As The Cookie Crumbles: Frame Up

‎"Whenever the people are well informed," an optimistic Thomas Jefferson once wrote, "they can be trusted with their own government."

The Doc just LOVES Ol' Massa Tom, mos'o'de'time!

But, of course, where there is a possibility to keep the democratic throngs informed, there is also always the possibility of conscientiously DIS-inform them. The latter of which possibilities will ALWAYS be seized by the Oligarchs, and exploited, to advance their interests.

Some wag once said: IN the corporate State, corporate media are State Media.

Under a regime of corpoRatized media, in which the CorpoRate media and the State media become intertwined and indistinguishable--become, in Althusser's words, "Institutional State Apparati"--it is impossible for a whole people to BE "well-informed" because the propaganda interests of the State are such that complete disclosure, or full information are detrimental --shit, they're bloody ANATHEMA--to the agendas of those in charge.

Which is what ALWAYS happened/happens, Jefferson's ill-placed 'optimism notwithstanding.

I REALLY admire George Lakoff, too. In many ways, I regard him as a latterday Jefferson.

His book, in the 80s, "Metaphors We Live By," should be read to every child in the cradle, and annually after that.

But he--like Krugman, and Reich, and so many others (Thom Hartmann, e.g.)-- are REQUIRED to appear to uphold the myth.

It's his JOB. He's a member of the "coordinator" class, so he takes his livelihood from the top of the system it's his job to gently criticize. He CANNOT attack any hegemonic applecarts. His job is to "reform" the system from within.

He's right as rain about "frames," of course.

You knew exactly what kind of shitty, skeevy, treacherous, lying fuck Shazama would be when he never even raised a peep to challenge the Owners' frames, but accepted them as he performed his governing discourse INSIDE the GOPhux frames.

If you had paid no attention to ANYTHING else, when Obombster started talking about "entitlement reform," he gave the game away. Even a sea-urchin would have had the cranial capacity to figger it out from there.

Briefly, on another matter: Last week I ranted about both the rhetorical and the legislative futility of the Udall-Bennett amendment to permit Congress and the states to regulate campaign financing and thereby to circumvent SOME of the consequences of the Citizens United ruling in 2010.

The legislative futility is still as factor, but at least an amendment HAS been introduced which WOULD actively and actually DEPRIVE corporations of their ill-gotten, and ill-used "personhood" perqs: Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL), a member of the House Judiciary Committee, has introduced an amendment that would ban corporate money in politics and end corporate personhood once and for all.

Deutch’s amendment, called the Outlawing Corporate Cash Undermining the Public Interest in our Elections and Democracy (OCCUPIED) Amendment, would overturn the Citizens United decision, re-establishing the right of Congress and the states to regulate campaign finance laws, even up to outlawing for-profit corporations to contribute to campaign spending.

Now THAT'S my kind of language.

It may still be futile, electorally, but it won't be useless in the event it should succeed. I'll take that, to the beach, hippies...