Tom Paine 1949
Diamond Member
- Mar 15, 2020
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This is a commentary on our media today, but also on our whole culture. It seems to me interesting and mostly accurate. Does it get you thinking about anything? Not looking for partisan polemic here, so much as reflection on living in political — or other — fantasies. As an old retired guy I personally have time to watch sci-fi or Marvel fantasies all day long. I’ve traveled all over the world and I must say one thing about U.S. TV and film culture (I don’t do gaming): nobody does entertainment and fantasy as well as we do. I’m reminded of an old saying I first heard from a conservative South American friend: “Americans are the best entertained and the worst informed people in the whole world.”
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Today, the liberal U.S. establishment is congratulating itself for having waged a resistance to authoritarianism... What is playing out is an increasingly extreme divergence of narrative from reality, on all sides: a phenomenon that some have termed “political virtualism,” or even “dreampolitik.”
Among the conservative base, there is no consensus about accepting the unfavorable election results and moving on. Instead, the fantasies everywhere seem to be getting more powerful....
The fantasy of a planet led by a benevolent liberal hegemon has proven no less destructive in reality than Trump’s strongman appeal ... Unsustainable on its own terms, the benevolent hegemon narrative appears to be undergoing a slow and painful collapse....
OUR WIDER CULTURE is to blame for this style of American virtual politics.... Foretold by certain far-sighted U.S. commentators in the past, entertainment has so thoroughly colonized all spheres of life that the election of a reality television star as president becomes not just possible but a logical outcome.
AT THE START of the information age — decades before social media, reality television, and cable news — the historian Daniel Boorstin warned that such a challenge to American democracy was on the horizon: the threat of fantasy. As Boorstin wrote in his 1962 book “The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America,” an extremely powerful culture industry had already begun to reshape the consciousness of Americans in a way that could blind them to the realities of their own country....
To put it another way, the channel is being changed from “The Apprentice” back to “The West Wing.”
Biden’s Win Trades One Political Fantasy for Another
Please do not use caps with thread titles. Thank you. Tom Paine 1949
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Today, the liberal U.S. establishment is congratulating itself for having waged a resistance to authoritarianism... What is playing out is an increasingly extreme divergence of narrative from reality, on all sides: a phenomenon that some have termed “political virtualism,” or even “dreampolitik.”
Among the conservative base, there is no consensus about accepting the unfavorable election results and moving on. Instead, the fantasies everywhere seem to be getting more powerful....
The fantasy of a planet led by a benevolent liberal hegemon has proven no less destructive in reality than Trump’s strongman appeal ... Unsustainable on its own terms, the benevolent hegemon narrative appears to be undergoing a slow and painful collapse....
OUR WIDER CULTURE is to blame for this style of American virtual politics.... Foretold by certain far-sighted U.S. commentators in the past, entertainment has so thoroughly colonized all spheres of life that the election of a reality television star as president becomes not just possible but a logical outcome.
AT THE START of the information age — decades before social media, reality television, and cable news — the historian Daniel Boorstin warned that such a challenge to American democracy was on the horizon: the threat of fantasy. As Boorstin wrote in his 1962 book “The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America,” an extremely powerful culture industry had already begun to reshape the consciousness of Americans in a way that could blind them to the realities of their own country....
To put it another way, the channel is being changed from “The Apprentice” back to “The West Wing.”
Biden’s Win Trades One Political Fantasy for Another
Please do not use caps with thread titles. Thank you. Tom Paine 1949
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