Embedding is disabled on youtube, but check this out, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJQcol7HevI
That was a popular music video in the ’80s and I guarantee you none of us here who are old enough to remember it batted an eyelash when we saw it. The culture had very successfully convinced most everyone under the age of ‘40 that Reagan was a bumbling fool. Seriously, watch that video from beginning to end and try to keep track of the cliches; Reagan is a doddering old fool, the military is evil, Reagan will blow up the world, America is imperialistic…
My college professors were constantly making crude asides about Reagan and the Republicans in charge and we hardly even thought about it.
This isn’t new and it isn’t going away. Again, that doesn’t mean you don’t fight, or you give up, but keep in mind; there is nothing new under the sun. Look at how many things the left has insisted on that history has proven absolutely false; Reagan was an idiot for telling Gorbachev to “tear down this wall,” Bush I was an idiot and we were going to lose the first Gulf War because our tanks and other equipment wouldn’t work in the sand, we were going to run out of oil by 2000, we were going to run out of food by 1980, Bush II stole the election from Al Gore, New York will be under 12 feet of water by 2010 thanks to global warming, we will lose in Iraq, the surge will fail, the stimulus will stem unemployment at 8.5%… Time, and time, and time again the Left is getting things wrong, the big things, and time and time again history is proving them wrong but the noise continues, unabated.
Again, don’t give up but do not harbor any silly illusions that there is some magic number of Conservative political leaders we are going to elect that will silence the idiots in the opposition. Don’t harbor any silly illusions that some magical new political party is going to sway the hearts and minds of elites and the MSM and the idiocy will stop.
When the first Gulf War started I was very naive about war, weaponry, the middle east, politics…
I was a newlywed and I distinctly remember walking in the door of our apartment to find Mrs. Firefly standing in front of the television, in shock. I walked up to her and looked at the screen. CNN was on and the U.S. was bombing Baghdad. Our President came on TV to explain. It was surreal. Newsmen were standing on roofs and anti-aircraft fire was visible everywhere. I had never seen a war before.
It’s all anyone could think about, night and day. It was scary. And CNN had tons of experts and analysts on. I remember one guy in particular really seemed to know what was going on. He was a retired military guy and he knew all kinds of details about the equipment our troops had. He was able to explain in tremendous detail how our equipment would fail in the field (the desert) and how our troops would be slaughtered by Saddam’s elite Iraqi Guard. I felt terrible for our troops. Those poor kids didn’t know what they were in for.
But nothing that expert said ended up being right. Every prediction he made was wrong, and our troops and their equipment did brilliantly in the field and our strategy was nearly ideal for the situation.
About 12 years later I turned on the TV and a new President Bush was explaining that we were about to invade Iraq. Still surreal, but I was a little more used to this sort of thing now. I had learned a lot about the middle east in the past decade, or so, and I had learned more about our military. I had a lot more confidence that our side knew what they were doing. A few days into this war I turned on CNN. THE SAME “EXPERT” WAS ON and he was being asked the same questions about this war. I doubt the CNN folks interviewing him knew that he had been used as an expert in the Gulf War, and that he had gotten nothing right. I don’t even think CNN was trying to paint our side in a bad light. I just think some young, green producer needed to find a “military expert” to sit in a chair, and this guy’s resume was in the stack. That’s when I realized nobody is paying attention. Like Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Al Gore, Teddy Kennedy, John Kerry… you can be wrong on every important question you are asked. Everything you can predict can fail to come true. The opposite can even come true. It doesn’t matter. Nobody is keeping score. Next week someone new will stick a microphone in your face and ask you for your opinion on something else.
Fight. Work. Do what’s right. But don’t ever think the other side is going away. They’ll always be there. You’ll never get them to side with you. They are not keeping score. Many are not even paying attention. As Reagan said, “no government ever voluntarily reduces itself.” No plan… No Congress… No President… No political party… will ever shrink the Federal government at the Federal level. The founders gave us the tool; State and individual rights.
First thing first: I love Genesis. Always have. Always will.
Second, this is just representative of the narrative creation process. The reason why the left is so effective at doing this is because they control the entertainment industry. They are able to perpetuate myths like this because people are more likely to be influenced by a song or a movie nowadays. Once that image is embedded into the culture it is a b*tch to root out.
“people are more likely to be influenced by a song or a movie nowadays”
I object to your premise. Why weren’t people influenced by songs and movies in the past?
Because in the past we didn’t have E! and Entertainment tonight and every other celebrity obsessed media outlet digging into celebrities lives and elevating them to the status of modern day prophets. People know more about the personal lives of celebrities than they know about their own family members. People are much more likely to be influenced by what Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie say than any member of Congress. Our media has made them much more interesting to a large percentage of the population and that is why they have influence.
But its not just celebrities, it is the narrative forced on us in movies and TV shows. Think about who the bad guys and good guys are. The evil greedy corporate criminal vs. the crusading journalist/lawyer/whatever. The leftist/statist viewpoint works well in entertainment outlets because it sounds nice. For a lot of people it then translates over into their views on other things. People don’t really know what is really going on, they just fall back on the cultural images they have picked up from the ADD-addled entertainment industry. Conservatives are bad, corporate stooges, liberals are peace-loving open-minded crusaders for justice. It has just become more and more effective over the years because of the focus on celebrities and the heightened status they receive in our culture.
So its not a stretch for a person to come to a conclusion like: “Reagan? Oh yeah, he was that war-monger who almost started a nuclear war. Remember that Genesis video, thats what it was about.” It also works the other way. They form an assumption, and it is reinforced by something they see in a movie or TV show. “I always thought Bush was stupid. That Oliver Stone movie proved it.” Plus, celebrities have become so much more willing to become political and use their roles to perpetuate those views that it only makes sense that the entertainment industry is much more likely to have influence then it did in the past.
But Blackhawk, you’re sadly mistaken if you think this is something new. That somehow “new media” is making one side bigger, or smaller or more extreme than it’s always been. This is what I’m trying to get young people to understand.
Do you have any idea how many True Hollywood and True Crime magazines sold in the teens, 20’s, 30’s and 40’s? E! is just the television equivalent.
“corporate stooges…” Give me 5 movies from any era, including the 20’s to 40’s, that paint businessmen in a good light. Have you ever read Charles Dickens?
When you watch old movies look for scenes that show a newsstand. When I was a kid those things were all around Chicago. Green, wooden structures, about ten feet long, 4 feet deep and 6 feet high. They were full of trash; celebrity gossip, crime gossip, political gossip, porn. There ain’t nothing on cable that wasn’t in those newsstands. In the old days people weren’t walking around reading copies of the Constitution, Shakespeare’s sonnets and Milton’s “Paradise Lost.”
Within a few blocks of my house there was a store front that served as the meeting place for an Aryan group. They were constantly handing out pamphlets and literature promoting their organization.
I’ve said this before, but I honestly don’t think people understand the significance. Charles Lindbergh, Charles Freakin’ Lindbergh! went on a national speaking tour to sold out auditoriums in the 30’s, promoting Hitler’s cause and attacking FDR, the President of the United States. Imagine Tiger Woods pre-scandal. Lindbergh was ten times more revered in this country. Charlie Chaplin was a socialist, probably a communist. Was anyone more famous in the movies in the ’20’s than Charlie Chaplin? This is not new. It’s not old. It just is.
But my point is that the cultural images and celebrity obsession is much more likely to bleed over into how people make decisions in regards to political and social issues now. In the past entertainment was entertainment, politics was politics, and family was family. They were all separate parts of life. Now for a lot of people politics IS life, and when that is the case every other aspect of their lives will serve in some way to reinforce their views.
My parents were just as celebrity obsessed as people today when they were younger. They bought the magazines and went to the movies and talked about which stars they liked, but they never discussed those stars politics. Even if they did, it wasn’t something they would seriously consider when making their own decisions. Today though, in my experience there are more people willing to consider entertainment as more than just entertainment, especially if it reinforces their opinions. Back when people were buying the true hollywood magazines they didn’t read them to find out who a celebrity was endorsing (some did, I’m sure, but not to the extent they would today) they read them to see what movie they were doing next and/or who they were marrying/divorcing this week. Combine that with the ADD MTV-addled culture that has taken hold of most people my age (and probably a few generations before me) and it is much easier for simple-minded people to just think about something they saw in a movie rather than something they read in the Wall Street Journal. I can’t tell you how many conversations I have had that go exactly like this “But [insert leftist enemy here] are all [insert leftist generalization here], remember, just like that movie we saw.”
I am aware that this is generalizing, maybe overly so, but it is pretty clear that today people are much more likely to allow entertainment to bleed into their politics.
Blackhawk,
If your point is human nature has somehow changed with your generation, then I disagree. When I was in High School SNL debuted. (I know, I’m old.) Every Saturday night everyone in the country watched Chevy Chase stumble and fall as Gerald Ford. Ipso facto, President Ford was an uncoordinated buffoon. Ask me or any of my peers in High School and that’s about all we knew of the President. Turns out he is probably the best athlete who has ever held the office.
Eh, he played for Michigan. I’d give the title to ex-lifeguard Ronnie.
It’s not about human nature changing. See my overlong and most definitely over-wrought response on the These are the Days thread.
“Land of Confusion,” right? OK, looking at blackhawk’s comment, it’s gotta be.
Love the song, dig the video, but still knew better than to trust Brit-musician opinions on Reagan or Maggie.
I agree 100% Eric. BTW, are you related to Bonzo?
Nope. Ham and Enos.
Land of Confusion, as animated by the crew of Spitting Image.
There was this weird kind of attitude that came into British comedy at the very tail end of the Seventies — right as punk rock hit its peak and then began to decline, not coincidentally — that anything that didn’t involve politics or massive amounts of bile (or preferably both) just wasn’t funny, period. Sort of the Antonio Gramsci approach to entertainment, really. It continued going strong right up until Spitting Image went off the air; traces of it are still to be found in British comedy to this day.
Bracing words, Rufus, and true.
On a surprisingly related topic, here’s a link to my latest blog entry. Yeah, I know, shameless plug and all that, but it ties in, I think.
http://aw1tim.wordpress.com/2010/03/12/the-citizen-versus-the-magisterial-presidency/
And yeah, it’s not so much that the leftists have the entertainment industry (although, after years in theater and film I can say that they do) but it’s that they have their claws so deep into the public school system. THEY get to have the say in what they indoctrinate our children with, in what the textbooks say, in the slant that they use for each subject.
If you want to start slowing the spread of leftist indoctrination and eventually stop it all together, then we are going to HAVE to take back the public schools, gut them and start over.
Respects,
AW1 Tim,
I think most Americans would agree with your sentiment; we would rather die than live as subjects and we are willing to do what’s necessary to defend the Constitution. Not to take away from the sacrifices of those who served in the military in WWII, but it’s a lot easier to understand an external threat like the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, than an internal one, like we face today. Except in revolution, like Cuba, internal threats are typically of the boiling the frog variety. How many people will take up arms and protect their rights if confronted by a foreign enemy? 90%? How many people will take up arms and protect their rights if the 16th Amendment passes? 0.0001%? How many people will take up arms and protect their rights if our Congress adopts socialized medicine? 0.00001%? When it’s incremental, and legislative, it’s much less obvious.
To quote Pogo, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
I’m pretty sure that if the American people haven’t taken up arms by now, then they never will.
Uncle Sam can put his head between his legs and kiss his ass goodbye.
I’m impressed Rufus! I thought I was the only human on earth that had heard or used that Pogo quote.
Which means we have to take back the schools from the unions…..
[...] Back to the Future [...]
Keep passing on the truth to the next generation.
Since “we” are out reproducing “them”, we will eventually win.
Always remember that good triumphs over evil.
When the words “Reagan” and “fool” are typed into the google, there is hope that this post will be the chosen one to click.