Thursday, February 3, 2022

That's Ignotainment

 Long gone are the good old days when deriding corporate news as "infotainment" was all the rage. It seems as though all we have left is the rage, manufactured for our ignotainment by those nefarious twin demons which the liberal elite have dubbed  Misinformation and Disinformation, and what the reactionary "populist" Trump and his plutocratic pals call Fake News.

They are striving mightily to subvert and supplant the twin demons of literary yore, Ignorance and Want. These personified social ills so affected Charles Dickens' Scrooge that he became instantly and permanently Woke. He was so rattled that he not only gave his wage slave Bob Cratchit an instant raise and paid time off, he also guaranteed life-long health care to Tiny Tim. The good feelings and new spirit of solidarity actually threatened to spread all over the land!


Ignorance and Want, from A Christmas Carol

But that story is so yesterday, not to mention restrictively seasonal. It's just a bridge too far for the elites - or when you consider that godzillionaire Jeff Bezos is having a historic landmark bridge dismantled just so that he can free his new mega-yacht from its Rotterdam harbor - a bridge too low for their bloated maniacal egos to squeeze under. Because instead of wanting to destroy the Ignorance and Want of the masses, today's sociopathic capitalists want to create more of it. They are the ones who disseminate Ignorance and keep their audiences Wanting more. The theory is that a constant downhill flow of rage and fear will keep the elites safe in their cocooned mansions, high-rise penthouses and those mega-yachts as the rabble is diverted into fighting it out among themselves. 

The virtue-signaling liberal side of the ruling class would have us believe that they are the enlightened ones, as opposed to those nasty old ignorance-spreading Republicans on Fox News. But this week, Whoopi Goldberg of The View put her foot right in it when, waxing indignant about the censorship in Tennessee (Scopes Trial country!) of Maus, a graphic novel about the Holocaust (because it portrayed nudity), she remarked in passing that the Holocaust was not about race.

The reaction from her fellow liberals was not so much the faux outrage of gleeful conservatives as it was disappointment that Whoopi Goldberg apparently didn't know that the Nazis had viewed Jews as a separate race. Her point of view was that racism is purely a matter of skin color. She doubled down on her stance when she crossed over from her ABC-Disney platform to the CBS wing of the media conglomerate to offer a non-apology apology on the Stephen Colbert show. She was mostly sorry that people had misunderstood her. She was very hurt. Whereupon ABC-Disney slapped her with a two-week suspension, ostensibly so that Goldberg can ponder and learn.

I think the real purpose of her banishment is so that this whole brouhaha can be swept under the rug. Because by the time two weeks are up, we'll be on to the next thing to get mad about. Maybe it'll be Biden declaring war on Russia. Maybe it'll be more has-been musicians yanking their music off Spotify in protest of Joe Rogan. Maybe it'll be another weather disaster spawned by capitalism. I doubt that the news, whether manufactured or whether completely real or natural, will be designed for fomenting good will or heaven forbid, erudition.

While most people, including me, think that Goldberg's temporary banishment is reactionary overkill, her bosses and defenders are as ignorant - or acting like they're as ignorant - as Whoopi. I haven't read or heard one single bit of commentary this week about Hitler's anti-Jewish 1935 Nuremberg Laws being at least partially inspired by the racist Jim Crow laws against Black people then in effect. So to start her ignorance rehab, I'd recommend that Whoopi Goldberg pick up James Q, Whitman's "Hitler's American Model: the United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law." That way, she might be able to have her cake and eat it too.

To be fair, few to none of us were ever taught about the connection between Jim Crow and Nazism in our American history books  This kind of fact-based information does, after all,  kind of make the United States, that great defender of global democracy and human rights, look like a hypocrite. This is especially so given that the Official Narrative now doesn't have fascism rearing its ugly head in the Homeland until Donald Trump was elected.

Lest you worry that low- and middle-brow Ignotainment, as practiced on The View and other cable talkfests posing as news channels, is failing abysmally at its censorious battle against Misinformation and Disinformation and Fake News, let me assure you that the more elite organs like the New York Times are still wheezing away with a  vengeance on their own Mighty Wurlitzers. 

They have a technique that is so passive-aggressive and sneaky that they can never be banished or canceled for any reason. They disseminate lies by wrapping them in layers of contradictions surrounded by ghostly anonymous CIA and Pentagon officials enveloped in disclaimers smothered by double talk. By the time the lies are exposed, if they ever are, they will be forgotten or forgiven.

This nefarious elite propaganda technique might be explained by a concept known as Ignotum Per Ignotius. It means that any given Unknown can only be explained by something that is even more Unknown. In other words, it is so annoyingly obscure, and so uninformative on its face, that if you don't understand it, then you are probably an ignoramus who should just go back to consuming ignotainment.

A perfect example of the deliberately muddy and convoluted Ignotum Per Ignotus technique can be found on the front page headline of Thursday's edition of the Times: "U.S. Exposes What It Says Is Russia's Effort To Fabricate Pretext For Invasion."

This is a pretty clumsy word salad. For one thing, a hunk of real estate being granted the power to speak should set your bullshit detector careening toward the danger zone.

But wait, it gets so much better that it devolves into ignotaining despite itself. For it seems that the Russians are planning to make a fake video wrapped in a disinformation campaign, and that the United Statesians are hoping to spoil it by alerting everybody now. The dastardly plan includes Russians collecting a whole bunch of dead bodies, strewing the corpses  across the countryside after blowing them up, hiring live actors and military props and filming the whole grisly tableau so that the Russians can then accuse Ukraine of committing genocide against Russian-speaking people. It's Wag the Dog, but without the comedy.

Now that its readers have been duly horrified, the Times inserts the usual butt-covering disclaimers:

Officials would not release any direct evidence of the Russian plan or specify how they learned of it, saying to do so would compromise their sources and methods. 

And,

While it is not clear that senior Russian officials approved the operation, it was far along in the planning and the United States had high confidence that it was under serious consideration, officials said.

And,

While the plan sounded far-fetched, American officials said they believed it could have worked to provide a spark for a Russian military operation — an outcome they said they hoped would be made less likely by exposing the effort publicly.

The highlights of the intelligence have been declassified, in hopes of both derailing the plot and convincing allies of the seriousness of the Russian planning. The officials interviewed for this article requested anonymity to discuss declassified but sensitive intelligence before it was released publicly.

 The article is meant to stimulate some reaction, any reaction, in America, in Europe and especially in Ukraine itself, whose enthusiasm for a conflict with Russia is a tad on the tepid dismissive side, to put it mildly. The military-industrial-media complex, ever in dire Want of ever more profits, is "exposing" a plot which may or may not exist. And when no film ends up getting made, it will be all the proof they need that the United States foiled the plot - which, let's be honest,  they themselves might have plotted. It has happened before. It actually sounds like part of the core curriculum for regime change as taught by the School of the Americas.

The top-rated reader comments to the Times article speak for themselves. That Mighty Wurlitzer just keeps right on wheezing and the played audience keeps right on clapping and Wanting more:

"So grateful for our intelligence community. They keep us safe."

"What credibility do we have as a country when Trump and almost half of the people in this country believe in manufacturing and fostering lies to overturn our own elections. What does the world actually think about anything we say when one of our political parties and its leader simply cannot be trusted and has proven to be a pawn of Putin?"

"The Biden national security team is playing a smart game keeping Putin off balance by exposing these schemes he's trying to gin up. This is a small payback for him and his goons getting involved in the 2016 election. It reminds me of the spy vs. spy black and white crow like figures in the mad magazine."

Oh, I don't know. The gaslit reader reactions kind of remind me more of this particular Mad character:

 


7 comments:


  1. I have so much rage against media figures who smeared and abused Bernie Sanders. I remember an extravagantly offensive interview Goldberg did with him, and I have been disgusted by her ever since I saw it. Colbert is another figure who used to be funny but has devolved into a sycophancy too depressing to abide. I does not surprise me at all that Whoopie picked his show as the appropriate platform for a non-apology apology. I think you are right that the two weeks she is off the air will be used to bury the story. Even so, I could not be more pleased to see her taken down by even a small measure. When I heard the news I laughed out loud. Karma is a bitch and it could not happen to a more unpleasant hack.

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  2. Whoopie Goldberg is yet another valuable side show, using up those scrolling inches and our attention spans.

    We have to look hard to find writers who warn about the folly of tempting Armageddon with any conflict between the two most heavily armed nuclear powers, whose arsenals are on a hair trigger and subject to mistakes of many kinds. Or articles that point out our imperial, entitled attitude about the world. There is dark humor lurking. Global nuclear war (and I don't think there is any other kind) could be the ultimate COVID vaccination for our species. And it would bring to a halt our burning of fossil fuels, even as other fires raged.

    I first paid attention to nuclear war when the movie "Dr. Strangelove" came out. And over the decades I've read many books and articles. Daniel Ellsberg's book "The Doomsday Machine" (2017) is especially riveting and discouraging. He writes from his experience of the 1970s, but shows the way the brain of the military beast operates.

    Both Obama and Trump endorsed spending $1 trillion to upgrade our nuclear arsenal, with no public debate and probably no private debate. Now I read an article that proposes spending $1.7 trillion to upgrade over 30 years. What could possibly go wrong?


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  3. The United States of Hypocrisy: Revisiting the Monroe Doctrine —
    https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/01/31/the-united-states-of-hypocrisy-revisiting-the-monroe-doctrine/
    January 31, 2022 ~ by Melvin Goodman

    America Is Reaping What It Sowed in Ukraine —
    https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/02/02/america-is-reaping-what-it-sowed-in-ukraine/
    February 2, 2022 ~ by Medea Benjamin & Nicolas J.S. Davis

    In the Line of Eternal Fire: Ukraine’s Nuclear Reactors —
    https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/02/02/in-the-line-of-eternal-fire-ukraines-nuclear-reactors/
    February 2, 2022 ~ by Linda Pentz Gunter

    A No-Nukes Strategy or a No-Win Reality —
    https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/02/03/a-no-nukes-strategy-or-a-no-win-reality/
    February 3, 2022 ~ by Kevin Martin & Brad Wolf

    Russian Historian: We Need Both the U.S. & Russia to Deescalate Crisis over Ukraine —
    https://www.democracynow.org/2022/2/3/russia_biden_troops_ukraine_border
    February 3, 2022
    Despite Russian President Vladimir Putin continuing to deny accusations of a planned invasion of Ukraine, the Biden administration ordered the deployment of 3,000 additional troops to Eastern Europe on Wednesday to supposedly protect Ukraine. Moscow-based historian and political writer Ilya Budraitskis says both Russia and the U.S. are gaining more from the threat of conflict than an actual war, and says Russia has no real strategic gain from a potential invasion.

    “We Need Peace”: War in Ukraine Would Be Humanitarian Catastrophe for Millions in the Region —
    https://www.democracynow.org/2022/2/3/ukraine_humanitarian_crisis_russia_nato
    February 3, 2022
    As tensions grow between Russia and NATO over a potential invasion of Ukraine, up to 2 million people in eastern Ukraine are at risk of massive displacement and violence if the conflict escalates. We speak with the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Jan Egeland, who is on the ground in Ukraine and says a war could roll back nearly a decade of humanitarian progress made in the Ukrainian region. “We need reconciliation, we need peace,” says Egeland on the messages he is hearing from Ukrainians.

    100 Groups Demand That Biden Stop Escalating Tensions Over Ukraine —
    As the president deploys 3,000 US troops to Eastern Europe, anti-war groups and progressive leaders warn that the United States must avoid getting entangled in another war.
    https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/groups-biden-ukraine/
    February 3, 2022 ~ by John Nichols

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  4. "Let's not be too rough on our own ignorance; it's what makes America great!”
    ~ Frank Zappa

    “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
    ~ Issac Asimov

    “I'm all in favor of the democratic principle that one idiot is as good as one genius, but I draw the line when someone takes the next step and concludes that two idiots are better than one genius.”
    ~ Leo Szilard

    “The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return.”
    ~ Gore Vidal

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  5. stranger in a strange landFebruary 6, 2022 at 10:40 AM

    This bit hits the nail right on the head: “which, let's be honest, they themselves might have plotted.” Didn’t Putin indicate that ‘The West’ is ever accusing their victims of the very things that they (‘The West’) are guilty of? This feels like a PRIME example of that phenomenon.

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  6. From time to time I comment here on one of the stories that get lost with the daily outrages that Karen illuminates: that is the fate of the Obama presidential papers.

    Here we are, starting the 6th year since Obama's presidency and as far as we can tell the papers are still stored in an old furniture warehouse in the Hoffman Estates village/suburb of Chicago. The current NARA (National Records and Archives Administration) statement says "Digitization plans are on hold" due to COVID.

    We don't know what the security and environmental conditions are. Even before January 6th, I could see the potential for a Trump-inspired disaster. Meanwhile, we read reports of Obama checking out the site of his new beachfront home in Hawaii. With his $12 million house on Nantucket he can be the ultimate bicoastal property owner, even as his presidential pyramid (and golf course) is imposed on the kind of poor Chicago neighborhood he once worked for. But I digress.

    Obama decided to forego a traditional library and promoted the idea that having the records digitized and online would improve access, despite the concerns of historians. Well, it is very possible that Obama will be the first president since Hoover with no library and access at all! NARA notes that as of January 20, 2022, the records are subject to FOIA requests, adding this incomprehensible note: "NARA will process textual records in a traditional manner, with archival staff processing responsive textual records requested via FOIA from the textual record." Say, what?






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