During those dark pre-Netroots wilderness years of 2002/2003 when all of us felt like aliens watching our corrupt American media machine churn out propaganda and narrative control with no counter-response, there was little understanding of how the wingnuts ran the game.
How could there be? Talk-radio was nonstop bullshit while what I like to call the "Daschle Democrats" were still trying to play Lieberman-like "moderate" dressup with polite discourse and lip service to "common ground."
All while the wingnut media empire was eviscerating anyone who stood in the way.
We were sitting ducks. We didn't know what hit us because we couldn't conceive of how the machine works. We talked past each other, because of our simple disconnect with how republican propaganda cements conventional wisdom, and the axiom was simple:
We speak words and think in terms of language.
Wingnuts speak pictures and think in terms of the visual.
One of the reasons Markos's site became so big so quickly was that he and the rest of the regular bloggers here at D.K. realized the visceral nature of the right wing funded propaganda movement far earlier than the democratic party did. They saw that the movement was manipulating the masses not through arguing such inanities as "logic" or "the issues" or "debating," but simply through the mocking and ridicule of their apponents in a fifth grade level smackdown "dis" contest.
So while they mocked us as "cowardly" or "weak" or "ugly," our side was responding with "let us debate the issues instead of insulting each other" rise-above platitudes that were the political equivalent of the nerdy bookworm trying to stop the schoolyard bully from punching him in the face by appealing to notions of democracy and dialogue.
What happens to the kid in the schoolyard pleading to "talk this dispute out"? He gets punched in the face.
And so we got punched in the face.
Until the realignment of the Netroots and the fighting dems began to strike back with equal force. We began to win back the national discourse not on the basis of the merits of our politics (even as real world events did and continue to prove us correct). We began to win back the debate through the sheer power of our ability to punch back at the gut level. At the visceral level. Through the mocking of republican image. Not text. Image.
And this is the key point of this diary:
The modern republican movement functions purely through the visual. Through children's picture book simplicities. Through the power of the image.
It took us years to understand this because we are reality based thinkers who believe in cause and effect, the scientific method, logic and dialogue.
The wingnut movement are making their billions by appealing to a baser American impulse. The Pavlovian visual reaction. The gut reaction to image.
Am I saying Americans are stupid?
Some are, of course, but this issue is more fundamental than intelligence. It simply has to do with how meaning is created.
And for the republican propaganda movement, "meaning" is simply found in the visual. As soon as you shift to debate words or ideas, you've lost.
You're a nerd. A loser. And Matt Drudge has the goofy pictures to prove it.
American culture has increasingly shifted into one that consumes information through the spectacle of the visual sound-bite. The instantaneous imprint of a picture. We are conditioned by T.V. and movies and the internet to respond instantly to stimuli. Some of us can temper that visual with textual based information.
Many of us cannot.
Within this mode of communication, debating the merits of Iraq means nothing. The power of the image means everything. Republicans intuitively understood this back in the 1990s. Fox News built its success by relying on the visual flash, the dazzle, the sizzle, to gain viewership. Once cool graphics and animated American flags are in place, they can say whatever they want. The words mean nothing. What means everything is the visceral anger of their hosts. With Hannity and O'Reilly raging, the image is of the angry defender of "America" and whatever they argue must then be true. Because the visual framework allows no other conclusion to be reached.
Again, note the fundamental shift from textual based information to visual based codes.
Another key barometer of the power of the visual is in how Matt Drudge ties his right wing propagnda into the larger machine. Think of John Kerry's digitally altered images in 2004, where they added makeup to accompany that ridiculous Gannon article on Kerry's "The First Gay President." Or of Kerry in that blue space outfit, looking goofy. The image then gets disseminated all over the radical angry right's hate sites, and then "reported" on (and thus shown) on the amplification outlets on Fox Noise, the Murdoch Empire, Clear Channel, Sinclair Media, etc.
To a republican movement devoid of actual real world success on any level, a republican movement completely lacking in intellectual coherence, logic or even the basic tropes of argument, the power of the visercal mock is far and away the greatest tool in their arsenal.
Whether or not George W. Bush wins a debate means nothing if they can find a funny picture of John Kerry or Hillary Clinton.
You can see further examples over on Fark.com, a message board based community with a number of conservative plants whose sole job is to post images of any number of democrats that make them look as buffoonish and ridiculous as possible. Nancy Pelosi making a strange face, Hillary Clinton looking wrinkled and tired, etc.
This is how they "debate." This is how they win.
By mocking the face.
So how does this relate to Barack Obama?
Because Obama threatens this paradigm in a way that the republican image-mock movement has no idea what to do with. Obama is unbelievably charismatic, good looking and refuses to be mocked or taken lightly. Thus they've attempted to smear his name. His childhood. Calling him a Muslim, etc.
Why?
Because they're absolutely terrified.
The propaganda movement requires the mock. Hillary's face can be mocked. Barack Obama's face cannot.
You can see this fear in the total visual boycott on The Drudge Report of any Obama pictures or images. When Obama announced he was running for president, Drudge refused to run a picture of Barack Obama himself, instead running a picture of Obama's buttons lined up. It was a strange, surreal and very telling moment for how greatly Drudge fears simply showing Obama's face on his site.
Because to those still swayed by the rapidly decomposing right wing propaganda machine, an image is worth a billion words. They have their catalogue of go-to pics when they need to control the sheep -- Gore looking pasty and angry, of Hillary looking wrinkled, of Pelosi looking confused, etc.
But they can't post Obama's face without a visual backlash. Without Obama looking damn good.
Think I'm being shallow? You're damn right. Because this is how they operate. Whatever Obama's stance on the issues means nothing. They elected George W. Bush, the least qualified, inarticulate and buffoonish candidate one could dream up, simply through the heroic manipulation of his visual image. Bush "looked presidential." That was all that machine needed to operate. The rest was simply the dissemination of the image.
The wingnut machine is in crisis because McCain looks old and tired, Rudy looks angry and ethnic, and those who qualify for the visual look (Brownback, Romney) have other issues holding them back.
So once again they will look to disseminate the visual mock through their outlets. With one huge problem. Barack Obama's visual charisma.
Note how Drudge had nothing on his site about Obama drawing 15,000 people in Austin. Take a look at the image currently up on Fox Noise's politics page:
Measuring the use of imagery is the best barometer of the wingnut propaganda movement. The absolute absense of Obama is perhaps the most telling piece of information at this point in the 2008 race. They know they can mock Hillary's face. But they're absolutely terrified of having to show this image on a daily basis:
It's this fear on the part of a failing, image based, propaganda movement that tells you all you need to know about Obama's viability as a candidate. If he terrifies the vacuous, then he can win. And win big.