Reading list recommendations for Eugene on the corruption of politics

[kcinsu]

I'm fairly sure that if Ron Paul became president, he'd be assassinated.

 

For those of you who actually believe this nonsense, it's time to grow up. You live in a confused, hippie extremist bubble. I don't doubt there would be a possibility of an attempt on his life (as there have been for most presidents), but to make a statement like this puts you in the same lazy-thinking category as free republic neo-con tea partiers who actively pray to the Lord for Obama's death.

 

[azatoth]

Ron Paul's stance on the War on Drugs seem to get all the potheads moist, but am I wrong in thinking he would want this issue to be completely up to each individual state? Instead of wholesale legalization of weed (and maybe other drugs) it could end up that some states would end up with even more draconian drug laws and the hippie libertarian will find himself shit out of luck.

[SR4]

Ron Paul's stance on the War on Drugs seem to get all the potheads moist, but am I wrong in thinking he would want this issue to be completely up to each individual state? Instead of wholesale legalization of weed (and maybe other drugs) it could end up that some states would end up with even more draconian drug laws and the hippie libertarian will find himself shit out of luck.

 

the hippie libertarian can always move. if its that important to him.

 

 

honestly, if i end up living in a draconian state and theres a liberal paradise next door, I have no problem ditching this place. I don't know why that bothers people so much. Its not like you are moving yourself across the ocean.

[azatoth]

But what if all states become awful places. Then what. I heard Kansas is a good place to see what happens when a tea party governor is running things.

[SR4]

you think California, New York, Massachusetts, Vermont, etc. will become Tea Party states?

[azatoth]

Probably not. I was just trying to make the point that RP being all for ending the drug war does not mean that weed would all of a sudden be legalized and it could become even worse in some states where his hippy libertarians live in.

[chenGOD]

 

 

when i said i want to do some reading i meant it, it was a genuine request as i said. i don't have anything to show that there's no influence.

If it was a genuine request, then read Manufacturing Consent. That's like an academic tour de force. It's well researched and while there might be a couple of quibbles here and there it's stood up to some pretty serious scrutiny, precisely because of who Chomsky is.

[SR4]

when i said i want to do some reading i meant it, it was a genuine request as i said. i don't have anything to show that there's no influence.

If it was a genuine request, then read Manufacturing Consent. That's like an academic tour de force. It's well researched and while there might be a couple of quibbles here and there it's stood up to some pretty serious scrutiny, precisely because of who Chomsky is.

 

exactly. its one of the most popular and SOLID academic works of the modern age. Even if the guy is an anti-Semite, none of that shows in the book...he also co-authors with Bernard Hermann, a well respected economist and corporate media analyst. The ONLY criticisms I have ever seen of this book result in desperate ad-hominem attacks on Chomsky for his "Marxist views" (which, if they had ever read anything by the guy they would know that is absolutely untrue) and more provocative shit that he wrote in other books, which is the idiotic equivalent of saying Wagner was a horrible composer because he hated the Jews. Im willing to bet if you had taken Chomsky's name off the book and replaced it with Milton Friedman or Thomas Sowell, it would be lauded as one of the greatest conservative books against the "liberal" media.

 

Read the book, not the name.

 

I have my own criticisms of Chomsky (one major one being that some people tend to take anything he says as gospel), trust me, but I have found VERY little, if anything within Manufacturing Consent that is incredibly faulty.

[eugene]

from the descriptions/reviews it does look like he is writing from the marxist paradigm, expanding on his superstructure concept perhaps. i hope it's full of examples like that monsento-fox thing from "the corporation" which was very effective. i've actually downloaded "manufacturing consent: the film" a couple days ago, so if i won't find something brainless to watch tonight i'll watch that film.

[SR4]

from the descriptions/reviews it does look like he is writing from the marxist paradigm, expanding on his superstructure concept perhaps. i hope it's full of examples like that monsento-fox thing from "the corporation" which was very effective. i've actually downloaded "manufacturing consent: the film" a couple days ago, so if i won't find something brainless to watch tonight i'll watch that film.

 

i can't recommend the film, as I haven't seen it and it probably isn't nearly as informative or well-documented as the book.

 

 

The Marxist paradigm is a weak argument. Chomsky's propaganda model, if anything is based directly off of Walter Lippman and modern political scientists, all of whom created the model specifically to rid themselves of the older Marxist propaganda model while simultaneously strengthening corporate power. Its crazy that this is constantly brought up; James Madison wasn't a communist and he practically argued the same thing in the 1780's, same with Thomas Paine. That is to say, when corporate interest intermingles with a somewhat democratic or representative government (in their comparisons the biggest example is British Parliament with members in the British Tea Company in India), both systems create substructures to reinforce their control over the populace without the use of force. THis shit has been around way, way before Marx...though Marx at least deserves credit for fine-honing the ideas into something more concrete.

 

 

It has nothing to do with Marxism, unless you are approaching it sociologically, which still falls flat because then you would have to say Emile Durkheim or Hegel were Marxists before Marx...and for the origins of "false consciousness" which was more of Engel's theory than Marx, one only needs to look at Hegel's writings on the "Philosophy of Right".

 

Im editing this stuff so much because I have all of my books around me right now unpacking, so I have easy access to this stuff.

 

edit: chen is posting, he probably knows more details than I would....but I still think the easy application of "Marxist paradigm" to Chomsky's use of the propaganda model is pointless and isn't really saying anything.

[eugene]

oh i didn't go that deep, it was just an impression. i was probably wrong to use the whole paradigm, but it definitively sits well with how i understand marx's "superstructure", at least one aspect of it. and it's not that i have anything serious against marx anyway.

the same people who did "the corporation" did that film btw..i just don't have the 20 hours or so to read that book now.

[SR4]

oh i didn't go that deep, it was just an impression. i was probably wrong to use the whole paradigm, but it definitively sits well with how i understand marx's "superstructure", at least one aspect of it. and it's not that i have anything serious against marx anyway.

the same people who did "the corporation" did that film btw..i just don't have the 20 hours or so to read that book now.

 

 

well thats fine then if that's how you meant it. it drives me insane that 99% of people that use "Marxist" use it as a completely baseless blanket insult without knowing any of Marx or Engels, or the ten-thousand different permutations of "Marxism" since.

[chenGOD]

The film is a great introduction. It's well done, but it's not as in-depth as the book.

As for Marx - as my IPE prof said: "I'm no Marxist, but I can recognize a good analysis when i see one." If you think Marxism is something to be dismissed out of hand, you need to rethink your ability to think critically.

 

Edit: didn't see your addendum eugene - so feel free to disregard what I said about Marx.

[eugene]

.

[SR4]

here's a passage that sorta illustrates my point about control over the media going all the way back to the Enlightenment:

 

 

The liberty of writing, like all other liberty, is most formidable when it is a novelty, for a people who have never been accustomed to hear state affairs discussed before them place implicit confidence in the first tribune who presents himself. The Anglo-Americans have enjoyed this liberty ever since the foundation of the colonies; moreover, the press cannot create human passions, however skillfully it may kindle them where they exist. In America political life is active, varied, even agitated, but is rarely affected by those deep passions which are excited only when material interests are impaired; and in the United States these interests are prosperous. A glance at a French and an American newspaper is sufficient to show the difference that exists in this respect between the two nations. In France the space allotted to commercial advertisements is very limited, and the news intelligence is not considerable, but the essential part of the journal is the discussion of the politics of the day. In America three quarters of the enormous sheet are filled with advertisements, and the remainder is frequently occupied by political intelligence or trivial anecdotes; it is only from time to time that one finds a corner devoted to passionate discussions like those which the journalists of France every day give to their readers.

 

It has been demonstrated by observation, and discovered by the sure instinct even of the pettiest despots, that the influence of a power is increased in proportion as its direction is centralized. In France the press combines a twofold centralization; almost all its power is centered in the same spot and, so to speak, in the same hands, for its organs are far from numerous. The influence upon a skeptical nation of a public press thus constituted must be almost unbounded. It is an enemy with whom a government may sign an occasional truce, but which it is difficult to resist for any length of time.

 

Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Chapter 11 (1835)

 

 

The last paragraph shows that even at the turn of the 19th Century, philosophers were struggling to find a way to resist the increasing skepticism of a public via public intellectual consumption. The answer was found during Marx's age and the later phases of the Industrial Revolution: the creation of a mass media requires immense amounts of capital to finance and proliferate...why give that control up? It would only be a matter of time before men like Pulitzer and Hearst realized the immense power of corporately controlled journalism...thereby "centralizing" control over the press without the appearance of centralization....its not the government limiting the press, its 50 different corporations! Each with their own unique take on things...so is it really that bad?

[awepittance]

how did a thread about Ron Paul turn into a kid-glove fest for Eugune?

[SR4]

im willing to talk about Paul again, it seemed like the thread went dead for a while.

[awepittance]

well i started another thread because i didn't feel like posting in one where it became a Eugune reading list thread. It's one thing to ignore a member, but to actually have said ignored member derail my own thread kind of sucked. So yeah maybe part of the reason it died is because i didnt want to post in it anymore

[eugene]

 

The last paragraph shows that even at the turn of the 19th Century, philosophers were struggling to find a way to resist the increasing skepticism of a public via public intellectual consumption. The answer was found during Marx's age and the later phases of the Industrial Revolution: the creation of a mass media requires immense amounts of capital to finance and proliferate...why give that control up? It would only be a matter of time before men like Pulitzer and Hearst realized the immense power of corporately controlled journalism...thereby "centralizing" control over the press without the appearance of centralization....its not the government limiting the press, its 50 different corporations! Each with their own unique take on things...so is it really that bad?

i dunno if that's that bad, my current uneducated understanding is that the government is constantly interacting and negotiating with corporations, it gives something up to gain some other thing they need, it's dirty but maybe it's worth it.

[SR4]

The last paragraph shows that even at the turn of the 19th Century, philosophers were struggling to find a way to resist the increasing skepticism of a public via public intellectual consumption. The answer was found during Marx's age and the later phases of the Industrial Revolution: the creation of a mass media requires immense amounts of capital to finance and proliferate...why give that control up? It would only be a matter of time before men like Pulitzer and Hearst realized the immense power of corporately controlled journalism...thereby "centralizing" control over the press without the appearance of centralization....its not the government limiting the press, its 50 different corporations! Each with their own unique take on things...so is it really that bad?

i dunno if that's that bad, my current uneducated understanding is that the government is constantly interacting and negotiating with corporations, it gives something up to gain some other thing they need, it's dirty but maybe it's worth it.

 

thats the problem though, its not negotiations anymore, the two supposedly different aspects of these societies are practically symbiotic in reality. Not to invoke Godwin's Law, but if you want to see how successful government-business symbioses is, look at fascism.

[chenGOD]

how did a thread about Ron Paul turn into a kid-glove fest for Eugune?

Because instead of blindly ignoring those who disagree with you, it is often more constructive to inform? The same of course could be applied to eugene.

[awepittance]

so it turned into a kid glove fest because you perceive his initial posts mentioning me and Kcinsu unprovoked as genuine curiosity information seeking ones and not attempts to personally characterize other members as 'bad shit crazy' ? Alright, i can respect that perception of him in a twilight zone universe, i just don't share it with you. Ignoring someone because they have a long term pattern of starting an argument with insults rather than facts , i think is pretty different than doing it simply because they disagree with you.

 

Call me sensitive, but right of the gates when someone wants to join in on a discussion and insults people who he had arguments within other threads, it's not my responsibility to take that person seriously anymore. I don't mind if you guys want to continue doing it since i made a new Ron Paul thread.

[chenGOD]

Yeah because when you revert to his level of debate you lose all credibility. Thanks for permission to continue posting in your thread robbie.

[eugene]

nm actually.

[SR4]

lads ima make some good ass cider to calm this down. tempers runnin high.

 

 

 

i can sympathize with robbie being pissed at what was obviously a thinly-veiled insult towards him. But I guess the faux-intellectual self-righetous asshole in me has to address someone when they ask for shit to read.