Re: The Intellectual Origins Of America-Bashing By Lee Harris

From: A and B Vitale (abvitale@FrontierNet.net)
Date: Mon 09 Dec 2002 - 19:39:44 GMT

  • Next message: Wade Smith: "Re: The Intellectual Origins Of America-Bashing By Lee Harris"

    ----- Original Message ----- From: <joedees@bellsouth.net>
    > > ----- Original Message -----
    > > From: Wade T.Smith <wade_smith@harvard.edu>
    > >
    > > > Let us not forget- there are as many (perhaps more) 'right' myths
    > > > perpretrated by the 'left'..... In fact, the record of right-bashing
    > > > by the 'left' is just as rancorous and infantile as any left-bashing
    > > > by the 'right'.
    > >
    > > ...except that it's rancorous to itself as it never really finds its
    > > way into public discourse.
    > >
    > > i mean, if 100 people are bashing the right and nobody hears it, does
    > > the right get bashed?
    > >
    > > there is no doubt bashing goes on from both sides, though one side is
    > > the dominant hegemony with regards to economic, political, social and
    > > media power...and the other side is only trotted out when the dominant
    > > regime needs a scapegoat.

    > In the US, both types of bashing are quite strident, and quite readily
    > heard.

    readily heard by whom? this is the issue.

    the people most likely to benefit from hearing alternative messages are precisely those people to whom the major media (and that means, the non-left) pander. in other words, "the populace" has only a few outlets for which it "gets its news" and those outlets squelch most of the left (and by left, i don't mean al gore-style-polished centrists). there no "o'reilly factors" for the left.

    of course, you can jump in a step deeper and look at more "objective" news outlets, if you have access to them. many require a computer and the time to spend in the search for news (which excludes a significant segment of the population.) but even there, you get disproportionate representation because the left has been colored as a bunch of paranoid, kooky, unrealistic, anti-patriots. such labels are intended to invalidate the message and prevent further inquiry. to examine the ideas of the left, one would have to be critical and objective...faculties which have become atrophied in the information age.

    but if the non-left WERE all those things mentioned earlier (hawkish, fundamentalist, racist, white, etc..) it wouldn't deter people who felt they were concerned about the sate of affairs here because there are plenty of cultural supports for hawkishness, fundamentalism, racism, etc.. there are institutions of war, so they must have some validity. there are institutions of fundamentalism, so they must have some validity. and racism is institutionalized, so it must have validity too.

    therefore: LEFT=ideas that have no associated, successful institutions; inability to achieve popular support because it is excluded from the media (examples: nader excluded from debates, moore's books kept out of certain bookstores, NPR still dominated by the non-left)

    NON-LEFT=ideas that are prevalent in culture and supported by successful institutions; popularly supported because it has the support of the media
    (examples: most talk shows on radio and tv)

    so if you have 30 minutes a day to figure out what's going on, where do you turn? do you read the Indie Media website and spend that time critically examining a smaller amount of the contents? or do you read CNN's website and get "a lot more" news from "respectable" and "legitimate" sources?

    i think the notion that "the Left is quite readily heard" should be qualified with "if you can wrestle yourself away from almost all public media."

    the interesting thing to ask is: why? the non-left will say it's because the left is wrong, ignorant, unrealistic, etc.. but maybe it's because their ideas are AS infectious as the non-left's and all they need are hosts that blend in to the population at large. it's those "normal americans" who become lefties that scare the non-left...it's hard to scapegoat a hardworking, soccer-mom american...but far easier to scapegoat the minute fraction of a percent of the non-left who throw rocks at the windows of Starbucks.

    alfred

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