Oct 15 2007

The New Stupid

Glenn Greenwald points to some remarks Bill O’Reilly made on Thursday.  After announcing that “Partisan politics bore me,” O’Reilly said the following:

So just talking about your personal security, would you support President John Edwards? Remember, no coerced interrogation, civilian lawyers in courts for captured overseas terrorists, no branding the Iranian guards terrorists, and no phone surveillance without a specific warrant.

I read this, and I wonder what television is going to be like, over the next, say, twenty years.  I read this, and I see the coming of The New Stupid.

I see it in various places and in various forms: the attempt to drive the American population into a dreamspace of total ignorance of the world around them.  A forced march from the observable into a land of faery.

I suspect that the drive to the The New Stupid will get worse, not better, with a Democrat in the White House.  My reasoning is that, with a Democrat in the White House from 2009 to 2016 — a President at least nominally committed to governing with an eye on empirically verifiable reality — those with a vested interest in having a large segment of the American populace in deep, deep ignorance will have to work all the harder to keep them there.

I am speaking of a portion of the population so far removed from the empirical that, for example, they will support oil wars without having the first idea, the first clue, what oil is or where it comes from.  Who want fossil fuels but don’t believe in fossils.

Now, it is not true that oil comes from dinosaurs.  It comes from the remains of prehistoric zooplankton.  But even getting as far as “oil comes from dead dinosaurs” is too close-to-correct, too empirical, too worldly, to be allowed. 

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For that reason, I regard the Jesus Horse at the Creation Museum in Kentuky to be one of the iconic images of the coming of The New Stupid.  It is part of the effluvia of the resource wars; an illustration of the uses of ignorance. 

Another iconic image, to me, of the coming of The New Stupid, of  imposed ignorance, comes from an allegedly more respectable source.  Here is the first slide [warning PDF] of General Petreaus’ presentation to a joint hearing of the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees on September 10.

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In this image from the land of faery, Saudi Arabia is not a source of “lethal aid, training, funding”, or anything else bad, coming into Iraq.  This image is not different in kind from the Jesus Horse, as far as I’m concerned; though this one is in more obvious support of immediate strategic and monetary considerations.

Going back to O’Reilly’s comments from this past Thursday:

Six years after 9/11, I am simply amazed at how soft some Americans have become when it comes to confronting the jihadist killers. This isn’t a game. This is life or death. And the cemeteries here in the New York area prove it. Again, no way Edwards will ever win the presidential election. Kid Rock has a better chance.

Now, I’m not an Edwards supporter, particularly.  But in the real world, John Edwards has lower “‘definitely would not’ vote for” scores than any Republican candidate. 44% of American adults “definitely would not” vote for Giuliani.  57% “definitely would not” vote for Romney.  Thompson: 54%.  Edwards is at 43%. 

Maintaining such a segment of the population will be necessary as America heads into the dark waters of the 21st century.  The more draconian the measures which are needed to enforce obediance to consolidation of power, the more a deeply frightening segment of the population is needed, to keep the rest of us in line.

To emphasize: it is not the goal of The New Stupid to make everyone in the 21st Century a snake-handling caveman.  It isn’t necessary and it wouldn’t be useful to do that.  It is enough to turn about 30-35% of the population into  Star Trek Pakleds (“We like things that make us go.”), and then to pretend that reasonable political discourse must be situated half-way between the real world and Oz.  That will suffice to keep the resource wars respectable.

So, again, I ask: what will TV be like in 2011?  Will torture porn like Hostel be fare for prime time?  Will there be reality game shows based in Baghdad?  Blackwater: Outwit, Outplay, Outlast?

I don’t know.  But I see the coming of the a new dark age.  I see the coming of The New Stupid.

18 comments

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  1. Tanya Meme and Giada DiLaurentis I’m good.

  2. today

    Amok

  3. I’m very slow to agree with the likes of this, from Stephen Holmes in the Nation:

    Ignorant of the numerous ways the misconduct of the United States has excited a craving for retaliation around the world, Americans necessarily saw 9/11 as a wholly unprovoked attack and therefore as an attack requiring not self-examination but military annihilation of the enemy. The illusion that 9/11 came from nowhere, Johnson argues, that it had nothing to do with America’s past behavior in the Arab world, contributed to the flaring of aggressive emotions among Americans.

    This is an interesting thought. But before we lay all the blame on newspapers and networks that may have deceived the American public, we need to consider the possibility that many Americans did not and do not want to be informed about the misdeeds of their own government abroad. A majority of the electorate supported Bush for some time after the pretexts for the Iraq War were exposed as mendacious and the appalling behavior of some American personnel at Abu Ghraib became well-known. Support waned only after the war turned into an undeniable and embarrassing fiasco, not because a large majority was appalled that the war had been launched on false pretenses or conducted by immoral and illegal means.

    When even Democrats are saying, for example, that some compromise on wiretapping must be reached with Bush, when even respectable news outlets talk as if it would be outlandish to deny the need for this, I am very slow to blame large swaths of the public for believing what they hear, from all sides.

    • snud on October 15, 2007 at 02:49
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    the movie Idiocracy, which is admittedly very low-brow, but I laughed my ass off. It’s a great rental flick when Shakespeare’s seeming a bit too weighty.

    Here’s a link to the trailer.

  5. Falafelman and his Nazi stormtroppers I have the very same complaint with Big Al.

    I’m going to try once again the reasons why I will forever condemn this global warming concept.  My objections lie in the totalitarianism of it all.  We are just replacing the war on terra meme with a war on the enviornment meme.  A war is still a war.
    The same people who rally on about the neo-cons and their war on terra also tell me with the very same dedication of Faux News viewers that my conversion from $600 every ten days for oil to a pellet stove is just not good enough?  WTF?  I was told wood pellets rely on machinery?

    For most this is the only green solution.
    http://en.wikipedia….

    Big Al Gore with his massive compassion for humanity could have rallied himself with thousands of other completely worthwile causes.  Depleted uranium is one of them.  Perhaps a real investigation solving the questions more and more people have about 911.  How about why media has supressed information about a simple drug that kills multiple versions of cancer.

    Simply not, the establishment must remain the establishment and carbon trading as the new Wall Street will be justification for the massive repossetion of the western world’s modern lifesyle.

    Meanwhile the gold rush of factory building in carbon exempt China continues to churn out lead laced childrens toys and lipstick.

    Blow me Big Al!

    • RiaD on October 15, 2007 at 04:19
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    I guess I’m missing a piece of info or …could you explain why you comparing Edwards to each R candidate? Should he not be compared to D candidates?

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