns regarding contemporary political history:

“’Contemporary’” is defined functionally by those critical people and events that go into forming the public’s presumptions about its immediate past. This idea of ‘public presumption’ is akin to William McNeill’s notion of ‘public myth’ but without the negative implication sometimes invoked by the word ‘myth.’ Such presumptions are beliefs (1) thought to be true (although not necessarily known to be true with certainty), and (2) shared in common within the relevant political community. The sources for such presumptions are both personal (from direct experience) and vicarious (from books, movies, and myths).”

(All quotes from Zelikow are from the Miller Center Report, Vol. 14, No. 3, Winter 1999.) We will return later to McNeill and public myth. First, we need to follow Zelikow into the sources of public presumption. He identifies four:

”First, public presumptions can be ‘generational.’ They are formed by those pivotal events that become etched in the minds of those who have lived through them [. . . ]. The current set begins in approximately 1933, although the New Deal generation is fading. The Second World War and Vietnam, however, continue to resonate powerfully.

“Second, particularly ‘searing’ or ‘molding’ events take on ‘transcendent’ importance and, therefore, retain their power even as the experiencing generation passes from the scene. In the United States, beliefs about the formation of the nation and the Constitution remain powerful today, as do beliefs about slavery and the Civil War. World War II, Vietnam, and the civil rights struggle are more recent examples.

“Third, public presumptions often concern 'dramatic stories plucked out of time,' such as the Alamo, Pickett’s Charge, or the Titanic.

“Fourth, some public presumptions gain currency because they have a particular resonance for us today, either because they invoke powerful analogies to the present [. . . .] or because they offer a causal link and seem to explain ‘why we are the way we are today.’ Taken together, we see that presumptions that remain ‘contemporary’ are—with few exceptions from the 18th and 19th centuries—events and episodes from the last 60 years.”

Depending on which conspiracy theory one subscribes to, that of the Bush administration and the Kean–Hamilton Commission or some variety suggested by the 911 Truth Movement, it takes little imagination to perceive in Zelikow’s assessment a premonition or foreshadowing of events to come, his remarks about searing events taking on transcendent importance being uttered just three years prior to the attacks of 9/11.

And nowhere in his comments will one find any concern that public presumptions should reflect history accurately.

Dis Cover Unworthy of Discover

Notice anything odd about this magazine cover?

The cover, which appears on Discover's March, 2013, issue, looks like something dredged from a 1950s science-fiction serial.  A guy in a suit lifting off to his next sales meeting represents Evolution's Next Stage? Does it get any more pedestrian, or vintage, than that? What's the next breakthrough—lawn-mowing robots?

America's visionary futurists peered over the edge—and all I got was this lousy jet pack.

Is it really plausible that the editors behind this popular science magazine can't envision a future grander than one that might have dazzled them in grade school? Or, maybe technological deprivation is an idea that media owners would like us to get used to.

The cover image is so dated that its cheesiness looks insidious. Is it an artifact of the project to deliberately dumb us down? Another exercise in normalizing middle-class expectations of a stagnant-to-declining standard of living?

Surely the technological imagination can conjure something more exciting than this to sell us as Evolution's Next Stage. The next stage in evolution?  Try THIS.

It Can't Happen Here (Until . . . . )

America's ongoing descent into a corporate state roused me finally to pick up "It Can't Happen Here", Sinclair Lewis' cautionary novel about the rise of a Fascist regime in the United States.  Published in 1935, when Fascism already had rooted itself in Europe, the story captures troubling tendencies in American popular media and popular mentality. Think demagoguery and mob psychology.

The passage below testifies to the timeliness of Lewis' cautions. Senator Windrip is a political rising star who runs for president and whose ascendance is fueled by his skillful exploitation of jingoism and other populist sentiments. Speaking is R. C. Crowley, the local banker of Fort Beulah. He is addressing an informal gathering of the modest town's professional class. But in particular he is addressing a skeptical Doremus Jessup, the local newspaperman and the novel's protagonist.

"I don't like all these irresponsible attacks on us bankers all the time. Of course, Senator Windrip has to pretend publicly to bawl the banks out, but once he gets into power he'll give the banks their proper influence in the administration and take our expert financial advice. Yes. Why are you so afraid of the word 'Fascism,' Doremus? Just a word—just a word! And might not be so bad, with all the lazy bums we got panhandling relief nowadays, and living on my income tax and yours—not so worse to have a real Strong Man, like Hitler or Mussolini—like Napoleon or Bismarck in the good old days—and have 'em really run the country and make it efficient and prosperous again."

How well does this shoe fit the politics of the United States in 2012?

Then Lewis comments on the integrity of political campaigns, when a Windrip supporter admits that the candidate's promises amount to air, "just molasses for the cockroaches." 

Then there's this timely partisan snipe, from the mouth of Karl Pascal, the Communist,

". . . Freedom, Order, Security, Discipline, Strength! All those swell words that even before Windrip came in the speculators started using to protect their profits! Especially how they used the word 'Liberty'! Liberty to steal the didies off the babies! I tell you, an honest man gets sick when he hears the word "Liberty' today, after what the Republicans did to it!" 

I'm just sayin'.

Occupy MN Launches Rally

Friday was a great kickoff for Occupy MN. 

500+ people convened in downtown Minneapolis at the Government People's Plaza. At 2:00 MPD's Segway Squad stopped traffic to accommodate a march to the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank.  The chant, "End The Fed" filled the air as the crowd asserted its numbers, and the banksters looked out over the protesters from inside their fortress. O, to be a fly on the wall by the watercooler.  


Corporate media say the movement has no concise message. But the last thing the movement needs now is a manifesto. Then it becomes about picking apart words. Keep it loose. Keep it free. And network, network, network.

Among the Truthers: A Journey Through America's Growing Conspiracist Underground

The sell copy inside the front flap of Among the Truthers’ dust jacket calls Kay a journalist. But Among the Truthers: A Journey Through America's Growing Conspiracist Underground evinces none of the objectivity that one would expect from a journalist. Canadian Jonathan Kay is an editorial writer and columnist who has been working to debunk the 911 truth movement essentially since its arrival. This book continues his quest.

In it, Kay sallies forth with a broad brush, surveying a mélange of familiar targets of ridicule—Senator Joseph McCarthy, purveyors of tales of Atlantis, anti-Semites, skeptics questioning the authorship of Shakespeare’s works, academic deconstructionists, and others, along with 911 truthers—targets that share no logical relationship. They share only an implication of being related every time somebody utters the phrase, "conspiracy theory".

One brand of glue Kay uses to try to hold together his conspiratorial herd of cats is The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, a scurrilous document that purports to be a collection of notes taken from lectures given by Theodor Herzl, in which the outspoken Zionist outlined a Jewish takeover of the world. Outside hardcore anti-Semitic circles, the document universally is dismissed as a fake. But the Protocols surfaces again and again in Kay's narrative as if he felt a need repeatedly to smear anyone who rejects official proclamations by associating them with this example of hateful propaganda.

Digging to the historical roots of his subject, Kay observes, "British colonial rule under King George III truly was designed to keep Americans in a state of perpetual subservience, and to steal the fruits of their industry. Over time, resentment of this fact grew into a deep suspicion of government power more generally."

The Monarch’s Court might have replied to Kay’s assessment as follows:

The oppression of the king was "truly" a "fact"? No, Mr. Kay. You don't understand. Good King George sought only to protect and care for the vulnerable colonists. Conspiracy theories swirled through the colonies, and this was unfortunate, but the colonists were a peculiar sort of people, prone to delusions and paranoia. Certainly your own ruling class acts always and only in the best interests of your laborers, as did King George. Why would you imagine that the rulers of the past were differently constituted from your own? You seem to have imbibed the kool-aid of Messrs. Jefferson, Franklin and Paine. They are such rabble as needs to be debunked in a book about the wrong-headedness of mistrusting authority.

During his quixotic journey, Kay effectively achieves the opposite of his intended effect, because he repeatedly admits that history provides many real-world precedents for the events and official narratives that raise eyebrows among today's conspiracy theorists, ". . . including the unsatisfying Warren commission Report on the JFK assassination, the secret bombing of Cambodia and the military cover-up of My Lai, a program of foreign coups and assassinations by the CIA, and other questionable activities officially denied and only brought to light after the fact [.]" Add to this list the Gulf of Tonkin incident and the plots hatched under Operation Northwoods, and you’ve got plenty of reasons to dismiss blanket dismissals of conspiratorial suspicion. The theorists too often are on target.

The More Things Change . . .

You can read the article about the ruling class' appetite for human flesh here:      http://bit.ly/kerva1

Now we know what those little hors d'oeuvres-y things at the royal wedding were.  Corpse medicine.

Oooops. Early in 2012, the body of a missing teen turns up at the Queen's estate.  Uh, let's call that coincidence. 

What, Me Worry? - and these are the people who set sail to civilize the savages? Now Prince Charles claims a lineage that links the British Monarchy to Vlad the Impaler! The bloodline that connects the bloodthirsty royals to Vlad branches off into the Bush family.  Just saying.


. . . The More They Stay The Same.


The ruling class still contracts with traffickers in human flesh. The missing money? The purchase of horrors? Recall, Rumsfeld was defense secretary under President George W. Bush.