...or: Politics In The Age Of Clutter-Busting Viral Messaging
(Maybe we should talk in terms like "blinding the radar with chaff in order to penetrate the victims' defenses and bomb the fuck out of 'em before they even knew what was happening", but that seems a little too bleak even for me. So...)
1) Make wild predictions of gloom and doom - be sure to slag Obama at every opportunity, and tell everybody that he's "in over his head", and he's paralyzed with indecision, and that he's unable to provide the right kind of leadership etc etc etc.
2) Once you're fairly sure the bad shit you knew wasn't going to happen - but said loudly and repeatedly that it was going to happen - is actually not going to happen, step forward and take credit for saving all of us, once again, from Da Gubmint's incompetence.
This shit goes on all the time, and this ebola shit is a really good example. Repubs have been savaging Obama for weeks. They're pretty sure nothing all that bad was gonna happen anyway, so it's the perfect political tool. They get to bash the prez for not doing something (which they already knew he didn't need to do), and then they can pop right back up afterwards and claim they were the ones who warned us about the terrible thing, and that they took decisive action blah blah blah, and then they slag Obama some more on how awful he's been.
It's all a stoopid game, and it's taken on a very obvious wrinkle that I'll call Entrepreneurial Politics. It goes hand-in-hand with Entrepreneurial Religion, Entrepreneurial Medicine, Entrepreneurial Education, Entrepreneurial Policing, Entrepreneurial Incarceration - whatever you care to name; it can be turned into a great way to shear the sheep if you just follow the simple formula.
Find an "issue" that sounds big and scary, but one that doesn't really present any great risk. (Remember: reducing risk to something as close to zero as possible is a big part of this scam. And BTW, what we used to call Capitalism had lots of risk, but now what we call Capitalism is more like owning the local casino and then buying enough Coin-Operated Politicians to pass laws requiring everybody to come in and "gamble" at least part of every day).
Wanna peddle some "harmless quackery"? Let's try Reiki - we know the patient is under a real doctor's care, which puts us in the "no harm no foul zone", so we can wave our hands over the afflicted areas in an ookie-spookie way and chant a buncha mystical nonsense and really bring the low-key-but-nonetheless-intense drama of ritualistic hoodoo bullshit and make the show worth the money, while knowing it's going to be the real science and knowledge and skill of the medical arts practitioners doing the real work while we get a chance to take some of the credit and make some of the money for doing nothing more than providing a little distracting amusement. So it doesn't matter that the patient really does have something at least potentially serious wrong him, cuz that's not your problem - you're just trying to make your mortgage payment this month yada yada yada.
Anyway, you flack the shit out of whatever Disaster du Jour you've come up with in order to raise possibly huge amounts of money that you can then turn around and spend on Advertising aimed at making sure that the "facts" are muddied to the point of incomprehension, knowing the rubes are gonna turn out and vote exactly the way you tell 'em to vote, and that a huge slice of the big squishy middle will stay home on election day because you've made sure they're pretty disgusted with the whole sorry mess.
And guess who stays in power.
The US Congress has an approval rating in the single digits, but the individual Critters get re-elected along the lines of 95% of the time.
In Soviet Russia, the Communists were the only ones allowed to run for office, and you couldn't vote if you weren't a member of the Communist Party. It was a closed-loop system, and under that system, members of the Duma (their version of Congress) were re-elected 91% of the time.
Shouldn't that be some indication that maybe we've got a fucking problem here?
Parting thought: Pessimism is the only sensible default position because you're gonna be proved right or pleasantly surprised every time.
(Maybe we should talk in terms like "blinding the radar with chaff in order to penetrate the victims' defenses and bomb the fuck out of 'em before they even knew what was happening", but that seems a little too bleak even for me. So...)
1) Make wild predictions of gloom and doom - be sure to slag Obama at every opportunity, and tell everybody that he's "in over his head", and he's paralyzed with indecision, and that he's unable to provide the right kind of leadership etc etc etc.
2) Once you're fairly sure the bad shit you knew wasn't going to happen - but said loudly and repeatedly that it was going to happen - is actually not going to happen, step forward and take credit for saving all of us, once again, from Da Gubmint's incompetence.
This shit goes on all the time, and this ebola shit is a really good example. Repubs have been savaging Obama for weeks. They're pretty sure nothing all that bad was gonna happen anyway, so it's the perfect political tool. They get to bash the prez for not doing something (which they already knew he didn't need to do), and then they can pop right back up afterwards and claim they were the ones who warned us about the terrible thing, and that they took decisive action blah blah blah, and then they slag Obama some more on how awful he's been.
It's all a stoopid game, and it's taken on a very obvious wrinkle that I'll call Entrepreneurial Politics. It goes hand-in-hand with Entrepreneurial Religion, Entrepreneurial Medicine, Entrepreneurial Education, Entrepreneurial Policing, Entrepreneurial Incarceration - whatever you care to name; it can be turned into a great way to shear the sheep if you just follow the simple formula.
Find an "issue" that sounds big and scary, but one that doesn't really present any great risk. (Remember: reducing risk to something as close to zero as possible is a big part of this scam. And BTW, what we used to call Capitalism had lots of risk, but now what we call Capitalism is more like owning the local casino and then buying enough Coin-Operated Politicians to pass laws requiring everybody to come in and "gamble" at least part of every day).
Wanna peddle some "harmless quackery"? Let's try Reiki - we know the patient is under a real doctor's care, which puts us in the "no harm no foul zone", so we can wave our hands over the afflicted areas in an ookie-spookie way and chant a buncha mystical nonsense and really bring the low-key-but-nonetheless-intense drama of ritualistic hoodoo bullshit and make the show worth the money, while knowing it's going to be the real science and knowledge and skill of the medical arts practitioners doing the real work while we get a chance to take some of the credit and make some of the money for doing nothing more than providing a little distracting amusement. So it doesn't matter that the patient really does have something at least potentially serious wrong him, cuz that's not your problem - you're just trying to make your mortgage payment this month yada yada yada.
Anyway, you flack the shit out of whatever Disaster du Jour you've come up with in order to raise possibly huge amounts of money that you can then turn around and spend on Advertising aimed at making sure that the "facts" are muddied to the point of incomprehension, knowing the rubes are gonna turn out and vote exactly the way you tell 'em to vote, and that a huge slice of the big squishy middle will stay home on election day because you've made sure they're pretty disgusted with the whole sorry mess.
And guess who stays in power.
The US Congress has an approval rating in the single digits, but the individual Critters get re-elected along the lines of 95% of the time.
In Soviet Russia, the Communists were the only ones allowed to run for office, and you couldn't vote if you weren't a member of the Communist Party. It was a closed-loop system, and under that system, members of the Duma (their version of Congress) were re-elected 91% of the time.
Shouldn't that be some indication that maybe we've got a fucking problem here?
Parting thought: Pessimism is the only sensible default position because you're gonna be proved right or pleasantly surprised every time.
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