Mad Dog loves Bill Maher.
He really does.
Maher is, taken with Stephen Colbert and Jon Oliver, the only really visible and effective force for liberal thought readily available to the masses and he is effective.
Jon Stewart has fled the field of battle.
There are wonderful voices of criticism--Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle--but they are too coarse for Peoria.
George Carlin is gone, although watching his "Jammin in New York" show is startling--he is speaking about 2018 from 1992. He was a quarter of a century ahead of his time. Always was. People who see the truth become prophets, not from some supernatural power, but from simple bravery. They see the truth nobody else is willing to see, to say it and later people say, "How prescient!" The Oracle is able to see the future by simply seeing the present clearly and without fear.
But getting back to Maher. His latest riff, which I loved, was effective, but flawed.
For dramatic effect, he asserted that Trump is something new, is more vile and more dangerous than any other President in history. He claims he was a history major in college, and all I can say, as someone whose last formal history course was high school--and that class, worse than useless--Bill ought to be reading more history now, and more widely.
Trump is different in that he plays a different game than anything we've seen over the past century and a half--he cannot speak the language of the intelligent, by which I mean, he cannot gather "facts" and examine the limitations of those "facts" and still build a case, and so he speaks the language of the bar room, of Archie Bunker: the simple declarative, often ill informed, mostly bigoted statement.
He deals not in persuasion, but in challenge. He is not interested in ideas, but in power. He has no ideology, unlike Hitler, but seeks popularity and adoration. In that sense, he is not a modern leader at all, a man like Hitler or Mussolini who seek to bring the masses along to his world view; he is more like the kings of ancient times, who wish to be adored, feared, exalted, seen as a "winner" whose place on earth is God given, a chosen man, not by the masses, who only appreciate his genius and superiority which has been bestowed on him by nature, from good genes and the right parents.
It's not really that he is anything new; he's simply part of a past most people are too young or too old to remember.
Reading Jill Lepore and Oliver Stone, the venality, the deep seeded hate, the ignorance are nothing new in occupants of the White House. But like most common criminals, the Presidents do horrible things to other people, all the while seeing themselves as victims.
Lepore does trace a change in the major issues. She notes that since slavery, there has been no issue which has rent the fabric of American thought until abortion.
High paid opinion manipulators, "political consultants" pushed politicians in directions which meant "abortion was murder and guns meant freedom, or guns meant murder and abortion was freedom."
All reasonable discussion flew out the window and the blown open door.
I'm now almost finished Stone ("Untold History") and halfway through Lepore ("These Truths.")
And yes, Maher is correct, the effect of reading these stories--they are not attempts at "history" so much as an interpretation of the past for present purposes (as all history really is--the effect is calming.
But calm people may not vote. And what Maher was doing in his Nov 3 plea, was to urge action among people (especially young people) who have historically been either too lazy or too self absorbed to vote.
If we are facing an emerging Adolph Hitler, then this really does demand action, and a willingness to sacrifice a few hours standing on line or fighting with poll workers intent on suppressing your vote and voice. So Maher was well motivated to claim Trump is something new, something we've never seen before, someone who can make "it can't happen here" actually happen here. But he is wrong--we have had Presidents in the past who were every bit as stupid, venal, unfit as the present President.
Nixon played the Trump game: divide the Whites against the Blacks--and forget about winning the Black vote; go after the resentful White voters. Forget the underclass, go after the middle class. Trump is doing the same. The difference is that Nixon did not have to openly vilify his boogie men; all he had to do was wink and nod and everyone knew who he was talking about--those dangerous Blacks burning down the inner cities and those white children, the spoiled, pampered children of privilege who are "bums" and who are contemptuous of hard working work-a-day Middle class solid citizens.
George Carlin's analysis from more than 25 years ago is still true today: You got the rich on top, who pay no taxes, controlling everything; you got the middle class who pay the taxes and keep the government and the country rolling; and you got the people at the bottom, the lower class, who are there to scare the Hell out of the middle class.
The people on the bottom now aren't so much the Blacks or even the more recently arrived Browns, but the wannabes, all those scary, tattooed face, lean and hungry invaders from South of the Border, who can throw rocks like shooting rifles and who want to rape White women--we wouldn't care if they wanted to rape just Brown women--and who want to take your jobs!
He really does.
Maher is, taken with Stephen Colbert and Jon Oliver, the only really visible and effective force for liberal thought readily available to the masses and he is effective.
Jon Stewart has fled the field of battle.
There are wonderful voices of criticism--Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle--but they are too coarse for Peoria.
George Carlin is gone, although watching his "Jammin in New York" show is startling--he is speaking about 2018 from 1992. He was a quarter of a century ahead of his time. Always was. People who see the truth become prophets, not from some supernatural power, but from simple bravery. They see the truth nobody else is willing to see, to say it and later people say, "How prescient!" The Oracle is able to see the future by simply seeing the present clearly and without fear.
But getting back to Maher. His latest riff, which I loved, was effective, but flawed.
For dramatic effect, he asserted that Trump is something new, is more vile and more dangerous than any other President in history. He claims he was a history major in college, and all I can say, as someone whose last formal history course was high school--and that class, worse than useless--Bill ought to be reading more history now, and more widely.
Trump is different in that he plays a different game than anything we've seen over the past century and a half--he cannot speak the language of the intelligent, by which I mean, he cannot gather "facts" and examine the limitations of those "facts" and still build a case, and so he speaks the language of the bar room, of Archie Bunker: the simple declarative, often ill informed, mostly bigoted statement.
He deals not in persuasion, but in challenge. He is not interested in ideas, but in power. He has no ideology, unlike Hitler, but seeks popularity and adoration. In that sense, he is not a modern leader at all, a man like Hitler or Mussolini who seek to bring the masses along to his world view; he is more like the kings of ancient times, who wish to be adored, feared, exalted, seen as a "winner" whose place on earth is God given, a chosen man, not by the masses, who only appreciate his genius and superiority which has been bestowed on him by nature, from good genes and the right parents.
It's not really that he is anything new; he's simply part of a past most people are too young or too old to remember.
Reading Jill Lepore and Oliver Stone, the venality, the deep seeded hate, the ignorance are nothing new in occupants of the White House. But like most common criminals, the Presidents do horrible things to other people, all the while seeing themselves as victims.
Lepore does trace a change in the major issues. She notes that since slavery, there has been no issue which has rent the fabric of American thought until abortion.
High paid opinion manipulators, "political consultants" pushed politicians in directions which meant "abortion was murder and guns meant freedom, or guns meant murder and abortion was freedom."
All reasonable discussion flew out the window and the blown open door.
I'm now almost finished Stone ("Untold History") and halfway through Lepore ("These Truths.")
And yes, Maher is correct, the effect of reading these stories--they are not attempts at "history" so much as an interpretation of the past for present purposes (as all history really is--the effect is calming.
But calm people may not vote. And what Maher was doing in his Nov 3 plea, was to urge action among people (especially young people) who have historically been either too lazy or too self absorbed to vote.
If we are facing an emerging Adolph Hitler, then this really does demand action, and a willingness to sacrifice a few hours standing on line or fighting with poll workers intent on suppressing your vote and voice. So Maher was well motivated to claim Trump is something new, something we've never seen before, someone who can make "it can't happen here" actually happen here. But he is wrong--we have had Presidents in the past who were every bit as stupid, venal, unfit as the present President.
Nixon played the Trump game: divide the Whites against the Blacks--and forget about winning the Black vote; go after the resentful White voters. Forget the underclass, go after the middle class. Trump is doing the same. The difference is that Nixon did not have to openly vilify his boogie men; all he had to do was wink and nod and everyone knew who he was talking about--those dangerous Blacks burning down the inner cities and those white children, the spoiled, pampered children of privilege who are "bums" and who are contemptuous of hard working work-a-day Middle class solid citizens.
George Carlin's analysis from more than 25 years ago is still true today: You got the rich on top, who pay no taxes, controlling everything; you got the middle class who pay the taxes and keep the government and the country rolling; and you got the people at the bottom, the lower class, who are there to scare the Hell out of the middle class.
The people on the bottom now aren't so much the Blacks or even the more recently arrived Browns, but the wannabes, all those scary, tattooed face, lean and hungry invaders from South of the Border, who can throw rocks like shooting rifles and who want to rape White women--we wouldn't care if they wanted to rape just Brown women--and who want to take your jobs!
No comments:
Post a Comment