THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE’VE KNOWN IT ~ AND I’M NOT FEELING SO GOOD
After World War I, Woodrow Wilson’s main propagandist Edward Bernays, the nephew of Sigmund Freud, turned the propoganda machine on the American People. Only he changed the name of it to “public relations,” because propoganda is such an ugly word after all, and he invented modern advertising and the “press release.” We’ve been fooled by labels ever since.
As a psychologist who studied both newscasting and advertising as an undergrad, I’m going to level with you here, cutting through all the propogandist bullshit. Everyone in social media is busy trying to gain some perspective on the Hunter Thompsonesque (on steroids and hallucinogens) wierdness of this presidential election cycle, but as Todd Gitlin, author of The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage opines in the NYT Sunday Review today, “The eerie truth is that 2016 is so deeply unnnerving not because it is ‘like 1968’ but because it isn’t like anything else.”
Forget the public relations labels “Democratic” and “Republican.” Those labels are meaningless today. What we just witnessed last week can only be accurately described as the “Fascist Convention,” intended to coronate Il Duce, the Don, as Chief Executive Officer of the Divided States of Amerika. All anyone needs to know about this textbook exercise in propoganda is that Trump’s beautiful, intelligent and persuasive daughter, Ivanka, invoked the phrase “my father” 27 times in just over 16 minutes. As social researcher George Lakoff points out, this is no accident: “In the strict father family, father knows best. He knows right from wrong and has the ultimate authority to make sure his children and his spouse do what he says, which is taken to be what is right.”
That is your basic, ahem, “Republican” voter. And as Lakoff goes on to point out, repetition is the first tool out of the propagandist’s toolbox: “The more a word is heard, the more the circuit is activated and the stronger it gets, and so the easier it is to fire again.” So from the founding fathers, to “Our Father, who art in Heaven,” to “my father” every 40 seconds from Ivanka “Vanna White,” we know what the authoritarian dog whistle sounds like now. Michael Moore is right — you cannot defeat this kind of emotional appeal to the lizard brain with simple logic, such as “Donald Trump is not MY father.” In truth, if we continue to see mass shootings, cop killings, and DIY terrorist attacks regularly over the next four months, and especially a BIG one here at home, or for that matter if the economic house of cards we continue to prop up suddenly blows over, Il Papa will be our next POTUS.
Now we pivot to the Industrial Military Complex Convention of the Free Trade Neoliberal Party, who will anoint their favorite, War Hawk Hillary, to be our next Commander in Chief. People who are very afraid of Il Papa are supposed to find comfort in the election of a Secretary of State whose foreign policy is captured in her notorious response to the death of Gaddafi by anal impalement at the hands of an angry mob: “We came, we saw — he died.” While the true anti-fasciscts will be marching in the streets of Philadelphia with Green Party candidate Jill Stein, Neoliberal Free Traders will be celebrating the embrace by one Bernard Sanders of the very embodiment of the political establishment that he once pretended to be leading a revolt against. Kumba-fucking-ya, my once-progressive friends.
Of course, all of this is as much a distraction as Pokeymon. We will not hear one word about the real issues from either candidate. Like spending one trillion dollars (cue up Dr. Evil pinkie to the lips) to update our nuclear weapon arsenal and make them more battlefield-friendly, as we continue to spoil for war with Vlad Putin and his antiquated nuclear warheads (which, of course, are still sufficient to destroy the whole fucking planet). NOT AN ISSUE. MOVE ALONG PEOPLE. Or the now (thanks, Barry!) unlimited power of whoever inhabits the Offal Office to order assassinations anywhere in the world, even of American citizens, without any “process” being due at all, and to continue using drones to kill women and children of a certain skin tone or religious persuasion because we are, after all, “exceptional.” We are the exception to the rule of international law and conventions, because goddammit we have more guns and bombs than they do. Not at issue, no matter who wins.
And then, of course, there is the most real issue of all. The one that threatens not only civilization itself, but the continued existence of the human race. Why are people everywhere acting as if the world is falling apart at the seams? Because it is. And because, in the end, we are not Americans, or Muslims, or Democrats, or Republicans. We are earthlings. And as the whole ball of wax continues to melt, as temperatures continue to rise, as tidal forces continue to erode coastlands, swallow islands, and as wildlife, birds, and insects continue to disappear from poisoned lands, and as nobody in a position of authority responds rationally to the horrified scientists who really can look into the future (because climate chaos unfolds with a 40 year time lag), HOW WOULD WE EXPECT PEOPLE TO ACT?
I am so sorry to report, my culturally traumatized friends, that no wall will hold back the tides, whether from Mexico or the Atlantic, and Hillary’s 500 million solar panels will not save us. World War III is no answer to the climate crisis, but is rather just a way to go down fighting. If you want to look for any real hopes for our shared future, watch what happens in the streets of Philadelphia this week, see if the crack in the Liberty Bell can be broke open wide enough to fit a real, rational, compassionate populist candidate through the lens of the corporate media. She’s out there marching in solidarity. She’s a medical doctor who isn’t afraid to speak truth to power, isn’t driven by fear at all, and the one person running who we’d like to sit down and have a microbrewed beer with.
Propoganda or Truth. That’s the real choice in this election season. It isn’t a horse race, or reality tv. It is our future, the future of life on planet Earth that is at stake. I’ll go with Truth, Social Justice, and the American way.
How about you?
