Could a President Obama set us free?
What is the “The Trap“?
It is a three part film by Adam Curtis, broadcast by the BBC in March 2007.
Curtis’s narration concludes with the observation that the game theory/free market model is now undergoing interrogation by economists who suspect a more irrational model of behaviour is appropriate and useful. […]

Errol Morris’ new film is:
Standard Operating Procedure

Is it possible for a photograph to change the world? Photographs taken by soldiers in Abu Ghraib prison changed the war in Iraq and changed America’s image of itself. Yet, a central mystery remains. Did the notorious Abu Ghraib photographs constitute evidence of systematic abuse by the American military, […]

Thanks to Peter Coyote:
A must read on our current economics
“It is through the newspapers and TV channels that the
socially destructive notions of a small group of
extremists have come to look like common sense.”
The Guardian UK
By George Monbiot
Tuesday 28 August 2007
A cabal of intellectuals and elitists hijacked the
economic debate, and […]

Don’t be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. (Rom 12:2)

I’ve been thinking a lot about this ever since the shooting at the Amish schoolhouse several weeks ago. Of all the groups of people that epitomize the idea of not being conformed to this world, the Amish are near the top. I’ve also been thinking about it a bit after some of my recent encounters of some of the negative aspects of group-think online.

A year or so ago, I was at a meeting of grassroots activist leaders in Burlington, VT. We had had a great day talking about ideas and strategies of how to change our country for the better. At the end of the day, we took a boat ride out on Lake Champlain. It was a beautiful day and at one point we gathered near the bow of the boat. One person was bewailing the inside the beltway consultocracy. I posed the question of if we are successful, how we will avoid falling into the same trap that they did and becoming the new insiders. This gave the leader of the group a moment of pause, and I hope that it still causes people to pause.

Early on in the Lamont campaign, when I was the person responding to emails at the ‘info’ account, one person spoke about how Sen. Lieberman had changed. He had lost touch with his constituents and become part of the beltway problem. The writer asked how I knew that Ned wouldn’t do the same thing. I admitted that I didn’t know that. I went on to say that based on my knowledge of Ned, I doubted that would happen, but I also said that if it did, then perhaps in 18 years, I would be working for some new young challenger.

As we launch into the 2008 presidential contest, are blogs going to be part of a new netroots based consultocracy, or will we be able to continue to renew our minds and transform ourselves? I am hoping for the later, but at times, I have my doubts.

Dang! I thought I was cutting edge encouraging people to move beyond blogs to online video. Last week, Zephyr Teachout and Tim Wu had this Op-Ed in the Washington Post: YouTube? It’s So Yesterday. It is great food for thought, and I thought I’d share some of my thoughts with you.

Back in October, I wrote about The Political Palimpsest. I had been to the Action Coalition for Media Education Summit in Burlington, VT and had seen the movie The Ad and the Ego. This movie has really influenced my thinking about political messaging and I think applies very nicely to Zephyr and Tim’s Op-Ed.

One point from the movie is that despite claims by many people that they don’t pay attention to advertisements, and that the advertisements don’t affect them, the ads really do have an important effect. That effect is less about the overt message, “Buy this car”, and more about the underlying message, “you aren’t good enough if you don’t consume, if you don’t look like the people in the ads.”

So, what is the underlying message of all the political advertisements that you’ve seen over the past couple weeks? Behind all the negative ads and false information, it seems as if the key message of political ads over this past cycle is “We think you’re stupid”.

Zephyr and Tim write, “With fewer viewers watching campaign ads on TV — thanks to Tivo, iTunes and Netflix — politicians will soon have no choice but to place themselves and their messages directly into popular shows, movies and video games.” I think they are right about political placement and ‘Second Life’ politics. That needs to happen, but those annoying ads on TV aren’t going away.

So yes, let’s ad new media into the mix, but let’s look at the underlying message that is being sent. I think the Lamont campaign provides a good example of the direction I hope to see things going. I admit, I’m biased. I was the technology coordinator for the Lamont campaign. But, I wasn’t part of the team doing the ads, and if I were, I would have pressed the idea of the underlying message even further.

What was underlying the Lamont ads? Perhaps the most important underlying message was one of community involvement. From the first ad where Markos Moulitsas Zúniga burst in with a group of supporters even before the ad was finished to offer their help, to the recurring “And so do we” tag to all the ads, the message was that Lamont supporters are people that believe that by working together in community, we can make our country better.

To me, that has always been the underlying message of American democracy, and a message that I wish we saw more of in all the political messaging. I wish the Lamont campaign had taken this message further, and I had thoughts on how they could have done it. I hope that we’ll see more of this sort of messaging in 2008.

Perhaps it will come through in the new media that Zephyr and Tim talk about. Perhaps it will also come about in service politics that people like Howard Dean, John Edwards and Matt Dunne have spoken about.

It is time that we move away from a message of “we think you’re stupid” to a message of “working together in community to make our country better”. John McCain may be leading the pack in political placements with his cameo in “Wedding Crashers” but people like Howard Dean, John Edwards, Matt Dunne and Ned Lamont are leading in presenting a more important underlying message.

When I was a mere tad growing up in the 50s and 60s, I heard much about the evils of Communism and Totalitarianism and dark practices within the Soviet Union. A recurring theme: the evil Soviets were managing news and rewriting history books. It’s chilling to read the same about the U.S. government. [Link]
Among […]

Why have we not heard of the 300,000 to 500,000 people who demonstrated in Chicago on Friday?

“300,000 to 500,000 people marched in Chicago to protest The Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005.”

Or this major development:

“Now comes the conservative American Bar Association–400,000 lawyers–whose House of Delegates has overwhelmingly approved a task force report accusing President Bush, in polite legal language, of violating both the Constitution and federal law. ABA President Michael S. Greco sent it to Mr. Bush with a cover letter dated February 13, 2006.” — Ralph Nader.

Why is the Mainstream Media [MSM] failing to report these stories? Google these stories and you will see that the MSM are missing in action. A conspiracy of silence.

Is it because they fear the restoration of the primacy of the people over Mammon’s market?

I hope you have seen Adam Curtis’ “Happiness Machines“, episode one of the 2002 BBC “The Century of the Self” series.

The arguments that Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss make, and to some extent Frued in his “Civilization and its Discontents“, that humans are far too dangerously irrational and prone to chaotic barbarism to ever participate in a democracy of self governance, is both tautological and false. It is also powerfully self serving. But Eddie Bernays and the National Association of Manufacturers, and now Karl Rove and the Neocons, would certainly make you believe it was gospel.

They are past masters of playing to the emotional aspects of our imperfect rationality. Bernays’ “Freedom Torches” as the name for cigarettes was brilliantly successful in getting women to smoke cigarettes — much to their detriment.

We need to expose their cynical assumption, going back to President Hoover, that citizens can only be, must only be, passive consumers.

There were more terrorist attacks in 2004 than in any year since 1985, based on the government’s top terrorism center. This suggests that the “War on Terror” is failing. The State Department is taking steps to correct the problem - by discontinuing the report, which is “the definitive report on the incidence of terrorism around […]

Are we on this case? It is more important to stop the “new and improved” Patriot Act than it is working to “protect” Social Security. If the Patriot Act II, and its corallary supporting legislation H.R. 418 sneaks though under the fog of confusion caused by the Social Security distraction, then the fight for Social Security will not matter.

This is an extreme statement of the case, but perhaps extreme conditions require extreme statements. For a less extreme source, please also see Bill Moyer’s essay Welcome to Doomsday.

As Democrats working for all of the people, we should insist that NO American is above the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. As Democrats, we must insist that any claims that any person can be placed above the law are such a violation of our democratic principals that they may rightly be considered treasonous. Are we to remain a democracy based on the principal that we are equal before the law and that none are above it? Only, it seems, if the Democrats and we the people fight for it.