As an avid reader of both Orwell and Jacques Ellul, I’m used to the idea of thought control in our society. But it’s always fun and entertaining to see how public opinion is formed, and how people keep their real attitudes cloaked. Fear of being out of the mainstream is a powerful motivating force.
We’ll now be subject to a TV gala called the Democratic National Convention. There will be speeches and floor shows, and the party will attempt to show the country how it is unified now. The leaders will parade about spouting empty phrases, and journalists will duly record them. There might be a “gaffe” or two (as when John McCain didn’t know how many houses Cindy owns). Someone might say something that is true. Don’t count on it. The stage production we call a convention is a professionally designed lap dance. It titillates us but leave us wanting. It’s an unfulfilled dream. Barack Obama is long on hope, short on delivery.
If we want to be mainstream, we must submerge our clearest thoughts into the abyss. We push them off into barb-wired free speech zones somewhere deep in our subconscious.
“Free speech zone” – that’s an Orwellism if ever there was one. The phrase speaks volumes – it says that we can only exercise our right to speak freely away from the mainstream and out of earshot. But it says even more than that – if the chained and heavily guarded area in Denver where they allow protests is where we exercise free speech, then everywhere else is where we don’t.
Oh, I hear all the fluttering of journalistic wings as practitioners of the once honorable profession dissect the horse race and analyze every aspect of the presidential contest except the actual issues. They are forbidden to go there, they know it, they have internalized it. They must know on some level that they are frauds and impostors. Otherwise they would not react with such anger and hostility when someone points out the obvious – their lips are surgically stitched to the butts of the powerful. Their eyebrows have been shaved so as never to arch in surprise or express disbelief. If they were to really do journalism, burrow and investigate, ask hard questions and write hard-hitting pieces on real issues, they’d wind up in a free speech zone.
We don’t outlaw free speech in this country. That would be too obvious. We’re much smarter than that. We merely marginalize it.
Mainstream media and bloggers (those who are allowed in have been vetted and screened) will be in Denver’s Pepsi Center these coming few days. There’ll be floods of words, but none so interesting as the drowned out voices of the protesters kept far away, the ones who really know what free speech means. The people behind those chain link fences are doing what respectable journalists would never think of doing: they are taking risks.
In China they don’t have to be coy. They merely outlaw protests. What we do is grotesque – a far cry from the freedom we once experienced in the 50’s and 60’s. Democrats, poised to take power, are asleep at the wheel again. Much better for us if our leaders laid their cards on the table, and if we behaved as people in dictatorships everywhere behave, looking down at our shoes, knowing the truth but too smart to speak it. Much better that than somnambulism.
Piece of Mindful 
There couldn’t have been too much blogger vetting going on–I was invited to attend with Jay Stevens and jhwygirl. I’m not saying I have connections, or I’m some sort of loose cannon, just that it was a very casual process.
I declined because I’m going on vacation in a couple weeks. I’d much rather spend my money on that.
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Montana’s universities also maintain “free speech” zones to keep students from outsiders with clipboards, bibles or radical views that might upset the corporate brainwashing.
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Rebecca – your writing is there for all to see. What could be simpler?
I was not invited. I would never belong to a party that would have me as a member.
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Only in a skewed conservative view would a Bible NOT be considered brainwashing.
I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or not, Mark.
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I don’t know what you mean by the bible comment. If you read Ellul you’ll find that propaganda (your word: brainwashing) is as natural as snow in Canada and as common as Canada geese. Wherever there is mass media there is propaganda. It’s just that the U.S. is very, very good at it.
Regarding your blog, I only meant that it was easy for the Democrats to read it and see if you were friend or foe. That’s all. I assure you that no foes are aboard down there.
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Which leaves a rather open-ended question out there, Mark: Why should there be? Do you commonly invite enemies, antagonists and nuisance naysayers to your parties?
And I wouldn’t be too quick to assume some form of nobility for the protesters and dissenters. Some of them are likely as mad as a march hare. Nor would I be as hasty as you often are to discount propaganda as being the enemy of truth. They are not opposites, nor does propaganda have some magical sway over people.
Rebecca, as one who has read the book many many times, I do not consider the Bible to be brainwashing. The behavior of some of it’s adherents, on the other hand …
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Most aren’t. The media makes it a practice to pick out the March hares, which is why I find the whole protest scene a waste of time.
But the object of this piece was the Democrat’s “free speech zone” concept, stolen, I know. Don’t you find it stretching the ability to buy in? Don’t you like want to be aboard with them and find that concept to trip you up?
I was also making the point that bloggers that did get the invite did so because they had been good soldiers.
And Ellul himself stirred it up when he said that propaganda was unavoidable and could be a force for good.
Oh do I beg to differ. It only works if you don’t know it is there, and it is pervasive and undetected.
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The Bible is not an inert work of literature, Wulfgar. The writers demand people believe in everything written within. Jane Austen does not condemn her readers to everlasting damnation if they do not believe Elizabeth Bennet would ever fall in love with Mr. Darcy.
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I have to disagree – by definition.
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Dave, would you please, for the love of God, quit agreeing with me. It makes me feel all icky … hehehe.
Yeah, the Bible is nothing more than writ word. What the writers have demanded is of no consequence now.
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That’s right, Dave. Go ahead and point out I only have a passing knowledge of the English language.
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I’m down with Rebecca as I don’t take too much ancient middle eastern monotheistic genocidal nomads’ superstitions too seriously. She won’t mind agreeing with me.
Nice writing Mark. Really, I enjoyed it even when I disagreed. You yearn for ideological purity when none exists.
And yes, wulfgar, speaking only for myself, nobody’s gonna invite me to float in the punchbowl of party politics.
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