I really really really do not understand this emotional investment of so many leftists (at least leftists on lbo) on the likes of the people on the far right. There must be better ways to relax or have fun than obsessing over Fox. Tiddlywinks, perhaps, or watching the grass grow in the Sahara.
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The media forms the common information space in which people's dreams, fears and beliefs are, to some extent, created and, to a larger extent, shaped and colored.
The Right has been able to create a Dorian Grey portrait of the Left - defined as starting with someone who simply thinks pleasantly fair thoughts about the minimum wage and daycare, through hardcore Dem organizers and apparatchik and all the way to folks who are considered radical by conventional standards such as anarchists and unapologetic marxists.
The picture has two levels of unreality and extremism.
On the soft level, the level of naive youth, lefties are depicted as weak, fumbling hippies, tree huggers, unrealistic and dreamlike. You picture a thin and winsome girl, circa 1969, dancing in a park. Her arms outstretched, she slowly twirls while someone off camera plays a sitar. How can she deal with the rigors of global finance or the terrors of international jihad?
Mark ye the little lower layer Starbuck and behold the supporting canvas for the romantic image: the enemy of the state, the hideous beast that aids the enemies of freedom, the traitorous dog.
Note how O'Reilly moves back and forth between layers as he tries to smear Moore (weak = Saddam supporter = traitor = weak). Note how Moore handles the situation like a pro.
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The question is not what O'Reilly and his fellow travelers think and feel - they are willing servants, their motivations, though probably fascinating, are irrelevant. The question is how will the left contend in the dominant information space.
An example follows.
Because I'm black and many people are quite thoroughly stupid I'm often complimented on how well I speak. The information space I contend with is one in which brown me = mumble mouth (hey Fat Albert, I do be wantin some ice b cream). The fact I'm not a mumble mouth is an inadvertent way of waging war upon a self re-energizing network of asinine ideas.
And so it is with the sharp performances of people like Moore, who fine tunes his style of self-presentation with each iteration of his media appearances. He's not weak. He doesn't fumble. He's on the Left. The cognitive dissonance this creates is useful.
Ideas form networks. Networks have the ability to route around damage (which, in the case of belief systems can be defined as heretical challenges) and continue packet transmission. The only effective way to deal with these networks is by introducing new nodes and packet streams.
Or, to put it another way...
Building movements is essential. Building movements while ignoring the info-space and the need for head-to-head combat in that space is a bad tactic.
.d.