FS & Praxis

[Ralph Dumain]

As useless as these little pieces of sheetz are, I am prompted to reiterate 
that the media is virtually totalitarian in a way that is most alarming and 
demoralizing.  Michael Moore is almost a lone voice.  My main complaint 
about him is that he is a slob and should make himself more presentable 
when he appears in public, especially in his own films.  Some other 
quibbles, to be sure, but he's all we've got.  There are celebrities who 
oppose the war, of course, and that helps in a celebrity-crazed nation.  I 
also saw on tonight's news the bruised bodies of protestors engaging in 
peaceful civil disobedience shot by the police with wooden bullets in 
Oakland, and this action was defended by Jerry Brown.  But mostly there is 
the relentless media barrage from all directions: patriotism at baseball 
games in the sports news, weather forecasts that include weather conditions 
in Iraq!, vile right-wing talk shows with arrogant, smug parasites like 
Bill Maher and Dennis Miller, sentimental portraits of soldiers' families, 
etc etc.  All in all it's a tasteless, unconscionable, nauseating 
spectacle.  I've never seen anything so vile in my entire life.  And this 
combined with the proliferation of ever more outrageous "reality" TV 
programs.  It's the logical outcome of the culture of fascism.  But no, 
it's not 1930s-style fascism.  It's not even the "friendly fascism" 
predicted by Bertram Gross in 1980.  It is fascism privatized.  Its media 
correlate is a manipulated market that cynically deflates obvious contrary 
evidence and effectively suppresses any serious oppositional 
perspective.  For lack of a better characterization, I term it "farcical 
fascism."  Alas, all world-historical events remain tragic, even as farce.

At 12:43 AM 4/9/2003 -0400, bob scheetz wrote:
>...and today it appears the BLD super-power military has turned to murdering
>journalists to preserve its "humanitarian" PR against contradiction, ...sop
>in "the only other democracy in the neighborhood".
>More examples of the systems ability to invert radical critique?  maybe the
>responsible will be arrested and tried for war crimes?