Walter Lippmann coined the term "manufacture of consent" back in the WWI era, and Chomsky wrote a book about it. Lippmann thought that the mass electorate had to be governed by experts or elites who understood the issues in a way that ordinary citizens could not. And he thought that the mass public, because it was incapable of understanding the complexity of the issues, had to be propagandized into consent. American democracy at least since then has been all about the insiders spinning the outsiders–all about elites inside a bubble deciding among themselves what is good for the country and the rest of us being told whatever we were thought to want to hear to justify what we otherwise could not understand.
So that's how things work, and it's been the same with Dems in power as much as with the GOP. Vietnam, for instance, was the brainchild of Kennedy's elites who convinced themselves they were doing the right thing. Among the elites there are factions, and there is an inside game in which these factions maneuver for advantage, and those of us outside the insider bubble hear rumors about these maneuvers, but we are never told straight what is really going on. All we get is the most highly spinned stories filtered through the mainstream media, which are quite willing vehicles for those factions which they perceive to support their interests.
So public opinion, while not completely irrelevant, is not
something elites care about or respect. It's simply a problem to be
managed. And management tools for that end are the use of fear,
jingoism, greed, financial anxiety, moral-norm confusion. Elites need
the support of the general public because of these pesky rituals called
elections (which in the last two cycles the GOP elites had no compunction about subverting), but elites among the Dems and the GOP are both in agreement that the general public must understand as little as possible
about what's really going on, so they can be left to pursue their
interests otherwise undisturbed.
Is there no one in the media who tells a story different than the one approved of by these elite factions? Sure there are a few, and you can find them on the web or on obscure cable channels. But what percentage of Americans watch Democracy Now! or have even heard of it? Moyers has been good, but what's his Friday night share? There are guys like Charlie Savage who did the grunt work to expose the whole business of Bush's abuse of signing statements, but such stories are rare and we can be sure that for every one published there are a dozen squelched as the NYTimes squelched the Risen/Lichtblau warrantless wiretap story until it was forced to run it. But even when such stories stories get out, they have a minimum impact in shaping mainstream opinion. They don't usually get on Good Morning America or the Today show, or the major networks' nightly news. If they do, it's only when the story has become to big to ignore. And they'll give plenty of airtime to those who would defend the indefensible.
Conservatives look at Olbermann or Maddow as the Left's version of O'Reilly and Hannity. I'd argue that there is a significant difference, but the point here is that neither Olbermann or Maddow would have shows on a network like MSNBC if their approach to the news did not represent certain elite factional interests. They can talk about anything they want so long as it doesn't threaten the interests of Microsoft and General Electric. They'll get the hook as quickly as Phil Donahue got it if they cross a line or are perceived as no longer to represent those corporate interests.
That's not a knock on them; that's just reality. They know what their limits are, and the rest of us should not expect to hear any hard-hitting reporting about General Electric's interests as a major player in the military industrial complex, for instance. Olbermann is like Limbaugh and O'Reilly in that he has the same ego problems they do, but there is value in both Olbermann's and Maddow's shows, particularly the thoughtful and blithe Maddow's, in that they are platforms for truth tellers who don't otherwise have one. Jane Mayer, Jonathan Turley, Glenn Greenwald, Naomi Klein, John Dean and others can blog and write books all they want, but they don't otherwise often appear in the MSM, if MSNBC can even be thought of as MSM.
So do I think Obama is playing this game? Yes, because he doesn't really have a choice. His choice in the first place was whether or not to play the game, and he chose to play, and he understands the rules and has agreed to follow them. He understands that the inside game is the only one that matters, and he's proved that he's a player, because if he was not, he doesn't get elected president. Does that mean he's been totally co-opted by a fundamentally corrupted system and cannot be trusted? That remains to be seen. I still retain hope that he can be for U.S. entrenched power what Gorbachev was for Soviet entrenched power. Gorbachev was a creature of the system who excelled at the inside game, but he was more than that–he brought an x-factor that in the end was the catalyst for destruction of the USSR's corrupted power system.
I think there are moments in the life trajectory of every society when it loses its way, when its elites no longer believe in its founding ideals, and when nobody really believes the system is legitimate in its fundamentals. The system is just there to be gamed the way the Wall Streeters are gaming it right now. As the inside-the-beltway response to the torture, warrantless surveillance, and executive abuses of power make clear, we're at that point in our trajectory now–a place similar to where the Soviets were in in the 80s. Entrenched power's collusion with and now defense of the abuses of the last eight years shows that the consensus attitude among elites is that they don't really believe in the rule of law or in holding anyone who is an inside player accountable. Elite entrenched power simply doesn't believe in the American idea anymore. The configurations of the American and Soviet systems are different, but the cynicism among its elites is the same.
No society is without corruption, but it is healthy to the extent that its corrupt factions are counterbalanced by factions that have integrity and and the public interest at heart. In Lippmann's day the elites he defended believed they had the best interests of the country at heart, even if they couldn't be bothered to candidly explain their policy objectives to the broad public. So for Lippmann's elites the propaganda was a noble lie to protect elites who were committed to doing what was best for the country. And I think that you could point to many 20th Century elites for whom the public interest was their main priority. Think how far down we've come even since the 1970s. Watergate would never have happened if elites were not shocked by Nixon's abuses of power. That shock just isn't there now among the nation's media and political elites, and there's far worse to be shocked about.
And so there comes a point when the noble lies simply no longer hold up because it becomes clear that no potent faction among these elites has the public interest at heart anymore, that their lies are simply self-protective fictions to shield their corrupt motives (rather than public-spirited ones) from public scrutiny. I think that this cynical propagandizing has been embarrassingly primitive in the way the GOP practices it, but the Dems do it, too. Pelosi and Reid are Dem leaders because they represent the aspirations and interests of most political-class Dems. The system is rotten to the core with very few elites caring about anything other than their own career and economic interests. And the MSM consensus is simply to accept this as reality.
So where does Obama fit in all of this? Let's assume for he sake of argument that Obama is an honest agent whose first priority is the public interest. He comes into power on a Democratic ticket and once in office he has to deal with a cynically corrupt Democratic party leadership and political class. Let's say for the sake of argument that he really wants to do something about healthcare, torture, intrusive surveillance, and Wall Street cronyism. He has to deal with a congress that is bought by the banks and the telecoms and the big pharmaceutical companies. What can he do? What could you or I do if we were in his position? He has to deal with a congressional leadership which is as deeply implicated in all of that as are the Republicans. How is he supposed to get anything done with a bunch like this?
Can he just do the right thing and let the chips fall where they may? That's the route to Jimmy Carterdom. Something changes only if Obama becomes Gorbachev. How? I'm not sure about that yet. But my sense is that he has to use the financial crisis and the torture scandal as tools the way Gorbachev used the arms race. I'm probably idiotically optimistic to think that this will happen, but perfect storms occur. What happened to the Soviet Empire was not intended by Gorbachev–events took on a life of their own. He brought the x-factor into a complex situation, and it functioned as a catalyst. And my sense is that Obama has that x-factor and that he can be that catalyst. I don't think it's something he can make happen. Things have to line up just right. But it could happen.
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Sunday Update: Kevin Drum responding to an Andrew Sullivan post in which Sullivan says that bloggers can fill the function of holding politicians accountable if the MSM won't:
I don't disagree with this. Still, even as recently as the 2008 campaign, it was striking how little impact most net-based feeding frenzies had until they were picked up by someone in the mainstream press. So far, at least, it's still the MSM that mostly provides legitimacy to stories and forces public officials to react to negative publicity. I wonder how long that will continue to be true?
I believe it will continue to be true for a long time, because while the big blogs reach millions, they tend to preach to the choir and are not effective in reaching outside a fairly narrow band of the like-minded. Even if that band comprised thirty percent of the electorate (and it doesn't), that's not nearly enough to define what passes for mainstream.
In 2004 at least thirty percent of the electorate knew that Bush lied about the war and very likely okayed what was going on in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.It didn't make a difference in the election because the MSM, while they showed the pictures, they didn't have an authoritative figure to the play the role that Walter Conkrite played during the Nixon era. Conkrite legitimized for the mushy middle types that Nixon was wrong, but we have no one to do that for Cheney/Bush, and what they did was worse than Nixon–much worse. It didn't take an immoral war and abusive torture policies to bring Bush down with the mushy middle; Bush's stock really didn't start to come down until Katrina in the summer of 2005.
Lots of Americans–tens of millions of them–can and do think for themselves. But they are still a minority. Twenty percent of the electorate, the mostly movement conservatives who self-identify as Republicans, are a right-wing cult and as such has the potential to do a lot of damage. But this group needs to be taken seriously for that reason only. They have a right to their opinions, just as Moonies and Rajneeshies have a right to theirs, but that doesn't mean that the rest of us have to take them seriously. The segment of the electorate that we need to persuade is that 30 to 40 percent which comprises the Reagan Democrats and what's left of moderate Republicans. An argument that appeals to their common decency and common sense needs to be made, and I don't know of anybody who's doing it in a way that I see as galvanizing.
I think a part of the problem
lies in that in the MSM imagination of reality to be disgusted with the
Republicans automatically defines you, not as a normal person disgusted by the disgusting, but as a Democratic partisan. Nevermind that there are lots of principled conservatives that are equally disgusted. The MSM formula requires that the Republicans be taken seriously, and so whatever passes for the center now is some crazy half-way point between
hard-right movement conservative surreality on one side and a kind of cosmopolitan common sense on the other–with serious hard lefties not even allowed
on the stage. Sullivan is worth reading because, though he has been just plain wrong about a lot, he's a decent, thoughtful person who is struggling to define that center, and he has a huge readership.
He like John Cole at Balloon Juice are former Bush voters who attract a lot of normal, sane Americans who have awakened to how really nutty the Republican party has become and they have credibility with many Americans who, like them, leaned Republican in the 90s and after 9/11. I get it. I can understand how people like Cole and Sullivan could have voted for Bush in 2000. The unconscionable is to have voted for him in 2004, and neither Sullivan nor Cole did. But their thoughtfulness and independent thinking, while it represents a huge, centrist blog-reading constituency, that constituency remains a minority.
Independent, critical thinkers will always be a minority. The majority needs authoritative communicators to legitimize what it's acceptable to think in the moderate middle. The blogosphere is too fragmented, and it's too easy to pigeon hole one blog or another as leftist or rightist. So the MSM will continue to define what is centrist, dumbed-down, mainstream opinion. Bloggers can try to pressure the MSM into doing their job, but bloggers don't own the MSM and they aren't paying their bills, nor do they represent a revenue stream that requires that the MSM heed them, so until bloggers can exert pressure in a way that has real bite, I don't see much changing.
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Monday Update: For another take, see this at "Postmodern Conservative":
But if one takes the word “blogs” and substitutes it for newspapers, one has something very close to what Tocqueville was talking about when he described the media of his day. Easily begun, often vulgar, frequently ill-informed, they serve to give voice to a current of opinion felt by “those wandering spirits who had long sought each other in the shadows.”
Maybe that's what blogs will become as the influence of the MSM continues to deteriorate, but they're not there yet.
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