Enemy of Entropy

Wag the Dog, anyone?

There have always existed three ways of keeping the people loving and loyal. One is to leave them alone, to trust them and not to interfere. This plan, however, has very seldom been practised, because the politicians regard the public as a cow to be milked, and something must be done to make it stand quiet.

So they try Plan Number Two, which consists in hypnotizing the public by means of shows, festivals, parades, prizes and many paid speeches, sermons and editorials, wherein and whereby the public is told how much is being done for it, and how fortunate it is in being protected and wisely cared for by its divinely appointed guardians. Then the band strikes up, the flags are waved, three passes are made, one to the right and two to the left; and we, being completely under the hypnosis, hurrah ourselves hoarse.

Plan Number Three is a very ancient one and is always held back to be used in case Number Two fails. It is for the benefit of the people who do not pass readily under hypnotic control. If there are too many of these, they have been known to pluck up courage and answer back to the speeches, sermons and editorials. Sometimes they refuse to hurrah when the bass-drum plays, in which case they have occasionally been arrested for contumacy and contravention by stocky men, in wide-awake hats, who lead the strenuous life. This Plan Number Three provides for an armed force that shall overawe, if necessary, all who are not hypnotized. The army is used for two purposes—to coerce disturbers at home, and to get up a war at a distance, and thus distract attention from the troubles near at hand. Napoleon used to say that the only sure cure for internal dissension was a foreign war: this would draw the disturbers away, on the plea of patriotism, so they would win enough outside loot to satisfy them, or else they would all get killed, it really didn’t matter much; and as for loot, if it was taken from foreigners, there was no sin.

A careful analyst might here say that Plan Number Three is only a variation of Plan Number Two—the end being gained by hypnotic effects in either event, for the army is conscripted from the people to use against the people, just as you turn steam from a boiler into the fire-box to increase the draft. …

The passage is by Elbert Green Hubbard, from Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. XIV: Great Musicians, Chapter 8: “Ludwig van Beethoven”. I can’t honestly see what it has to do with Beethoven in particular, but perhaps that would become clear in context.

Somebody help me, please! I’m awash in a sea of stupidity.

My humanities classmates are full of ideas like:
“it isn’t really that big of a deal unless you have something to hide” - it being government surveillance.

“…they won’t target you or really care about what you are doing unless you are doing something wrong” - tell that to Peter McWilliams. Oh, you can’t, he’s dead!

“…the cameras don’t limit freedom, you can still do what you want” - as long as “what you want” is within the current cultural norms, and there isn’t a power-hungry fundamentalist deciding what to do about what they view.

Those examples are from just ONE post. The class is full of people who are saying, over and over, very explicitly, that they welcome ANYTHING the government does to “make us safe from terrorism.”

I’m scared.

There’s an essay over at The Village Voice that you want to read before it goes away:
“Why I Am No Longer a ‘Brain-Dead Liberal’” by David Mamet Here’s a brief excerpt.

This is, to me, the synthesis of this worldview with which I now found myself disenchanted: that everything is always wrong.

But in my life, a brief review revealed, everything was not always wrong, and neither was nor is always wrong in the community in which I live, or in my country. Further, it was not always wrong in previous communities in which I lived, and among the various and mobile classes of which I was at various times a part.

And, I wondered, how could I have spent decades thinking that I thought everything was always wrong at the same time that I thought I thought that people were basically good at heart? Which was it? I began to question what I actually thought and found that I do not think that people are basically good at heart; indeed, that view of human nature has both prompted and informed my writing for the last 40 years. I think that people, in circumstances of stress, can behave like swine, and that this, indeed, is not only a fit subject, but the only subject, of drama.

Some thought-provoking stuff in there. It’s good to see someone brave enough to change his views, and talk about it politically. Since I consider the Voice a very liberal publication, it’s especially interesting to see the piece there.

I know that I read Red Family, Blue Family: Making sense of the values issue by Doug Muder several years ago.¹ I clearly remember posting a link to it in Suzette Haden Elgin’s blog, and having her pick it up and pass it on enthusiastically.

A friend posted a link to it again this week, and I re-read it today. I don’t know why, but it made even more sense this time around. Muder uses the work of George Lakoff (Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think and Don’t Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate) and James Ault (Spirit and Flesh: Life in a Fundamentalist Baptist Church) to explain things that have previously seemed inexplicable.

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