Little of what is in the news is real news. Most of it are staged events and stage management of actual events. Those who present us with news on TV and in newspapers have many options before them, and decide to focus on some events and ignore the vast majority. That has to be, as media is small and the world is big.

But there are real events that cannot be ignored. There are people in business and government whose job is to monitor real events, and to the degree possible, manage perceptions of those events. When perceptions cannot be managed, they go into “damage control” mode, and if they cannot control damage, the event is said to be “out of hand.”

Out-of-hand events have the power to change public perceptions. With the oil spill in the Gulf, damage control has been, at best, only marginally effective. The Obama people are in the pocket of the oil industry, just as the Bush people before them. Consequently, they are mere spectators. Yet they must appear to be in charge. That calls for on-scene photos, staged confrontations, angry press conferences with oily sand as a backdrop. A staged hug with a fisherman’s wife would be good, as would a little girl and an oily turtle. Little girls really work well.

The best that they have done to date is this:

Is that the best they can do? Together with the occasional press report that Obama is “outraged!” his people appear to be rank amateurs.

This could be his Katrina – a PR nightmare. The underlying event is a large national catastrophe, but all of that aside, he has to appear tough and in charge. Fortunately for him, he was not off celebrating someone’s birthday. Still, his people have failed him miserably.

Maybe it is time for a staged distraction event. When 400 marines were killed in Lebanon, Reagan’s people invaded Granada. But the Gulf spill is so big that only a war or new terrorist attack could divert attention. But those things take time – that is, the Pentagon is always ready to go to war anywhere, but the public has to be prepped, and summer is the worst time to launch an advertising campaign.

It’s a perfect storm for Obama – a large and photo-friendly event that cannot be contained … in summer. This is his moment. Either he appears to take charge, or he appears not to be in charge. The cameras wait.

The oil industry in an ongoing development program of deep-water drilling off our coasts. The activity has been mostly unregulated. It was officially sanctioned by the Bush people, and later the Obama people carried on as if the election had changed nothing. Obama himself spread the illusion that he opposed such activity during the campaign, but that was just for perception sake.

That program will be set back a few years. That’s the worst that will happen to the oil industry. British Petroleum’s financial liabilities are limited by law. So is just a matter of riding out the storm before they go back to business as usual.

For the Obama Administration? They might be wishing for a terrorist attack. They are pretty much tapped out on wars at this time.

In the United States we are locked in to two political parties, and the way we talk about it, one might think that it was ‘designed’ that way. But there is no designer. Our parties – the right wing one and the weak opposing party – are all that we have left after meaningful opposition to corporate power is drowned out, demonized and marginalized.

Most other ‘democratic’ countries (the term only loosely applies to us) have developed at least three powerful factions, sometimes more, and governance is a matter of negotiation where minority parties have a voice because they are often needed to form majorities. If we had a public media and if more voices were allowed to penetrate public consciousness, something similar would happen here.

I imagine that our disaffected non-voters, our progressives and trade unionists would form a powerful coalition resembling the British Labor Party. (A third minority faction would also form, and what we call “Democrats,” stripped of progressives and labor, would be our equivalent of the British Liberal party.)

So we are left to Democrats and Republicans because of opinion management, but it is corporate media that “manages” our ideas. They decide which candidates are “viable,” ignoring any who might threaten entrenched power. They are the image makers, the ones who decide which ideas have traction. They own our TV’s, and TV acts as a gatekeeper for power.

Health care, for instance, was on the public mind for decades, but was only allowed into the political sphere in 2008, and was then used to protect and enhance the power of the health insurance companies. Why then? Why not 2004 or 1956 or 1974? If we had a third party, we would have a public health care system.

Interesting indeed, as those progressives and trade unionists and disaffected voters were fighting for single payer, and then for a public option, but they never seemed to get a voice – they were demonized and marginalized and never got tracked. We got a corporate solution to health care. Weird, eh?

It’s not that we only have two parties. We have at least three. We only recognize two. When there is a movement from the grassroots to get that third party moving, the Democrats step in and work to stop it. Republicans are, oddly, comfortable with third parties. Democrats, on the other hand, have hissy fits and vomit blood at the thought of a Nader stealing their votes.

In the end, as in 2008, the Democrats absorb anything left of them, and render it moot. Democrats crushed single payer. Democrats give us Clinton and then Obama, and all of the right wing accomplishments of the administrations before Democrats are frozen in place. Assisted by corporate media, Democrats prevent the boomerang effect. They seal Republican victories, and act as caretakers until the next Republican Administration takes power.

They also prevent the ascendancy of our Labor Party.

So if at times it appears that I argue from consequence – that I imagine that our system was designed to be as it is – I do not. I merely assert that it is as it is because power does not allow it to be anything else. It is, in the end, all that is left after popular movements are removed from politics.

I am a Cincinnati Reds fan. They are in first place right now and playing well. We Reds fans are given that pleasure in the second year after each leap year, and only during the month of May.

The question is, why do I care about this team? I am “branded” to them, that is, I have an emotional loyalty that transcends reason.

In my case, it goes way back to when I was first married, and was developing resentments toward my first wife. She was a rabid New York Mets fan, and the Mets and Reds played each other that year for the right to go to the World Series. The Mets won, but it was an electric contest with close games and a fight between Buddy Harrelson and Pete Rose. Later Rose hit a home run and circled the bases with his fist defiantly in the air. I liked that guy, and the team was a winner – they would become the team of the 70’s, with two World Series (including 1975, a classic). But more than that, they satisfied my need to counter my wife’s extremely annoying devotion to the Mets. They became my subconscious defiance of that woman.

Here it is 2010, and the brand sticks. But I don’t care, as I really enjoy baseball now without any lingering resentments towards people from the long ago. And I have suffered with this team. I cannot re-brand. I should be a Rockies fan now, living in Colorado. It’s not happening.

I have watched others go through similar branding with other sports franchises, as with the Red Sox, Cardinals, and of course, Yankees. Ever notice how, in a sports bar, there is always a larger following for teams that have recently won the Superbowl? We’re quite pathetic, aren’t we, living our miserable little lives and validating ourselves via athletes. These guys have but one loyalty – their teammates. They can play in any city, wear any uniform. Their bonding is with the ones they live with in the trenches.

There’s an interesting book that’s been out for a few years called “Buyology“, by Martin Lindstrom. This is not a book review – Lindstrom merely confirms what I already knew – marketers study us intensely. Most products we buy are crap. Advertising seeks to move this crap off shelves by any effective means. “Brands” are emotional attachments. Most advertising fails – there’s just too much of it. Those who do manage some success are those penetrate our conscious barriers and plant their emotional images. They “brand” us.

Two examples: Burger King created “The King”, a creepy archetype who can be seen peering through windows, just staring at us. It’s Jungian. The beauty of it is that it takes no great mental leap to tie the image to the product. “The King” and Burger King are one in our minds.

The other is Apple Computer with their “Mac” and Justin Long and John Hodgman ads – a nice, likable and very cool guy against an equally likable but stodgy old fart. Two images for two companies. Does anyone not think Apple is a cool company?

There’s so much crap out there – so many Chinese plastic products that we don’t need. Our food is and processed and reprocessed primordial goo with flavor and color added to make it resemble something edible. Advertisers are challenged to market these products by converting them from crap into something emotionally fulfilling.

The Obama campaign won the coveted Advertising Age Marketer of the year award in 2008. Swing voters were fed up with the Bush brand, and so were offered a new one. Corporate money, sensing the sea change, left the Republicans and went to the other party. The hope/change/yes-we-can advertising was brilliant and worked on me and everyone I know on the Democratic/progressive/left. They gave us blanks and allowed us to fill them in with our own angst and yearning. I saw it in the faces of the people in Grant Park that evening in November of 2008 – the tears and smiles and wish fulfillment that the campaign had produced.

I’m lovin’ it.

It was all marketing, of course. Like processed food, Obama is a soulless substance with flavor and color added (no racial inference intended). He has taken office and carried on with all of the important polices of the Bush Administration. He’s New Coke – the old recipe with more sugar, but with a better marketing strategy.

The lesson I draw from this is not that Obama is disingenuous or that we were snookered by Democrats. That plays on a level that is so far beneath real politics that it is naive. The lesson is this: Political campaigns have no bearing on public policy. They merely fill our time and satisfy our democratic pretensions.

Public opinion is an animal all by itself. Leaders cannot pay much attention to it, though they do fear it. The fear leads to sophisticated management techniques. And for that the leadership elite call upon the advertising and public relations industries and all of their skills. The whole notion that we are either ‘D’ or ‘R’ is a management technique, nothing more. The two attract different mainstream personality types – authoritarians on one side, nurturers on the other. Public policy from either is virtually identical once election cycles end. There are two corrals, and public opinion is effectively neutralized by herding us to one or the other.

Oh yes … it is done with great passion. We take tremendous personal validation when our team wins, like Pete Rose circling the bases, fist high.

The blogs are heating up now with campaigns and candidates. This is our preoccupation and will absorb most of our energy in the coming months. It will really heat up in September, since marketers know not to run new ad campaigns in summer. They will be looking to create emotional bonds between voter and candidate.

When it’s over, the ad people will meet and have panel discussions and review the fifteen and thirty-second spots, discussing why each succeeded or failed. Successful advertisers will have more clients later on.

The American public lacks education, time and information. Without those elements, there can be no democratic governance. There will just be advertising.

Here’s a game to play – it’s not original. There’s this kid, Justin Beiber, who I did not know existed before listening to a podcast today, and he was interviewed in New Zealand, and he was asked if he knew his name meant “basketball” in German. (?) And not only did he not know that, but he did not understand the word “German.”

So let’s play a game called “Things that Sarah Palin doesn’t know about.”

I’ll start, and please make your additions:

The Siberian Coast
Oil and gas
Use of the fruit fly in scientific research
Magazines
Newspapers
The Middle East
Afghanistan
Pakistan
The other ‘stans’
Advanced degrees
The history of the Boston Tea Party
Canadian health care
Law

She is learning U.S. geography, and a bit about fame. And as always, with Palin, it is not that she does not know things. That is mere ignorance and is easily remedied. It is that she does not know she does not know things. That is stupidity.

Trader 1: “They’re fucking taking all the money back from you guys? All the money you guys stole from those poor grandmothers in California?”

Trader 1: “Yeah, Grandma Millie man. But she’s the one who couldn’t figure out how to fucking vote on the butterfly ballot.”

[Laughing from both sides]

Trader 1: “Yeah, now she wants her fucking money back for all the power you’ve charged right up, jammed right up her ass for fucking $250 a megawatt hour.”

[Harder Laughing]

The above exchange, exposed during the contrived energy crisis in California in 2000 and 2001, came to mind late this last week as I watched the stock market inexplicably drop 900 points and then rebound. There are several explanations going through my mind – some more reasonable:

1. The drop was deliberately triggered with the idea that Wall Street traders would profit from certain stocks they had shorted. (This is unlikely since, while it would be possible to trigger a crisis, it would be impossible to direct the outcome in the chaos that followed.)

2. The drop was deliberately triggered with the idea that sharp traders would intuitively know how to play it for maximum gain.

3. The event was spontaneous, and sharp traders intuitively knew how to play it for maximum gain.

4. The event was spontaneous, a few people made a fortune, a lot of people lost.

5. The event was spontaneous, traders were taken by surprise, and chaos, bad and good fortune alike were spread randomly across the spectrum.

I do not know. I suspect that #1 and #5 are equally unlikely. As with every mystery in life, the “side” information, or “unknown unknowns,” as Rumsfeld called them, would illuminate the picture and expose whatever malfeasance was going on. And, since this is the US of A, there will be no meaningful investigation, and we will never, ever, know.

The Enron traders came to mind because most of us are so naive as to suffer from the illusion that powerful people are just like us, only smarter. They have lives and families and children and, of course, consciences. And yet the two Enron traders exhibited exactly the opposite – there is no apparent functioning conscience in either. That’s why they held the jobs they held – bored with mundane everyday life, they sought out the excitement of the game, the trading, the manipulation.

Even the names they gave their various trading schemes … “Fat Boy”, “Death Star”, “Forney Perpetual Loop”, “Ricochet”, “Ping Pong”, “Black Widow”, “Big Foot”, “Red Congo”, “Cong Catcher” and “Get Shorty” … indicate a juvenile fascination with gaming. They are bored.

They are sociopaths. The lives that other 96% of us lead have no interest for them. They don’t care about families and lovers and pets, though they are adept at mimicry. They alleviate the tedium by gaming the rest of us.

Maybe it is only the money, but I think accumulation of money is only a side benefit, as at a certain point these people have enough, and yet never stop.

And this is why our society functions as it does. This is why we are gamed into wars, why we kill millions of people with fancy weaponry from afar, why we are so interested in the Great Game again playing out in Afghanistan. Embedded among us, masked as regular people, are sociopaths – people without conscience.

Some are painfully obvious and easily seen – Cheney and Bush and Rumsfeld, Geithner and Emanuel, and the two traders above.

But most are deeply embedded and working their way around us, scheming, running small and large businesses alike, doing things they could care less about, like selling Internet service in a small town or doing large IPO’s that will eventually tank … whatever the game of the moment is.

Sociopaths dominate our lives. And yet, they don’t care about us. Not in the least. To them we are nothing more than Grandma Millie, and their job is to jam things up Grandma Millie’s ass. They don’t hate Grandma Millie. They don’t love her. They are incapable of either. They are merely doing what they enjoy doing – the only thing that motivates them- the game.

So when I see the stock market inexplicably plunge 900 points, pardon me if I don’t buy official stories about it. Wall Street is rife with sociopaths – it’s Mecca for money Muslims, and the ultimate game.

PS: Allowing sociopaths free run is the modern-day interpretation of Adam Smith’s “invisible hand.” It is the intellectual class acting in service of the financial class that creates these elaborate justifications for their behavior. The price is right.

I was listening to the Sirota show on the radio yesterday morning, sort of – it was on in the background. I think that David was trying to contextualize the possibility that there is a Pakistani link to the alleged Times Square bombing attempt. He mentioned the fact that the U.S. runs routinely drones into Pakistan and kills civilians (having a special affinity for wedding parties, I might add).

A caller reminded him that both Bush and Obama have been president during the time that the military has been attacking Pakistan with drones.
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Footnote: This may seem a bit cryptic to those who frame the world through the lens of two parties, and I was in a rush yesterday. But the state of mind of the caller was this: The possibilities for action, good on one side, bad on the other, are expressed in the minds of most Americans as “Democrat” or “Republican.” Therefore, when something is done that appears antisocial, even evil, as killing innocent civilians in Pakistan via drones, the fact that the same deed is done when the government is nominally headed by either allowed party at different times means that the act is morally neutral.

It’s contrived thinking, moral wrestling and freakish logic, but given the narrow parameters of acceptable thought here in the land of the free, represents the only logical conclusion most can arrive at. It’s cognitive dissonance, impaired reasoning, and thought control.

I was listening to a liberal talk show out of Portland this morning, and the hosts suggested that Obama should take this opportunity to nominate a real progressive to the Supreme Court. They said that the Republicans are going to fight him anyway, so he might as well go for it.

Ariana Huffington urges Obama to nominate Elizabeth Warren to the court.

Good grief! At what point are these people going to realize that Obama is not a progressive, never has been a progressive, never will be a progressive, has no progressive leanings, and only branded himself as somewhat that way to take advantage of disenchantment with Bush and the Republicans.

This is Clintonism redux – it never goes away. Democrats are clueless beyond belief.

From Edward Abbey:

Autobiography: Perhaps I, like Boswell, and neither neurotic nor psychotic but a type of psychopath: “intact intelligence, defective superego, self-destructive tendencies, social maladaptation, unpredictable behavior, intense narcissism, weak ego – this type often very gifted, even brilliant and creative” (from the book Great Men). Certainly the description suits, satisfies, even pleases me – I am particularly eager to accept the final terms of the diagnosis: like any other psychopath, I’m perfectly content to be sick if I can also be clever.

The video below on the murder of civilians in 2007 in Iraq went viral, and has been seen all over the world now. I was curious about Denver – it was not mentioned on local TV news, and there is no mention of it in the Denver Post or on its web site. In other words, local news media is performing its two functions: 1) They dominate the local news market Econ 101: exclusion), and 2) they prevent us from getting news.

The US Court of Appeals decision yesterday regarding net neutrality is ominous in this regard, as the Internet has provided us with a way around the news filters. We only know about the existence of the video because of Wikileaks. (A search of the Denver Post web site returned “O’Clock” for Wikileak.) Without equal access, corporations, who own the major news outlets and control the flow of “news”, and who are deeply invested in both foreign and domestic policy, will also control the flow of information on the Internet. You might still be able to access this site, Piece of Mind, for instance, but only after a 30 second or one minute wait, or I might just disappear after refusing to pay pay some corporation for faster speeds (access to the commons, known in economics as “exclusion). I have no illusions of grandeur. I know I am nothing. But on a large scale, this means that we’ll go back to the pre-Internet dark ages, with news coming only from CNN and FOX and local news outlets at the bottom of the food chain.

Finally, Glenn Greenwald made a critical point on Democracy Now! yesterday regarding the Wikileak video: There is a danger in management of perceptions much as with Abu Ghraib and Mai Lai. Most people think that the photographs leaked of Abu Ghraib showed an anomaly, and that the behavior stopped with exposure. Not very damned likely. Much more likely is the Mai Lai effect, where after exposure of that atrocity, Lt. Colonel Colin Powell managed to quarantine and isolate the event by punishing some low-level participants. In doing so he left the impression that it was an isolated event rather than a normal every day occurrence.

That’s how he advanced in rank. He was damned good at his job.

In the Wikileak video. The soldiers in the attack helicopter are going about their jobs much as assembly line workers in Sri Lanka, doing repetitive tasks as if it is just another day on the job. They are detached and indifferent, even laughing as a tank rolls across a dead body.

This is business as usual. It has been going on from the beginning, is going on today in both Iraq and Afghanistan. It was called “counterinsurgency” before the name was tainted. Now it is called by other names, but it is the the same program: Mass murder.

God, if there is one, will strike me dead one day for repeating quotations from works I have not read, but this one is so delicious that I am doing it anyway. It is from Sir William Osler, and the book that I am reading credits him with being “the father of modern medicine.” Here it is:

“The greater the ignorance, the greater the dogmatism.”

The first to come to mind are the Teabaggers, who are painfully ignorant in all of their public displays. Then come the free market set – the Freidmanites and Randians and their fellow travelers who live in a theoretical world where the worst aspects of human nature are overcome by simply letting that nature go on full display. I suppose there is something to that in the same sense that forest fires self-regulate. They do stop burning when they run out of fuel.

The book that cites Osler is “Why Evolution Works (And Creationism Fails)”, which I just picked up last night. The clerk at the book store said that he had been taught by one of the authors, Paul K. Strode, a local high school teacher here in Boulder.

Amazon.com, where I used to buy books, recently pulled out of Colorado, ditching local distributors, for our state’s attempt to impose sales tax on purchases through them. At that point I realized that I was doing local book sellers a great disservice by using Amazon, and opted to forgo any further purchases via that legal person. Our choices here in Boulder are many – Boulder Book Store, where I shopped last night, is always busy, so I hope they can survive Internet competition. But then, this is Boulder, a college town, a liberal town, so it is natural that books would be a popular commodity.

In Colorado Springs, our conservative mirror image, the most widely read medium is the billboard. They recently, and I am not making this up, censored bus stop posters that had a picture of a female puppet showing cleavage. A puppet! The sexual repression in that town is palpable. It may someday spontaneously combust.