ELEGIAC MOMENTS
Dr. Eugene
Narrett, Ph.D
February 3, 2012
NewsWithViews.com
“The dictatorship of party leaders supports itself upon that of the Press. The competitors strive to … bring the people en masse…under their own mind training.”[1]
Among the most far-reaching proposals to emerge from the GOP primaries was the suggestion by Newt Gingrich about changing the debate format. He urged that instead of the current “game show” model in which a network harlot or panel controls the discussion, apportions speaking time (and, thus, “electability”), limits and trivializes the matters discussed (the more personality conflicts the better) that there simply be a time keeper with two candidates asking each other questions and speaking for up to three hours as Lincoln and Douglas did many times.
Like many structural changes in American life, that one would be wonderfully beneficial and is very unlikely to happen. For one thing, the mass media which serves the interests of the Directorate (chief among whose interests is distracting, stupefying and degrading humans) will never relinquish its control of the key features by which candidates vie for office. Only the totally owned or the totally trivial are encouraged. For another, Mitt Romney, much less ‘the President’ would never agree to debate the former speaker unmediated by a dumbing-down agent: his ‘platform’ is a series of one-liners; he is totally insincere or self-deluded in trying to present himself as even a slightly conservative Republican. The fact that he has been endorsed by Bob Dole and John McCain, two designated losers and party insiders is revealing; that and the fact that he was governor of Massachusetts which means he had to govern in accordance with the far left one-party legislature and ‘the Vault,’ the local term for the Directorate in the greater Boston area.
Similarly instructive were the celebratory photos of Romney, front page above the fold with the lead story, run by the Boston Globe the days of the primary and day after. This is the Nanny State-globalist kiss par excellence.
Watching FOX news, the “fair and balanced” network that permits some moderately conservative voices among the many Statist ones that otherwise dominate the media, it is clear that they, about as much as the other networks are and have been eager to get the primaries over and done with and anoint Romney and GOP nominee. This also is instructive as is the increasing illiteracy and puerility of their coverage. A ‘narrative’ is established and everything that the candidates say and do is compressed into this superficial and biased ‘story line.’ The deformation is akin to the scripted jocularity and almost universal lack of intelligence of the talking hair styles and their electronic gadgetry. The greater the gadgetry, and it becomes more grandiose each season, the more superficial and arrogant the ‘commentators’ and ‘news anchors’ become. To watch two hours of network ‘news’ is to study a sample of the nation’s decay, and the way this decay of language, thought and truth is managed. It is to be stunned by horrible examples of pseudo-humans armored with the silver plate of arrogance.
For the same reason, the most wonderful and central moment in the campaign was when Gingrich punctured a CNN ‘moderator’ for the “character assassination” as one pundit honestly called it in the South Carolina debate. The resulting cheers from the audience reflected the feeling of the American people about media arrogance, dishonesty, bias and superficiality. This will not change so Gingrich’s detailed proposals become all the more important to articulate. His remarks after the Florida primary were examples of how Executive Orders could be used for good (shrinking government).
Observing focus groups of citizens discuss the issues reveals genuine concern and some insight. But the main thing shown is the degree to which literacy is crumbling under media-public school stupefaction. Most people no longer have words to express the ideas many of them still know are needed to halt the disintegration of America. There no longer is any need for outsourcing, financial assaults or massive illegal immigration to destroy the nation: the decay of language, and thus of thought will complete the job in a generation if the process is not reversed. For that one needs to banish Television and the worst monopoly-union of all: that of the public schools and their moronic regiment of conditioners and managers.
It would be nice to have zero taxes and have the Federal Government run on tariff income (the East Asian nations do plenty of that against us). The main benefit would be shrinking the size and the power of a State apparatus that has become fascistic as most social malfare States tend to do, selling their spurious compassion as a means “to eat you with, my dears.” But since no President directs the nation (although a savvy and experienced one, or even a rather shallow change of pace like George W Bush) can bring many new, different and better people into lower levels of the administration and this can make a big difference), zeroing out Federal taxes is a dream. The media so far has taken an avuncular, amused and trivializing attitude to Ron Paul because it sees him as a good way to fragment Conservative votes. Were he ever to be nominated, or even to get close to being nominated, the media savagery would begin and continue. Were he somehow elected in the face of this massive hostility, which is not possible, he would be controlled in office, dealt with one way or another. The vibrancy of his message grows with the damage caused by the welfare State and its impoverishing monetary games.
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To have a very low tax rate and an extreme simplification of the Byzantine tax code (a boondoggle for accountants and nightmare for everyone else) is the best one can achieve, at this point. Eliminating several dozen Federal ‘Czars’ and numerous Cabinet Departments (“Education”) would do much to reduce the power of the STATE over the people and its tendency and intention to destroy the Republic and the people through mandated institutions and programs. “Mandates” are recent code for commands. There is a corporate and military model in government now that should alarm citizens.
The Second Amendment has never been as important as now but the framers surely would notice that the discrepancy between a citizen’s and the State’s armaments and technology is extreme and growing.
When Rick Santorum said that “everyone who breathes” MUST buy ‘health insurance’ in Massachusetts or pay a fine (more than two thousand dollars on your tax bill) he was correct. To watch Romney shake his head ‘no’ reveals mendacity. The mandatory ‘health care’ type of fascism should be exposed daily.
About the media trivializing what is a very important process: they will tell us endlessly about Rick Santorum’s ill three-year old daughter, lead every ‘item’ on him with an update of her condition; they will glory to show us his ninety-one year old mother just as they jabber endlessly about tactics, “exceeding expectations” and everything but the issues. It is sad that the Senator’s daughter has a terrible condition; it is lovely that his mother is vigorous, happy and proud to make an appearance or three with her son. This does not mean that the media machine should be fed pabulum to disgorge upon the public. They become frenzied about a former wife’s comments fourteen years after the fact, if the former husband is a serious and conservative Republican candidate but they have no interest in the Secretary of State’s interesting domestic arrangements. Nor do they need to, but let them drop the pretence of objectivity and fairness. As Gingrich said, with little exaggeration, the current President and Romney are the “favorite candidates” of George Soros: there it is.
Through Bain Capital, Romney has extensive ties to the Bilderberg, Trilateral, CFR groups and the Aspen and Brookings Institute.[2]
The Keystone pipeline that should run from Canada to Houston carrying almost limitless supplies of gas and oil from shale sands is important for the economy for many reasons: jobs, lowering costs of fuel, food and many other products; removing one of many excuses for the State Department to pander to OPEC, etc. What may be most revealing about the Administration’s opposition to it, however, is that to block something so needed (and in such a bizarre and troubling way, via the State Department and some claims about “national security”) shows the extent to which the Directorate feels it can give Americans a series of ‘in-your-face’ moments. The last three-plus years have been a major exercise in this process. This indicates that a stage of overt, Nanny-State fascism with a superficial smile is largely here. “The New Idol” as Nietzsche called the State is here and the sooner it is reduced in size, and the more it is reduced the better for every human’s sake. The “cold monster” as Nietzsche also termed it feeds on human energy and intelligence, masticates and mangles them and then dribbles out a toxic residue as ‘benefits’ while completing the process of facilitating management of generic human inventory. One would like to believe it is a bad dream but experience and study shows it to be a dark reality.
Note that ‘affirmative action’ is almost never criticized or even mentioned anymore: it has become a sacred cow. Ron Paul mentioned it briefly in response to a set-up question about how many Hispanics he would appoint in his administration (the other three candidates pandered in various degrees); and also briefly in commenting on how the destruction of the housing market began. But almost as much as “no-fault divorce” and how this industry has destroyed fathers, children and families and contributed to myriad problems in this nation, from health to education to facilitating the unguent suasions of the national security state and its ‘protections’ no one says a word. The room of the nation is filled with ‘800 pound gorillas’ that, like the Emperor’s new Clothes cannot be mentioned. That always is a bad sign for a nation: when signal truths cannot even be mentioned. When was the last time a significant national figure dared a substantive critique of feminism? Because the media would destroy such a person, the media must be radically revised if the culture can have a chance to recover from the past 45 years.
Now that the media have constructed and reiterated the narrative of a triumphant Romney in Florida we learn that its ‘winner-take-all’ format violated RNC rules, as a January 1 letter from the head of the RNC specified to Florida officials. Apportioning the delegates 23 – 15 – 7 – 4 would preclude grandiose claims and prognostications, the meat of the distraction machine. It also would have changed the extent of campaigning in the State. But here as in most things, public life follows a script. All means must be tried to change the terms of the debate to expose realities.
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The media is indoctrinates and in the guise of “coverage” covers up life, destroying the ability to think and communicate by destroying language. That’s why persistent and detailed comment on how the media destroys the chance to have a meaningful campaign, that is, discussion-debate about how to save the nation is so important. That’s why glorying in the denotative and affective range of language is a culture-restoring act. That’s why intelligent and detailed discussion of what must be done to repair some of its major wounds is very important. Perhaps the extreme financial, economic and social crises that have come to a point in the past five or fifteen years can be meaningfully addressed now that the problems are so acute and the destructive forces so clearly in view.
Dr. Narrett has published a short Memoir, Thanksgiving available here.
Eugene Narrett blogs on literature, cultural identity & dynamics.
Eugene Narrett’s recent book Culture of Terror: The Collapse of America, on Amazon.
© 2012 Eugene Narrett - All Rights Reserved
Footnotes:
1.
Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West (NY 1962; 2006, Alan Helps
one-volume abridged edition from the English translation of Charles
Atkinson), 395, section “The Press” in Chapter 19, “Philosophy
of Politics.”
2.
drag
your pointer on this pie chart to connect relationships
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