Radio: an invisible influence?

Radio. We think of it as a quaint old technology but radio waves connect us through our newest smartphone technologies and they also divide us when used to deploy ideas over the airwaves. Radio was the first broadcast medium used by the Nazis to disseminate propaganda and arouse a frenzied unity and hatred of Jews and other outsiders. In America, as FDR worked to lead the U.S. to recovery from the Wall Street Great Depression, Father Coughlin began to use the power of radio to first support, then oppose and attack those efforts.

More recently in the early 1980s conservative talk radio programming has exploded with the expiration of the Fairness Doctrine and their sensational discourse is a natural draw for commercial-driven network TV. Today some right-wing radio shows are rightly labeled "hate radio" and they have had a profound and poisonous impact on the American psyche while the celebrity bloviators become increasingly wealthy - and untethered from consensus reality. Worse, they have had demonstrable political impact as when Rush Limbaugh derailed a bipartisan immigration bill that President George Bush was ready to sign until this large radio celebrity launched his well-crafted word "shamnesty" over the airwaves resulting in a flood of dittoheads contacting their representatives and ultimately killing the bill. Right-wing talk radio: it's more than just entertainment.

As the media comes under attack from Trump and his administration, it is surprising how little discussion about significant impact of extremist right-wing radio on the election of Trump. However, Matt Gertz of the National Memo seems to get it in his online discussion of how right-wing media "paved the way for Trump."

Patriotism morphs into fascism when a myth of national perfection is aggressively promoted, discouraging the critical democratic reflection for ongoing national improvement.
Certain programs and networks seem obsessed with repetition of slogans and words designed to exaggerate, denigrate and emotionally manipulate. We are assured of fairness and balance at the same time the word "liberal" is repeated hypnotically as a term of disparagement and scapegoating.

Why? Mostly to generate ad revenue, but also to arouse the resentment of those whose lives have been economically wrecked, not by liberals, minorities or immigrants, but by the legally mandated greed of the "corporate person" a.k.a. the corporation. Right-wing radio misdirects that rage from the criminal corporation to scapegoat those who are different but similarly crushed by the same economic struggles in a country where the "corporate person" counts more than the working person. The "corporate person" may be stupid but it doesn't take a lot of smarts to deploy the trusty divide-and-conquer strategy among the working folk and much of it has come via radio.

The image above is disturbingly suggestive. It's a big jump, but worth mentioning for sober reflection, the radio-controlled Rwandan genocide was based on similar privilege and cultural resentment - 800,000 killed in 100 days between April and July of 1994. Most were hacked to death with machetes, no guns necessary. This is not to say that the hate radio gang is plotting a massacre of liberals, but the litany of venom and disinformation on these shows should catch our attention because we are now living at the uncertain, chaotic dawning of the reign of Trump.

We did it once, shall we do it again?

Even though Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 2.8 million, many Americans were completely floored by her electoral college loss in the 2016 election and spend the last week mourning their disillusionment. I voted for Hillary but I did not feel the smug assurance of well-paid pundits and my fellow liberal voters - I knew that she might lose. 

A recent SNL skit about the 2016 election starring Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock highlights the denial of Democrats, liberals and other Hillary voters over the surprise victory of the most boorish, bigoted, divisive and unqualified candidate ever to run for president of the United States. Joined by several white friends who were certain of a Democratic victory, the characters played by Chappelle and Rock maintained their doubt about the outcome. 

Clearly, many of us had our heads in the sand - and in the aftermath of this democratic disaster, reflecting on what our future might hold, it looks like we're doing it again.

We can discuss the various causes of this astonishing and embarrassing result, but we might be wiser to consider what comes next and what we need to do to prepare for it. By providing non-stop coverage of "expert" pollsters and the obnoxious and spiteful Tweets of Hillary's opponent, the corporate media helped to get him elected. 

Perhaps their lust for profit clouded their judgement.

Neither the election nor the media are "rigged" in spite of his paranoid claims, but they are part of the "elite" that drove many working-class voters, women and other minorities to vote against Hillary Clinton. Now these handsomely paid pundits are parroting their assigned kumbaya lines about accepting election results and a smooth transfer of power, but in the streets it's a different story.

All across America, people are protesting his electoral college win and the ugly, frightening words and ideas that inspired it. Meanwhile the media and many liberals are replacing their heads in the sand and pretending that everything is going to be OK, that the reality TV host didn't really mean all the racist, sexist, violent and threatening things he said. But many of us are sure that everything's gonna be just fine.

But then there's the appointment of Stephen Bannon of Breitbart News Network, an organization that promotes white nationalism and other bigotries according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

I'll bet there were plenty of Germans were in denial in the 1930s and we all know how that turned out.

In spite of recent calm and measured interviews we have no reason to believe that this "man" will (or is able) to change, to become more stable, moderate and thoughtful. This is simply wishful thinking on the part of liberals who are sometimes too tolerant, too willing to consider all sides of an argument and too reluctant to condemn that which is dark and threatening. This "man" has promised to revive our pathological program of torture but, like the election results, we refuse to believe it because we feel so cozy and safe with our heads in the sand where we don't have to see the angry and venomous hoards who voted for him - and who promised armed uprising if Hillary won the election.

We didn't hear too much concern about that before the election, but now that many Americans are protesting her loss, the media focus is on the horrors of broken windows, blocked traffic and lost business - hardly comparable to armed resistance and promotion of bigotry.

The ugliness has already begun and he's not even in office yet. What will awaken the Pollyannas of the left and center who voted for Hillary?

It is not only naive but dangerous for us to pretend that the hatred and ignorance inspired by this "man" will soon pass and that nothing serious and irreversible will happen during his tenure. The misinformed and bitter anger of his heavily armed supporters has already been well stirred and documented. We'd be wiser to reflect on what could happen once he's in office and what our most effective response might be.

Perhaps it's time to wake from our sleep of denial before it's too late.

Trump's best cards

Though, probably the best demonstration of "demagoguery" we've had in a while, in the hurricane of bluster, blather and bald-faced lying that is Donald Trump I think his appeal is on target in three areas:

• unscripted presentation
• critique of PC language policing
• globalization as a key factor in losing middle-class jobs

All three are valid concerns for working voters, but they're being exploited by a man who has no history of giving a damn about average folks and the American worker.

Bernie Sanders is genuine and unscripted, he hits these same three targets, but with more honesty and with specific content instead of inflammatory sloganeering - so why didn't more working folks support Sanders? It could be sexism, racism or the FOX-conditioned irrational fear/hatred of Liberals, Democrats and especially Socialists. Or it could be that Trump simply stokes their anger rather than offering informed explanations and detailed plans.

While the initial intent of "PC" or politically correct speech was to promote civil discourse with a move away from biased or offensive language. Conservatives think this is only a liberal thing but O'Reilly's annual whine about the "war on Christmas" is nothing but evangelical PC - and a bit exaggerated at that. There is an abundance of Christian iconography, slogans and prayers in our public spaces.

The problem of language policing is that it encourages heightened sensitivities so that many people hold what I call a "victim mousetrap" mindset, just waiting to spring shut on something they find offensive. The validation, in some corners, of "the trigger warning" is a sign that we've gone too far.

Aside from following basic rules of civility, pubic discourse should not be shut down according to the most sensitive person in the crowd - this is a dangerous absurdity. Anyone so raw as to need a TW should *stay home* until they are well enough to participate in the rough-and-tumble that is democracy rather than expect the rest of us to walk on egg-shells.

As for globalization, the first thing to note is that it has been defined for us all by small groups of mostly white men whose policies sometimes override national law if corporate profit is at stake. It has been money-grubbing, free-loading guys like Trump who have promoted and benefited from the outsourcing of jobs. That is is legal does not mean it is smart or right. The global economic model is called "liberal economics" but it is only liberal with those already awash in wealth.

The hypnopedia of laissez-faire slogans like tax-cuts, privatization, trickle-down and rising-tide has been repeated and tried for 40 years without achieving its lofty claims. In reality, this economic model has helped create an unprecedented and dangerous gap in wealth. One day "race to the bottom" won't be just a phrase, it will be our experience UNLESS we re-define a globalism not focused on maximizing the profit of a few but a more rational and sustainable globalization for the people and the planet.

Guns, the 2nd Amendment & Demagoguery

(editors note: after Trump's recent suggestion that Hillary Clinton "wants to abolish" the 2nd Amendment and how "the 2nd Amendment people" might be able to stop her, I found a 2013 gun essay that my local paper would not publish in spite of its relevance. There have been many other shootings since then, and now with Trump's most recent threat - I thought it worth posting.)

Reflections on Riflery

           There’s been another assault rifle shooting at an Atlanta-area elementary school, but thankfully nobody was killed. This may seem like an odd time to reflect positively on my relationship with guns but it’s time for some serious reflection. 

          I got my first BB gun when I was about 10 and my father gave me my first real rifle when I was 12. It was a Marlin .22 caliber semi-automatic Model 60 with a 14-round tubular magazine. My dad would take me target shooting and I would go “plinking” at cans and bottles in the woods with my friends. In the fall, my brother and I would go squirrel hunting in the Blue Ridge. That rifle brought me a great deal of enjoyment. I spent several summers of my adolescence teaching NRA sponsored riflery courses as a camp counselor, and I took great pride in teaching my campers important safety practices, basic gun knowledge and good marksmanship. Like many reasonable Americans, I like guns and I enjoy shooting.

          Since those days however, I have noticed an unfortunate trend in our national relationship with guns in which Americans have become less informed and consequently more afraid of guns than ever before. Over that same time, I have also noticed a national drift towards the far right during which the 2^nd Amendment has been aggressively promoted and irrational fears of government gun confiscation have increased. While I am a firm believer in the 2nd Amendment and the right of self-defense, today’s conversation about guns has taken on a disturbing tone, especially since the Newtown massacre. 

          Though widely criticized, the NRA’s suggestion of armed security personnel at schools seems reasonable to me. I grew up with school security guards in Northern Virginia and never once found them to be threatening. But let’s not forget that the school security guards at Columbine were impotent to prevent that slaughter. Background checks would not have stopped the Newtown massacre and they won’t stop those who purchase guns from the trunk of a car. Nearly every “solution” suggested has been shown to be insufficient in one case or another. But are these good reasons to oppose the passage of reasonable gun laws? No. 

          Because of the speed of the mass shootings, magazine capacity has naturally become a focus of discussion, but if you can’t hit your target with 10 shots, you probably shouldn’t even own a gun – or at least you need some serious target practice.  As for those who read the 2^nd Amendment as a protection against a tyrannous government, they should reconsider whether a whole closet full of assault rifles could stand a chance against the massive arsenal of any government. Fully automatic weaponry and much heavier arms are not doing the job for the Syrian resistance for example.  And if we think we can rely on the protection of those with “concealed carry” permits, unless they are required to pass a stringent yearly marksmanship test, their engagement with a mass shooter is more likely to increase the bloodshed rather than drop the killer. Precise accuracy with a pistol is a difficult skill to master requiring regular practice. 

According to political scientist Robert Spitzer, it wasn’t until the 1970’s that the NRA became so aggressively focused on lobbying and ritually evoking the boogeyman of government gun confiscation. There is even video evidence of LaPierre doing a flip-flop on the issue of background checks that the NRA once favored. The NRA’s nefarious and inordinate influence was obvious when the GOP Senate (along with some skulking blue-dog Dems) demonstrated their submission in rejecting a reasonable expansion of background checks for gun purchases. 

          Perhaps it was their political fear of the NRA or maybe they were really convinced by the NRA’s disinformation campaigns such as their claim that “80% of police say background checks will have no effect on violent crime” a claim which has since been challenged by police and academics alike. The NRA relies a bit too heavily on the logical fallacy of the “slippery slope” thus scaring many gun owners into blind opposition to common sense gun law reform.

So as a gun enthusiast, I’ve had mixed feelings about the gun debate – that is, until I heard a pro-gun heckler interrupt Neil Heslin as he spoke about his son Jesse’s death at Newtown. As Heslin reviewed the heart-wrenching experience, someone shouted “the 2nd Amendment shall not be infringed...my rights” and the first word that popped into my mind was “nutcase.” Of course, “insensitive,” or “ignorant,” “uncivil” or even “unbalanced” could apply, but nutcase seems to fit the best.  When I heard this, I found myself asking: what kind of person would do that to a grieving father?  

          This was not a patriotic outcry, it was a selfish and paranoid incivility. 

           The NRA might want to reconsider pressing for mental health checks when their promotion of paranoia about gun confiscation and a “Big Brother” tyranny might actually disqualify them from gun ownership. This paranoia takes a chilling turn if you look at the dozens of YouTube  videos about the Newtown shooting “hoax” that was meant to initiate mass gun confiscation. That’s a dangerous level of irrationality and conspiracy paranoia. 

          In fact, the exact wording of the recently rejected bill specifically disallows any such confiscation. And, can we really take such hysterical claims seriously when our Supreme Court has unequivocally affirmed an individual right to bear arms? President Obama has repeatedly affirmed the 2^nd Amendment and gun owners can and do openly carry and even attend political rallies with their rifles shouldered. Fearing a repeal of the 2nd Amendment in this context reveals the depth of paranoia in the minds of some gun owners. 

The biggest threat here may not be the random mass shooting, but rather the minority of fanatical, gullible gun owners who resist facts, believe NRA disinformation and belligerently refuse compromise, who selfishly shout about their rights as parents grieve the slaughter of their children, and who seem willing to believe almost anything to justify their paranoia. 

Perhaps it’s time for the majority of reasonable NRA members to exercise some real courage and leave the NRA to form a new, more respectable gun organization:
the Rational Rifle Association.

Political Spectrum Shift?

          A media commonplace these days is to repeat how "divided" America is between the political left and the right, and the implicit and explicit message of conservatives is that we have drifted dangerously left of center, especially now with the democratic socialism enthusiastically embraced by the Millennials who supported Bernie Sanders. 
           Some might even consider his proposals of universal healthcare and education as "extreme" - but only if viewed myopically. If we use the developed world as our standard, such public benefits are the rule rather than the exception yet we Americans accept, and some of us even defend this sad state of affairs. And most countries that provide such benefits are not totalitarian states contrary to the sloganeering of the ill-informed. 
          I would argue that we are not left of center but far, far right of center with an unprecedented and well-funded push to continue to push us further to the right. Certain "news" networks can rarely get through a day without the constant and hypnotic repetition of the word "liberal" as well as web chat rooms are full of other demonizations ("libtard," "demoncrat," "liberal scum") that indicate we are most certainly *not* left of center. 
           And then there is right-wing talk radio (some "shock jocks" or "hate radio") where additional invective is used to roil the anger of working folk by millionaire celebrities who are less interested in the welfare of their audience than the income from their ratings.
          According today's increasingly dogmatic political tests, President Nixon was a screaming socialist, calling for national health-care, making connections with Communist China, starting the Environmental Protection Agency and even exercising strong executive authority by issuing a freeze on price increases to stem inflation. As a teen being raised by a single mother after my father died, I can remember feeling grateful that the President seemed to care about ordinary, struggling families. 
          Nixon is only one example, but there are others in terms of policy and legislation. In most ways, America is being pushed aggressively rightward: the prison-industrial complex has made us the jailers of the world, the militarization of police, the erosion of women's rights and an irrational xenophobia are just some examples. We're so far off center that the nominee of a major political party can be supported by white supremecists and retain (if not increase) his credibility with a rabidly devoted base.
          This base is rightfully angry about "globalization" but they need to understand that the "neo-liberal" economic model is a misnamed and does not reflect democratic liberal values at all - it only represents massive accumulation by the few and massive debt for the the rest of us. Unfortunately, the dust kicked up in anger any time the word "liberal" is used prevents some hard working Americans from seeing that the real culprit is greed not liberal social and economic values. 
          For a final check, look at the era of the "Greatest Generation" with much higher corporate taxes, socialized education in the GI Bill, the Interstate highway system, public schools, public hospitals and public libraries. Instead of these public services, today's conservatives speak of a "depleted" military with complete amnesia over the parting warning from President Eisenhower about the dangers of the military-industrial complex. 
          Maybe a first step toward arresting our rightward course might be to start discussing changes in public perception of the political spectrum. After that, we should re-define "globalization" so it is focused on people and our planet rather than the entitled corporate "person" whose appetite for profit will never be sated.

Big Brother RVA

          In August 2003 I wrote an essay "Who Is Watching The Watchers?" about the TV "reality" program Big Brother and I wondered about how such shows could condition us to being constantly monitored.

          This was before the proliferation of social media and smartphones.

         In spite of revelations of mass NSA surveillance of Americans, most of us freely provide our personal information (sometimes seriously compromising!) and images with the powerful combination of smartphones and social media - who needs to spy? 
         We are beginning to be taught about cybersecurity and how to keep our own devices free from spying and compromise but many of us do not bother. The ubiquitous surveillance camera has naturalized the experience of being observed by unknown watchers. Yes, cameras have helped after a crime or terrorist event, but they cannot actually stop crime or terrorism.
         Most of our surveillance is for commercial benefit. I once counted 40 cameras that I could see as I waited to check out at a local Walmart.
          Here in RVA, the Richmond City Police recently spent an undisclosed amount on a surveillance system to keep an eye on an abandoned building - the old Vepco hydroelectric plant on Belle Isle (this is in addition to their surveillance plane that patrols the city, especially in the Texas Beach area).

          I am assured by a sensible source that the cameras are necessary: they have prevented crimes and "possibly" even prevented a murder. All well-and-good if it were that simple, but how do we determine when crime is prevented? Does the video show the beginning of the act, then the criminals glancing up and leaving? If not, prevention claims are simply a guess.
          So, in 2016, thirteen years after my original essay we still have scripted "reality" shows but we are also now socially surveilling ourselves. And Big Brother is watching now more than ever. Watch the documentary Citizen Four sometime for some eye-opening revelations.
          Now more than ever, we must never cease to ask the question the Roman poet Juvenal asked in one of his satires: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? or  
Who's Watching The Watchers? 

No STEM Fruit Without The Writing Root

            Though often obscured by our more spectacular and lucrative technologies, writing is the Mother of all disciplines and the central tool in the invention of the technologies that followed it. Writing is the root that has empowered the STEM to develop - there would be no STEM fruit without the writing root. We may not have the personal jet packs or the flying cars predicted in The Jetson’s, but think about what has changed during the few thousand years since writing. These millennia represent only a few grains of sand in the hourglass of humanity during which we have evolved technologically from clay tablets to space stations. Writing has been the essential tool in these astonishing and rapid developments. Considering this, we would do well to balance our vigorous promotion and support for STEM with an equal measure of promotion and support for its protean root - writing.

            Our digital age can be seen as favoring image over text, but in cyberspace text still swirls around us in a maelstrom of meanings and links, many yet to be made. And behind the screen we see is the world of ever-evolving codes, most based on alphabetic literacy. Hypertext is a practical manifestation of the literary concept of intertextuality, and its facilitation of continual linking allows completely new and instructively unorthodox connections between texts offering unprecedented opportunities for new perspectives and discoveries. Twenty-six arbitrary shapes meant to represent sounds may not seem like a “technology” but the phonetic alphabet has been and continues to be one of the most powerful tools for shaping our world. 
          Because of its ubiquity we naturally become desensitized to its astonishing creative power, but this low-tech set of marks we learned to arrange in specific patterns on a surface represent thought as well as speech sounds. The alphabet has helped us invent new words, conceive ideas, tell our stories, keep records and develop increasingly complex ideas. Some ideas became materialized and mass produced in books, leading to more ideas and books and  eventually the birth of the artificial, if convenient, divisions of knowledge we call academic “disciplines.” And these disciplines continue to develop, discover and disseminate new information primarily with the irreplaceable technology of writing.   

            Most of us remember when we learned the alphabet to the tune of “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” but how could we have known that the string of phonetic symbols we listed lyrically had helped us take our first steps towards those very stars? Without writing, we would likely still be living technologically primitive agrarian lives, relying on the slow and unreliable oral transmission of information. Without writing there would be no established law that materially and visibly fixed standards of civilized behavior, leaving us subject to the ugly unwritten laws of brute force and warlord whim – an historical pattern evident even today. And what’s worse, we’d have to endure all this with nothing to read for distraction.

             Today, the flow of information and resulting innovation is nearly constant. Sometimes it can be overwhelming but it’s exciting to live in an age so enriched by the complex creations of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. From our Smartphones, the World Wide Web and the International Space Station to nanotechnology, genomic sciences and 3-D printing, efforts in the STEM fields have yielded spectacular advances and they continue to change our lives radically. But, these astonishing fruits could never have occurred without the intensive use of the root technology of writing. The detailed development and accurate transmission of ideas requires the technology of writing so that specific details can be recorded precisely and accurately, and seed ideas can be explored and written into sprouting, ultimately bearing ripe and delightful fruit. 

            In the history of our species, writing is a relatively young technology but consider the accelerating technological explosion that followed it. Cuneiform, one of the earliest forms of writing, was developed in Sumer, today’s Iraq, over 3500 years ago so that merchants could keep track of their stock and tally sales by using an alphabet of abstract wedge-shaped marks made in tablets of clay. Today, barely four millennia later, we write digitally with a vast galaxy of new tools at our command – and for reasons that far surpass our original commercial purposes.

            Writing teachers would do well to reflect on how pedagogy and the act of composition might change as speech-to-text software programs increase in quality and accuracy. Such a change will necessitate gaining some basic knowledge of contemporary brain research and which areas of the brain are active during written composition compared with brain activity when we compose orally, as we have done for almost two million years. And, while it might be tempting to think that writing will become obsolete now that we can record speech digitally, we would be foolish to abandon the simple, free and reliable technology that helped us develop our ability to record sound.

            The Web is wonderful but it is expensive and vulnerable, dependent on a power grid subject to major interruptions through infrastructure decay, weather phenomena, cyber-attack and terrorism. In contrast, reading a physical book and writing by hand on paper can be achieved without electricity. Such old-school technologies are less hackable, less complex, more affordable - and far more stable. Even a wet book can be dried and read – try that with your Smartphone or laptop. Wisdom lies in a balance of old and new that includes a reliable backup.

            The teaching of writing must be more fully funded and vigorously promoted at all levels if we are serious about promoting STEM and the critical and close reading skills that are required in those fields. The good news is that, in the sciences, there has been an awakening to the importance of writing and the necessity of skilled writers to convey new discoveries accessibly to the broader public. This is especially crucial in times of rapid technological change. One program working towards this end is the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook whose mission is to train upcoming generations of scientists “to communicate more effectively with the public, public officials, the media, and others outside their own discipline.”

            Their inclusion of the public forum in their mission statement here is especially significant. It reminds us of what is often left out in discussions of literacy and education: civic engagement and participation in the democratic process. To be an informed and responsible participant in a complex democracy requires a high degree of critical literacy if we are to keep democracy alive. In an 1818 letter to Rev. George Wythe, Thomas Jefferson writes about the purposes of education that move beyond simple employment, and he notes the value of developing a clear understanding of our rights and responsibilities to our community as well as the expression and preservation of our own ideas in writing. And in Jefferson’s list of the necessary subjects for study the first two are writing and reading – the root from which the STEM has grown.