Posted on 12/25/2013 5:41:21 AM PST by Louis Foxwell
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And so we have Obama. A petulent neophyte given the ultimate reigns of leadership and authority. In his wake we have become a bitter, broken nation. Let his reign of terror beceom the very end of progressive politics in our land.
Let all liberalism be smashed upon the ash heap of history and let it never more rise to fill the minds of the weak and stupid with its candied vision nightmares.
Merry Christmas, my FRiends. May the true Spirit of Christ's birth rekindle in your hearts and minds a certain knowledge of and profound commitment to the omnipresence of the Living God in our nation.
The italicized paragraph is spot-on. More on that later. Merry, Happy, my FRiends.
Excellent piece. Thanks
THAT has got to be the most damning indictment I have had the please to read.
Merry Christmas to all our stalwart pundits!
> The media is no longer informative, it is conformative.
This isn’t anything new, btw. The difference now is, there’s a consistent set of talking points, and taxpayer financing of NPR, PBS, and “the arts”. Thanks Louis Foxwell.
I often think that the vast majority of people in this country are still regular Americans who have no idea that the reins of power are being seized by the rich and powerful. They believe the propaganda even though they know they should not. This country is taken over by a TINY minority and they should be scared to death of being noticed.
He misses ‘why’ they control the news. ‘Power’ is just another word for m-o-n-e-y.
They do it to increase consumer spending. Their livelihood comes from their %10 advertising cut of consumer spending.
And only from that.
Artificially increasing consumer spending is only done by confiscating investment spending, the spending that creates wealth. The media has massaged the news to support the government’s redistribution of wealth from investment- which they make no immediate profit from to spending.
They can’t help themselves it’s to their wallets’ interest!
After years of success at this their profits are now dependent on government taking money from investors and giving it to spenders.
You know- what Democrats (socialists) do.
A philosopher called the media a “predatory oligarchy’.
Disagree.
There is a common meme that money is the root motivator behind everything that happens. I beg to differ.
Money, of itself, provides only the ability to acquire "stuff." Once one is past a certain basic level, more or larger or better stuff provides little in the way of actual physical pleasure.
The true quite literally insatiable desire is for status and ego gratification. This has been obscured in our society by the fact that the main way one acquires status is by first acquiring money. In pre-modern societies, there were other ways of acquiring status. Indeed, money often flowed from status, not the other way around. Few of these alternative paths exist any more.
Let us look at automobiles as an example. One can get a new Toyota for ~$20k. This car will do, very efficiently, anything a Lamborghini can do, insofar as moving self, others and stuff from place to place. Indeed it will do so more efficiently.
So why would someone want to spend an order of magnitude or more of money to buy the Lamborghini? Because it's a status symbol. Women and others will admire you. People appear to have no limit at all on their appetite for this.
Until quite recently, women competed indirectly for status by the men they latch onto. Men competed to some extent by the women they were seen with.
Status can also be achieved by and is directly intertwined with power. That status/power is much more important for most people than money can be seen by the fact that wealthy men will leave their money-generating activities for years to enter "public service," where the direct monetary rewards are contemptible (by their standards), but their status shoots up tremendously. They will even spend tens of millions of their own money to acquire political office, showing very clearly that money is a means to the end of status for most people, not the other way around.
Daniel is one my all-time favorites, but he needs to get away from this notion the US is a "democracy." We are not, and if we ever become one we will become Hell on Earth. I cringe every time I read someone who should know better than that.
It is both heartening and humbling to see a great writer put together the arguments, and even some of the verbage and terminology that I have been pushing for the last 20 years.
Greenfield is a brilliant writer. This is a brilliant essay. I am pleased to say, that in my own way, I have been saying almost exactly the same thing. I like to think that I was one of, if not the first, to use the term “mediacracy”.
Daniel Greenfield does it so much better than I ever could.
“Status can also be achieved by and is directly intertwined with power. That status/power is much more important for most people than money can be seen by the fact that wealthy men will leave their money-generating activities for years to enter “public service,” where the direct monetary rewards are contemptible (by their standards), but their status shoots up tremendously. They will even spend tens of millions of their own money to acquire political office, showing very clearly that money is a means to the end of status for most people, not the other way around.”
You are mostly correct, but I disagree that “That status/power is much more important for most people”. I think the people that it is important for are a minority. A majority do not even want the status and power of being a supervisor or boss. The hassle is not worth it to them.
But, that small minority that does crave status and power is far more than enough to be extremely dangerous.
I agree that direct power over others is probably a minority obsession. However, acquiring money is the primary way of acquiring status in our society, with power a partially separate but far more direct route to status.
My contention is that status, as such, is the primary driver behind a desire for “more.” More, larger, more powerful, shinier stuff. All ways of displaying and thereby acquiring status relative to others. Pecking order, if you will.
What’s the first question asked when two people meet? What do you do? We then immediately rank ourselves on probable education, housing, wealth, etc. Status.
Take the man with $10B. What could he possibly buy with $20B that he couldn’t with $10B? Can a desire for more stuff motivate him to keep working hard? Nope. But he can move up on the Forbes ranking of the World’s Wealthest Men. Status.
We found/stumbled upon a way to make status conditional on providing things other people want.
I think you are correct about status and power. It is mostly because direct power usually comes with some responsibility, and people shun that.
If people can exercise power without responsibility, many more would want it. I think it is one of the key tenets to the attraction of power in the media.
The behavior of a profit-making industry can be satisfactorally explained by what is good for it’s bottom line. So it’s secondary that, of course, people have various other interests than money. It is not neccessary to look to these other, emotional, motives.
The media’s natural predatory desire for government redistribution to increase consumer spending is at the heart of all the behavior Greenfield educes so well. (Though he misunderstands the cause of it.)
As the other commenter’s namesake said so well: “you show me where a man gets his cornpone and I’ll tell you what his opinions are”.
“Take the man with $10B. What could he possibly buy with $20B that he couldn’t with $10B? Can a desire for more stuff motivate him to keep working hard? Nope. But he can move up on the Forbes ranking of the World’s Wealthest Men. Status.”
I can personally find ways to spend a virtually limitless amount of money.
10 Billion... a trifle. I want my own country with a nuclear aircraft carrier group and a robust space program that I intend to start an asteroid mining operation with.
The silver lining may be that it has become apparent to many more people that it was the media that foisted Obama on us. We've seen behind the curtain.
Now it's just a matter of realizing that like fear, the only power they have is what we give them.
We can certainly agree on that.
Yes, but is your root motivation the desire to possess those things or the status and adulation you would acquire by having them?
Movies are a very powerful way to show motives. Have you ever noticed how many movies end with the hero being applauded and admired by a crowd? A lot more than show him being surrounded by nice “stuff.”
I agree people have a variety of motivations for what they view. What I am really objecting to is the simplistic notion that everybody is “really” motivated simply by money. For many people money is more a means to an end than an end in itself.
But with regards to media the situation is reversed- the very obvious profit motive driving their support of redistributionism is completely ignored! To do that is worse than simplistic, it is futile.
Anyway, hope you and all had a Merry Christmas.
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