Writes Jay Caspian Kang, in "Arguing Ourselves to Death/To a degree that we have yet to fully grasp, what rules our age is the ideology of the Internet" (The New Yorker).
The article title "Arguing Ourselves to Death" is a play on the book title, "Amusing Ourselves to Death." The book, by Neil Postman, came out in 1985, and mostly took aim at television.
The article's subtitle reference to "the ideology of the Internet" is also inspired by "Amusing Ourselves to Death." There's this quote from the book:
What is happening in America is not the design of an articulated ideology. No Mein Kampf or Communist Manifesto announced its coming. It comes as the unintended consequence of a dramatic change in our modes of public conversation. But it is an ideology nonetheless, for it imposes a way of life, a set of relations among people and ideas, about which there has been no consensus, no discussion and no opposition. Only compliance. Public consciousness has not yet assimilated the point that technology is ideology.
"So what is the ideology of the Internet?" Kang asks. I don't think he really answers that question. He offers "democratization," but he seems to find the "millions of little arguments" an impossible cacophony.
UPDATE: Over an hour after I published this post, I saw that I typo'd the last word, "cacophony." Somehow I wrote "cacaophony," suggesting that the noisiness of the internet is not dissonant but delicious (though I must say, my first association with the word "cacao" is that "Portlandia" bit).
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64 comments:
The pomposity and lack of self-awareness is comical. I toyed with the idea that this was satire.
"He offers "democratization," but he seems to find the "millions of little arguments" an impossible cacophony."
That's a great line. I think the author is on to something, though. "I'm so old I can remember" when there were only hard newspapers and magazines, nothing online. And some of us, a very small minority of people, would read the opinion pages in newspapers. And if you had something you wanted to respond to, you really had to want to respond because it would require you sending in a letter to the editor, and maybe, possibly, your letter would get read, and...even published, two or three days later in response to the article that got your dander up, or that you wholeheartedly agreed with.
Instant responses were only things we kept to ourselves, or muttered across the kitchen table. There were no public instant responses. You had to care enough to sit down, write a letter, and hope it was well written enough to get noticed by an editor and put in. Otherwise you were just pissing in the wind.
I was one of those freaks who used to write letters to the editor. And now look at me. Look at all of us. Posting instant responses- every single human being- about every possible topic. No longer is it world events. It's....a football player kissing a music star, an awards ceremony turned into a Democrat campaign event, a President who cannot speak vs a President who cannot shut up. Or just inane things like watching a teenager blow up a bottle of Coke. We've got comments and multiple platforms on which to send them out to the world.
It IS a cacophony of comments from the millions at every moment in every day. This is our new world. Letters to the Editor? Seems pretty quaint at this point. Like something from ancient times. Like 1991.
"The mods do have supporters: 'normie' liberals and conservatives who still put a degree of faith in the expert and media classes and who want"
I did, several years ago, and my trust was abused to the point where I strongly believe that there are no actual "experts," in a what we would commonly understand the word to mean sense, in the media classes, outside of sports commentary, where genuine expertise is valued. Instead the purpose of the media class is to inform us of the things we are supposed to believe in order for the power elite to get what they want. In return they get comfortable jobs with high salaries.
Imagine an election night commentary as insightful, expert, and unbiased as that of an NFL playoff game.
Civil discourse is something that clearly improves society and might even be a hallmark of a "high" society in that it facilitates/promotes discussion vs "fighting". All of the institutions mentioned (establishment institutions, mainstream press, the academy—particularly its most élite schools, the Harvards and the Yales) have all actively worked to degrade civil discourse [and quite successfully] and replace it with the heckler's veto. They were repeatedly warned that they would not like the new rules; they thought the new rules would never apply to them. Unsurprisingly, as their own start to eat them, some are beginning to long for the "good old days".
In 1989 I sat with a mechanical engineer who showed me how he used this newfangled "internet" to manage a product development team spread out in Texas, Italy, and England all from his office in Ohio.
He was also prescient that this instant global communication would undermine existing institutions because there would be far fewer gatekeepers between people and information. Traditional institutions (govt, academia, media) would spend enormous amounts of energy and money in a futile effort to be the moderators. The result will be instability until traditional authority is finally forced to give up power.
I still think about him from time to time. Rarely have I met someone who so clearly understood the future.
I remember Amusing Ourselves to Death as a good read. It might even be more interesting now. Or maybe I'll just think it's commie bull****. One never knows.
In the early 20th Century, there was deep concern that the advent of palace-like department stores, newspapers and magazines (some for women!), fashion shows, and other allures of city life would lead to similar cacophonies of envy, desire, and the erosion of morality.
And they basically did so.
The printing press was also "a dramatic change in our modes of public conversation". Which is why so many people tried to censor it.
"In 1989 I sat with a mechanical engineer"
In 1985 I was visiting my father when the phone rang and when he answered it was just modem squeal so he went to his radio room to answer on his PC. It was an old ham radio friend.
Dad was def an early adopter.
But like with ham radio they didn't have much to say, just hello how are you how's the weather here's my qsl or some BS.
I've a shrewd hunch that society can continue to function without giving Jay Caspian Kang the ability to silence anyone.
The narcissistic ideology of the press, advocacy, and activism.
The mods do have supporters: 'normie' liberals and conservatives who still put a degree of faith in the expert and media classes and who want, more than anything, to restore some bright line of truth
I don't believe anybody. I know everyone, including me carry our personal prejudices, and blind spots. I do my best to align facts with my knowledge of subject.
But, really. expert and media classes??
After years of RUSSIA! reporting that was fueled by zero facts ALL was a lie, but still "sources close to the story . . " were the experts, a wide swath of media consumers relied on. Yep, unnamed sources. What could possibly go wrong.
In the middle of that, we get Covid. the '6 weeks to flatten the curve" idiocy. The vaccine that did not prevent contracting or spreading a virus vaccine, idiocy. The natural immunity means nothing, idiocy. The quarantining the healthy, not the sick, idiocy.
These "experts are going to provide a bright line definition of truth?
Sorry, NO.
So we are back to my Jr High civics chapter, that explained the most disturbing speech must be afforded constitutional protections. Because no single entity (govt) can be trusted.
Follow the science, is nothing but the logical fallacy of Deferring to Authority. Yes its a discredited debating tactic. Deferring to Authority. When you see it, most likely you are being lied to.
The mods do have supporters: 'normie' liberals and conservatives who still put a degree of faith in the expert and media classes and who want, more than anything, to restore some bright line of truth so that society can continue to function....
Trump supporters are largely 'normie' Americans who want, more than anything, to restore some bright line of truth so that society can continue to function. Obviously, they put a much smaller a degree of faith in the experts and basically zero faith in the media classes and for good reason.
Those who still put their faith in the elite academy are increasingly only those who are credentialed by it and are essentially defined by those credentials. Such people make up the legacy media class. They're going to be the last people who recognize the fundamental problems that have developed in our institutions because they themselves are one of those problems.
As a veteran usenet poster back in the day, it became clear to me pretty quickly that some posters would always go on rants and participate in flame wars. And it was easy to tune them out. Robt DeNiro would have been be one such person in alt.showbiz.gossip or alt.personalities.trump -- if something like the latter existed back in the day (I don't think it did). You just let them spout their nonsense until they wind down.
Here’s the thing that really grinds my gourd. I write insightful, pithy comments like this and am lucky if I get one idiotic response from RetardMan23876 from Nowheresville. It’s effing discouraging. Feels like I’m screaming across the Grand Canyon at night from the distant side. Ef ‘em all.
"I remember Amusing Ourselves to Death as a good read. It might even be more interesting now. Or maybe I'll just think it's commie bull****. One never knows."
I read that book. It is (as I recall) very good. I'm curious, though--if you reread it and found you disliked it--why you might think it's "commie bull****" rather than just "bull****?" Does "commie" have a specific meaning to you, or is it for you just an all-purpose term of opprobrium, (as seems to be the case with many people)?
You just have to have social upheavals from time to time to reinforce the inexorable rules of human behavior. Courtesy and civility aren't discardable, they are not the frosting on civilization - they are the foundation. We are reminded yet again that civilization is a delicate act of balancing, materially both fragile and durable, and it exists only by consensus and occasional displays of force. And the most powerful corrupting force is the temptation to abuse authority.
The more a site posts partisan vitriol, the more likely the comment section will be repetitive, crude, and inane. We need better editors, not mods.
“ I did, several years ago, and my trust was abused to the point where I strongly believe that there are no actual "experts," in a what we would commonly understand the word to mean sense, in the media classes, outside of sports commentary, where genuine expertise is valued.”
You can still find places where expertise is respected in places like trade magazines and websites. I read several aerospace-related sites every day and there are still knowledgeable people there, both on the staff and readership.
Kang should read 'The Reason Why' by Cecil Woodham-Smith.
The book dissects how the Victorian class system and the Purchase System of promotion for officers in the British military led to disaster in war in the 1800's.
IMO, we're suffering from a similar problem now, not just in our military, but in academia, in government, in the media and in the corporate world, where prestigious credentials allow less able individuals to leapfrog over those with more experience, aptitude and ability. It's our own version of a class system and it increasingly keeps leading us to disasters today.
"The mods do have supporters: 'normie' liberals and conservatives who still put a degree of faith in the expert and media classes and who want, more than anything, to restore some bright line of truth so that society can continue to function...."
WTF? We normie conservatives despise the "expert and media classes"--the experts that tell us child mutiliation is a medical necessity, or that lockdowns will flatten the curve, sorry, stop the virus, or, wait, that vaccines will stop it, and the media classes that eagerly spread the Russia collusion hoax, or that faint at a Tom Cotton op-ed.
"it imposes a way of life, a set of relations among people and ideas, about which there has been no consensus, no discussion and no opposition. Only compliance . . . He offers "democratization," but he seems to find the "millions of little arguments" an impossible cacophony."
And there we have it, "compliance" with "democratization": can't have that! Millions of arguments: imagine! No! Elon, to the gallows! Althouse next.
Non-partisan mods that following pre-established rules to enforce civility are perfectly welcome.
As are unicorns.
You can have civil discussions or you can have open discussions. Choose one.
"He was also prescient that this instant global communication would undermine existing institutions because there would be far fewer gatekeepers between people and information. Traditional institutions (govt, academia, media) would spend enormous amounts of energy and money in a futile effort to be the moderators. The result will be instability until traditional authority is finally forced to give up power."
I first got on the internet a couple of years before it went public. I remember the utopian talk when it did so. Everyone would be able to access "THE FACTS" which would inevitably lead to everyone agreeing with the poster leading to a either a socialist or libertarian new era of universal peace and prosperity. Oh, and the socialists wanted dirty commerce banned from the internet. I don't know how they thought porn distribution would work.
This is not an ideology per se. It is the combination of:
1. Media that facilitates impulsive responses and short attention spans, plus
2. An Internet that never forgets impulsive actions
Some have talked about techno-totalitarians, think instead about people turning into techno-barbarians or techno-primal. They know somewhere back in their minds that anything they do can get them 'killed,' so the 'pre-kill' their online opponents.
I’ve seen the experts and the damage done.
One mod to find them, one mod to rule them all, and in the darkness bind them. Google.
There are no arguments. There are Democrats and their leftmedia pets spewing their talking points and censoring, ignoring or shouting down other points of view.
Whether it’s the corporate world or society—loudest shouter gets more airtime, and even if they don’t drive the actions they end up being placated.
The same applies to content on the internet. A small number of users produces most of the commentary, content, etc. Weighted per word, comment sections are often dominated by "loudmouth" types.
This was much more of a problem in the days of forums, where every post in a thread was simply displayed in full, unlike the current system with upvotes and downvotes which can counter it somewhat.
Help, Help I'm Being Repressed!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vl4ufIrMtXg
This is a great description of modern ideologies presented as non-ideological:
It imposes a way of life, a set of relations among people and ideas, about which there has been no consensus, no discussion and no opposition.
"Social justice" and "DEI" could be described as such.
As for "mods," the various online forums and comment sections of the late 1990s early 2000s were a place of intellectual adventure for me. It's portrayed as being devoid of any thoughtful debate, but that's not true. You had fish around, but you could find adversaries willing to build an argument, link to sources and challenge your ideas not your mamma's shoe size.
I read "Amusing Ourselves to Death" about once a year.
We’re at risk of losing the forest for the cacao trees. That’s funny; when I type cacao on the iPhone the poop emoji comes up. That’s probably from the Spanish word “caca” which translates to poop. I have my Spanish language setting turned on. Cacao.
The desire to censor people who disagree with you is pretty powerful and it takes someone with a strong ethical core to not abuse that power when given it- and such people are extremely rare, and certainly rarer in the community of self identified moderators than in the general population. People who want to moderate a discussion are generally not to be trusted a priori, and you never trust the professed motivation unless they are the rare honest one who says, "I don't need a reason- I just want to shut your mouth for you."
As usual, the MSM keep telling the same ol' lie, that they are purveyors of "truth" and they are trying to keep everyone honest in this crazy world of "conspiracy theories" and "extremists".
I've come to believe the Ol Commie technique of accusing others what you're doing is the most effective propaganda/rhetorical trick ever invented. The MSM is constantly trotting out lies, half-truths, exaggerations, propaganda, and unproven charges against those they dislike. And instead of defending themselves when people point this out, they just accuse everyone else of lying and being "extremists" and "Conspiracy theorists".
And so, we spend all our time defending ourselves, instead of attacking THEM. We had 3 years of the MSM and their allies in congress accuse Trump of Russiagate, a conspiracy theory without evidence, and pulitzer prizes were handed out and now we know the whole thing as a "Bright lie". The J6 "assault on democracy" is lie. Much of what was put out by the MSM as "Scientific Truth" on Covid turned out to be a lie, half-lie, or an exaggeration.
THe MSM is now lying about border. About illegal immigration. About the state of the economy. About the amount of crime and the ability of Ukraine to win its war. About, about, about.
Yet, according to the MSM, the problem isnt THEM, its all the OTHER people on internet. They're the millions of voices putting out half-baked conspiracies and craziness, making it impossible for people to know the TRUTH.
Amazing.
we pretend there is AGW, the virus didn't come from Wuhan, that it's mortality rate was higher, that Biden is sentient, that Jon Stewart had any wit all of these are null propositions,
yes tell it to the people who burned down half the country's cities,
I fully expect a future push to online voting to 'protect our forests'. 30.
The "caca" in "cacaophony" does not make me think of cacao. It looks like a new word for shitposting.
Does the word 'Censorship' appear anywhere?
Could those early performative "flame wars" have been a kind of proto-TikTok?
Early internet "flame wars" were the radio days and Twitter, Instagram and Facebook are the motion picture talkies of today.
It mirrors the history of humanity. We keep forgetting that "understanding" comes from mis-understanding. The more we pretend to know everything, the more foolish and less understanding we become. Don't kill what you don't understand, unless we are talking about maiming kids reproductive future.
Let the flame wars resume 🤦🏽♂️
"This was much more of a problem in the days of forums, where every post in a thread was simply displayed in full, unlike the current system with upvotes and downvotes which can counter it somewhat."
Yes, we know Rich, you prefer a regime of censorship.
They probably could have gotten away with Russiagate, but not with that and the obvious lies about COVID at the same time.
Before the was public internet, before fax machines were widely available, there was Telex/Teletype/TWX
I remember in the late 70s working with an engineer from corporate (Fort Worth) in the Puerto Rico plant. He needed to "talk" to someone in FTW but for some reason could not do it by phone. We went to reception, he kicked the receptionist out, seated himself at keyboard and started typing. He immediately got a response. Then he sat there for another 10 minutes twixing (What an opportunity Elon missed to rename Tweets) back and forth. I remember being completely blown away at the time by this.
I knew about TWX of course and used it regularly. Usually I gave the receptionist a handwritten note, she typed it in and generated a paper tape full of holes. Then she dialed the other number and ran the tape through. Connections were metered and the tape reduced the time spent connected.
This was the first time I had seen a conversation in real time over the TWX.
John Henry
Why we don't believe the media, they constantly lie, and not only by omission.
Deputy Chief of Staff Anthony Ornato’s first transcribed interview with the committee was conducted on January 28, 2022. In it, he told Cheney and her investigators that he overheard White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows push Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser to request as many National Guard troops as she needed to protect the city.
He also testified President Trump had suggested 10,000 would be needed to keep the peace at the public rallies and protests scheduled for January 6, 2021. Ornato also described White House frustration with Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller’s slow deployment of assistance on the afternoon of January 6, 2021.
Not only did the committee not accurately characterize the interview, they suppressed the transcript from public review. On top of that, committee allies began publishing critical stories and even conspiracy theories about Ornato ahead of follow-up interviews with him. Ornato was a career Secret Service official who had been detailed to the security position in the White House.
I wouldn't be surprised to see Congress put the lead back in gasoline in an attempt to make us stupid enough to believe the whoppers they tell us.
Here is another bit of testimony we never heard from the "experts" in the media.
"Once the Capitol was breached, the Trump White House pushed for immediate help from Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller and grew frustrated at the slow deployment of that help, according to the testimony."
Joe Biden continues his torrent of lies about J6 to this day. The reason he has always been so prone to "gaffes" is that his true agenda is so at odds with his public agenda, that keeping them straight would require superhuman abilities.
In the 1950s my cousin had a paper route in Hagerstown MD. He took me to the newspaper one day and I got the full tour including the printing plant. Very impressive, especially the Mergenthaler machines that converted molten lead into (fake) news at the press of a keyboard button.
That was where I saw my first "fax" machine. ISTR that it could only receive, not transmit but could be wrong. And it took forever (5-10 minutes?) to receive a poor quality image to be used in the paper.
I think in one of the original Tom Swift books from the 20's Tom invented a fax machine. My father had the whole set 20-25 book setas a lad and I read them voraciously.
In the 80s, in one of John D MacDonald's novels, fax machines made a plot device. There were a number of people who had fax machines and used them to spread what would be called wild conspiracy theories. Again, it impressed me because it was not just sending info, they were having conversations via fax. I've done that in the 90s. Someone would send a sketch, I'd mark it up and shoot it back, they mark it up some more and send it back to me. All in real time.
Fax machines were still pretty expensive (my first, in 1990, cost about $1500)
John Henry
Meh.
His leap in jumping from defining "moderators" as those trying to enforce civility in internet discussions to "mods" as the elite establishment trying to control society and equating the two just doesn't work.
Staging two vaguely defined entities with two clearly different goals doesn't set up a good comparison and conclusions drawn from that flawed premise are very likely to be wrong.
A Mobile Game To See How Well YOU Can Handle Content Moderation
Moderator Mayham
https://moderatormayhem.engine.is/
It was an interesting experiment to play, and well worth the development time.
Too bad that many people who really need to understand the process and how policies and rules actually work will never go through a round or two to get a glimpse of how tricky it actually is.
The mods do have supporters: 'normie' liberals and conservatives who still put a degree of faith in the expert and media classes and who want, more than anything, to restore some bright line of truth so that society can continue to function
So, religion.
"Blogger Rabel said...
Meh.
His leap in jumping from defining "moderators" as those trying to enforce civility in internet discussions to "mods" as the elite establishment trying to control society and equating the two just doesn't work.
Staging two vaguely defined entities with two clearly different goals doesn't set up a good comparison and conclusions drawn from that flawed premise are very likely to be wrong."
This was my first thought also. That having been said, I'll try to add to it.
In any conflict it's fairly easy for news organizations to find out what each participant in the conflict says it's about. And the news can tell us what each side says. That telling of what each side says is what I mean by baseline expertise and impartiality. Recently, the elite institutions (looking at you Harvard) have all given up on this simple, baseline task. The NYT, for example, has stated that it will only present what one side, the left, says any given the conflict is about and then it will present what the left says about the other side. But reading other media one sees that "the elite" are all doing the same thing as the NYT and in fact, the elite are now the group which has agreed to present only one side. And this is called "moderation by them. This "moeration," I would say, has caused a trajectory of elite separation - first, from half the country (Russia, Russia); second, from half the country together with chunks of the left (the Jews are no longer listened to); third, from reality (the stock market is up which means everyone is doing well; there is no crisis at the border in the US; a two state solution can be implemented in Hamas-controlled Gaza).
We begin to directly experience the need for free speech without "moderation."
But free speech doesn't mean that there should be no moderation on the internet. Remember, only you moderators can prevent flame wars. But then, there are those who, it seems, simply cannot realize that two different kinds of moderation on the internet and in the media use the same word for their different actions. So there are cases the presence of anti-flame moderation is brought into unnecessary conflict with the right to and the need for free speech.
normie' liberals and conservatives who still put a degree of faith in the expert and media classes and who want, more than anything, to restore some bright line of truth so that society can continue to function....
How about we start with what constitutes a "vote." Those who would "restore...truth" ought to be pushing forward serious measures to promote transparency, responsibility and accountability regarding both voting and vote-counting.
And yet...
How about what it means to be a citizen, a legal immigrant, or a trespasser?
Robert Cook: because Neil Postman was a communist, and even flirted with Stalinism.
Sometimes you have to believe people when they tell you who they are.
Let me expand a bit. I just looked at Postman's books that I own. Had to dust them off. One of my academic specialities is radicals in education. It's a fertile topic, even more fertile than emus.
I share with him a luddite perspective on computers in education, but that was more a means to an end for him.
Postman said he was a communist, but a more precise definition of his lifestyle would be extreme Maoist Fabian, an entirely disgusting combination, whereas he and his peers would compose an elite urban class that would control how the rest of us great unwashed kept them in their crackers and cheese and use donkeys for our ploughs. He understood nothing about economics and had a deep revulsion for the middle and working classes.
His lifelong passion was to eliminate intellectual merit or differentiation between students and use his theory of "radical education" to make everyone the same -- except for his own children and the children of other elite commies like him. His book, Teaching as a Subversive Activity, reveals his true intentions.
Only trust commies to tell you they're commies. Otherwise, don't trust them at all.
Sorry, Mr. Cook. He's a fraud. He'd look down on you. You don't strike me as a champagne communist, but a questioning person. Let go of these people. They don't care about you, or anyone else.
I was an early and avid Usenet participant until around 15 years ago. I was involved in one group in particular that adopted "moderation," which naturally was then used to silence voices that the moderator disagreed with, no matter how politely expressed, and even if in response to another post on the same subject. There was no recourse, and discussion about moderation decisions in the group was forbidden. I left and never looked back. Light moderation to delete obvious trolls or blatantly off-topic or abusive posts is probably necessary, but it rarely stops with just that. This and other blogs I participate in are notable exceptions.
Another way to discredit Neil Postman is to consider how television brought people together, black and white, Jewish, Orthodox Russian and Catholic and black Baptist who lived in absolute harmony in Poughkeepsie together watching the same tv shows.
I grew up in a very racially diverse suburb.
Archie Bunker, The Jeffersons -- this is what we talked about on holidays, when Mr. Jefferson, who led neighborhood parades on every holiday, famously lost a toe to save a frog while mowing his lawn, and all the men tried to get the toe stuff out of the mower, but it was mixed with the frog stuff.
Talk about a melting pot.
I came across a Japanese propaganda comic book/magazine (Asia No Hikari/Light of Asia) in the papers of an American veteran of the South Pacific theater in WW2 and was surprised to find an ad (from a familiar Japanese company) for fax machines.
WTF?, I asked myself. Turns out the fax (facsimile) machine has been around a long time, longer than many assume.
I'm old enough to remember the days of usenet discussion groups. I was a regular on the WW2 and ACWABAWS moderated and unmoderated groups. The unmoderated ones could be fast and furious fun with near-instant back and forth but eventually they were taken over by shitheads; the moderated groups' traffic slowed to a trickle because the mods had to deal with so many shitheads . . .
James K’s experience rings a bel with me. Long ago I used to frequent the Motley Fool, mostly about investment, but there were some discussion boards on current affairs and so on. On these I found myself as a moderately right commenter having arguments with some lefty posters. Some polite some not so much. But I was always polite and never had a comment blocked. But then one day one of the lefties who I sometimes argued with got a job there and became a moderator. My comments started disappearing. So I disappeared myself.
It's 24 years and finally someone is saying it out loud. Since the blogs came about the "intellectuals" have been having trouble as their gatekeepers were gone around. In the early days, some media story or "expert" would say something and quickly someone with real expertise, not a chatterer, could call out the errors. The news media and publishers even controlled which experts got exposure, but blogs let people stand on their knowledge without so much as a by your leave to the publishers.
The "intellectual" serves their faction of the state.
For this essential acceptance, the majority must be persuaded by ideology that their government is good, wise and, at least, inevitable, and certainly better than other conceivable alternatives. Promoting this ideology among the people is the vital social task of the “intellectuals.” For the masses of men do not create their own ideas, or indeed think through these ideas independently; they follow passively the ideas adopted and disseminated by the body of intellectuals. The intellectuals are, therefore, the “opinion-molders” in society. And since it is precisely a molding of opinion that the State most desperately needs, the basis for age-old alliance between the State and the intellectuals becomes clear.
It is evident that the State needs the intellectuals; it is not so evident why intellectuals need the State. Put simply, we may state that the intellectual’s livelihood in the free market is never too secure; for the intellectual must depend on the values and choices of the masses of his fellow men, and it is precisely characteristic of the masses that they are generally uninterested in intellectual matters. The State, on the other hand, is willing to offer the intellectuals a secure and permanent berth in the State apparatus; and thus a secure income and the panoply of prestige. For the intellectuals will be handsomely rewarded for the important function they perform for the State rulers, of which group they now become a part.
--Murray Rothbard, 'The Anatomy of the State'
The main problem with Reddit is that when you block someone, there's no *PLONK* sound effect. I mean, isn't this the 21st century?
Mary Beth said...
The "caca" in "cacaophony" does not make me think of cacao. It looks like a new word for shitposting.
***********
I think the same "kaka" root appears in "kakistocracy"----a word succincly describing Biden and his thuggish administration.
I started using Usenet sometime in the late 80s. I don't recall ever being bothered by the flame wars. The real turning point came when those two shithead lawyers discovered how to spam. And did, for purely mercenary reasons. The conversations were never the problem. Money was.
Bob Boyd said...
"Trump supporters are largely 'normie' Americans who want, more than anything, to restore some bright line of truth so that society can continue to function."
As usual, another MAGAt gets it wrong. Unadulterated Fascists are riding high in and among the Trump organization, worshiping downright power without recognition of any bright line of truth that would restore America's traditional values and the rule of law. Governmental functions designed to fairly and democratically administer the world's most successful governmental organization were never performed by competent officials because Trump focuses only on Trump.
Anytime I read someone call an American Rightwinger or MAGA person a "fascist" - I write them off as a dumbass or libtard. People who use those kind of words in an American context (Nazi too) are just unserious clowns.
"Sorry, Mr. Cook. He's a fraud."
I don't know. Maybe. Maybe not. How is he a fraud? Because he was an avowed communist? That's not enough.
Until I have more information supporting that accusation, I can't say and must give him the benefit of the doubt. I still have AMUSING OURSELVES TO DEATH on my bookshelf, (the only book of his I've read), so I will have to reread the book and see how it strikes me decades later.
He's a fraud because he subscribed to and advocated for ideologies, sacrifices, and lifestyles he himself didn't live. He was a limousine commie. Not that I don't agree with some of his insights about reading books and having computers in literature classrooms, but the rest of his drivel about pedagogy is your basic Maoist bull.
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