| Name: |
Shortbus
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| Subject: |
Where there is Hillary there is more fire
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Date:
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9/9/2016 10:36:19 AM
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Hoo mite vote for Hilary?
America The Illiterate
Sep 8, 2016
Authored by Chris Hedges in Nov 2008, via Strategic-Culture.org,
We live in two Americas.
One America, now the minority, functions in a print-based, literate world. It can cope with complexity and has the intellectual tools to separate illusion from truth.
The other America, which constitutes the majority, exists in a non-reality-based belief system. This America, dependent on skillfully manipulated images for information, has severed itself from the literate, print-based culture. It cannot differentiate between lies and truth. It is informed by simplistic, childish narratives and clichés. It is thrown into confusion by ambiguity, nuance and self-reflection.
This divide, more than race, class or gender, more than rural or urban, believer or nonbeliever, red state or blue state, has split the country into radically distinct, unbridgeable and antagonistic entities.
There are over 42 million American adults, 20 percent of whom hold high school diplomas, who cannot read, as well as the 50 million who read at a fourth- or fifth-grade level. [That’s 70 million people TOTAL, out of 330 million or 21%.] Nearly a third of the nation’s population is illiterate or barely literate. And their numbers are growing by an estimated 2 million a year.
But even those who are supposedly literate retreat in huge numbers into this image-based existence. A third of high school graduates, along with 42 percent of college graduates, never read a book after they finish school. Eighty percent of the families in the United States last year did not buy a book.
[Census data says there are 116 million households in the USA, if you assume the 70 million illiterates and below 5th grade literacy folks defined above are spread out evenly, you get 60% of households that have an adult member with a below 5th grade literacy level. In reality many of the below 5th grade folks are in the same household, so the “80% of families didn’t buy a book” number is bad, ugly bad.]
The illiterate rarely vote, and when they do vote they do so without the ability to make decisions based on textual information. American political campaigns, which have learned to speak in the comforting epistemology of images, eschew real ideas and policy for cheap and reassuring personal narratives. Political propaganda now masquerades as ideology. Political campaigns have become an experience. They do not require cognitive or self-critical skills. They are designed to ignite pseudo-religious feelings of euphoria, empowerment and collective salvation.
[Total agreement. Bernie and Trump clearly illustrate that, Hillary is failing to generate “pseudo-religious feelings of euphoria” and is vulnerable because of it.]
Campaigns that succeed are carefully constructed psychological instruments that manipulate fickle public moods, emotions and impulses, many of which are subliminal. They create a public ecstasy that annuls individuality and fosters a state of mindlessness. They thrust us into an eternal present. They cater to a nation that now lives in a state of permanent amnesia. It is style and story, not content or history or reality, which inform our politics and our lives. We prefer happy illusions. And it works because so much of the American electorate, including those who should know better, blindly cast ballots for slogans, smiles, the cheerful family tableaux, narratives and the perceived sincerity and the attractiveness of candidates. We confuse how we feel with knowledge.
The illiterate and semi-literate, once the campaigns are over, remain powerless. They still cannot protect their children from dysfunctional public schools. They still cannot understand predatory loan deals, the intricacies of mortgage papers, credit card agreements and equity lines of credit that drive them into foreclosures and bankruptcies. They still struggle with the most basic chores of daily life from reading instructions on medicine bottles to filling out bank forms, car loan documents and unemployment benefit and insurance papers. They watch helplessly and without comprehension as hundreds of thousands of jobs are shed. They are hostages to brands. Brands come with images and slogans. Images and slogans are all they understand. Many eat at fast food restaurants not only because it is cheap but because they can order from pictures rather than menus. And those who serve them, also semi-literate or illiterate, punch in orders on cash registers whose keys are marked with symbols and pictures.
This is our brave new world.
Political leaders in our post-literate society no longer need to be competent, sincere or honest. They only need to appear to have these qualities. Most of all they need a story, a narrative. The reality of the narrative is irrelevant. It can be completely at odds with the facts. The consistency and emotional appeal of the story are paramount. The most essential skill in political theater and the consumer culture is artifice. Those who are best at artifice succeed. Those who have not mastered the art of artifice fail.
In an age of images and entertainment, in an age of instant emotional gratification, we do not seek or want honesty. We ask to be indulged and entertained by clichés, stereotypes and mythic narratives that tell us we can be whomever we want to be, that we live in the greatest country on Earth, that we are endowed with superior moral and physical qualities and that our glorious future is preordained, either because of our attributes as Americans or because we are blessed by God or both.
The ability to magnify these simple and childish lies, to repeat them and have surrogates repeat them in endless loops of news cycles, gives these lies the aura of an uncontested truth. We are repeatedly fed words or phrases like yes we can, maverick, change, pro-life, hope or war on terror. It feels good not to think. All we have to do is visualize what we want, believe in ourselves and summon those hidden inner resources, whether divine or national, that make the world conform to our desires. Reality is never an impediment to our advancement.
The Princeton Review analyzed the transcripts of the Gore-Bush debates, the Clinton-Bush-Perot debates of 1992, the Kennedy-Nixon debates of 1960 and the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858. It reviewed these transcripts using a standard vocabulary test that indicates the minimum educational standard needed for a reader to grasp the text.
During the 2000 debates, George W. Bush spoke at a sixth-grade level (6.7) and Al Gore at a seventh-grade level (7.6). In the 1992 debates, Bill Clinton spoke at a seventh-grade level (7.6), while George H.W. Bush spoke at a sixth-grade level (6.8), as did H. Ross Perot (6.3). In the debates between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, the candidates spoke in language used by 10th-graders. In the debates of Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas the scores were respectively 11.2 and 12.0.
In short, today’s political rhetoric is designed to be comprehensible to a 10-year-old child or an adult with a sixth-grade reading level.
[Keep in mind, 99.99% of the population did not attend the Lincoln-Douglas debates in person and only read the after action reports in the papers, which did print the journalist’s notes of the debate.]
It is fitted to this level of comprehension because most Americans speak, think and are entertained at this level. This is why serious film and theater and other serious artistic expression, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins of American society. Voltaire was the most famous man of the 18th century. Today the most famous “person” is Mickey Mouse.
In our post-literate world, because ideas are inaccessible, there is a need for constant stimulus. News, political debate, theater, art and books are judged not on the power of their ideas but on their ability to entertain. Cultural products that force us to examine ourselves and our society are condemned as elitist and impenetrable. Hannah Arendt warned that the marketization of culture leads to its degradation, that this marketization creates a new celebrity class of intellectuals who, although well-read and informed themselves, see their role in society as persuading the masses that “Hamlet” can be as entertaining as “The Lion King” and perhaps as educational. “Culture,” she wrote, “is being destroyed in order to yield entertainment.”
“There are many great authors of the past who have survived centuries of oblivion and neglect,” Arendt wrote, “but it is still an open question whether they will be able to survive an entertaining version of what they have to say.”
The change from a print-based to an image-based society has transformed our nation. Huge segments of our population, especially those who live in the embrace of the Christian right and the consumer culture, are completely unmoored from reality. They lack the capacity to search for truth and cope rationally with our mounting social and economic ills. They seek clarity, entertainment and order. They are willing to use force to impose this clarity on others, especially those who do not speak as they speak and think as they think. All the traditional tools of democracies, including dispassionate scientific and historical truth, facts, news and rational debate, are useless instruments in a world that lacks the capacity to use them.
As we descend into a devastating economic crisis, one that Barack Obama cannot halt, there will be tens of millions of Americans who will be ruthlessly thrust aside. As their houses are foreclosed, as their jobs are lost, as they are forced to declare bankruptcy and watch their communities collapse, they will retreat even further into irrational fantasy. They will be led toward glittering and self-destructive illusions by our modern Pied Pipers—our corporate advertisers, our charlatan preachers, our television news celebrities, our self-help gurus, our entertainment industry and our political demagogues—who will offer increasingly absurd forms of escapism.
[I’d say “increasingly absurd escapism” is the best of the worst outcomes.]
The core values of our open society, the ability to think for oneself, to draw independent conclusions, to express dissent when judgment and common sense indicate something is wrong, to be self-critical, to challenge authority, to understand historical facts, to separate truth from lies, to advocate for change and to acknowledge that there are other views, different ways of being, that are morally and socially acceptable, are dying.
Obama used hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign funds to appeal to and manipulate this illiteracy and irrationalism to his advantage, but these forces will prove to be his most deadly nemesis once they collide with the awful reality that awaits us.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-09-07/america-illiterate
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| Name: |
lakngulf
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| Subject: |
LnG
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Date:
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9/9/2016 11:35:23 PM (updated 9/9/2016 11:37:22 PM)
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Give me some honest answers. What would the Republicans (you included?) be doing if Hillary Clinton was saying the same things about Vladimir Putin as Donald trump?
Clinton Foundation and hrc state department are a lot closer to Putin than djt
What would they (you) be saying if the Clintons had given their name and endorsement to a ''University'' that was nothing but a fraud and scam?
some did not like their results from the school. Others loved it and gave rave reviews. I do not know, was not there.
What would they say (you) if it was factually shown that the Clintons had used illegal immigrants to provide construction on private property and then stiffed them out of the promised wages?
djt is involved in a lot of activities, knows the system, and probably used it to his advantage at times.
What would they (you) say if the Clinton Foundation had illegally given money to the re-election committee of a candidate who then dropped an investigation of the foundation?
I think the Clinton Foundation has done worse, as in aided our enemies for "return on investment" but I do not have all the facts.
What would they (you) say if it was further shown that the Clinton Foundation then reported in their tax filing that the contribution had been to a completely different entidy?
It has already been shown that the CF has unreported much income, primarily from countries that they'd rather us not know had given
What would they (you) say if Hillary Clinton personally pushed the stupid conspiracy theory that Melania Trump did not enter the country legally or if they talked up the true fact that she lied about her college career?
Who did not enter legally?
What would they (you) have to say about Hillary if she said a judge was not qualified to hear a suit against the Clinton Foundation because his parents were from someplace that she has said bad things about?
That was a stupid thing for him to say. But he is not the only one talking this election. "I did not ..."
What would they (you) say if Hillary Clinton publically mocked wheelchair bound Charles Krauthammer?
Krauthammer cannot stand Donald Trump, and would continue to tell it the way he saw it.
I hope you get what I am driving at but frankly doubt it!
"It is the Alternative, Stupid" You see the bad in one, I see it in the other. And there is NOT a third option. So far djt has not been found to destroy subpoaened (msp) evidence, or crash it with a hammer, or "wipe it with a cloth". hrc is unfit to be our leader.
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| Name: |
lakngulf
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| Subject: |
LnG
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Date:
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9/10/2016 9:20:16 AM
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The point is that Trump should have done better than mock a disabillity. He did it in public, that is not good.
Other points, he should not have belittle McCain, he should not comment on active legal matters, he should bombast that he is smarter than the generals, he should not have degraded Bush 2nd, he should not have said "little Marco" or "this or that Jeb", etc. He is bombastic, have said that before. He is a businessman who has tried much, failed some, but he primarily has not made his profit off of taxpayers and shady foundation deals.
Long before the email situation became criminal (and it is criminal even though an Obama admin Loretta's it under the rug) and even before the CF shenanigans were revealed, I had this to say, and yall have not changed my opinion (opinion that is):
This is from February of this year:
If we all agree that it will be the "lesser of two evils" then, by definition, values would have to be compromised. If the candidate follows my thinking down the line then he/she would not be an evil. But that is not the case. I agree with Hound that Trump is a better option than Cruz, and I almost agree with her on Rubio. The kid seems unprepared and we have been dealing with unprepared, that led into "Hey, I can screw this county up, and, They really need to like Muslims more". It is really a matter of the "lesser compromise".
I think Trump will protect 2nd Amendment.
I think he will not fight for an end to little human murder.
I think he will go as far as he can with an immigration plan. (He has run into many, many deals where he bombasts his plan and then has to modify along the way. But you have to start from a position of strength and work down. Again unlike current).
I think he will know who to deal with in an attempt at economic reform. He knows laws that affect business, trade, taxes and tarriffs. He knows who and what is laundried off shore. He knows how and who is avoiding taxes. He might cut some loopholes. He will know more about economic policies than anyone we have had in the past.
I think he is not weak, and will not be offended or afraid to surround himself with capable, competent folks. He has connections, foreign and domestic.
I am not sure what he will do with the tax code.
I think he would not let the likes of Lois Lerner, Eric Holder, Hillary Clinton, Daniel Werfel, and others go unprosecuted. There may not be sufficient evidence but he would use his resources to check.
I think he would make the GOP establishment go crazy because he would gather leaders of both parties together and say "OK, here's the problem. Divide into two bipartisan groups and each group come up with a solution. We come back in one weak and one group is fired"
I think he is a caring man, who knows the workers from top to bottom, and helps the plight of each.
I think we would wind up with another John Roberts on the Supreme Court, who, like Trump, has differening opinions on many, many topics.
I think what he lacks in foreign policy and military knowledge and experience, he more than makes up for it in domestic, and has said repeately, "I will listen to the military folks on that. They know what they are doing"
His current phrase is "common sense conservative" and I like that.
OK, I think he is the lesser compromise.
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