Contributors

Monday, March 21, 2011

Managing Fantasies, Wasting Time

Last in Line recently sent me an amusing email that apparently has gone viral in right wing circles of late. Essentially, it says that the new health care law will somehow morph into sharia law and that's been Obama's secret plan all along. Being the reasonable man last in line is, I know he sent it in jest but I found his note to be serendipitous considering Bill Maher's final new rule last night. It starts at about 2:25




While this is amusing, I find the truth of it to be very frustrating and sad. "One reason nothing gets done in America is that one of the political parties puts so much more into fantasy problems." Indeed. Not only is it holding us back from advancing as a nation but it may well threaten our status as the leader in a unipolar world. Dangerous when you consider that it is our democratic society combined with our military and economic strength that keep the world in line.

My other thought on this was...does Bill secretly read my blog? Because this does sound an awful lot like things I have said. Or maybe it's the simple fact that he feels the same frustration I do that we have to waste our time managing people's fantasies. Ignoring them clearly won't work as it was these fantasies that, more or less, won back the House of Representatives.

His list is quite ridiculous, though, and when you hear it all together one has to wonder how much longer are we going to have to dither with these manufactured crises? We have real problems that we need to deal with and the screaming about the New Black Panther Party pushes us backward.

Of course, this makes complete sense when you consider one of my favorite books, recently updated, by Barry Glassner. In The Culture of Fear, Glassner's essential point is that we are afraid of all the wrong things. It is our perception, not reality, that has changed. I submit that perception is exactly what the right wing media (in particular the right wing blogsphere) very much want to control. They have found great success in doing this and will continue as long as there is an audience.

So, what would cause them to lose that audience? Teachers and media outlets like NPR.

What a coincidence....
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25 comments:

Last in line said...

That's not the reason you lost the House.

Anonymous said...

I don't believe it is just "coincidence" that FoxNews Redeye has much more attractive female guests.

Anonymous said...

BUSH LIED!

LIBYANS DIED!

Impeach Bush/Cheney NOW!



http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1368314/German-newspaper-publishes-suppressed-photos-U-S-soldiers-posing-partially-naked-Afghan-corpse.html

jeff c. said...

I guess having a democracy is now another "fantasy" we have to do away with in our country.

Mark Ward said...

How so, Jeff? I don't follow. Then again I've been busy today and haven't been paying attention to the inter webs.

Larry said...

Those last couple of sentences of yours are from so far out in left field, Marxy, the players have tentacles, not hands. That's some weapons-grade crazy you've got going there.

Anonymous said...

Yet another example of the Corporations dealing with a problem! Note that they couldn't make a profit when the people of Libya nationalized the oil for the good of all the people! The US trades weapons for oil. Libya doesn't want our weapons, or need to give us oil. They had to be attacked! Now we will arm the rebels, as long as they promise to do business with us. i.e. "be our friends"

You saw this coming Mark!

Oh, but wait... wasn't our new president a clean articulate negro? How could I have been so distracted?

jeff c. said...

Mark: I made the very large mistake of checking out a recent post of Kevin Baker's on education in which someone commented that democracy needed to be done away with because voters were stupid. Of course all of it was blamed on liberals. They did come close to guessing the real problem with education when they mentioned how everyone knows every contestant on American Idol but their brains couldn't connect that to corporations-the real problem.

Larry said...

I made the mistake of checking up on what had been said at Kevin's site, being a non-trusting soul. As I half-expected, the only comment that might possibly be hammered enough to be forced into the hole you want seems sarcastic to me. Would you care to link to the exact quote that set your spidey-senses tingling?

BTW, I find it hard to blame corporations for failure of school to do their basic functions (yet at costs rising on average significantly above inflation). Neo-Liberals (because they for damned sure aren't Classical Liberals), and they've certainly got the leftist/statist attitude down. While Mussolini raged against liberals, he meant the liberals of his time. The American liberal of today is a complete inversion of a classical liberal, and if you removed references to Mussolini and updated a handful of anachronisms, they'd be having tingles up their legs they'd like them so much.

I will note that the social conservative wing of the GOP are just another manifestation of the old progressive movement. They're not classical liberal, either, by any stretch of the imagination. I would be happy if the GOP could jettison them, but political realities being what they are, they would relegate themselves to 3rd place status, squabbling with the libertarians, who are too fractured and fractious to ever come together for long as a coherent party.

Bcut I don't see how one can not put much of the blame on schools on the neo-liberals. For the most part, they run and staff the schools, they run the educational mills that "train" and certify that new teachers have been properly indoctrinated. Schools have mostly followed the fads that have come out of the ed "schools" (a friend of mine who got a BA in American History said the education classes he had to take to be able to teach in Montana were the most worthless classes he'd had since 6th grade. He was of the opinion that his classmates who majored in education shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a classroom until they'd actually completed a "real" degree, because not only were they ignorant about so much, they had no idea just how ignorant they really were. But they had lots of confidence and self-esteem.

Meanwhile, the evil corporations keep doing all their corporationy things and screwing up the schools, because they have a vested interested in promoting the rise of an uneducated, unemployable generation of people, because somehow, after an unknown step occurs, they will profit just like the underpants gnomes did. Riiight.

Mark Ward said...

Jeff, there's not much point in reading Kevin's posts on education. He says the same wrong thing over and over again which, I suppose, is a definition of insanity, right? I checked out the post, though, and I think the comment about democracy was meant in sarcasm so no need to get your undies in a bunch.

Good point on the American Idol reference though. It is exactly what I am talking about. Larry, if every student knows all the contestants on American Idol, isn't that proof positive that the corporate owned mass media has overrun the socialization of our children? The same holds true if every student knows all the characters on the Simpsons. And that's the school's fault? Try the parents!

It's not liberal ideology that's the problem. I'm in front of kids every day and we simply can't compete with what they see as successful and "cool" in our culture: materialism and self involvement to the max. As I seem to be saying a lot lately, you have the wrong adversary. Certainly, there has been fault with the schools but there has also been fault with parents and the local communities as well. This is what I was saying in the MJG post if you read it. And teachers are a problem as well because they too have been overrun by the mass media. One can see evidence of this in how sports is treated in schools, for example. Honestly, it's our whole culture that has been overrun.

This is something we could come together on if the right would stop with the fantasy problems. An example of this would be the "Liberals are Fascists and indoctrinating our children in schools" meme that you mention above. It's simply not true.

Also not true is the "self esteem" meme. Another fantasy problem invented by the right. Go into a school and see for yourself. Spend a full week at a junior high and you'll see that classroom management, for example, is an actual problem as opposed to the manufactured one of overly sensitive teachers.

juris imprudent said...

Also not true is the "self esteem" meme.

Dude, when Doonesbury is crackin' on ya, it ain't a manifestation of the right-wing fever swamps. This may never have really extended beyond California, but it sure as hell happened here - and it was liberal Dems behind it.

And speaking of fevered imaginations - taking a sarcastic comment as literal, ouch.

Then again - you defend the accusation against corporations, which is wrong-headed. Giving people Idol or the Simpsons is not some evil fucking plot - it is giving people what they want. Funny how you aren't putting down a thousand other shows that came and went with barely any notice - why? Because your thesis of what is popular is bad depends entirely on what is popular. The Romans knew about this some two thousand years ago - bread and circuses ring any bells?

Anonymous said...

I refuse to let my kids watch I Dream of Jeannie. Imagine an unmarried man and woman living in the same house!

The End Is Near!

rld said...

So we could come together and solve the problem, if it wasn't for the right. Gee, how did I know it would be the rights fault.

juris imprudent said...

Gee, how did I know it would be the rights fault.

The Preacher sez we must repent of our sinful ways. We must only think allowable thoughts, lest we call down damnation on all.

Mark Ward said...

As long as we have to continue to waste time managing the right's fantasy problems, then yes, it is primarily their fault.

6Kings said...

As long as we have to continue to waste time managing the right's fantasy problems, then yes, it is primarily their fault.

Deluded as ever....

GuardDuck said...

The left's fantasy is that it has ever successfully managed a problem....

Mark Ward said...

I have yet to see (other than in micro circumstances like Harding and deregulation) where most of the ideology of the right works in reality. It's getting worse every day. Just listen to Bill's list. None of these problems are real.

Guard Duck, I'd say guiding us out of the Depression, defeating the greatest army the world has ever seen and creating a boom unlike any other this country has ever seen is evidence that you are wrong. All of this was done under the guidance of a democratic socialist and a liberal democrat.

More specifically, social security reduced poverty in the elderly by 40 percent since it first began. Problem successfully managed.

juris imprudent said...

All of this was done under the guidance of a democratic socialist and a liberal democrat.

The one who was a plutocrat and opposed public employee unions.

Anonymous said...

Is it ok if I consider AGW a fantasy of the left?

Anonymous said...

Can I assume any possible victory in "The War on Poverty" is a fantasy of the left?

Anonymous said...

How about 'if we get rid of all guns, we get rid of crime'?

Leftist fantasy?

rld said...

Problem successfully managed? I notice you were careful not to say Problem Solved.

Larry said...

Mark, you're so blinkered. Who gives a shit if kids know popular culture? Kids have always known popular culture. Do you honestly think kids of the 30's and 40's didn't know the baseball stars, the Hollywood stars and starlets, the serials at the movies? However, they also knew what they were supposed to know from school. Yes, American culture and families have changed over the generations, but how many of those changes were direct (if often unintentional) results of liberal policies? Moynihan, himself a liberal, warned about exactly what was happening to black families back in the 1960's, and now those same effects he noted then have spread across nearly the whole non-Asian population of the US. Give them another generation or two and they'll be rusted, too, from the corroding influence of socialist ideals masquerading as "liberal".

Anonymous said...

It’s funny how many articles and news come out on a weekly basis.