The Deplorables

The Only Political Question that Matters?

You can’t avoid it.  The presidential election.  Everywhere you turn on the media, endless discussion of a reactionary racist billionaire and a war-mongering Wall Street clone.  It's 'close'!  It's 'close!'  Who to choose?  Who to choose?  Such a dilemma! 

The fact that the falsely ‘democratic’ electoral system in the U.S. has given us this choice shows that U.S. capitalism’s façade is really dropping.  It is as paper-thin as it has been in 80 years.  Two frankly reactionary candidates, each with their own severe problems that can’t be wiped away by rationalizations, has to give even the smarter members of the ruling class pause.  Why do the majority of people call themselves ‘independents,’ in spite of years of propaganda for the Democrats or the Republicans? Why do so few people vote in elections?  The last one in 2014 had the lowest turnout in history.  In the last round of Party primaries in 2016 less than 10% of the people voted. Why do these two candidates have the lowest ‘positive’ ratings in history?  All of this expresses a profound disassociation with this imitation democracy by a majority of the population.

Consider the Cow

Then there are the structural problems.  In elections, incumbents almost always win. Money has an inordinate finger on the scale.  Districts are absurdly gerrymandered to the point that Republicans have far more seats than Democrats, even though they have fewer voters.  Voter suppression, since first being exposed in the 2000 election in Florida, has become even more widespread, especially with the destruction of the Voting Rights act by the undemocratic ‘Supreme’ Court.  Even the Constitution limits actual democracy - the Senate is inherently anti-democratic and the Electoral College as well.  Winner-take-all election rules, which mitigate against other parties, are the overwhelming legal rule.  3^rd parties are castigated for being ‘spoilers,’ not for promoting democratic choice.  You are spoiling the ruling class machine!  Hacking voting machines is current practice. Wall-to-wall propaganda coverage from cable, network television, public radio, corporate newspapers and websites all back up the same corporate messages.  The list goes on and seems to be getting worse.

Yet the political context is even more sinister.  Anyone who rejects an electoral charade in which the population is expected to believe the utterings of these laughable candidates, just as new-born babes trust their mothers, is ignored. We are to vote our ostensible identity and our pocketbooks without thinking, even though neither candidate actually cares about the working class – which is the majority across all ethnicities, nationalities and genders.  

In reality, it is the current lie of democracy that is being exposed – a situation that bodes ill for the future of this ‘democracy.’   It is becoming clearer – even to non-Marxists - that we do not have a real democracy.  We have a rhetorical democracy.  We have an oligarchy with two wings, running two different parties with tactical differences.  To “Occupy the Democrats” is like getting a suite at the Waldorf Astoria for free.  It is a fantasy, and always has been. 

The supporters of Trump are actually much higher-bracket Republicans than the press lets on, as his real base is white small businessmen and the self-employed.  His xenophobic, racist and sexist campaign brings to mind the Italian reactionary billionaire blowhard Silvio Berlusconi – not Adolph Hitler.  Right-wing demagogues have a long history in the U.S., so Trump is not something completely new.  Even so, large segments of the Republican capitalist class and their politicians are rejecting him and supporting Clinton.  Even neo-conservatives are flocking to Clinton, including Bush I, who has joined that club.  Perhaps it is Trump's reluctance to make war on Russia?  People wonder where Trump came from.  Political characters like Trump are using politics that have been embedded in prior party platforms for years, just putting them on steroids.  Like the wall to keep out Mexicans?  Already built by both Democrats and Republicans and ... the Israeli government, but the latter for Palestinians.   Deportations?  Massive practice even now.  And so on.

Trump ‘says’ he wants to take it up to a whole new level, but the capitalist handlers in the deep state and the military will have a sit-down talk with Trump if he wins and let him know how far he can go. Or else.

What created Trump?  The whole 40-year move to the right by the U.S. ruling class, which has ignored poverty, criminalized non-whites, deprived workers of jobs, sidelined unions and lowered wages.  Ultimately the hidden enabler is a Democratic Party that has collaborated with Republicans on many economic and political issues – though not all, as there are still tactical splits.  And that is why the Democrats are the ‘more effective evil,’ as Black Agenda Report describes them, preparing the ground for this vicious billionaire.  Continuing the tactic of backing a Wall Street supporting, incarceration-state loving, war-mongering Democrat only guarantees that the next Republican candidate might be even more effectively right-wing.  Both parties leave the majority – the working class – with little but empty phrases.  The “green” of money is the real identity we should keep track of.  Following the ‘green’ is the only way out of this mess to understand who are our real enemies and our real allies.

I must comment on the personal proclivities of Clinton supporters.  Clinton called Trump’s base 50% ‘deplorables’ at a $250K a plate fundraiser. You can imagine THAT audience was not exactly on the front lines of the ‘freedom struggle.’  “Racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic” as the chant goes.  You’d think Hilary was a real leftist with that, right?  Au contraire.  Trump actually used the phrase ‘working-class’ to counter her attack on his base, though some of it was certainly true.  Trump attracts bigots like shit attracts flies, but not all his supporters are bigots. In a way, this was Clinton's version of Romney's '47%' statement.

Lets look at Clinton’s reality about these issues.  Does she have a government-funded program to get rid of poverty and unemployment?  No.  Has she decided to back off the military up-arming of the police?  No. Has she come out clearly for marijuana legalization and against the incarceration state?  No.  Has she decided to reinstate AFDC?  No.  Has she backed off the privatization and re-segregation of charter schools?  No.  Is there a program of paid government child-care in the works?  No.  Or promotion of unions in mostly female workplaces?  No.  Has she pledged to get rid of discriminatory laws against gay people in the 29 states that allow businesses to fire you for being gay?  No.  Will she stop proclaiming "America" the essential country?  No.  Will she restrain herself from a warring on Russia?  No.  Will she refrain from arming ‘moderate’ jihadis or bombing another Middle-eastern or African country full of Muslims?  Or pulling the FBI off their practice of ‘terror’ stings in the Muslim community?  No.  It is all hot air designed to fool the credulous, just as Trump’s attempts to pretend he is some kind of working-class hero to whites is a complete fraud. 

They are both frauds because it is essential to lie to voters when you actually represent monied interests.

In actuality support for Clinton by Democratic Party loyalists is a form of preserving the status quo.  These people do not really want to change anything - they just fear that things might get worse for them.  For those who are in the labor movement or the working class, it is self-deception on a very personal level because they know that Clinton will do little for them, and Trump also.  Now you may chose to vote for the Clinton wing of the capitalist class as a more rational alternative – but understand clearly what you are doing. Don’t dress it up with pretty phrases about ‘fighting racism’ and the rest.  Just admit to yourself: “I back this group of rich people more. I don’t care about fundamental change."

'Lesser Evilism' is a permanent strategy in which the ruling elite limits any challenge to their two parties.  It is permanent because there will never be a time when there is not a supposed 'greater evil.'  Every election is always 'crucial' in this way - from LBJ/Goldwater on down. So in essence it says, 'shut up and get in line...forever."  It is essentially politically totalitarian.

Words mean something, but actual policies mean more.  It is the structural aspects of racism, sexism, homophobia and denigration of Middle-Easterners that need to be addressed, not just reciting clichés about identity. It is these structural aspects that materially maintain the actual experience of oppression, and continue the process of making ‘identity’ real in a capitalist society.

If Trump wins the election, this country will be up for grabs, as a good chunk of the population will go on a ‘war’ footing against him - and that is all to the good.  If Clinton II wins, things will go on as before, though the right will also go on a 'war' footing - but it might be something more violent then before.  The rightist development of the "Tea Party" into the "Alt Right" might lead to proto-fascist attacks on forces like Black Lives Matter and others.  This should be met with force if it occurs.  The NYT, Wall Street, the corporate media and the majority of the capitalist class is hoping and betting on the Clinton option 2 as the smoother choice for them.  However a split like this in the bourgeoisie makes capital very vulnerable. For the working class, neither candidate is acceptable.  And so the revolution in the U.S. advances on tiny, many-millioned mouse feet. 

Red Frog

September 25, 2016

The Kitchen Sink

"The Heart Goes Last,” by Margaret Atwood

This is a book with so many angles that it is not really clear what it is about.  The book starts with the United States suffering dystopian conditions similar to Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” – the result of a huge financial collapse. People have lost their jobs, live in cars, starve, work odd jobs like bars or prostitution, fear theft and death.  To avoid this dreadful situation, the lead characters join a sinister ‘utopian’ solution to their poverty called the Positron Project.  It is a confinement / prison community where the residents spend 6 months in neat ‘50s bungalows working normal jobs and 6 months in jail raising chickens or knitting blue teddy bears.  The 1950s is the touchstone for this world.  It seems like Atwood is riffing on the incarceration state that the U.S. has become.  It is the beginnings of a good story. 

Largest prison strike in history going on now - but not in this book.

Then the secrets of the comfortable prison are slowly revealed – housing and then murdering prisoners for profit through organ-harvesting; kidnapping for baby-blood infusions; human meat used for chicken feed; the manufacturing of sex robots and to top it off, romantic ‘mind-surgery’ on unsuspecting women.  The prison is like some kind of corporate capitalist conglomerate trying every creepy profit angle - not just earning money from the state to incarcerate criminals and the unemployed, which is creepy enough.  And absolutely accurate. 

Ultimately there is an internal rebellion organized by some high-level insiders (not prisoners...) against the corporate dictator, Ed, who runs the Positron Project.  The story ends by leaving the dystopia of lived-in cars and the poor robbing and killing out of desperation.  It leaves the prison situation in which freedom and confinement are inextricably mixed.  It ends up in a ‘normal,’ somewhat present-day Vegas – with wedding chapels, Elvis and Marilyn impersonators, even the “Green Man” group - with no seeming connection to that past.  As if Atwood lost interest in the earlier story and had just paid a visit to the joke that is Las Vegas and wanted to use it for material.  As somewhat of an odder coda, after the boss Ed is exposed for his more nefarious doings and punished, the prison / bungalow enterprise still continues - but ‘only’ to continue to produce sex-bots and collect money from the state for incarceration.  Like normal, like the situation has improved!

The real story in this book seems to be a somewhat unreal take on romance, love and sex.  It seems to Atwood that all men primarily want sex (somewhat like the ‘Handmaid’s Tale’) and so, indeed, do most women.  The story or themes are window-dressing for an unconvincing story of ‘love’ by somewhat robotic characters – or actual robots. The lead female is a conventional, air-headed blonde married to a brooding but ‘solid’ conventional guy.  She is actually attracted to another man in the compound because her husband is dull, and adultery follows. The boss Ed eventually becomes obsessed with her too and wants to turn her into his sex slave through brain surgery on her.  Meanwhile her husband gets trapped into an adulterous relationship himself while pining for another sexy woman he doesn’t know.  Following this?  Do you care? 

So what we have here are subjects previously touched on by “Cloud Atlas;” by “The Road;” by “Frankenstein," even by any number of romance novels.  The organ harvesting is especially interesting, as this has been going on since the birth of capitalism and the fact that it still plays a fictional (and real) role shows how little has changed.  If there is a coherent point to “The Heart Goes Last?” or even a coherent story within it, it escaped this writer.  In spite of the prominent blurbs on the back-jacket, and as much as I admire Atwood, the answer is no.

Reviews of “The Road,” “The Handmaid’s Tale,” “Cloud Atlas” and "Monsters of the Market," below.  Other dystopian books and films are also reviewed. Use blog search box, upper left. 

Red Frog

September 19, 2016

“Leviathan, Amalgamation and Capital”

"Deadwood” – The HBO series, directed by David Milch, 2004-2006

If you caught this series when it first aired or as it exists now in digital suspension, it stood out for several very important reasons.  Most people are drawn in by the characters that appear on television programs or in books.  You either love or hate them, are amused by them, admire them, are bored by them, wish they were dead, etc.  It is all about a personal, emotional attachment to an imaginary human being, or a fictional recreation of a real person.  In this series for instance, the hotel owner Farnham is a servile toady, creepy and greedy and ultimately sad.  But riveting in his own way.  Yet character-driven stories end up somewhat meaningless, as what is of real import is the framework in which the ‘characters’ labor. 

Deadwood, Black Hills South Dakota, 1876

The real Deadwood itself exists now as a cheesy and cheap casino town in the Black Hills of South Dakota.  Its main legend besides gold is the murder of ‘Wild Bill’ James Butler Hickok in Saloon #10, and the graves of both Hickok and ‘Calamity’ Jane Canary on Boot Hill just up from town.  This is what might make you tune in at first.   In the series, Hickok is a somewhat admirable but deeply troubled character who haunts the rest of the series after being shot in the back in the first season.  Jane and his companion, Charlie Utter, never forget him.

What becomes obvious is that this is first of all a story of small businessmen.  Every key character runs a saloon, a bordello, a hardware store, a livery, a transport business, a hotel, a newspaper or a bank in this booming gold town, saturated in mud and whiskey.  These owners also predictably run the town as an informal group that gather at the GEM saloon. We are supposed to admire them.  This is not so much different than the control small businessmen still have over real small towns in the U.S.  The proletarian miners and the entrepreneurial individual claim owners – the ‘hoople-heads’ as they are referred to by Al Swearengen, the key saloon and whore-house owner – are mostly invisible.  Bit players.  Background scenery, even though they are the overwhelming majority.  

Given his name, Al swears a lot, as does almost everyone else.  ‘Fucks’ fly (over 4,000 times) and ‘cocksucker’ is the biggest insult – giving homophobia and anti-woman attitudes a constant mantra.  After all, crudity was the point.  Women are mostly represented by abused prostitutes, until a rich woman and a wife come into evidence.  The buck-skinned drunk Jane ultimately finds solace with another woman.  But the language that really captures the ear is the archaic and formal way with words used by everyone in 1876 – even in a frontier town where you’d think only grunts and a vocabulary of 150 words would be appropriate.   The language alone – as in T.C. Boyle’s books ‘Water Music” and “World’s End” – is a treat to hear and follow, especially spoken at high speed.  This is a version of American Shakespeare on the frontier, a language derived from the archaic cadences of the Bible.  But again, the language is another layer on a deeper cake. 

What lies behind the murders and scheming of the town’s small businessmen are even bigger businessmen – the “Comstock Syndicate” and representatives of the big mining owner, George Hearst, another real person, as were many other lead characters.  Appropriately, Hearst’s key man in Deadwood is a bright psychopath and sexual deviant.  And working with this Syndicate are crooked representatives of the ‘government’ of Dakota in Yankton, which plans to work with Hearst to steal mining claims by creating a panic about ownership of those claims.  The Black Hills, while taken from the native Americans, had not yet been taken from the placer miners or the town’s leading citizens.

Dead people die without much problem while the holy hardware store owner and appointed sheriff Bullock deals with the obvious and sometimes avoids the criminal.  After all, he’d have to arrest at least 3 or 4 of the town’s businessmen if he enforced all the laws.  Even the murderer of Hickok is declared innocent in a farcical trial.  So what we have here is what Marx called ‘primitive accumulation’ – fortunes built on genocide, land theft, violence, law-breaking and fraud.  As one person said, this is really the story of the founding of America.

Celestial ‘Chinks’, ‘niggers’, Jews and 'dirt worshipping' Native Americans are merely problems for the mostly white and male Deadwooders.  The series shows the bigotry of some of the white population, with exceptions of course, as Swearengen has his own Chinese guy Wu, who he is allied with.  One drunken loudmouth gold-claim owner, Steve, instead of taking out his anger against the real suspects behind the scheme to invalidate claims, ultimately directs it at a helpless black man in town.  He keeps up his absurd racism until the end.  He's certainly not an accidental character.  Modern academic verbiage would say this is how a 'colonial-settler' state functions.

Being this is the U.S., elections are a required part of the fake democratic political stew.  Hearst wants a sheriff elected who ignores his bold-faced killing of 3 Cornish union organizers.  Accompanying this plan is the stuffing of election boxes by imported soldiers who vote the way they are told, the way Hearst and Yankton want.  This makes it clear that election theft is a long-time tradition in the U.S.

Hearst wants everyone in the camp under his thumb, even every other businessman.  So it’s war between them.  And so we get to the real framework of the characters – money and capitalism. Or ‘amalgamation and capital,’ Hume and Marx, the pursuit of capitalist monopoly in the face of small enterprise; the conflict with labor; the bloody monopolist Leviathan descending into their midst. 

Inevitably the anti-union and violent Pinkerton’s make an appearance on Hearst’s side.  With their help Hearst wins his bloody fight to seize all the valuable gold claims through murder and intimidation.

Later the Deadwood and Lead area became a stronghold of the Socialist Party and the IWW, and had its own widely-read Socialist papers because of the strength of the miners’ union.  However, this series ignores the miners all around.  The camp’s businessmen failed to recruit them in the fight with Hearst - something that could have made sense.  Instead a motley collection of hired ‘guns’ arrive from Cheyenne, as well as armed Chinese – all too late. The capitalist Leviathan wins because the miners are not brought into play, even in the smallest way.

P.S. The 2019 HBO movie that wrapped up Deadwood used the 'hoopleheads' led by Jane to punish Hearst.  'Bout time.

(Other long-series reviews below:  “Game of Thrones,” “The Wire.”  Use blog search box, upper left.)

Red Frog

September 14, 2016

The Propaganda ‘Free’ Press

"Manufacturing Consent,” by Edward S. Herman & Noam Chomsky, 1988

This 1980s classic of detailed media deconstruction set the tone for future leftist criticism of the corporate media, especially over international affairs.  The authors’ methods of counting mentions, noting locations in newspapers, counting ‘reporting’ that merely mimics government talking points, trying to locate (missing) countervailing views, and noting lack of context or tone or terminology has been adopted by many, including people like Glenn Greenwald, one of the most prominent media critics at present.

The Propagandists

Catching lies, omissions, distortions and stenography from the U.S ‘mass media’ is a full-time job.  Chomsky/Herman’s method of understanding what is actually going on is to consider all of it based on a ‘propaganda model’ that has the media essentially parroting the view of the U.S. ruling class and their government.  To prove this, they look at some case studies: reportage on the conflicts in Central America in the 1980s; the “Bulgarian” plot to kill the Pope in 1981 and media coverage of the American invasion of Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s.  Their studies affirm that the propaganda model most closely describes the international performance of the U.S. mass media almost across the board – ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS; the New York Times, Time Magazine, Newsweek, Readers Digest, The Washington Post, etc. during these events.  Now cable news and internet ‘news’ outlets accomplish the same mission – providing propaganda, misinformation or plain entertainment in an even more breezy and witless form. 

It is much preferable to have hidden censorship rather than ‘legal,’ open censorship for the purposes of capitalist governing.  Which is why U.S. censorship IS hidden. Chomsky / Herman describe 5 filters that distill the ‘news’ down to what is acceptable to the government and corporate rulers - sort of like vodka or gin. This you are not supposed to know!  1. 9 corporate oligopolies control most of the news and other media – Disney, AOL Time Warner, Viacom, News Corp., Bertelsmann, GE, Sony, AT&T & Vivendi.  Film studios, TV networks, music companies, newspapers, cable networks, magazines, book publishers – all under their wing.  Their directors sit on interlocking directorates for many other corporations.  2. Corporate advertising. Anyone who does not have capitalist advertising has a difficult time surviving financially.  Advertisers exert direct and indirect influence over content and generally the ‘news’ organizations will not threaten the money flow. 3. Unquestioning reliance on government, think tank, business and military ‘experts’ and handouts by ostensible journalists. 4.  Flak when any news outlet steps out of line, as did CBS when airing their findings that little Bush II joined the National Guard to evade Vietnam and then barely showed up. The ‘venerable’ Dan Rather lost his job on that one.  5.  “Anti-communism as a national religion and control mechanism.”  While the USSR is no more, anti-socialism continues to be a well-spring of Republican and UnDemocratic Party talking points and actions.  Chomsky looks at the murder of a pro-Solidarnosc Polish priest in 1984 and compares that coverage to the almost non-existent media take on the murders of numerous leftist priests in Central America during that same period.  In the same context, the authors mention that the Pittston strike in the U.S. coalfields got less publicity in U.S. media than a miners’ strike in the then-existing USSR.

Words are important in media.  Chomsky/Herman show how the word ‘genocide’ is carelessly and loosely used for actions by enemies of the U.S., but never for allies or itself. The double-standard was especially in play in descriptions of NATO’ war on and dismemberment of Yugoslavia – Kosovo particularly.  They describe how Cambodia’s Pol Pot went from genocidal enemy to ally when the Khmer Rouge were ousted by a Vietnamese intervention.  The media flipped the script virtually on command. ‘Fledging democracy’ is another tip-off that a fake exercise in voting is about to begin. Friendly dictators are always ‘moving towards democracy.’ “Reform” is almost universally meant to mean going backwards, not its original usage, so Orwell would be proud.  You will note that no country has the right to self-defense (or self-determination) against U.S. interests.  This is a pillar of the Beltway media consensus and is never mentioned.  The media role of ‘victim’ is separated by ‘worthy’ and ‘unworthy’ ones in the press – the ‘worthies’ being victims of political enemies of the U.S.  The propaganda model always claims the ‘center’ and excoriates the ‘right’ and the ‘left’ - even when it actually supports the right-wing.  It essentially operates as a ‘veil’ for the right.  Protesters against elite opinion are either denigrated or ignored, as was shown during the WTO protests in Seattle in 1999.  Recently Jill Stein’s views on Hillary Clinton were censored from a taped broadcast on television’s PBS “News Hour”, (with the grim Judy Woodruff looking on in disgust), which basically gutted the rationale for why Stein was running.  So her one chance at an interview was bowdlerized. 

Marginalized facts are allowed sparingly, as small stories in the back pages of papers.  Occasionally an event like Watergate is used to show how ‘free’ the press is, when that was an exception to the rule – and the break-ins’ discovery actually beneficial to one wing of the ruling class. As the authors note, numerous FBI break-ins in the offices of the Socialist Workers Party were ignored by the media.  The Iran/Contra scandal, another example of the ‘free’ press, was centered on the fact that Congress was not informed, not that the government was illegally backing Contra terrorists trying to overthrow the Nicaraguan government.  My Lai was also used to proclaim how ‘free’ the press was – catching this exceptional brutality and pinning it on one low-level officer.  What no one but anti-war protesters noted was that My Lai was the rule, not the exception, for U.S. policy in Vietnam.  The story became a cover for that reality.

Lies and distortions by the media that later prove to be erroneous are never corrected.  So when Ali Agca, the Turkish fascist who shot the Pope in 1981, is shown by exhaustive research and an Italian court to NOT be connected the Soviets, the trial result is ignored.  When Salvadorean military officer Roberto D’Aubuisson was ultimately linked to the murder of Romero, the media ignored it.  They had fuzzily blamed it on leftists or on rogue rightists, not a prominent member of the general staff.  The acquittals of bête noire Serb leader Slobodan Milosevec and rightist Vojislav Seselj on charges of genocide or atrocities by a UN War Crimes tribunal were also buried, as they contradicted the central narrative created by NATO and the U.S.  False suppositions rarely get corrected – and that is because they were intended as propaganda in the first place.  Even the notorious “Tonkin Gulf” incident and the absurd Kennedy assassination ‘lone shooter’ theories are never reevaluated by most media. 

The Carter administration backed the El Salvadoran junta that later murdered Archbishop Romero and many others.  Reagan just continued that policy, as did the media. In that process, elections carried out by ‘our enemy’ Nicaragua were vilified by the media, while elections in those ‘developing democracies’ El Salvador and Guatemala – U.S. allies – are heralded.  Even though more objective election observers from other countries said the Nicaraguan elections were far more fair.  El Salvador and Guatemala had no democratic rights at all at the time of the ‘elections,’ being countries where the governments used murderous terror to control the population. 

Regarding the “Bulgarian” plot to kill the Pope, the authors pin the blame on the media itself for running with this ball, by relying on information from fascists in the Italian secret police and CIA journalists at Readers’ Digest in 1982.  The only link to Bulgaria was that Ali Agca visited Bulgaria, along with 20 other countries.  But it was politically useful at that point to attempt to inflame Catholic / Solidarnosc opinion in Poland against the USSR.  This section is a beautiful individual case study of how U.S. propaganda is disseminated.  Facts are optional. 

The authors show that the rightist idea that ‘television’ lost the war in Vietnam was pure hooey. This was really a plea for censorship, which has now been carried out in the Iraq & Afghanistan wars through ‘embedded’ reporting.  Prior to 1967, even with all the war violence on TV, the majority of the U.S. population supported the war according to the polls.  After the 1968 Tet offensive, the U.S. government itself changed its policy to one of ‘Vietnamization’ and bloody ‘pacification’ programs like ‘protected hamlets’ and the Phoenix assassination squads. They realized the Tet offensive, carried out by the southern Viet Cong, had retaken the majority of the countryside back from the U.S. and their puppets.  The U.S. population actually became MORE pro-war for awhile after Tet, thus undermining the whole argument about press 'betrayal' at the time of Tet. 

As opposed to U.S. propaganda, the NVA had very few units in middle or southern Vietnam, nearly all fighting being done by southern NLF guerrillas.  NVA numbers matched the violent mercenaries from South Korea, Australia and other countries the U.S. had imported into South Vietnam - another untold story. In 1973 Tom Wicker, one of the media’s Vietnam ‘doves,’ bought into the Nixon/Kissinger thesis that the “Communists” broke the 1973 Paris Peace accords, not the U.S.  This led to 2 more years of blood-soaked warfare.  Evidently he didn’t read the agreement, which was a replay of the Geneva accords of 1954 calling for elections and recognition of the NLF.  Again, elite opinion across the board only differs in tactics or costs, not in goals. 

In the new introduction, Chomsky/Herman do not think the internet has enhanced democracy or freedom, but has ‘tended on balance to enhance the applicability of the propaganda model.’ Studies of internet sites or cable are absent from this book, given its dating.  What is also missing from the book is a look at U.S. journalism schools, where this book is not taught, even though it should be in Journalism 101 courses across the country.  Which is saying something right there.  It seems many U.S. journalists today are bright, empty-headed careerists who want their face on TV or their name on a byline, and not much more. 

Chomsky and perhaps Herman are liberal anarchists and so their description of the former USSR and the degenerated workers states shares some of the fifth filter - anti-communism. The book constantly compares Pravda to the NYT or other U.S. media, trying to convince readers to apply their understanding of Pravda to the U.S. situation.  This is illustrated by their discussion of the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan.  Both papers are outlets for propaganda, but one of them did not represent a capitalist class, which is a bit significant.  This Chomsky/Herman ignore, choosing to be the academic ‘owls’ that see all 'objectively,’ basing themselves on ‘international law.’

Nevertheless this is an essential book for those attempting to understand how the U.S. media works.  While a bit dated, a new forward in 2000(?) incorporates new information.  I will end with a quote from the authors: “… a propaganda model suggests that the ‘societal purpose’ of the media is to inculcate and defend the economic, social and political agenda of privileged groups that dominate the domestic society and the state.  (They do this by…) The distribution of concerns, framing of issues, filtering of information, emphasis and tone, and by keeping debate within the bounds of acceptable premises.”

Not ‘news’ anymore to probably the majority of politically-aware people in the U.S. 

Red Frog

September 5, 2016