It is not about politics. It is about the “American Hologram”, as Joe Bageant calls it:
“All Americans, regardless of caste, live in a culture woven of self-referential illusions. Like a holographic simulation, each part refers exclusively back to the whole, and the whole refers exclusively back to the parts. All else is excluded by this simulated reality.”
The Great American Media Mind Warp: A Feast of Bullshit and Spectacle
Of course Joe, who died recently, is pretty far out there. But his notion of the Hologram, which has become almost sacred in some parts of our culture, is pretty accurate. Compare and contrast, for example, main stream media with Rachel Maddow. She reports, I am told, on the negative receptions GOP members get at their so called town hall meetings. But the MSM? Or look at Wikileaks on Gitmo vs the MSM on Gitmo. Or look at the failure of the MSM to link the decline of the dollar to the price of gasoline.
So what we need is a counter-narrative that strips the current hologram of its power to delude and anesthetize. IE, until we see through the hologram and realize it is naked, as it were, we are not going to get much meaningful change. Change is not what the powers that be want, which of course is why they promote consumption, celebrity and entertainment over all. A nation of zombies, who don't even know they are being duped, is what they want.
This is not rocket science and is well known, but so far no one has been able to articulate a sufficiently compelling alternative narrative.
Massimo Pigliucci on Ignorance Today
AMERICA: Y UR PEEPS B SO DUM? Ignorance and courage in the age of Lady Gaga
Journal: USA Theater of Politics Adds a Side Show
Review: Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle
2008 ELECTION 2008: Lipstick on the Pig
