Wrapping Up the Election -- From Red Rock Eater News Service\r\n \r\n\r\n\r\nWrapping Up the Election -- From Red Rock Eater News Service<\/b><\/p>
\r\n\r\n\r\nBy Phil Agre<\/b><\/p>
\r\n\r\nSun Dec 24 10:15:09 2000<\/p>
\r\n\r\n\r\nHere are some notes to wrap up the election.<\/p>
\r\n\r\n1<\/p>
\r\n\r\nIt must be hard for George W. Bush. He's always had things handed to\r\nhim by his father's friends. And now his father's friends have handed\r\nhim the White House. An aristocrat who is related to five kings,\r\nW. has inherited his office without the trouble of counting the votes.\r\nIt's nice that George has finally found something that he wants to\r\ndo, but it's a real problem for the rest of us.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nWe are compelled to\r\nface the problem of living in a country without a legitimate government.\r\nWhat do we do? Do we break laws? Do we burn things down? Well, no.\r\nSociety needs institutions, and this isn't like recess where the rules\r\nhave been suspended for a while. We'll pretend that the institutions\r\nare in effect until such time as George W. gets out of Al Gore's house\r\nand we can put the institutions back into effect in a legitimate way. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nLegitimacy is a tricky thing. Nobody has the power to make a country's\r\npolitical institutions legitimate, because anybody who did have\r\nthat power would already *be* the country's legitimate institutions.\r\nThat's why we make myths about the Founding Fathers, and why we treat\r\nthe Constitution as quasi-sacred. Otherwise every next question of\r\nlegitimacy would initiate a regress that could never stop. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nAnd that's\r\nthe regress that faces us now: the Supreme Court, ultimate giver of\r\nlaw, has shown itself to be lawless. We have no appeals. So lots of\r\npeople have chosen to pretend that something legitimate has happened,\r\nsince the alternative -- acknowledging reality -- seems so much worse. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nWhat, then, is legitimacy? It has two aspects, which we might call\r\nsubjective and objective. An institution is subjectively legitimate\r\nif its putative constituents regard it as legitimate. Government\r\nis by the consent of the governed. But no institution is legitimate\r\nunless it is also objectively legitimate, meaning that it conforms to\r\nnorms of justice and rationality such as the rule of law. Of course,\r\nno absolute authority exists to settle disputes about the objective\r\naspects of legitimacy, because any authority that does claim to settle\r\nsuch disputes must itself be legitimated. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nThe point, rather, is that\r\nindividuals and minorities must always have recourse to claims about\r\nobjective legitimacy. Subjective legitimacy is intrinsically fuzzy,\r\nsince it is not violated if a single nut doesn't go along with the\r\nconsensus. So the goal of the US civil rights movement, to take an\r\nexample, was to deprive an unjust and irrational institution of its\r\nlegitimacy through appeals to objective norms of justice and reason,\r\nand to wrap itself in the founding myths of the country in doing so.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nThat's why I found striking the recent news that Otpor -- the Serbian\r\nstudent movement aimed at subverting the late government of Slobodan\r\nMilosevic -- was largely trained and funded by the Republican Party\r\nand supplied with frequently polling results by Republican pollsters,\r\nand especially that the training consisted largely in lessons on the\r\nphilosophy of nonviolent resistance, taught no less by a military guy.<\/p>
\r\n\r\n http:\/\/washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/articles\/A18395-2000Dec3.html<\/p>
\r\n\r\nThe first principle of nonviolent resistance, according to the lessons\r\nthat Otpor learned, is to take away the authority -- the legitimacy --\r\nof the institutions. In Otpor's case that legitimacy was hanging on\r\na thread already, thanks to years of corruption and vote fraud, and so\r\ntheir main job was to make this fact visible with images and slogans\r\nand wait for the legitimate opposition to get organized. (It was the\r\nDemocratic Party and its trainers and pollsters that helped with this.)<\/p>
\r\n\r\nThe irony here is deep. Nonviolent resistance in the United States,\r\nof course, originated with the aforementioned civil rights movement,\r\nwhich got it partly from their own reading of Christianity and partly\r\nfrom Gandhi. The racist establishment the civil rights movement was\r\nfighting was at that time affiliated with the Democratic Party, but it\r\nhas since changed over to the Republicans, who today are intertwined\r\nwith scores of think tanks devoted to curtailing the enforcement of\r\ncivil rights laws, all of which are applauding John Ashcroft's recent\r\nappointment to attorney general.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nThe Republicans, though, have considerable experience undermining\r\nthe legitimacy of democratic institutions. They do this, as is their\r\nhabit, through projection: by issuing false claims that non-Republican\r\noffice-holders are themselves undermining the legitimacy of the\r\ninstitutions in which they hold their offices. Thus, for example,\r\nthe false accusations of judicial activism against the Florida Supreme\r\nCourt or the attacks on the various Florida canvassing boards, all\r\ndefended on the most irresponsible grounds. And the pattern goes back\r\nmany years, for example to the thoroughgoing smear campaign against\r\nBill Clinton, Janet Reno, and Al Gore. It is a dangerous game, and it\r\nis now coming back to haunt them.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nIt is dangerous for a deep reason, that institutions can only remain\r\nobjectively legitimate if appeals to reason have any effect in the\r\nsociety. By using their vast access to the media to promote a jargon\r\nthat is fundamentally irrational, and to use that jargon to decimate\r\nrational thought in every sphere of public life, the right has created\r\na mirror game in which everything is turned backward, and in which the\r\nsociety's institutions could not possibly be legitimate. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nUndermining\r\nlegitimacy is central to the jargon: people who differ with the far\r\nright face twisted accusations that there are doing so illegitimately,\r\nfor example being called \"biased\" or \"partisan\" even if they were\r\nnot speaking in any capacity to which those words could be applied.\r\nLikewise, members of the far right took over many Usenet newsgroups\r\nby issuing similar accusations against anyone who disagreed with them,\r\neven to the point of filing bogus complaints with their opponents' ISP's\r\nor employers. Principled conservatives presumably regret all of this,\r\nand refrain from using the jargon themselves. But thus far they don't\r\nseem unhappy about it.<\/p>
\r\n\r\n2<\/p>
\r\n\r\nI was struck throughout the post-election conflict in Florida at the\r\nquality of the legal work that was done by nearly everybody -- all\r\nof it on impossibly accelerated schedules. Someone should benchmark\r\nelection law when it comes time to bring the legal system into the\r\n21st century. There were only two major exceptions to these high\r\nstandards of quality. One was the ridiculous decision of circuit\r\nJudge Sanders Sauls, which was just a personality problem. The other\r\nexception was the United States Supreme Court, whose stay order and\r\ndecision in Bush vs. Gore were both pieces of junk. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nThose documents\r\nwere both terrible. They were badly reasoned, and they failed even\r\nto apply conventional methods of analysis. The final decision was\r\nespecially bad; it was factually shoddy, it cited precedents in ways\r\nthat were basically false, and it consisted of a confusing patchwork\r\nof opinions that allows itself to be read as 5-4, 7-2, or even as 3-6,\r\ndepending on how you looked at it.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nBut the most shocking aspect of the Supreme Court's decision is that,\r\neven though they provided nothing approaching a basis in precedent to\r\nsupport their holding on Bush's equal protection claim, they declared\r\nthat their decision does not provide a precedent for future decisions.\r\nBecause the Supreme Court is the ultimate arbiter of the law, it is\r\naccountable only through its obligation to give rational arguments for\r\nits decisions, and through the requirement that its decisions serve as\r\nprecedents. No court can anticipate all of the circumstances in which\r\nits decisions might later become relevant, and so it has an incentive\r\nto frame those decisions in a rational way, lest the court be blamed\r\nfor causing perverse legal consequences in future cases. This court\r\nrefused that responsibility, and with it any pretense to legitimacy.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nWhat is more, in the present case some of the foreclosed consequences\r\nof establishing a precedent are entirely clear. If the court can\r\ndilute the rational basis test for finding equal protection violations\r\nin state laws to this degree, and if it can apply the equal protection\r\ntest to a right that it itself regards as a creation of the state\r\nlegislature and not as a Constitutional right, and if it can find\r\nan equal protection violation in a situation where the harm is so\r\nspeculative and applies to so few people, and where the people are\r\nnot members of any suspect category, and where no claim has even\r\nbeen made that the harm was intentional, then a whole lot of other\r\nequal protection claims thereby become feasible. If the court had\r\nbeen intellectually honest about their decision then we would all be\r\ncelebrating a new golden age of equal protection. But it wasn't, and\r\nwe aren't.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nYet another disturbing aspect of the decision was the concurrence\r\nby Justices Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas. Whereas the majority only\r\nhad a problem with the Florida legislature's standard for counting the\r\nvotes, the concurrence would also have overturned in a sweeping way\r\nthe actions of the Florida Supreme Court. Others have explained more\r\nexpertly than I could why this concurrence was wrong -- the simple\r\nanswer is that the legislature gave the courts broad powers to settle\r\nelection contests. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nWhat was disturbing was the appeal to precedents\r\nfrom the Jim Crow era in which the Supreme Court struck down state\r\ncourt decisions that were flagrantly irrational, and that in the\r\ncontext of the times were plainly intended to flout the authority\r\nof the federal government in matters of civil rights. As Justice\r\nGinsburg observed in her dissent, nothing the Florida Supreme Court\r\nhad done came remotely close to meeting the standard established in\r\nthose cases.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nThe fact that Justice Rehnquist was using Jim Crow era precedents in\r\nthis particular case is highly significant. Rehnquist, as is well\r\nknown, got his start as a Republican activist against minority voting\r\nrights, and his entire career has been devoted to reestablishing the\r\n\"states rights\" regime that predated the 14th Amendment jurisprudence\r\nof the civil rights era. This is a pattern on the right: taking the\r\nrhetorical and legal tools that have arisen to help people defend\r\nthemselves against oppression, and using those tools against the\r\npeople who developed them. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nThus, for example, the practice of issuing\r\nbogus claims of double standards against the supposedly liberal media,\r\nand the practice of appropriating liberals' words and giving them new\r\nand twisted meanings. This latter practice is exceedingly common, and\r\nit seems almost like a reflex among numerous people who appear to be\r\nunacquainted with any other way of talking about politics. In using\r\nJim Crow era precedents and equal protection reasoning against Al Gore\r\nand the Democrats, Justice Rehnquist was declaring victory. Indeed he\r\nwas spiking the ball -- engaging in a gratuitous display of ugliness\r\nthat we can only hope history will remember.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nThe fact that Justice Thomas joined with Rehnquist and Scalia's\r\nconcurrence was especially horrible. I can understand a conservative\r\nAfrican-American opposing affirmative action; affirmative action is\r\ninescapably problematic and controversial, and in a perfect world it\r\nwould certainly not exist. But for an African-American Supreme Court\r\njustice to concur with this twisted abuse of Jim Crow era precedents\r\nto decide an election is completely over the top.<\/p>
\r\n\r\n3<\/p>
\r\n\r\nIn the wake of the electoral debacle in Florida, a broad consensus\r\nhas emerged that the American electoral system needs to be reformed.\r\nFor example, upwards of 90% of Americans in polls say that the country\r\nneeds uniform national standards. Particular attention has focused\r\non voting machines, particularly the punch-card ballot machines whose\r\nconfusing design and malfunctions create such havoc in the generally\r\npoorer areas where they are still being used. And certainly the\r\nvoting machines should be fixed. But even though voting machines are\r\na technological problem that we can fix in a technological manner, we\r\nneed to keep in mind that fixing the voting system is a much larger\r\nproblem.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nThe fact is, the current system is the way it is because it benefits\r\nsomeone. It is not an accident that most of the voting problems in\r\nFlorida affected Democrats, or that politicians from both parties\r\nfell over themselves to fix the military absentee ballot problems that\r\ndisproportionately affected Republicans. It was the Republicans who\r\nthought it appropriate to respond to Republican voting fraud by hiring\r\na Republican company to disenfranchise thousands of largely Democratic\r\nvoters. It is the Republicans who have opposed the fraud-resistant\r\n\"motor voter\" laws on the grounds that they make it too easy to vote.\r\n(They really say this.) It is the Republicans who oppose Congressional\r\nrepresentation for the District of Columbia on the grounds that the\r\nmajority of the District's residents are Democrats. (They really say\r\nthis too.) <\/p>
\r\n\r\nIt has been considerate of the press to portray our voting\r\nsystem problems as a bipartisan matter, because that will provide the\r\nRepublicans with a face-saving way to reverse their historical record\r\nof hostility to effective voting rights for anyone but themselves, if\r\nthat is what they choose. But it is not true.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nRecent reports by the Wall Street Journal remind us of just how broad\r\nan issue voting rights is, and how complex the whole social system of\r\nvoting. No voting machine will guarantee that voters in poor areas\r\nare always assigned to polling places that are within reach of public\r\ntransportation, or that voters will be notified of the location of\r\npolling places by any means more effective than a small announcement\r\nin the newspaper six months before. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nWill we have laws to ensure that\r\nrich and poor districts have equally good technology for locating a\r\nvoter's registration, or that rich and poor districts will both have\r\nenough poll workers to avoid long lines? Are we going to require long\r\nenough voting hours that working-class people have a chance to vote?\r\nLocal authorities have a thousand ways of suppressing voter turnout\r\nin poor neighborhoods if that's what they want, and the lack of a tax\r\nbase in poor communities already makes it likely that the elections\r\nwill not be run well.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nAn equal chance to vote, in other words, goes far beyond demonstrable\r\ngovernment intent to suppress voting. Not that I'm saying anything\r\nnew here: this was all plain common sense during the civil rights\r\nera, back when conservatives believed in local control. The recent\r\nelection, however, reveals that conservatives believe in local control\r\nprovided that they control it. Having been burned by local control\r\nthat they didn't control, perhaps they can be shamed into supporting\r\nuniform standards for effective voting rights. National standards\r\nfor voting would enjoy the economies of scale that locally organized\r\nvoting so obviously lacks, and it would make effective voting into\r\nan issue for everyone, rather than the subject of thousands of local\r\nbudgetary fights.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nThe fact is, the United States' voting system is poor by the standards\r\nof many third world countries. We do not have an independent election\r\ncommission. We have state elections being regulated and certified\r\nby the campaign chair of one of the candidate's campaigns, a conflict\r\nof interest that would be considered obscene in Serbia. (Then we have\r\nthat same campaign comparing their *opponent* to Slobodon Milosevic.) <\/p>
\r\n\r\nMy point is not the cliche that the US should stop lecturing everybody\r\nelse about democracy -- democracy is simply the right way to live,\r\nand everyone should be lecturing everyone else about it whether they\r\nare perfect themselves or not. My point, rather, is that the United\r\nStates should stop pretending that it is sui generis, and develop\r\nsome capacity for shame when it fails to live up to the standards of\r\nNicaragua.<\/p>
\r\n\r\n4<\/p>
\r\n\r\nLots of people right now are saying, oh well, the country survived\r\nRonald Reagan, and how much worse can George W. be than that. That's\r\nnot my view. The difference between W. and Reagan is that Reagan\r\ndidn't have much of a bench. Faced with the problem of staffing the\r\ntop layers of entire federal government, Reagan was forced to hire a\r\nbunch of crooks and fools, for example at Interior and the EPA, who\r\ncontributed to the quite amazing record of official corruption that\r\nRepublicans have tried to erase in recent years by promoting bogus\r\ninvestigations against Bruce Babbit, Alexis Herman, Henry Cisneros,\r\nMike Espy, and Hillary Clinton, among others. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nThe difference with\r\nW. is that the conservative movement, having attracted high levels\r\nof funding from its wealthy beneficiaries, has recruited and trained\r\na whole generation of pundits, staffers, and operatives, many of\r\nthem very talented. Most of these people came of age during the\r\nwars of the Clinton era, when they did the day-to-day gruntwork that\r\na campaign of personal destruction requires. Character assassination\r\nis all these people know. They have been positively reinforced by the\r\nSupreme Court, and now they will be taking second- and third-ranking\r\npositions throughout the incoming administration. All of the moral\r\nconstraints that might have curbed the Reagan administration to some\r\nslight degree are wearing away, I think we can expect four bad years. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nOf particular concern is the state of the media. One of the media's\r\nroles in a democracy is to call attention to false assertions on the\r\npart of the powerful. Yet during the campaign the media's role was\r\npretty much the opposite. Its performance in this regard was nothing\r\nshort of astonishing. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nIn the early part of the campaign, the media\r\nbacked John McCain, until George W. Bush destroyed him in a bestial\r\ncampaign of smears. So how did the media respond to this horror?\r\nIt responded by shifting its allegiance to Bush, as every survey of\r\nmedia content, including those of conservative groups, demonstrated. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nBush then proceeded to destroy Al Gore in a bestial campaign of smears.\r\nSo what did the media do? It called Bush \"likable\" and credited him\r\nwith \"character\". And it explained that Gore's emphasis on reason and\r\nissues was just a \"tactic\" that he adopted because he isn't as likable\r\nor robust of character as Bush. I found this pattern terrifying.\r\nHow can this media be trusted to keep the Bush administration honest?<\/p>
\r\n\r\nLiberals are blaming Gore for his lousy campaign. For example, they\r\nask why Gore didn't respond to the easily documented falsehoods that\r\nissued daily from the Bush camp. This blaming of Gore is simply more\r\nevidence of the liberal passive-aggressive death wish. Gore's major\r\nproblem was not that he was timid, but that he didn't have the pundits\r\nwith him.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nEven if we stipulated, contrary to fact, that mainstream\r\nnews reporting exhibits a liberal bias, there can be no disputing that\r\nthe vast majority of political commentators with regular opinion slots\r\nin the major national media are conservative, and that the vast majority\r\nof the others are centrists at best. Conclusive proof of this pattern\r\nis provided by the simple fact that you read facts and arguments here\r\nthat you do not read in the major national media. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nDid you ever see a\r\nsingle commentator in the national media assemble a list of the false\r\nattacks on Al Gore's character by the Bush campaign? Can you assemble\r\na list of a dozen-plus false Democratic attacks on Bush's character\r\nthat were endlessly repeated by the pundits in the national news media?\r\nNo, you can't.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nThe consequences of the pundit gap are many, and they go far beyond\r\nthe ability of one side and not the other to lie with impunity. Have\r\nyou noticed that George W. Bush often speaks in allusions? He often\r\nuses broad, vague words that allude to arguments that have saturated\r\nthe media courtesy of the pundits. The party sends out its talking\r\npoints, the pundits talk, and the candidate just alludes to what the\r\npundits have said. That's what you can do when you have a few dozen\r\nmessage-disciplined pundits on your side. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nGore couldn't do that.\r\nHe had to do everything himself. If he wanted someone to be attacked,\r\nhe had to get someone in his campaign organization to do it. Bush,\r\non the other hand, could do whatever he wanted at arm's length and\r\nnot get called on it. That difference gave Bush a tremendous tactical\r\nfreedom that Gore lacked.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nOn a few occasions during the campaign, it should be allowed, George\r\nW. Bush was asked how he could square his promise to establish \"a new\r\ntone in Washington\" with the savagery of his campaign. He tended to\r\nlook surprised by the question, ducking it a couple of times before\r\nfinally saying, look, this is politics. And no doubt it was politics\r\nas he learned it from his father's campaigns. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nThe real question now\r\nis not whether Bush himself is going to stand before his podium and\r\nslander Tom Daschl in the course of budget negotiations. The question\r\nis whether Bush is going to call off the dogs. During the campaign,\r\nno Democrat could say the first bad word without the Republicans\r\ntrying to stick it on Gore, if only by pointedly observing that Gore\r\nhadn't told them to knock it off. (Of course, even when Gore did tell\r\nthem to knock it off, as he did in Florida, they went ahead and stuck\r\nit on him for weeks afterward anyway.) <\/p>
\r\n\r\nWell, during the coming years\r\nevery ounce of conservative slime should be stuck back on W. W. was\r\nthe intellectual author of the horrible campaign against John McCain\r\nin South Carolina, and the equally horrible campaign against Al Gore.\r\nHe shouldn't be allowed to call in the rhetorical artillery every time\r\nhe needs someone else to be destroyed in the next four years.<\/p>
\r\n\r\n5<\/p>
\r\n\r\nOn the Wednesday evening before the election, I heard a terrifying\r\ninterview with Charlton Heston on CNN. Wolf Blitzer presented him\r\nwith an NRA advertisement that stated in huge letters that Al Gore\r\nwants to ban guns in America, and then with a video clip of Al Gore\r\nsaying that it was false and a smear campaign. Heston simply called\r\nGore a liar. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nWhat most disturbed me was the language with which he\r\ndid this. Despite the unambiguous language of his own organization's\r\nad, Heston refused to address the question of whether Gore wants to\r\nban guns. Instead, he kept saying that Gore was \"against gun owners\"\r\nand was now lying when he claimed to be \"for gun owners\".\r\n\r\nIn doing this, Heston was using vague language to defocus the issue\r\nand make Gore's real position unthinkable. Gore supports a variety\r\nof gun safety and gun control measures that, while differing from the\r\npositions of the NRA, fall very far short of banning guns. But Heston\r\npersistently defocused the issue into the vague dichotomy of \"for\r\ngun owners\" and \"against gun owners\". Only extremes can be expressed\r\nin this language, and that was the point. The NRA was whipping large\r\nnumbers of working men into a frenzy by lying to them and by promoting\r\nthe use of language that is not consistent with rational thought.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nBlitzer also confronted Heston with quotations from a newspaper\r\nin which he seemed to be calling, in clear and literal terms, for\r\nAl Gore to be killed. Heston denied that he meant to associate the\r\nkilling language with Gore, even though he was talking about Gore's\r\npolicies, and then he blamed his inflammatory comments on the frenzy\r\nof the crowd at the NRA event where he was speaking -- a frenzy that\r\nwas produced by his own distorted rhetoric. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nWhen liberals do this\r\nit is called \"refusing to take personal responsibility\". In ancient\r\nGreece it was called demagoguery and was understood to be the major\r\nthreat to democracy. It is the modus operandi of the far right, and\r\nthat is why the contemporary far right so often issues false charges\r\nof demagoguery against its opponents.<\/p>
\r\n\r\n6<\/p>
\r\n\r\nI received many responses to to my lengthy analysis of the new jargon.\r\nLet me address four of the most common responses in turn.<\/p>
\r\n\r\n (1) You're doing it too.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nMany responses took this form; as I mentioned above, throwing people's\r\nwords back at them is an exceptionally common technique of the jargon.\r\nBut it's important that not everybody who said \"you're doing it too\"\r\nwas necessarily a member of the cult that I described -- the cult of\r\npeople who have cultivated the jargon so thoroughly that they are not\r\ncapable of civilized behavior and rational thought. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nTo the contrary,\r\nmany decent people simply live in such a jargon-filled world that they\r\nare unacquainted with any other way of talking about politics. So,\r\nfor example, I had people telling me things like \"you criticize others\r\nfor being biased, and not presenting both sides, but you, too, are a\r\nbit guilty of this\".<\/p>
\r\n\r\nObserve the civil tone of this. The person who\r\nwrote this is basically decent; it's just that his mind has become\r\nslightly infected with jargon. Note that his accusation against\r\nme is distorted. My \"new jargon\" message did not criticized others\r\nfor being biased. So far as I can find, my only uses of the word\r\n\"bias\" throughout the campaign were in the context of demonstrating\r\nthat the claims of liberal media bias were the opposite of the truth. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nIndeed, I specifically criticized others for abusing the term \"bias\"\r\n(as he was doing) in an overly loose way in order to delegitimate\r\nthe opinions of their opponents. Lots of people did this: watering\r\ndown my argument into a vague cliche that could be turned back around\r\nagainst me. And most of them were not nice about it.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nNow, of course, it is possible in principle that I am doing the things\r\nthat I accuse others of doing. After all, people who talk in jargon\r\ndo the things that they accuse others of doing all the time; it's\r\ncalled projection, and it's one of the central mechanisms of jargon.\r\nBut none of the many accusations against me had the slightest merit,\r\nand few had enough detail that they could be rationally evaluated. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nIn fact, having learned the word \"projection\", some people proceeded\r\nto throw that word back at me by accusing me of projection in various\r\nvague and distorted ways. They seemed delighted to have learned\r\na word that is so entertaining to wield as a weapon. The hall of\r\nmirrors gets bad at this point, with crazy people projecting their\r\nown projection onto me. It's a good thing that I believe in logical\r\nthought, or else I would be lost.<\/p>
\r\n\r\n (2) Everyone does it.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nSeveral people informed me that my argument were one-sided, inasmuch\r\nas Gore in particular or liberals in general also do the things I\r\ncomplained about. Nobody presented any evidence for this view, which\r\nthey seemed to regard as self-evident. Those who presented actual\r\narguments for it proceeded in pretty much the same way as the people\r\nwho provided response (1), namely by watering down my argument so that\r\nany case of doubletalk in history could be equated with the phenomena\r\nthat I described.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nMy response to these people is that, in fact, I rarely see Democrats\r\nor liberals do the things that I described in my \"new jargon\" article.\r\nThe point is not that Democrats and liberals are completely pure;\r\nthe point, rather, is that the new jargon is a specific repertoire of\r\ntactics with its own history and logic. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nMaybe someone should perform\r\na separate analysis of the varieties of doubletalk that Democrats and\r\nliberals use, but they rarely use the ones that I described. To give\r\nan example, I rarely see liberal pundits do something that is common\r\namong conservatives: pick a vaguely framed message (usually to the\r\neffect their opponents are bad people), string together a disparate\r\nhandful of factoids from diverse times and places that seem in an\r\nimpressionistic way to support the message, conclude that the chosen\r\nmessage captures the essence of the entire category of opponents that\r\nthey are castigating, and then weave that message together with other\r\nassorted disparagements that have been spread about by that pundit\r\nor others. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nIf this were a liberal method then you would have seen\r\nsomeone, somewhere in the national media, put together a list of\r\nGeorge W. Bush's false personal attacks on Al Gore's character and\r\nthen conclude in a foggy way that all of Bush's accusations against\r\nGore were false. But you never saw this, and for a simple reason:\r\nthe fashioning of strategically vague messages and the gathering of\r\nrandom factoids that support the prescribed message are the central\r\nmethods of public relations. That's where the Republican operatives\r\nand conservative pundits got them, and that's what they have proceeded\r\nto teach to their followers.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nA subcategory of \"everyone does it\", common among liberals, was \"this\r\nis nothing new\". These people pointed to various kinds of doubletalk\r\nthroughout history, and they asked what is new about the new jargon. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nAgain the argument depends on watering down my argument. The new\r\njargon is new in a straightforward sense: plenty of current vocabulary\r\nitems (\"junk science\", \"political correctness\", \"pattern\", \"partisan\",\r\n\"bias\", and so on) are now used in systematic ways that differ from\r\nthe ways they were used ten years ago. Many of the common phrases of\r\nthe new jargon didn't even exist ten years ago. So the new jargon is\r\nnew in that sense. But it is also new in a deeper sense. Many of the\r\nunderlying methods of the new jargon, including ones that I described\r\nin my various close-readings of jargon texts, are hard to find in\r\nthe rhetoric of earlier times -- at least in the rhetoric of the 1980s.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nAt the same time, I do not mean to say that the new jargon is wholly\r\nwithout precedents. As I say, the new jargon derives from public\r\nrelations, and is an extension and radicalization of the reason-\r\ndestroying strategies that were pioneered quite openly by people like\r\nEdward Bernays. And while I do believe that the rhetorical technology\r\nof the new jargon is more sophisticated than the technology of any\r\nearlier period in history, I am not certain that the sheer intensity\r\nof the ideological assault of the 1990s is any greater than, say, the\r\nassault organized by the National Association of Manufacturers and its\r\nallies in the face of the post-war organizing boom of the Truman era.<\/p>
\r\n\r\n (3) Are you saying they're mentally ill?<\/p>
\r\n\r\nOne element of the jargon, I said, is projection. Since projection\r\nis a psychological term, some people asked whether I am saying that\r\nthe people who cultivate the jargon are mentally ill -- after all, I\r\nalso called the Bush campaign \"insane\" for lying and exaggerating about\r\nAl Gore's supposed lies and exaggerations. It is a complex question. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nI am certainly not saying that people who speak in jargon have organic\r\ndiseases; I do not believe that they have anything wrong with their\r\nbrain chemistry. Nor do I believe that the people who speak in jargon\r\nare simply expressing a childhood trauma that induced a mental illness\r\nthat happens that take this form. That sort of hypothesis obviously\r\nmakes no sense, given that most of these people did not learn the\r\njargon as children. The question, then, is how the decision to speak\r\nin jargon interacts with personality structure.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nI don't believe that everyone has a fixed and settled personality that\r\nis either neurotic or psychotic or whatever. I believe that people's\r\ncharacter evolves over their whole lives through the interaction of\r\nfactors on many levels. One of those levels is certainly the person's\r\nformative experience of reason, trust, and other basic aspects of\r\nhuman relationships. Another of those levels is cultural. Someone\r\nwho grew up in a pathological environment might seek out a healthy\r\nenvironment in an attempt to set themselves straight. Another person\r\nwho grew up in similar circumstances might listen to Rush Limbaugh and\r\nhang around with people who talk in jargon in an attempt to become a\r\njerk. That's a choice.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nThen there are people who grew up in fair-to-middling environments,\r\nand who simply find themselves in a jargon-filled environment because\r\nof where they live or who they associate with. The pundits may\r\noffer them ways to have cruel fun at the expense of others, or they\r\nmay pander to some mild insecurity by means of nasty stereotyping of\r\npeople who supposedly regard themselves as superior, and they might\r\ningest this poison without really thinking about it. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nBy this method\r\nan otherwise relatively healthy individual might be recruited into\r\na cult whose members cultivate an irrational jargon in more and more\r\nextreme forms, to such an extent that it changes their personality\r\nstructure. Those people, I would claim, induce a mental illness in\r\nthemselves through their cultivation of jargon, and by practicing the\r\nkinds of abusive interactions with other people that I have dissected\r\nhere. I don't know whether such people are literally capable of\r\nmaking themselves psychotic in a sense that a psychologist would\r\nrecognize. Quite possibly their thought disorder will be confined\r\nto political topics and to a generalized selfishness and disregard\r\nfor others. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nMy point is that the clinical theories, by focusing\r\non one account of etiology and disregarding the role of culture and\r\ncultivation, have a shallow understanding of what mental illness is.\r\nSo am I saying that they are mentally ill? Yes, the hard-core ones,\r\nbut only in this more interactional sense of mental illness. <\/p>
\r\n\r\n (4) So what's this about them being a cult?<\/p>
\r\n\r\nI have indeed referred to the people who cultivate the new jargon as\r\na cult, and a couple of people wrote to ask whether I mean it. I do,\r\nbut again in a sense that needs to be defined. One person, a family\r\ntherapist, wrote me an interesting message about having been asked to\r\nlook into a religious group that appeared to be exhibiting cult-like\r\ntendencies. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nHis conclusion was that the group did in fact behave like\r\na cult, but that there was no cult leader setting out to brainwash\r\nanyone, and no particular individual orchestrating the pathological\r\ngroup dynamics of thought-control. It really was something emergent\r\nas far as he could tell.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nThis family therapist then asked whether I believe that the cult of\r\njargon is similarly emergent. Well, I certainly don't believe that\r\nthe cult of jargon is a single hierarchical organization controlled by\r\na single personality. Nor do I believe that any one person invented\r\nthe jargon. As I say, it descends from public relations, and my sense\r\nis that it emerges through the echo chamber as scores of pundits copy\r\none another, probably consciously, so that every small innovation in\r\njargon gets instantly taken up, echoed, applied to other topics, and\r\ninterwoven with the existing jargon. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nIndividual cult members choose\r\nto cultivate the jargon because they regard it as a way to smite the\r\ninfidels. Having already dissociated all conscience about matters\r\nof truth and logic -- it is the infidels who they imagine to have\r\nno regard for truth and logic -- the cultists have no problem saying\r\nthings that aren't true or don't make sense. They are not concerned\r\nwith such things.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nThe cultists, then, in my understanding, are part of a dynamic that\r\nfuels itself through projection -- all of the evil gets projected into\r\nthe infidels, and thereby seems to demand that even greater evil be\r\ncultivated. On the other hand, the individual techniques of jargon do\r\ncome from somewhere. The pundits are just conduits. The individual\r\ntalking points, vocabulary items, rhetorical techniques, stereotypes,\r\netc are all devised by professionals in think tanks, at the op-ed page\r\nof the Wall Street Journal, on a thousand corporate PR staffs, and so\r\non, all of whom know exactly what they are doing.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nIt bears repeating that all of these dynamics come in degrees. At\r\none extreme, some jargon-speaking individuals are hard-core addicts\r\nwho have wrecked their own minds just as thoroughly as any member of\r\na therapy or self-realization cult. Indeed, I've had several friends\r\ngo through such cults, and I have attended several indoctrination\r\nmeetings at their invitation, including some at which I was the only\r\nnon-cult member in the room. In this context I have deliberately\r\nentered into conversations with \"trainers\" in which they tried to\r\ntake my mind away and I gave them just enough information about me\r\nto let them think that they were succeeding, just because I wanted\r\nto understand what they were doing. I learned a lot that way, and\r\nit has helped me to understand phenomena in many other areas of life.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nThe basic technique of cult mind-control, in my own experience, is\r\nto persuade someone to treat their doubts -- first their resistances\r\nto getting their life together, and then their resistances to giving\r\nall of their money to the cult and devoting their lives to recruiting\r\nnew cult members -- as alien enemies to be isolated and rejected.\r\nThe resistances might be labeled as machine-like tape recordings,\r\nor as the internalized voices of enemies, or as a fake mask that one\r\nadopts to avoid exposing one's real self to the world. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nOne develops\r\nthe skill of identifying a resistance, objectifying it in this way,\r\nand then blowing past it to take the action that it would otherwise\r\nhave prevented you from taking. The first resistances to be treated\r\nin this way might well be neurotic fears that stand in the way of\r\nworthwhile actions. But once the skill of dissociating resistances\r\nis cultivated, it is applied to ever more basic resistances, leading\r\nthe individual to replace his or her entire personality with that of\r\nthe leader of the cult.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nThat, in my experience, is how cults work, and it is not far different\r\nfrom the process of learning jargon. Every resistance to talking\r\nnonsense and acting like a jerk is labeled as the sanctimony of\r\nliberals and expelled. That is the purpose of projection: casting out\r\nevery element of one's personality that is not consistent with playing\r\none's part in an irrationally oppressive social order. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nThe pathology\r\ncomes in different degrees. In reading the jargon-laced messages\r\nthat people have sent me, and interacting with some of them, there is\r\na clear spectrum. At one end of the spectrum are hard-core cultists\r\nwho are aggressively irrational. I've talked about them already. In\r\nthe middle of the spectrum are people who engage in false accusations,\r\ntwisting of language, falsely throwing your words back at you, and so\r\non, but who have no rancor about them and are genuinely puzzled that\r\nyou have a problem with them. Their minds are far enough gone that\r\nthey have a jargon-answer ready for anything you might say to them,\r\nbut they have not yet descended into the harsh, snide vituperation of\r\nthe really whacked-out.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nAnd then at the normal end of the spectrum, as I've said above,\r\nare rational people who live in a culture of jargon and simply don't\r\nknow any other way to talk about politics. These latter people, for\r\nexample, will often back off and apologize when it's pointed out in\r\npolite and analytical terms what they are doing. They retain enough\r\nof their rational faculties to recognize what they have done when\r\nit is pointed out to them, and they will actually admit, yes, you're\r\nright, I was taking your words and mechanically throwing them back\r\nat you without having any real argument in mind to support what I was\r\ndoing.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nThis latter group are the people who are retrievable, who retain some\r\nhealthy parts to their minds, and who have not yet made jargon into\r\nthe organizing principle of their personalities. It is important,\r\nin my view, to address those people. They have already developed\r\nantibodies to most of the nonconservative ways of talking that are\r\ncurrently in widespread use in American political culture. The\r\ndemocratic language of the 1980's will not work on these people,\r\nmuch less the democratic language of the 1930's. A working majority\r\nof democratically-minded people will not be reassembled until a new\r\nlanguage emerges, one that squarely identifies the jargon for what\r\nit is, that swears off irrational thought-forms of its own, and that\r\nspeaks to the many legitimate points that sane conservatives have\r\nactually raised.<\/p>
\r\n\r\n7<\/p>
\r\n\r\nMany people have supposed that my word-by-word analyses of jargon\r\nfollow some esoteric technique that one could learn from a book.\r\nIt is true that I was originally motivated to perform this sort\r\nof analysis by the tradition of close reading in literary criticism.\r\nIt is also true that I find most of the \"critical thinking skills\"\r\ntaught in logic and rhetoric classes to be woefully insufficient\r\nfor practical purposes. If anyone does want an introduction to\r\nserious ideas about literary analysis, the best place to start\r\nin my opinion is with the following seriously smart book: Frank\r\nLentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin, eds, Critical Terms for Literary\r\nStudy, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. (There is also\r\na second edition that I haven't seen.)<\/p>
\r\n\r\nBut the main thing I want to emphasize is that anybody can perform\r\nthis sort of analysis. The important things to know about it are\r\nnot technical but intuitive. The first intuition is that you are\r\ntreating the stuff as a scientific specimen. Everything you do\r\nis aimed at holding it still so that it loses its assaultive force. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nThis is particularly true when dealing with abusive, name-calling,\r\nsarcastic, scornful, mocking types of rhetoric that are aimed at\r\nyou as a person, or that stun the rational faculties by playing\r\nwith strong, primitive emotions. But it is also true for any sort\r\nof illogical propaganda. Quite regardless of whatever literary or\r\npsychological vocabulary one might invoke, the purpose of word-by-\r\nword close reading is simply to freeze the rhetoric and deprive it\r\nof its power to wound, confuse, or bait.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nYou know how when you say a word ten times it suddenly sounds strange\r\nand loses its meaning? This is similar: the literary critics call it\r\ndefamiliarization. It's a way to stop taking the jargon for granted\r\nand letting go by without thinking about it, and giving it more of a\r\ndetailed response than just shaking one's head and rolling one's eyes. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nIndeed, the hardest part of analyzing the jargon is simply having the\r\npresence of mind to document it. You read a nonsensical op-ed column\r\nand then you toss the newspaper; you hear something twisted on the\r\nradio and then go about your day; someone assaults you with right-wing\r\nrhetoric and you can't get out of there fast enough. Or else you feel\r\nprovoked to respond intemperately, which is of course just what they\r\nwant. In either case rather than dealing with the stuff rationally\r\nyour mind spasms and spits it out, as if stung by an electric shock,\r\nand only by draining the stuff of its shock-value can you retain the\r\npresence of mind to capture it for science.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nThe next intuition is the importance of naming. Putting a name on\r\na twisted rhetorical device serves many purposes. It pins it down\r\nso that it loses its ability to scramble the mind. It helps you to\r\nnotice patterns, because once you have a name for something you are\r\nmore likely to notice it elsewhere. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nComparing and contrasting the\r\nvarious examples under a common heading will further defamiliarize\r\nthem. And naming the pattern helps others to notice it. Instead\r\nof being stunned, confused, terrorized, demoralized, dehumanized,\r\nor otherwise deprived of their critical faculties and voices, your\r\nfellow believers in democracy will be able to name what is happening\r\nto them and organize a rational response. It's okay to make up\r\nyour own names; nobody says that you have to use the names that have\r\nalready been canonized by some kind of academic theory. You don't\r\nneed academic theory to do this stuff, and if you are not an academic\r\nthen I would positively discourage you from reading most of it.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nThe last important intuition about the close-reading of jargon is that\r\nyou can learn an awful lot by studying a single passage very closely.\r\nQuantity is not important; what's important is sustained analysis of\r\nsingle examples. The intuition originates with Biblical scholarship\r\nand is called hermeneutics: that every text has layers of meaning,\r\nand that every layer of meaning that you recover through analysis also\r\nmakes it possible to recover another layer of meaning through another\r\nround of analysis. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nOf course, this intuition is normally applied\r\nto venerated texts such as the Bible. But it can also be applied\r\nto propaganda -- not because propaganda is comparable to the Bible\r\nin any moral or aesthetic sense, but because propaganda derives from\r\na long and powerfully driven tradition. Many talented propagandists\r\nhave worked very hard to twist language into the forms that get flung\r\nat you, and you can do the world a lot of good by untwisting it.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nIf you don't know where to start your own practice of propaganda\r\nclose-reading, just follow your guts. Pick an example that feels\r\ntwisted to you, write it down very precisely exactly as it appeared\r\n(summaries, paraphrases, and memories don't work) and work your way\r\nthrough it word-by-word, putting names on everything the text seems\r\nto be doing. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nIt's okay to speculate and hypothesize what the text\r\nmight be up to, since you will have an opportunity to evaluate your\r\nideas as you go along. It's important to do this in writing, since\r\nwriting externalizes your thoughts and thereby furthers the process\r\nof defamiliarization that is the key to removing the venom from the\r\nrhetorical specimen as you study it.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nRemember that it's not just about opinions you disagree with. It's\r\nnot just about random flaming or bad manners. It's about emotionally\r\nabusive sophistry that feels cultivated, like it's part of a pattern.\r\nIt's about the systematic ways that language is twisted to undermine\r\nreason for political ends. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nPay attention to ambiguous uses of words\r\nthat blur together two distinct ideas, and to hidden changes of topic.\r\nAlways dwell on anything that feels vaguely wrong to you, or anything\r\nthat provokes strong emotions or makes you want to walk away or get\r\nmad, or that makes your stomach hurt or makes you feel like someone\r\nis yelling at you. Start to recognize how you respond to the really\r\ntoxic stuff, and how you let it take your power. Then be precise in\r\ndescribing it: don't reach for broad generalizations and cliches, but\r\ninstead formulate careful statements of what the text is doing, based\r\non real evidence and not on what you'd like to think.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nSo much toxic jargon goes by every day: op-ed columns, radio programs,\r\nTV commentaries, Internet web discussions, even those little political\r\nnotes that corporate deejays slip in between songs. It's important to\r\ncapture the stuff, because if you try to recover it tomorrow it tends\r\nto be very hard to recover. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nWe should found a jargon zoo, for example\r\nby sampling usenet archives, taping radio programs and transcribing\r\nthe most twisted bits, saving the editorial columns, and subscribing\r\nto the publications. Let them accumulate. The really powerful thing,\r\nwhich comes naturally once you start analyzing one example after\r\nanother, is to identify several examples of the same rhetorical device\r\nand present them side-by-side. That really sucks the power from it.<\/p>
\r\n\r\n8<\/p>
\r\n\r\nLong-time readers of this list have probably noticed that I often\r\nwrite about my feelings, and not just in the context of hate mail and\r\nother extreme phenomena but also in the context of ordinary situations\r\nthat arise in running the mailing list. For example, I once wrote\r\nabout feeling mildly worried when the pace of useful submissions to\r\nthe list begins to slack off, and then feeling mildly worried again\r\nwhen I get so much material that I have to worry about overflowing\r\npeople's mailboxes. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nThese are obviously not strong emotions, but they\r\nare still the sorts of emotions that many people find embarrassing to\r\nhear about. Many non-Americans regard this soul-baring as an American\r\nvice, and it's certainly true that the United States has an emotional\r\nstreak that manifests itself in things like Pentacostalism that would\r\nbe entirely out of place in most parts of Europe or Asia. Likewise it\r\nis hard to imagine other countries giving rise to a psychotherapeutic\r\npopularizer like John Bradshaw. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nBut non-Americans can rest assured\r\nthat public confessions of emotion, especially about wounds arising\r\nfrom traumatic events, repel a plurality of Americans as well, and in\r\nthese more conservative times they are going out of fashion, or are at\r\nleast being confined to their original forms in religious testimonies.\r\nAnd, of course, many public testimonies of emotion are perfectly gross,\r\narising for example from exhibitionism, self-indulgence, manipulation,\r\ncommerce, or other improper motives.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nNonetheless, I do think that there are legitimate purposes in public\r\ndiscourse for accounts of personal feelings. My own purpose, clearly\r\nand consciously, is empowerment. I want other people to be able to\r\nuse the Internet in socially positive ways, but I am also aware that\r\nmany people hold back from establishing a public voice for emotional\r\nreasons. Many people fear being attacked, or saying something stupid,\r\nor getting overwhelmed. The worst part of those feelings is feeling\r\nalone with them, as if they had never happened to anyone else. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nThat\r\nis how an authoritarian society works: everyone lives in a little box,\r\natomized and isolated, playing out a role in the artificial public\r\nspace of \"ordered liberty\", never saying what they think because it\r\nis too dangerous to even let themselves know what they feel. Knowing\r\nthat other people feel the same way can thus be liberating: one is\r\nnot alone, and the feelings are not only common but understandable.\r\nOf course, a story about feelings can become its own dogma, but that's\r\njust one of the transitional phases that people can go through as they\r\ntry stepwise to emerge from the mental prisons of oppression. In the\r\nend, everyone has to recognize the emotions that can keep them from\r\ndoing something useful in the world.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nWhen I talk about my own feelings, therefore, I am not calling out\r\nfor help. I am not seeking sympathy. Don't worry about that; I have\r\nperfectly good ways of getting the poison out of my system. And I\r\nam not talking about anything like the totality of my feelings, which\r\nyou definitely don't want to know about. I'm only talking about the\r\nones that are likely to be useful. And these are not necessarily the\r\nstrong ones. I deliberately write about the small recurring patterns\r\nthat arise in running the list because I strongly suspect that they\r\nare multiplied by thousands across the Internet, and that by writing\r\nabout them I am helping others to become more fully aware of their\r\nown experience of the new medium. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nWhen I talk about the emotions that\r\narise from jargon hate mail, likewise, I am describing phenomena that\r\nI suspect are multiplied a million-fold or more across the society,\r\nas the epidemic of jargon pummels the great majority of decent people\r\ninto a mental daze. You can see why the cult of jargon so harshly\r\nmocks all public talk about feelings, except of course when talking\r\nabout their own \"anger\" at liberals: they want everyone to be trapped\r\nin a prison of emotional trauma where they can be controlled. That's\r\nauthoritarian culture, and it's wrong.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nend<\/p>
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/p>\n","contact":"","link":"http:\/\/dlis.gseis.ucla.edu\/people\/pagre\/florida.html","address":"","phone":"","parent_id":0,"mime_type":"text\/html","summary":"An aristocrat who is related to five kings, W. has inherited his office without the trouble of counting the votes.\r\nIt's nice that George has finally found something that he wants to do, but it's a real problem for the rest of us. We are compelled to face the problem of living in a country without a legitimate government. What do we do? Do we break laws? Do we burn things down?","numcomment":1,"fileurl":"\/uploads\/2000\/12\/rre_fl25.htm","filesize":"51.6 kibibytes","article_url":"\/news\/2000\/12\/4985.php"},"attachments":[],"comments":[{"id":4999,"heading":"the ancient \"good cop, bad cop\" trap","article":"I have two objections to this piece. First, it's way too long\r\nand drove me to distraction. Which is really saying something,\r\nas I'm not a person that anyone who knows me would accuse of\r\nhaving a short attention span. Second, although I sympathize\r\nwith the view that the Republicans employ deceptive and \r\ndemagogic rhetoric with much greater regularity than the \r\nDemocrats, I detect an unwholesome obsession with this\r\nfactoid as if it betrayed the uniquely evil nature of Republicanism.\r\n\r\nIn fact, I vividly recall the time when Bill Clinton denounced \r\n\"people breaking the windows of **small businesses**\" \r\n(emphasis added) in Seattle last year. I also recall the Clinton\r\nadministration-appointed World Bank President James \r\nWolfensohn's remarks to a Dutch periodical expressing fear\r\nfor the Czechs during the upcoming Prague World Bank\/IMF\r\nmeetings, on account of the Ruckus Society's training camp \r\nwhere they allegedly taught people to make molotov cocktails. \r\nPerhaps these are not precisely the sort of demagoguery that \r\nthis writer is denouncing in this piece. But they are both \r\nbreathtakingly mendacious, defamatory, and court violence \r\n(or justify it after the fact) against innocent people in a uniquely\r\nreprehensible way, given the high-profile of the speakers.\r\n\r\nI'd have had more appreciation for this piece if it had explored\r\nits most interesting premise in greater detail: the links between\r\nPR and politics. This subject can be expanded into the parallels\r\nbetween electoral politics and market economics more generally,\r\ntwo systems of social control that both parties are equally \r\ncommitted to. Instead, the writer, in my opinion, beclouds \r\nmatters by harping, in an obsessive way, on one wing of elite\r\nrule (\"the bad cop\"). Unfortunately, by falling into such a line\r\nof reasoning, the author is caught right where neoliberal\r\nideology wants him. It's too bad, since he was on to something\r\nimportant. Had he actually explored further the cross-fertilization\r\nhe begins to describe, he might have made it all the way to the\r\ninsights of Noam Chomsky. The latter explains as clearly as anyone\r\nhow \"the good cop\" and \"the bad cop\" are both employed by the \r\nsame cop show. By definition, the \"good cop\" doesn't undermine, \r\nbut COMPLEMENTS, the \"bad cop.\"","author":"Guy Berliner","parent_id":4985,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2000-12-31 07:06:44","modified":"2000-12-31 08:00:00","fileurl":""}]}