Thursday, May 05, 2011

The Right Wing Renews its Ongoing War on a Fair and Free Media

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

The U.S. right wing will not be happy until every American is reduced to a mere 'consuming' machine, a unit, into which is fed the most absurd lies, the most outrageous right-wing rewrites of history, the most transparent pre-texts for war, aggression, oil theft, ongoing deprivations of civil liberties. As wealth is transferred upward to what is now a ruling elite of just one percent of the entire population, we are expected to concede our last redoubt: 'our' media!
Krasnow: "The spectrum is there whether it is used or not; only when it is enhanced by the use of broadcasters and others does it have any value at all to the public."

--Former FCC Counsel Erwin Krasnow Calls For End To 'Public Ownership Of Airwaves' Standard
The latest outrage is the more recent reprise of the right wing's ongoing attack on what had been the people's airwaves, the people's media, the people's right to know and its implicit corollary: the people's right to be told the truth!

Krasnow's conclusion is absurd! What value has the public derived from being lied to and/or brainwashed? If his only concern is how 'broadcasters' may return a profit then consider the more reasonable alternative to the 'theft' of publicly owned airwaves. Let the corporations rent the airwaves from the 'people' whose ownership of the public airwaves was recognized by the Communications Act of 1934! Even better --allow a publicly owned corporation to manage and utilize the 'airwaves" for the benefit of millions that are reduced to mere demographic targets today!

Where is the precedent, the principle that says the public at large is responsible for ensuring that big corporations make big money? Where --in the history of Europe and the U.S. --is there an established principle that the people are responsible for ensuring that a corporation be successful? Where is the principle that awards assets to a private enterprises because 'profits' are not returned to someone should the people own them? There is no such principle! But given enough time Antonin Scalia is sure to pull something just as absurd out of his ass!

To expect the public to finance the very lies that are served up to them is absurd if not criminal! KRASNOW'S reasoning is fallacious, a right-wing inspired rationalization, an ex post facto excuse to let huge corporations reap huge profits by lying to us, brainwashing us, and otherwise kissing up to the right wing of which they are a part! Such a corporation could not possibly do a worse job than have the likes of FOX et al. As evidence --I give you Rush Limbaugh, Billo, Hannity, the entire FOX network and every screaming Limbaugh wannabe in the nation! It is time these charlatans and posers be denied the 'privilege' of yelling 'FIRE, FIRE' in a crowded theater(s)!

The full-court press against the people's rights began when Ronald Reagan appointed communications attorney Mark Fowler to head up the Federal Communications Commission. Fowler had served on Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign staff in 1976 and 1980. He became Reagan's hatchet-man. The FCC began to repeal parts of the Fairness Doctrine, announcing in 1985 that the doctrine had hurt the public interest and violated free speech rights guaranteed by the First Amendment." That's nonsense.

Trashing the Fairness Doctrine, in fact, denied 'free speech' to everyone but the ruling elites who can afford the millions of dollars it takes to own and operate a radio station, perhaps the billions required to operate a world-wide network of right wing nuts, fascists, and goofy goons like Billo Really? and Glenn Beck! ? Ask youself: does 'free speech' exist at all when ONLY the likes of Billo and Beck have the 'right' to lie to millions every second that they are on the air? Of course not! You have been reduced to passive vassal. As long as the right wing continues to steal and abuse what had been YOUR airwaves, free speech exists only for the mere 1 percent who can afford to buy a network or even a single radio station!


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Monday, May 02, 2011

The Mask of Wotan

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Jung's influence has been keenly felt among screenwriters, novelists, and 'literati' who often speak of a "character's shadow", one of several "archetypes", a mirror image of what writers call the "higher self".

Related to Jung is the work of Russian folk tale expert, Vladimir Propp, who thought of "archetypes" as "masks" deliberately worn by "characters". Masks are worn in both stories and in life for one of two purposes or both: to reveal and/or to hide.

In most cases a benign public mask is worn to hide facets of the personality with which the character has not yet made peace. It is a mistake, however, to equate "the shadow self" with evil. It is merely the hidden self —the object of one's search for oneself. All "quest" stories are symbolic of this process.

In both Propp and Jung, the idea is to peel away this "social facade", this "mask". The metaphor "peel away”, however; suggests that the process is an easy one but that is rarely the case. Masks are the gestalt of one's various defense mechanisms and unconscious anxieties. "Peeling them away" reveals an "authentic self" that is often difficult to reach and more difficult to confront or deal with. Throughout the 50's existentialists and other "beatniks" talked about getting down to one's "real self". Jung believed that this “real self” was the source of vitality and creativity lurking behind a "neurotic shield" —a mask!

Jung was influenced by numerous mystical religions and Taoism where terms like "inner room", "the great void," the "realm of essence," the source of things", the "It", the "Creative Unconscious" are common.

The biggest obstacle to objective truth is one's own self image or "mask". We are inclined to believe whatever is consistent with whatever belief system makes us feel good about ourselves. In America, an entire political party espouses what was once called “supply side” economics but now more often referred to as “trickle down” theory.

The theory is discounted by almost every reputable economist upon abundant objective and verifiable data. That this theory continues to be popular suggests that it's appeal does not lie in objective truth. “Trickle down” economics is most surely a convenient rationalization of an increasingly self-absorbed life style catered to by the mass media. Has modern America become a culture premised upon mass denial?

In 1936, Jung was trying to figure out what was happening in Germany —just as many are trying to understand what is happening in America today. Jung wrote an essay called "Wotan" and in it, he tried to understand developments under Hitler, in terms of the mythology of the god Odin, a.k.a. the Germanic god Wotan. Jung wrote: "We have seen him come to life in the German Youth Movement." I am not sure what "gods" have come to life in America —but I am more inclined to characterize them as fallen demigods, if not demons. Gods or Demons, they are but manifestations of the human personality. There may be a "Wotan" in all of us.

A “mask” is but the smiley face we show the world; it's origin is the lie that we tell ourselves. I recently watched a PBS documentary about a Japanese sergeant who "supervised" British and Australian POW's in Southeast Asia during WWII. Though he had been convicted of war crimes in connection with the treatment of the POW's, the man —some 55 years after the fact —still denied that thousands of POWs had been literally worked and starved to death under his supervision. He denied that he had beaten many of them himself with wire whips.

There is an old saying that the truth will set you free. But here was a man who by his denial had made himself prisoner to the lie —his own lie. In Jungian terms, his life --premised as it was upon the falsehood that he told himself --was "inauthentic".

Dr. Gustav Gilbert, the American psychologist at Nuremberg, came to some conclusions based on his experiences keeping Nazi war criminals alive until final sentencing could be carried out. He said that he had come to understand the nature of "evil". Evil, he said, was an utter lack of empathy. I might add: that empathy with another is only possible if one has come to terms with one's own "shadow", one's own "source of creativity", one's own humanity. One who cannot see humanity in him/herself or in another is a Nazi in spirit; and “Nazism” typifies what Jung would have called the "inauthentic" life, a life lived upon lies and denial. A life lived behind a false mask. ..


Eagles: Hotel California

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