After this, no more body counts. But I was startled not to feel the full impact of something in my own writings down below. It is an accounting summary of “terrorist” attacks against Western Civilization, 1970 to present. These are official numbers – there are people in our government whose job it is to count such things. Bean counters. I could do this. I could work for the Pentagon!

In total, “terrorists” have engaged in 2,953 incidents of violence resulting in 4,947 deaths. Remove on incident, 9/11, and you have 2,952 incidents resulting in 1,974 deaths.

The U.S. (under King George the First) killed that many people with one bomb in one incident in a barrio in Panama City in 1989.

The difference is, of course, that the 4,947 people are people that matter, people who count. And so we count them when they die. Ask the Pentagon bean counters how many people died in that Panama City barrio, and you’ll get a disinterested shrug. Those we do not count. Those people, working men and women with families who dance and sing and love one another just as we do – their removal from the planet elicits hardly a blink of the eye here in the civilized US of A.

This is all old news to me. I know what’s up. I know why certain people matter and others don’t. I know why we are menaced by one evil demon after another, from Hitler to Osama. For the Panama barrio, the justification for our murder spree was Manuel Noriega, and man who is currently rotting away in a jail in Florida, about as harmful as Fred Rogers. But he became the face of the enemy.

We are but sheep given knives and led to slaughter other sheep. The game is old, and interestingly, has come full circle now. The U.S. is in Afghanistan – Central Asia, where the original “Great Game” was played.

Can’t do anything about it. People are as they are. Israelis are murdering and enslaving Palestinians, but if the tables were turned, if the U.S. had armed the Palestinians instead, then Palestinians would be murdering and enslaving Jews (and dropping white prosperous on them).

Life goes on. Only a few of us ever get our heads out of the trenches to see the game at play and understand the rules. That’s all we can hope for – some understanding. Imagine being a football fan for life and yet never knowing the rules of the game. That is what it is like for the ordinary American citizen.

I feel lucky. I escaped from the trench, found the rule book, and now have a sense of empowerment that comes from knowledge. I think this is what it means to be free.

How about you? Do you feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?

A statistical abstract of the absurd notion that we are somehow threatened by people with plastic explosives in the soles of shoes or nitroglycerin in shampoo bottles:

Number of airline hijackings, Europe and North America, during 1970’s: 31
Number of deaths resulting from said hijackings: 29

Number of airline hijackings, Europe and North America, during 1980’s: 13
Number of deaths resulting from said hijackings: 61

Number of airline hijackings, Europe and North America, during 1990’s: 6
Number of deaths resulting from said hijackings: 0

Number of airline hijackings, Europe and North America, during 2000’s: 7
Number of deaths resulting from said hijackings: 2,973

International terrorist attacks**, 1970’s: 920 (deaths: 287)

International terrorist attacks, 1980’s: 1,219 (deaths: 990)

International terrorist attacks, 1990’s: 626 (deaths: 367)

International terrorist attacks, 2000’s: 188 (deaths: 3,303)

Number of Vietnamese war casualties, Vietnamese side (Government of Vietnam): 3,100,000

Number of children starved to death by Bill Clinton in 1990s (UNICEF): 500,000

Number of civilian casualties in Iraq since U.S. invasion, March, 2003:
Iraq Body Count: 94,000-102,574
Johns Hopkins (2006): 655,000
ORB (Opinion Research Bureau of London (2007): 1.2 million
United States Government (Washington) DKDC*

Number of Jews in the world (Jewish People Policy Planning Institute): 13.2 million

Number of Jews that will survive in end times (Revelations): 144,000

Number of Jews that Jesus intends to kill if the end of the world is today: 13,056,000

Number of Jews killed in Holocaust: 6,000,000

High end estimates of dead in U.S. attacks on Vietnam and Iraq (sanctions and war): 4,800,000

Summary: The U.S. is getting there, approaching Holocaust numbers, but in the end, Jesus is the best damned killer of all.

*Doesn’t know, doesn’t care

**U.S. defines a “terrorist” attack as an act of violence committed against civilians by a non-military person or group, thereby exempting state-sponsored terrorism (its own activities) from consideration. So, for instance, during the 1980’s, 180 “terrorist” attacks in Colombia were actually insurgent attacks on a U.S.-owned oil pipeline that is at the center of that country’s civil war. U.S. acts of retaliation (“counterinsurgency”), also part of that war, are not considered.

Blogging can indeed be fun. A post by JC this week over at 4&20 devolved into a firefight about conspiracies and “conspiracy theorists”. I believe in several conspiracy theories, and so was victim of the standard “tin foil hat” insult. It’s the easiest posture of all to adopt when one is thoughtless, unimaginative, and compliant.

What “conspiracies” do I believe in? It’s not that simple. Events are complex, and cannot be managed so much as motives disguised. Take, for example, the case of the JFK assassination. It was a conspiracy for sure, as there was more than one person involved. It threatened to expose government activity that our government did not want exposed, and so inspired a cover-up. And the cover-up inspired wild conspiracy theories about the CIA, LBJ, JFK as a martyr, and Vietnam.

It took some conspiring to cover that crime up, to pin it on a patsy, but it was mostly people thinking on their feet, making things up as they wildly scrambled to cover up other things that were going on. They came up with some crazy theories, patently false on their face, about what happened that day. There was no magic bullet, there was a shooter in the grassy knoll, and as I am fond of saying, Lee Harvey Oswald and I share one common trait: neither of us were in the window of the Texas Book Depository that day.

So far, so good – a murder, a mystery, a cover up, crazy theories on all sides about what happened, one (Oswald acting alone) spun deliberately to mislead the public. It gets even more interesting. It’s a lesson in how various people form opinions about the world.

With JFK, there’s objective data out there that says that official explanations do not make sense. Plenty of it. Different people approach it differently. Me and my ilk look at it, wonder, look for alternative explanations (and are often wrong) – it’s a curiosity that compels us to delve deeper. We don’t buy the official story. Some of us just love a good murder mystery. It’s my favorite genre.

Others get their “truth” from authority figures. The official explanation is that Oswald did it, and that he acted alone. To make this theory, which is virtually unsupported by evidence, stick, they rely on the willingness of people to trust those in power, and the gullibility of people to believe any lie if it is told by an authority figure. Would Earl Warren lie to us?

Mr. Warren did what he had to do, and he did it for high and noble reasons. But he lied. LBJ selected him to head the Commission that looked into the crime because he was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and was therefore extremely credible. He had a big lie to tell, and it had to be told with force, and it had to be believed.

Earl Warren was an honorable man. And he lied to us. Reluctantly. He didn’t want the job. LBJ talked him into it. LBJ was a persuasive man.

Down here at the bottom, we who are naturally curious, who wonder and read and are enthralled by mystery have to endure fools of a sort who have the audacity to call us names based on their willingness to accept official truth, no matter how flawed. It’s way too easy, and they shouldn’t get away with it. Journalists, who should be naturally curious, are oddly the most likely to rigidly adhere to official truth and fire the tin-hat arrows at us. I don’t really understand why that profession is so deeply flawed. They should be more curious, more willing to question official truth, but they aren’t.

There are conspiracies afoot, everywhere, and especially in politics, where most of what we see in front of cameras is mere theater. Politicians, by the very nature of their profession, must forge alliances among natural enemies. They lie, play charades and engage in elaborate tricks to make things happen. It’s a real skill, and I admire those who are good at it. I like Dick Nixon, for example, purely Machiavellian, dark, brooding and conspiratorial. He’s my ideal.

And conspiracies are generally effective when carried out by people who have power. Pizza delivery boys don’t generally succeed at attacking military bases, but wealthy Wall Street Barons can deal secretly in oil futures and drive up the price, play the naked short-sell game behind the scenes and bring down investment houses, and have so much financial power that presidents are at their beck and call.

Oh, yeah – and they can steal elections, get us into wars based on brazen lies, murder people, entrap them in flagrante delicto, destroy and make careers, and and make people behave as they wish. That is the nature of power.

I wonder about those who seem to believe that power behaves itself. That’s loony, tin-hat thinking. Power is as power does.

Understand, of course, that events are random and largely uncontrollable. The Bush people who got us into the Iraq war probably thought it would be quick and easy. They set in motion a deadly set of unmanageable events that in the end, would kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people. They suffered from the illusion of control and had weaponry at their disposal. They are dangerous, and should be in jail or hanging, Nuremberg style, at the end of a rope.

But powerful people can influence events, and most importantly, influence how we view events. Iraq was about oil, among other things. That is painfully obvious. The degree to which the reader of this essay thinks in line with official truth about why we invaded Iraq defines how compliant that person is in his thoughts. Most people are followers, and so adhere to official truth. It’s a pity, as there is so much fun to be had trying to understand this crazy world.

Oh, yeah, and weak people would conspire, if they could. I haven’t heard anything about McDonald’s clerks quietly working behind the scenes to influence its stock price. I do hear all the time about powerless people who seek to make their living dealing in illegal substances. That’s conspiracy, and it happens all the time.

Why is it so easy to believe in conspiracies when the perpetrators are weak people, but so hard when they are powerful?

Could it be that thing about the emperor?

Mr. Shackleford put up an interesting post on talk radio, which linked to a series of reports on CNN on the phenomenon. It’s a favorite subject of mine.

Different media affect us in different ways. Television is a guest in our home, usually right in the middle of our family rooms, and so TV hosts usually have to be charming. Maybe that’s old school – Glenn Beck certainly doesn’t fit that bill, but over the years, TV anchor spots have generally gone to the likes of Brian Williams and Katie Couric. They are pretty, vapid, and likable. Dan Rather even went so far as to wear a sweater under TV lights, thinking it would make him appear more comfortable to viewers, and therefore more trustworthy.

Radio is different. The channel of communication in radio is one talker, one listener. Rush Limbaugh may be reaching 13 million people, but it’s a one-on-one medium.

Radio hosts do not have to be charming. Most aren’t. Radio is inflammatory – that one talker has that one listener by the testicles, and can implant all kinds of ideas and really make him angry. (Most talk radio listeners are men.)

Marshall McLuhan called radio “the tribal drum”.

Radio is provided with its cloak of invisibility, like any other medium. It comes to us ostensibly with person-to-person directness that is private and intimate, while in more urgent fact, it is really a subliminal echo chamber of magical power to touch remote and forgotten chords. …Radio affects most people intimately, person-to-person, offering a world of unspoken communication between writer-speaker and listener. That is the immediate aspect of radio. A private experience. The subliminal depths of radio are charged with the resonating echoes of tribal horns and antique drums. This is inherent in the very nature of this medium, with its power to turn the psyche and society into a single echo chamber. … The only medium for which our education now offers some civil defense is the print medium.*

Ellul wrote about radio in his 1965 book Propaganda:

[Paul] Lazarsfeld, in his [1942] survey of radio broadcasts, cites the case of programs designed to acquaint the American public with the value of each of the ethnic minority groups in the American population. The point was to demonstrate the contribution each group was making, with the purpose of promoting mutual understanding and tolerance. The survey revealed that each broadcast was listened to by the ethnic group in question (for example, the Irish tuned in the program about the Irish), bur rarely anybody else. …

What happens? Those who read the press of their group and listen to the radio of their group are constantly reinforced in their allegiance. They learn more and more that their group is right, that its actions are justified, thus their beliefs are strengthened. At the same time, such propaganda contains elements of criticism and refutation of other groups, which will never be read or heard by a member of another group.

Last summer’s Tea Parties and Town Halls all had the tenor of talk radio. People yelled, talked over one another, but most importantly, they were angry. Talk radio made them that way. Talk radio controls the right wing, and sets the tenor of our debates, the content of signs at rallies, and the comments on blogs.

And the right wing is angry, my friend. Angry and unreachable. It is characteristic of victims of propaganda to exist in a bubble, to reject opposing views without regard to content or carrier. Tea Parties demonstrated to me both the power of radio and of agitprop itself.

Left wing talk radio is very similar, I might add. There just isn’t much of it out there.

Ronald Reagan did away with the Fairness Doctrine, and Rush Limbaugh hit the airwaves around the same time. Right wing talk radio owes its existence to Reagan. Were it necessary to give more than one side of an issue, to grant use of our airwaves for rational debate allowing expression of all sides of any issue, there would be no Rush. What he is doing is as old as radio itself – he is agitating.

Now I hate to say this, as the natural conclusion is that I am drawing parallels, and what happened in post-Wiemar Germany will never repeat, but the Nazis did make effective use of radio to advance their agenda. It’s an effective tool for propaganda – one-on-one, captive listener, one-side only.

Then there is the odd and precisely symmetrical case of Father Charles Edward Coughlin. He had a radio audience of forty million back during the time of FDR. He spewed antisemitism and became an apologist for Hitler and Mussolini. (To be fair, he also supported the New Deal before he turned against it.)

So this is not a new phenomenon by any means. The larger point is that the medium is what agitates, and not the message. Any propagandist could encapsulate his views in talk radio format and make people angry.

I don’t listen to right wing talk radio. I do like a healthy exchange of views, so I listen to Thom Hartmann on my Ipod while exercising or driving. Hartmann drives me a little batty with his high-energy – he overwhelms callers and guests. (He admits to being ADD.) But he does allow opposing viewpoints on and treats those who carry those views with respect.

There are others on the left – Randi Rhodes is offensive to me, so I avoid her. David Sirota has a local morning show here in Denver, and tries to get interesting guests. Stephanie Miller is a comedienne, and a very funny one, so I give her leeway for not knowing very much. She’s entertaining. Air America is fading into the shadows, and is apparently trying to reinvent itself yet again.

But mostly, talk radio is a right wing phenomenon, and I think that it is the anger of that side that drives it. The right is angry about liberals, taxes, the media, Vietnam, abortion … so radio is a natural fit for them. It’s agitation.

But it’s more than that – there are stations aplenty, but Clear Channel, a right wing corporation, owns 1200 radio stations, 58 of them “blow torches”, or 50,000 watt behemoths. That has a lot to do with why right wing dominates the airwaves. Clear Channel dominates station ownership.

The problem is that our airwaves are dominated by one view only, the mother’s milk of propaganda. In addition, we have allowed a few companies to take control of too many stations. The result: we are swimming in agitprop.

The answer: Reduce the number of stations any one company can own to a very low level, say fifty, and no more than one in any market.

And: Return the Fairness Doctrine. It’s far more important to have free expression than “free markets”.

———————
*Marshall McLuhan, Radio: The Tribal Drum, 1964

This is the best laugh I’ve had all week – from Gore Vidal. One advantage of growing old is the freedom to say what you think. It’s not going to affect your income, and your freinds are either dead or senile or they are your friends through think and thin.

Megan Carpentier was nonplused at Gore Vidal’s take on the Roman Polanski affair. She trotted out the old words that feminists use whenever someone says something they don’t like … she chose “misogynist” and “despicable”. Those are good words, I’ll grant you, as they condemn without specifics, throwing a blanket over further inquiry.

Anyway, read and enjoy.

Question: So what’s your take on Polanski, this many years later?

Vidal: I really don’t give a fuck. Look, am I going to sit and weep every time a young hooker feels as though she’s been taken advantage of?

Q: I’ve certainly never heard that take on the story before.

Vidal: First, I was in the middle of all that. Back then, we all were. Everybody knew everybody else. There was a totally different story at the time that doesn’t resemble anything that we’re now being told.

Q: What do you mean?

Vidal: The media can’t get anything straight. Plus, there’s usually an anti-Semitic and anti-fag thing going on with the press – lots of crazy things. The idea that this girl was in her communion dress, a little angel all in white, being raped by this awful Jew, Polacko – that’s what people were calling him – well, the story is totally different now from what it was then.

By the way, Vidal’s photograph at the above link virtually defines the word “sardonic”.

Note: I originally wrote this post in December of 2008, and am feeling a little smug about it (like it was so hard to predict what was in store for us). So consider this gloating.

—————–

With Saxby Chambliss winning in Georgia, Democrats will not have a filibuster-proof senate. No surprises there. I never thought that idea had much merit anyway, as there are enough right wing Democrats to kill and progressive measure that comes afoot. Think … Joe Lieberman. I doubt they’d be able to muster sixty votes on anything. Even with a working majority last time around, Republicans ran the show, and the Democrats did not put up much of a fight.

The nomination of Michael Mukasey as Attorney General is a fine example. Democrats were poised to bottle up the nomination in committee, and then had two timely defections – Chuck Shumer and Diane Feinstein. They got it out of committee. Interestingly, the nomination vote had 40 votes against – yet there was no talk – none – about a possible filibuster. (Probable there were some hidden pro-Mukasey votes nestled among that forty – that’s another problem. You never really know what you’ve got there.)

That’s just how Democrats roll …. over.

We spent the day yesterday in Astoria, Oregon, with Steve. He’s doing counseling and some administrative work while teaching out there, and it looks like it might be a place where he spends some time.

Steve is doing well, even seems to be thriving. He has studied the history of the area for teaching purposes, and so was a good tour guide. He took us out to see an early twentieth century shipwreck, and then later to Fort Clatsop.

Clatsop was not at all what I expected. It was tiny – a small fort housing 34 men, one room for the two captains, and four each housing eight men. It’s a reconstruction based on notes- they haven’t found any remnants of the original. They are generally sure of the area, but not the precise location. It’s probably long been farmed under.

Three of our kids are out here in the Pacific Northwest – two daughters in Portland. Another was visiting while we were here, so it was almost a family reunion, missing only Annie, who is working in Billings. It’s beautiful country. We have thought now and then about moving out here, but realized that the rainy winters would get to us after a while.

I’ve been depoliticized while out here, hardly caring about writing here. I’ve got something going with Budge down below – maybe. He wants to set me straight on three things: tariffs, unions, and minimum wage. All are bad for workers, he says, and furthermore, he has the numbers to prove it.

I did mention that minimum wage workers have not lately commissioned any studies on what might be good for them, so we are pretty much stuck with the conservative economists and think tanks to determine how best to care for them. The thrust from that sector seems to be that low wages and no unions are the best salve for their wounds.

Who am I to argue?

I guess I’m never really depoliticized. But I have decompressed. We’re going into Portland today to shop. I looooooves me some shopping. For lunch we’re going to find a Whole Bowl – I looooooves me some of them them beans and rice. And we’re looking for a Nike factory outlet. I looooooves me some of that overpriced sweatshop stuff. But in the end, I am justified buying Nike shoes because I know that tariffs, minimum wages and unions only produce bad outcomes for working people.

From Dave Budge:

Mark, when are you going to answer the questions about tariffs, unions and minimum wages? That’s your run and hide m.o. I’ve asked you several times.

From me:

Bring it over to my place. We’ll have at it. I’ll set aside special space for you later today.

I’m not exactly sure what questions I am supposed to be answering, but I think it has something to do with tariffs, unions and minimum wages harming working people. I’ll wait.

Hiking on Thursday.

Click here

Click on the above link to be taken to a song called “Broadcast Blues”. The singers are anonymous.

Here’s why: Sue Wilson has made a movie of the same name, Broadcast Blues. I haven’t seen the film yet, as it has not been released, but it has had great success at various film festivals, and I’ve listened to her interviewed (click here, scroll down to October 11). As I understand it, the film is a riff on AM radio in America, a one-note tune if ever there were one, and dominated by right-wing giant Clear Channel.

Clear Channel owns 58 “blow torches” (50,000 watt stations) in the largest markets in the U.S., and over a thousand stations in total. It is the reason why the right wing dominates the airwaves. It is not popular demand. It is monopoly ownership.

Originally, before release, the theme song for Broadcast Blues was going to be Bruce Springsteen’s “Your Hometown”. Wilson had written permission to use the song. However, the Boss had released a new album and was embarking on his 2007-2008 Magic Tour, and backed out of the deal. His people told Wilson that if Bruce played in her movie, he would risk pissing off Clear Channel.

Clear Channel, in addition to controlling most radio stations in the country, also controls most concert venues. With that kind of power, they cannot resist flexing the political muscles (power corrupts …). Just as they shut down the Dixie Chicks for being politically impudent, so too are they powerful enough to shut down The Boss.

Of course, Springsteen is no profile in courage. I’ll never hear him again with the same ears. “Born in the USA” was a great song. Maybe The Boss is just a dog who’s been beat too much.

Wilson searched around for another song to replace Your Hometown, but could not find another artist willing to take on Clear Channel. In the end, she found several volunteers who were willing to record an original tune, but only anonymously.

A commenter calling himself “Lizard” at 4&20 Blackbirds put up the following, which is a quote taken from another place. Apparently it is a concept widely understood in economics – even Malthusians use it. But for this purpose, it is used to describe the dynamic between Democrats and Republicans in our faux-democratic system.

“The American political system, since at least 1968, has been operating like a ratchet, and both parties — Republicans and Democrats — play crucial, mutually reinforcing roles in its operation. The electoral ratchet permits movement only in the rightward direction. The Republican role is fairly clear; the Republicans apply the torque that rotates the thing rightward.”

“The Democrats’ role is a little less obvious. The Democrats are the pawl. They don’t resist the rightward movement — they let it happen — but whenever the rightward force slackens momentarily, for whatever reason, the Democrats click into place and keep the machine from rotating back to the left. Here’s how it works. In every election year, the Democrats come and tell us that the country has moved to the right, and so the Democratic Party has to move right too in the name of realism and electability. Gotta keep these right-wing madmen out of the White House, no matter what it takes.”

If you came to this website today because you like my inability to economize on words, you came to the wrong place. He nailed it.