| « | Bastions And Batteries Part 2: Techno-Fascism, 2010 |
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Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Bastions And Batteries Part 3: The Megaphone And The Marshals
"I saw the time when Logres was only myself and one man and two boys, and one of those was a churl," Merlin said. "Yet we conquered.""It could not be done today," Ransom said. "They have an engine called the Press whereby the people are deceived. We should die without even being heard of."
[C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength]
The techno-fascists' ability to sell their wares arises almost entirely from their alliance with like-minded persons in the Old Media. As just about everyone in the Old Media is sympathetic to techno-fascism, that amounts to an enormous, unopposed megaphone, blaring out its beauties at all hours.
"Unopposed?" Did your Curmudgeon just type "unopposed?" Hm. Indeed he did. Well, perhaps our Old Media aren't quite unopposed. But they do aspire to that estate. Consider:
I UNDERSTAND how Shirley Sherrod, the Agriculture Department official who was forced to resign last week, must have felt.Last year I, too, resigned from an administration job, after I uttered some ill-chosen words about the Republican Party and was accused — falsely — of signing my name to a petition being passed around by 9/11 conspiracy theorists. Partisan Web sites and pundits pounced, and I, too, saw my name go from obscurity to national infamy within hours....
Anyone with a laptop and a flip camera can engineer a fake info-virus and inject it into the body politic. Those with cable TV shows and axes to grind can concoct their own realities. The high standards and wise judgments of people like Walter Cronkite once acted as our national immune system, zapping scandal-mongers and quashing wild rumors. As a step toward further democratizing America, we shrunk those old gatekeepers — and ended up weakening democracy’s defenses. Rapidly developing communication technologies did the rest. [From the New York Times]
For many liberals, Ms. Sherrod’s hasty dismissal carried strong echoes of the ouster of Van Jones, an environmental adviser to the president who was forced to resign after Fox News focused attention on some of his past work and statements, and his decision to sign a petition in 2004 questioning whether the Bush administration had allowed the terrorist attacks of September 2001 to provide a pretext for war in the Middle East. [Also from the New York Times]
Got the idea, you knuckle-dragging, guns-and-Bibles-clinging reactionary, you? You're not supposed to learn what the Old Media don't want you to learn. It's for them to decide what "news" to expose you to -- and don't you dare question their judgment, or you'll be called a racist!
Meanwhile, a development that could affect every family in America is reported solely in the alternative media:
A bill introduced in the House of Representatives by Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., would reinstate a compulsory military draft during war time and require U.S. citizens not selected for military duty to perform a "national service obligation" – as defined by President Obama – for a minimum of two years.Rangel introduced the Universal National Service Act, or H.R. 5741 on July 15. The measure was referred to the House Armed Services' Subcommittee on Military Personnel on July 23....
Rangel took to the floor of the House to reintroduce HR 5741, stating, "I have introduced legislation to reinstate the draft and to make it permanent during time of war. It is HR 5741, and what this does is to make everyone between the ages of 18 and 42 – whether they're men or women, whether they're straight or gay – to have the opportunity to defend this great country whenever the president truly believes that our national security is threatened."
Are you between the ages of 18 and 42, Gentle Reader? Do you have a son, a daughter, a nephew or a niece in that age bracket? Don't you think you ought to have been alerted to this bill sooner than 13 days after its submission to the floor of the House?
Today, facts, the who-what-when-where-why which were once the sine qua non of journalism, are filtered for suitability by Old Media editorial boards. What matters is "the narrative." If the facts can't be induced to conform to "the narrative" required by techno-fascist preferences, then they must be suppressed. But suppression requires the control of all conduits by which the facts might be submitted to a candid world.
The Old Media, and those who profit by their mendacities, want nothing more than the restoration of their monopoly status as it existed before talk radio, the Internet, and the multiplication of low-overhead independent publishers. Those alternatives have made it possible for Americans to learn more than they should...according to Old Media standards and tastes, anyway. And so we have major political figures and public intellectuals arguing and legislating for censorship: the recently invalidated McCain-Feingold Act, Julius Genachowski's attempts to restore the Fairness Doctrine by administrative fiat, Elena Kagan asserting before the Senate Judiciary Committee that the FEC has the authority to censor books, Hillary Clinton's call for a "gatekeeper function" on the World Wide Web, and Cass Sunstein's proposal that op-ed Websites be required to cite others with opposed views.
Clearly, such persons reject Thomas Jefferson's dictum that in any encounter with falsehood, truth will always triumph. Either that, or they don't think the truth is on their side. It's for you to decide, Gentle Reader; your Curmudgeon has enough duties.
Yet, of the several bastions held by the techno-fascists, their media megaphone is the only one that's seriously threatened at this time. It constitutes a weak point in their battle array. Because of the abovementioned alternatives and their expanding reach, the Old Media are losing "mindshare," and are growing ever less relevant to journalism in our time. Our batteries are penetrating this bastion; therefore, we must rush more forces into the breach.
Unfortunately, our current positions require adjustment. There's too much emphasis on interpretation -- opinion-editorial pieces -- which is essentially counter-battery fire. Though worthwhile, it has a defensive cast, and no war has ever been won on defense. To seize the offensive, we must take up the tasks the Old Media have relegated to secondary importance: the gathering of facts and their objective presentation to interested readers.
There are costs, of course. There are also risks. Even today, New Media journalists rely heavily on reportage from Old Media sources. Those sources have begun to fire litigious rounds at the most popular Web news organs. "Fair use" law doesn't shield us all that well, and sources of facts unencumbered by Old Media filters would serve us better in the long run anyway. Recent raids by squads of armed U.S. marshals on large Web hosts, on nonspecific allegations of copyright violation, emphasize the importance of the issue.
Can we mobilize for this effort? How long will it take us?
More anon.
Comments
And what would a draft do to the forces which are training to fight the tyrants?
Posted by on 07/28/2010 at 07:56 PMFree training?
Posted by Col. B. Bunny on 07/28/2010 at 08:22 PMThe draft bill is a non-story until it actually shows signs of getting passed. The WND article mentions that he introduced similar bills in 2003, 2006, and 2007, and nothing happened with those either. It looks to me like political posturing, and talking about it as a realistic threat is also. In this case the MSM was justified in ignoring it - they don’t report every single little thing that gets proposed just to make some sort of point because they’d have no time to discuss any of them in any depth, let alone anything else.
The underlying point of this post is well taken, but better examples could and should have been found.
Posted by on 07/28/2010 at 11:37 PMCharlie Rangel introduces a bill like this every year, and every year it goes nowhere.
Posted by on 07/29/2010 at 03:28 AMRollory, Mark: Recall for me who was president at those three previous occasions. A Republican, wasn’t it? Recall for me whether Rangel, the sponsor, was at those times facing tax evasion and ethics charges that might cost him his Ways and Means Committee position and his seat in Congress. And recall for me whether Barack Hussein Obama, who’s already regimented about a quarter of the American economy, might have said something about conscription for “national service.”
And while you’re at it, wise up. Nothing I say, here or elsewhere, is without its point, unlike others I could name.
Posted by Francis W. Porretto on 07/29/2010 at 04:45 AMCol. B,
True, but my point being, it’s hard to defend the home front when you’re 1000s of miles away fighting for the PTB.
Posted by Mickey on 07/29/2010 at 07:05 AMI really don’t see the change in administration as being critical to this particular issue, and I don’t see how Rangel being in trouble makes a draft bill more likely to pass. He may hope it distracts people from his bad behavior, but until it actually does so I see no reason to expect that will actually happen.
Obama talks a lot but he has a very poor sense of what people, even Democrats, will actually put up with. Congress, for all its faults, has a somewhat better idea. They are not going to pass a draft. That would be an ideal way of establishing a habit and precedent of widespread noncompliance with federal law - would make it socially acceptable to defy federal law - which would open vast cracks in the attempt to secure power over the country. I don’t think the Democratic leadership is unaware of this, or would want to risk it.
If I am wrong it will be clearly visible to any and all, but until that actually happens, I repeat, this is a nothingburger.
I’m not at all sure what your last sentence is in reference to.
Posted by on 07/29/2010 at 08:10 AMI’m not at all sure what your last sentence is in reference to.
Then you’re thicker than you appear:
1. A Republican president prosecuting wars the Democrats oppose was a certain barrier to the reimposition of conscription. This is not the case with Barack Hussein Obama, who’s actively looking for a reason to back away from our engagements in the Middle East.
2. Rangel had no need to defend himself, by misdirection or any other method, during the Bush Administration, as the charges currently lodged against him had not yet been made.
3. The Obama Administration has already floated a trial balloon about reimposing conscription, for “homeland security” and unspecified other purposes.
Now, as it happens, I give one warning. This is yours: Don’t waste my server space any further. If you have something cogent to say, say it, but don’t repeat yourself at my expense without pondering whether I might have given you reasons to reconsider your position. Unless you’re one of six people, all of whom I know personally, professionally, or both, you will never, ever have that privilege.
Posted by on 07/29/2010 at 09:31 AMOne possible approach to the question you raise in this essay is the idea of crowdsourcing. If we can come up with effective mechanisms for consolidating, fact-checking and communicating information about things happening around us, we might be able to effectively mobilize an alternate reporting network. Certainly one thing the modern media circus has taught us all too well is that “credentials” do not make for objectivity. None of us is disqualified from participating in fact-gathering; we just need means to verify and disseminate effectively.
Posted by on 07/29/2010 at 10:02 AMMickey, gotcha.
Kirk, I think you’re on to something. The web is a giant electronic version of a vertical, serial, chronological paper file. There is a huge quantity of absolute info gems that pours forth daily but there are few places where one can find distilled info of use for purposes, say, of practical politics. Before the recent primary in my state I tried to find info about candidates and it was surprisingly difficult to find. Ditto, for info on Tea Party resources.
Attempting to solve this problem would likely quickly degenerate into a futile effort to chase every info will-o’-the-wisp and an early, serious decision would be necessary to put workable boundaries on the project.
I’ve wondered about crowdsoucing. I’ve not seen that term before now but think it relates to an idea I’ve had of using ASCII templates that data gatherers can download. The templates would, say, allow for data to be collected on state and county officials and their positions on illegal immigration/open borders/amnesty. Obviously, something that no one person could research from afar. This assumes a lot of interest on the part of individual citizens here and there and obviously the data collection effort has to be seen as useful and worth the effort to individual volunteers. Good luck choosing the right type of data to track and some creativity in this dept. would be in order. The utility of my particular example isn’t the issue.
To complete the explanation of the concept, note that the enhanced ASCII files would be emailed back to InfoCentral where the data would be imported into a data base for publication.
An alternative is focus less on raw data collection and republication and more on individual collection and analysis where someone like myself looking for info could find a list of candidates and also links to election officials, elected officials, fax nos. of same, legal resources, voting records, economic data. Again, this is project that could get out of control quickly and the compilation would have to have to be seen as useful to many readers.
The basic idea is to create “go to” sites on certain issues or clusters of issues to overcome the random exposure to data that the web offers. Religion of Peace is one excellent site I have in mind. Where are the sites on global warming, foreigners buying up American assets, mosque locations and affiliations, debt, etc.
Maybe all I’ve described here is Wikipedia without the danger of having one’s precious work product “improved” or sabotaged by trolls or fools.
Posted by Col. B. Bunny on 07/29/2010 at 11:48 AMI forgot to mention innovative ways of using graphical geographical data to illustrate political data. Jamat al-Fuqra compounds, mosques, CAIR offices, NOI temples, etc.
There is a site that makes this easy but who knows whether it’s in friendly hands or not.
Posted by Col. B. Bunny on 07/29/2010 at 02:54 PM
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