Exceptionally Unexceptional But America's Exceptional Unexceptionalism Remains Exceptionally Disturbing, 65
The clincher scene in “Air” has Nike’s marketing hotshot Sonny Vaccaro saying to Jordan, ‘We need you in those shoes not so you have meaning in your life but so that we have meaning in ours.’ How sad if that were entirely true. (“The Brand Stories of Our Lives,” see below, Pamela Paul, NYT Opinion Columnist, 8/3/23)
Once again we wait breathlessly for the next installment, the latest poll, the most recent in depth analysis that “informs” us Donald Trump’s popularity rises once more among the Republican cult camp followers, as they learn that their leader is even dumber than thought possible, even more unqualified than we could have imagined and, yes, more than likely an outright narcissistic traitor to the United States deserving to spend his remaining years behind bars, along with his “crew” in the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives, you know, the ones that aided and abetted possible treason and refused to certify the presidential election … likely not going to happen of course. It’s so difficult to take this all in isn’t it. NO … NOT REALLY.
Watch Josh Run Like Benny Hill
Of course stupidity, corruption, mediocrity and mendacity occur throughout the world, but the U.S. appears to have taken delusion, denial and make believe to unheard of levels. Now this actually is not a make believe problem because a still growing number of adult Americans are absolutely and completely comfortable living in their own, special, alternative universe.
Maga Moron Flies Off the Rails
Morons Don't Comprehend How Stupid They Are
Boo Knows Marketing
He’s Boo at work, according to the columnist Emma Goldberg (see below) but his real name is Christian Boucousis, a former fighter pilot who now heads a company called Afterburner.
The company’s goal is to help executives get pumped-up-mental-toughness and understand their objectives, while confronting their metaphorical enemies maneuvering in for the “kill.” Boo’s clients include some large, well-known global companies.
War-is-work you need to realize. “Precision and accuracy” is being taught, according to Boo, just like elite fighter pilots. We gotta sell more cereal, more cell phones, more deodorant and acquire more property. Let’s focus, get ahead of our competition and make the shareholders smile. The smarter and tougher have to meet their objectives no matter what. Oorah!
No, I don’t know if Boo said this but I imagine he’s filling his coffers trying to help some of these CEO’s become like Gregory Peck in “12 O’clock High.” I certainly would have flown over Nazi Germany in 1944 in my B-29 if General Savage had been leading my squadron.
While I suppose I think this is probably not America’s answer to much of anything, I sure liked Tom Cruise in Top Gun. The son of my best friend in high school was a Navy fighter pilot and flew off aircraft carriers. Now that has to be a real rush of adrenaline. But one reader of the article offered, “When a ‘Top Gun’ pilot fails, he dies. When a CEO fails, he gets half a billion dollars. The fighter pilot analogy was a very poor choice.”
Instead of receiving clinical help, angry paranoiacs like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are invited to congressional hearings and treated like savants. (“Why America is going backward: Being the richest nation in history isn’t enough,” Mike Lofgren, Salon, 8/5/23, see below)
The Cruelty of Mediocrity and the Comfort of Delusional Fascism
Charles Blow, the NYT columnist, recently spoke about the relationship that oh so many Republicans, both the politicians and the loyal voters, have with Trump. He likened the relationship to a “biological phenomenon” that we call parasitism. The parasite benefits and its host is most certainly harmed.
Many years ago in Ecuador I had some parasites that took seemingly forever to get rid of. In my case I lost, as I recall, nearly 20 pounds before ridding myself of my not so friendly freeloaders. But according to Blow these Republicans “have courted their own infection.” The cure may not be close at hand.
One of my favorite words is now, onerous. This is one of the popular expressions uttered by Chamber of Commerce types and large corporations, especially popular among fossil fuel companies, big agriculture and construction in general. Possibly Boo, the head of Afterburner, has helped some of America’s titans man-up.
Regulations are onerous to the “American people.” Of course we believe in regulations that help protect our workers but we’re protecting them now and we don’t need more onerous rules that are burdensome, poorly written, blah, blah.
Heck, coal miners—some real Americans—have always died of lung disease, um, especially bad now with silica dust, nevertheless…. But rest assured, millionaire senators from West Virginia like Joe Manchin have your back, don’t you know. At the national level, sure enough, business lobbies against heat protection! Onerous regulations are everywhere.
At the state level, bought and paid for knuckleheads like the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, rescinded city ordinances that mandated heat protection, while global warming threatens to bake our fantasies, our delusions and our communities.
And what can one say about Florida’s main man, Ronny DeSantis, a nasty little fascist wannabe, who is giving elite universities a bad reputation, certainly in terms of moral character. See: Business lobbies against heat protection
“For here we have a politician who regularly trades in antisemitic and racist, misogynistic and homophobic tropes promoting agenda-driven disinformation in place of actual science to further the agenda of the fossil fuel interests funding him and his party.” (Michael Mann, climate scientist, commenting on the approval by the Florida department of education to make a video available to children in kindergarten to fifth grade that attempts to demonstrate that the science of climate change is not true.)
Video Denying Climate Science Approved by Florida D.O. E.
Who Is That Pretty Little Thing In the Pink Corvette
No, I have not yet seen the movie Barbie, seemingly a pleasant summer diversion, my failure perhaps for not being culturally sensitive. Some of my friends have told me that it nails the dastardly patriarchy once and for all. It also appears to have sent some right-wing podcasters into a state of apoplexy, so it must have something good to say. I have, however, been reading about our latest cultural phenomenon. We Americans are still good at coming up with endless cultural phenomena.
If Barbie constitutes a triumph it’s a triumph not of feminism but of the patriarchy’s so far most unassailable scion—capitalism. See below: “Barbie’s muddled feminist fantasy,” David Cox, The Guardian, 8/5/23)
Two articles about Barbie world in particular caught my attention. The first one, Barbie and the Problem of Corporate Power asks us to look at what this movie is about, beyond the compelling plastic doll and even women empowerment, and what Mattel, the manufacturer of the iconic Barbie dolls, senses. It’s not a simple tale of good and bad, nor is it merely a Hollywood bling and sizzle story. It’s all of the above and more.
The other article is entitled Let’s Not Forget the Real Star of Barbie: Shameless Product Placement. This movie apparently has unabashedly placed more stuff in this film for you and your children to buy as soon as you leave the theater than any movie has ever done. It’s quintessential capitalism at its worst and its best, depending on your point of view. (See below all these articles)
A Mixture Gone Very Bad
“They are highly submissive to established authority, aggressive in the name of that authority and conventional to the point of insisting everyone should behave as their authorities decide. They are fearful and self-righteous and have a lot of hostility in them that they readily direct toward various out-groups. They are easily incited, easily led, rather un-inclined to think for themselves, largely impervious to facts and reason and rely instead on social support to maintain their beliefs. They bring strong loyalty to their in-groups, have thick-walled, highly compartmentalized minds, use a lot of double standards in their judgments, are surprisingly unprincipled at times and are often hypocrites.
Probably about 20 to 25 percent of the adult American population is so right-wing authoritarian, so scared, so self-righteous, so ill-informed and so dogmatic that nothing you can say or do will change their minds. They would march America into a dictatorship and probably feel that things had improved as a result. And they are so submissive to their leaders that they will believe and do virtually anything they are told. They are not going to let up and they are not going away.”
(The above is by Robert Altemeyer, a Canadian psychologist. It comes from the article “Why America is going backward” see below)
As much as I still believe we can get out of the mess we’re in (along with the rest of the planet) we’ve put ourselves in a very deep pit. Why wouldn’t the likes of Ron DeSantis or a Josh Hawley, graduates of Yale, Harvard and Stanford, or for that matter even a feral cretin like Trump manipulate, lie and pander to the electorate in general. It works in so many cases.
Why wouldn’t authoritarians or outright fascists want to gut public education, rid colleges of the liberal arts, put a halt to equality, oppose worker rights and benefits, make American health care much more about making money than providing affordable health care for everyone, embark on censorship, deny climate change, suppress the history of racism, continue misogyny and stifle change.
The question is what kind of a country do you want? And what kind of a world do you want to live in?
Consider
I saw the movie Oppenheimer yesterday. It was truly excellent. Sadly, by in large, Americans are historically illiterate and that has become more than just unfortunate in the 21st century. What happened some 78 years ago changed more than the end of WWII.
I found tears welling up in my eyes at the moment the splitting of the atom occurred and tried to imagine the occupants in Los Alamos at that very moment. We did it. But what did we do? A film critic, Wendy Ide, said of Oppenheimer, “Ultimately, however, the monster in this story is not Oppenheimer’s invention but the appetite for annihilation that it unleashes in mankind.”
But we are not living in a theater. When our lights go out they will not be coming back.
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The Brand Stories of Our Lives
We're in the Era of the 'Top Gun'
Barbie's muddled feminist fantasy
Barbie and the problem of corporate America
Let's not forget the real star of Barbie
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