Media

A Butterfly Flaps Its Wings: From the Powell Memo to the Eastman Memo and January 6th

Published on by Brynne VanHettinga

Part 9 of a 10-part Series:

The Pitchfork Politics of Conspiracy and Hate

“The road to fascism and dictatorship is paved with failures of economic policy to serve the needs of the general public.”

 Tim Wu in The Curse of Bigness:  Antitrust in the New Gilded Age (2018)

On January 6th, it was mostly White men—members of the most privileged group in American society—who were now the ones threatening the “system.” Yet, these were not the billionaires and oligarchs—the “masters of the universe”—whose primary objective is the protection of obscene wealth. This was a protest against a government that is viewed as being unresponsive to the People. If we are completely honest, we might admit to some sympathy for this sentiment, if not for the action. How many of us have argued that our elected representatives know nothing about the struggles of our daily lives and care even less. How many of us have participated in peaceful protests or rallies at the Capitol (as this writer has), which (even if unlikely and not caused by any of us) could have turned violent?

Moreover, imagine what any one of us might do if we genuinely believed the election was stolen. Indeed, there was a small-but-non-zero probability that Trump may have simply declared himself the winner (regardless of actual results) and barricaded himself in the White House behind a force of military loyalists and armed MAGA vigilantes. What would we have done in such a situation? Certainly, the Capitol would not have been a target, nor would January 6th have been a day of any particular significance. There likely would have been mass protests, and some of these likely would have turned violent. Although the riot at the Capitol on January 6th was the inflection point that climaxed a slow but insidious threat to American democracy, we know that this could have taken any number of alternative paths. Former Vice-President Mike Pence should take serious note of possible alternate outcomes.

 

Michael Cohen predicts Trump will not leave White House if he loses on 2/27/2019

January 6th is a unique event in more ways than the obvious. Post-January 6th analysis has focused on criminal prosecutions and reforms to the Electoral Count Act, with the goal of insuring that such a thing does not happen again. As necessary as these legalistic remedies are, they do not address the extreme level of delusion and hate that has infected a sizeable minority of the population. As attorneys who participated in the coup plot are now being charged with “weaponizing their law licenses” by bar disciplinary authorities, harder to address has been the weaponization of the First Amendment. 

At what point should free speech rights yield to public safety hazards? In the case of Covid misinformation, we can point to this as creating a threat to public health, and even human life. We can point to “hate speech,” that results in “hate crimes” and acts of stochastic terrorism where people are killed. In some cases, the public harm is less acute and even harder to establish causation. For decades, we have been subjected to a corporate media that, at first, focused on manufacturing insatiable wants to keep us working harder. In the beginning, many of us in the (formerly robust) middle class may have been able to afford the occasional advertising-induced splurge. What was the harm in wasting money buying things we didn’t need? As the middle class was hollowed out and most of us found ourselves working harder for less, the corporate media shifted to the manufacturing of consent, a Panglossian propaganda model touting glamorous lifestyles, justifying the infallibility of “markets,” and blaming everyone who isn’t already rich for their own shortcomings.

This strategy enabled the oligarchs to maintain a hold on power for decades. But people will continue to work harder for less only so long. At some point, most folks were no longer willing to vote on single moral/cultural issues like abortion, even when the opposition was labeled as baby-killers. New and more heinous bogeymen had to be created. It started with pedophilia—which, unfortunately there are plenty of real-life examples. But—oops—some of the pedophiles are doing “our” bidding, so even more loathsome (and patently incredible) stories were made up about deep state pedophile rings drinking the blood of children in the back of a pizza restaurant in New Jersey. The Q-conspiracy took on a life of its own.

The Q-Anon movement appeared after decades of right-wing disparagement of government. Government is portrayed as an impediment to freedom, but this version of “freedom” is about allowing the privileged to do whatever they want unimpeded by obligations to society at large. Freedom for the rest of us means the “freedom” to work harder, with the remote chance that we too, might become obscenely wealthy. The purpose of “public” schools was to provide a training ground for technocratic job skills useful to the corporatocracy. High level positions in academia, government and law are reserved for those educated at elite institutions—and who are carefully screened to insure they subscribe to elite values. The hoi polloi are not privy to learning the history and mechanics of government, a philosophical ethos of public service, or the critical thinking skills necessary to challenge the status quo.

The working class is not only kept ignorant of how government functions, but is programmed to view government as the enemy—a “deep state” which is comprised of elites who are completely disconnected and disinterested in their daily lives and welfare. Which, unfortunately, contains some element of truth, but they are unable to discern the whole picture. Success is determined in a hypercompetitive environment of Darwinian survival of the fittest and everyone for himself. This prevents development of solidarity among the working rabble, which also prevents them from forming or joining labor unions—which have also been demonized. This creeping degradation of working and civic life erodes hope in the future.

Since the civil rights era of the 1960s, previously marginalized groups—BIPOC, women and LGBTQ—were able to make some visible gains in socio-economic advancement.  Although still in the minority, women are now CEOs of major companies.  There is a record number of women in Congress, and four women now sit on the U.S. Supreme Court. Income of Blacks and other minorities has also improved, but inequality remains high. Although income and status for women and minorities has improved over the past several decades, they have nonetheless not caught up with the income and wealth levels of white men. From the vantage point of rural and working-class white males—whose incomes have stagnated or declined—what they observe is that some “others” are gaining while they are losing—which creates resentment and polarization.

The economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton describe a heretofore unacknowledged epidemic they term Deaths of Despair. They trace a rising death rate from suicide, drug overdose and alcoholic liver disease (a slower form of suicide)—particularly among middle aged white men without college degrees—to declining real wages, insecurity, deprivation, alienation, and loss of hope for the future. For the first time in a century, American life expectancies fell in 2019 (pre-Covid) and 2020. Although the drop in life expectancies was larger for most minority groups, it fell 2.4% for whites. Even when life expectancies were increasing, Americans had lower life expectancies and poorer health than citizens in other high-income countries. Moreover, beginning in the 1990s, life expectancies in the United States began to diverge across geographic regions, and these have been correlated with political party domination. Between 2001 and 2019, the absolute difference in mortality rates between Republican leaning and Democratic leaning counties jumped by 541%.

The acknowledgement (and discussion) of extreme and growing inequality is found primarily among academics or non-mainstream media sources. Government and academic centers that collect data typically focus on datasets and formats designed to be useful to businesses or “economic development” planners. Other than occasional, fragmented stories or articles, popular culture and mainstream media has developed no language or discourse to address how and why the “system” is not working for so many people. Most Americans know (or more likely, “feel” on a gut level) that they are working harder for less, and that life has become more precariatized and harsher. Because they have no way to even articulate the angst—let along avail themselves of systems and institutions to help figure out why and what to do—they look for someone to blame.

This alienated angst is juxtaposed against a media saturated in relentless optimism, Wall Street boosterism, jingoistic hubris, and celebration of wealth. The message is if your own life doesn’t measure up to the roaring success that is all around you, it is because you either need to work harder, “market” yourself more aggressively, or are simply a loser. This is more than a disorienting cognitive dissonance, but amounts to a subtle assault on the core of one’s own human dignity. A combination of material, social, and psychological degradation primes a significant subset of the affected population to devolve into scapegoating and conspiracy theories—which can lead eventually to disconnection from reality. Or, what Dr. Lobaszewsky would term a hysteroidal high point.

There is a spiteful attitude among the alienated white working class that goes above and beyond mere selfishness and greed we usually associate with plutocrats. This perversion of (perhaps justified) grievance is expressed in the sentiment that if my own life is miserable and my job sucks then no one else (especially if they are BIPOC, LGBTQ, or a different religion) should have a decent life or job either. So…,we will vote against minimum wage increases, employee rights, job safety, expanded health care, environmental protection or anything else designed to make the lives of the “least of these” better. We would rather deny these things to “the other”—which also serves to deny them to ourselves—because the only way we can feel good about ourselves is to ensure that someone (or everyone) else is miserable.  

The words of Katherine Stewart (The Power Worshippers at page 277) emphasize many of the same things that Lobaszewsky observed in Nazi and Soviet-occupied Poland:

“Reactionary authoritarianism doesn’t come out of nowhere. It draws much of its destructive energy from social and economic injustices that leave a few with too much power and many others with too little hope. Rising economic inequality and insecurity has created a large mass of people, on all ends of the economic spectrum, who are anxious for their future and predisposed to favor calls for unity around an identity that targets others for vilification and degradation, [thus elevating] to power a small group of people with the means and desire to control the social order for their own benefit.”

 

A Butterfly Flaps Its Wings: From the Powell Memo to the Eastman Memo and January 6th

Published on by Brynne VanHettinga

Part 5 of a 10-part Series:

Big Money and the Corporatocracy Captures the Media

Indeed, whether such extreme inequality is or is not sustainable depends not only on the effectiveness of the repressive apparatus but also, and perhaps primarily, on the apparatus of justification.”

Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, (2014)

Gaining a stranglehold on elected representatives, the legislative process, and appointed officials and judges was still not enough. In a democratic system, there is always the danger that the people will tire of working harder for less year after year or otherwise rebel against obscene levels of inequality. Therefore, the elites had to capture the apparatus of intellectual discourse and cultural transmission; i.e., educational institutions and popular media. 

The war on American workers has been going on since the middle 1800s. In the early days, striking workers would sometimes receive sympathetic attention in the press.  The machinery of the U.S. Congress finally responded to the plight of workers when it passed the National Labor Relations Act in 1935. What followed was growth in the American middle class that made it the envy of the world. Although nearly undiscernible at the time, this phenomenon was already starting to wane—guess when?—the middle to late 1970s—as the Powell memo was put into operation.

The full operation of the Powell memo did not become readily measurable until the Reagan Presidency. Reagan launched the first major salvo against labor when he broke the PATCO strike in August 1981. Throughout the 1980s, media coverage of unions grew increasingly negative. The 1980s were also a period where the media and popular culture was promoting a “greed is good” ethos. But, ironically, it was auto workers and teachers—who only wanted to have enough resources to do their jobs and be paid enough to support their families–who were portrayed as greedy (in the bad sense).

Although it had been noted in obscure academic publications and occasional news articles, only around the turn of the 21st century did serious and sustained media attention become focused on the yawning gap of income and wealth inequality. Mainstream economists began to challenge the prevailing “trickle-down” theory of supply side economists, or the notion that allowing a few fat cats to become obscenely wealthy would somehow (??) inure to the benefit of the rest of us. In 1996, the economist Ravi Batra accused his mainstream colleagues of “napping in their ivory towers” for totally missing the “wage blight” that had been afflicting American workers since 1982. Others finally began making a connection between the decline of labor rights and power and increasing inequality.

In 2017, a pair of researchers at the Vienna University School of Economics and Business analyzed how the media framed issues of economic and social inequality “after decades of benign neglect.” How inequality is presented is “not discussed in economics at all, and hardly mentioned in communication studies.” The authors suggest that economic inequality has only recently been “rediscovered,” likely because it has become so extreme—especially in the U.S. They allege that the “interdependencies between economics and the media” exert an important influence over “the contested sphere of preference shaping,” including political opinions.

The scholarship that has examined this issue has found that business and financial news “tends to be framed by pro-market explanations” and rarely, if ever, “question the overarching economic philosophy of free-market capitalism.” Any one of us can conduct our own informal review and easily discern that most stories are framed around the interests of corporations and employer groups. This bias is “further intensified by the growth of public relations, sponsorship, and other subsidized information flows favoring wealth and powerful interests.” 

  • Coverage of poverty is portrayed as a threat to the community, linking the poor to crime, drug and alcohol addiction, reinforcing the trope that the causes of poverty are due to individual faults rather than structural deficiencies.

  • Welfare “reform” is portrayed as something that reduces dependency and fosters self-reliance. Stories seldom cover the “working poor”—the folks who work sometimes two and three jobs and are still unable to make ends meet—because this would not be consistent with the mythology that the poor are lazy and lacking in work ethic.

  • Taxes on wealth—most of which fall on a very small portion of the population—are portrayed as an issue of general concern affecting all Americans. This is tied into meritocratic notions of “deserts,” that individuals should keep what they earn. The stories hardly ever delve into the fact that the very wealthy “earn” most of their income from things like stock options, carried interest, and capital gains rather than the kinds of “work” that most of the rest of us do.

  • In stories about shareholders challenging executive pay, the shareholders are portrayed as “rebels,” although sometimes the executives are shown dining and drinking in luxury. The authors suggest that this “strong conflict frame” ignores wider themes around capitalist structures, austerity, shareholder agency and inequality.

The authors next examine the causes of this bias/neglect. First is the “hegemonic structure” of media ownership, which has become increasingly concentrated (as have many other industries). This concentration has affected both the elite (mainstream) traditional media like newspapers as well as newer online social media platforms.  Added to this are increasing “commercial pressures,” which result in fewer investments in investigative reporting and more sensationalized stories. The authors suggest that information should be “reconceptualized as a public good and not a commodity.”

The authors then address a more controversial issue, which they term “manufacturing consent.” They cite at least one study of stories about tax reform, which found a definite “pro-rich (or pro-corporate) bias” being promoted by “the propaganda function of institutions such as the mass media and advertising industry.” The authors conclude,

“The one-sidedness of sources already came clear in the studies we analyzed….For our topic of economic inequality and redistributional policies, this would presumptively mean that certain ways of talking about economic inequality… [and efforts to remedy it] are disregarded. Marked as unrealistic or utopian, leaving it—once again—to the market, in its wonderful magic, to do the trick, seeing growing inequality only to be explained by meritocracy…”

On one front, the strategy was to simply keep most people’s noses to the grindstone—where they have neither the inclination nor the energy to look up and ask WHY things are the way they are. On a second front was a complete lack of discourse or public consciousness of what was happening to work, wages, tax loopholes for billionaires, corporate welfare, and connection to political power. The third front involved demonizing government—or any form of collective action where working people could assert themselves. The teaching of civics in American classrooms (especially working class and minority classrooms) has been all but abandoned.

The right-wing media ecosystem was more than a platform for the propaganda of billionaires, but fomented divisiveness and distrust that has destroyed any sense of community or solidarity. The very notion of “we the people” was rebranded as “socialism.”  The system is deliberately designed to keep people tired, irritable, broke, and desperate to find a scapegoat. With the help of psychological and social sciences, messages are tailored to induce ever-increasing wants. Other messages are directed at the survival responses of the limbic system, designed to induce fear and rage.  

Where are the People Who Look and Live Like Us?

Published on by Brynne VanHettinga

 

Sometimes, when you don’t see yourself in the world,

you start to think that you don’t exist.

 

    DeRay McKesson inOn the Other Side Of Freedom

Being a relative newcomer to the Fargo-Moorhead area, I often pick up a local glossy promotion piece that one finds for free at grocery stores or the library. I know these things are often no more than Chamber of Commerce propaganda touting all the great places to live and things to do (so long as you have money). They are filled with photos of perfect homes, happy people, luxury goods and scrumptious food (OK, I will confess a certain addiction to food porn).  One sure way to know the visual representations in these things are pie-in-the-sky is that the photos almost invariably portray sunny days with green trees and blooming gardens, rather than the dreary, gray, ice-and-snow-buried days that are more typical here for at least five months out of the year.  

Where We Live: Illusion

Where We Live:  Reality

However, these publications can be helpful in learning about the community in general and local businesses in particular, so long as one remains aware of their overly idealized portrayal of reality. A recent issue of one of these things featured 100 things to do, eat and experience in Fargo. One of these sub-articles was about a travel agency, and four of the things on the “list of 100” were actually other places to visit in either North Dakota, Minnesota, and even as far away as Bozeman, Montana.  So, in order to come up with 100 things to do, people have to travel out of town at least once in a while. One good feature of this issue was a section that featured local non-profits and ways to give back to the community.

However, the most interesting section was interviews with locals who described their “perfect day” in various neighborhoods. These individuals were all white. Six of them were dual-earner heterosexual couples. There was one gentleman who was presented as a single person, but there were allusions to “family friendly” activities, which suggested the fellow might either be gay or a single father who had shared custody. There was also one single woman (who lived in a less-desirable neighborhood).

In 2018, Fargo has an (estimated) population of 124,844, which is an increase of 18.2% from the 2010 census. This compares to an overall increase in U.S. population of 5.96%. In spite of brutal winters with below-zero average temperatures, Fargo is growing more than three times faster than the country as a whole. Fargo is also 86.2% White, which is higher than the national average of 72.4%. So, the fact that everyone who works for this publication (they have photographs of the staff on one of the earlier pages) and all the featured individuals therein are White does not necessarily suggest racism or discriminatory animus. The median household income in Fargo is $50,561, which is less than the national average (2017) of $61,372.

Who We See: Illusion

Who We Are: Reality

Taking a closer look at the folks who told us about their “perfect day,” we find:

Heterosexual couple living downtown (a more desirable and higher-rent area), age approximately 30-40. She is a social media manager and he is a manager at Microsoft.

The apparently single gentleman, approximate age 50-55, who lives on the North side of town, enjoys golfing and dining at a restaurant that caters to golfers. He is a business development manager for a local company. He also enjoys cooking at home and the Happy Harry’s Ribfest which takes place in June (something I like to do as well–this guy may be a fellow foodie).

Heterosexual couple, approximate age 30-40, with a pre-teen boy and a middle-school-age girl who live on the South side of town.  She is the owner of a local small business and he is Director of GIS services at a data services company.

Single woman, approximate age middle 20s, lives in one of the commercial corridors. She works as an account manager.

Heterosexual couple, approximate age 50-55, lives in a desirable neighborhood and apparently enjoy the finer things in life. He is a land developer and she is President and CEO of a local non-profit. One gets the distinct impression that their household income is higher than the Fargo average, and probably higher than the national average as well.

Heterosexual couple, approximate age middle twenties or possibly early thirties. Their photo shows them digging into a yummy-looking plate of chicken wings (already warned you about the food porn). They live in West Fargo, and seem to be the closest thing to working class that we see anywhere. He is a marketing technology specialist and she is a kitchen manager at a local restaurant.

Heterosexual couple, approximate age middle thirties to early 40s. They live in an area which is a mix of middle and upper-middle class. They appear to have sufficient discretionary (but not extravagant) income.  He is a technical architect and she is an HR specialist. They apparently have no children.

Heterosexual couple, approximate age mid-50s to mid-60s. They live in Moorhead, MN, a smaller town in MN directly across the Red River from Fargo. He is the owner of a local business and she is a Deacon at one of the (many) Lutheran churches in the area. If this couple has children, they are likely adults by now.  Moorhead contains a somewhat older population—one who likely remembers the days of stable, decent-paying, middle-class jobs, as Minnesota is more worker and union-friendly than North Dakota. People in Moorhead like schoolteachers and even retired people often have small second homes at “the lakes” East of here, although these people are not what most of us would consider wealthy.

What is common to all of these individuals is that they have stable employment (each of them has only one job).  Because most of them describe themselves as managers or business owners, it can be inferred that these individuals possess a college degree.  In this respect, Fargo has a higher percentage of persons with college degrees (38.8%) than the national average (which is somewhere between 33 and 35%, depending on where and how these numbers are figured). This employment also allows them to have regular time off and sufficient income to participate in activities above and beyond basic survival. Ironically (but not surprisingly), no one’s “perfect day” included work.

Because our church does a lot of local “mission” work with homeless shelters and food pantries, I tend to see a lot of people that one never sees in these publications.  Obviously, since the publication’s primary purpose is advertising, it is focused on an audience with discretionary income, and so one would not expect to see the lines of persons who visit the pantries and shelters.  Rather, what is missing is any representation of the more typical working residents. These are the people who come in to have their taxes done (so they are working and have some money), usually with multiple, fragmented jobs (two or more W-2s per taxpayer).

Yet, there is a fine line between the invisible desperate and the precariatized many. These are the folks who constantly juggle work schedules and day care as well as cash flow. Unlike the couples in the publication, who are able to enjoy weekends as a family, these families rarely see a day where all of them can be not working (or going to school) at the same time. If these folks have extra money, they likely don’t have extra time, and vice-versa. A “perfect” day for them might be just to sleep in and have a good meal together with someone (anyone) in their family. They are also more diverse racially, ethnically, and age-wise than the folks we see in the glamorized glossies.

A visitor who picks up this publication (or any similar such publications that are available in most metropolitan areas) would have the impression that residents in the Fargo-Moorhead area have well-paying stable jobs that allow them sufficient predictability, leisure time and resources to actually enjoy life (even life at minus 40 degrees). Some may argue that this is harmless fluff, something like advertising “puffery” that falls short of actual deception because no one takes it literally.

But what does it do to the psyche and self-esteem of the (much more numerous) working folks whose lives are not quite so picture-perfect? We can come to believe that we are the exceptions and not the rule—the “norm” that we constantly see portrayed in front of us. Because our lives are hidden, so is our precarity. The fact that work does not really “work” for many of us remains unseen, unacknowledged, and unchallenged.