American Zeitgeist
Lately, my diaries have focused on the abundance of propaganda, especially right-wing propaganda, in our general ecosphere right now. It’s a miasma; like Palmolive, we’re soaking in it.
The propaganda that has been proliferating as of late has been especially dark, embued with a sense of either hopelessness or resignation; also, there’s a distinct current or undertone, either of fear or the threat of violence. I stay aware of the most flagrant breaches of decorum mostly through viewing reaction videos as suggested by YouTube’s algorhthm. (I discover the controversy there; I find an article right then about the controversy so I can read about it; then I return to the influencer video to hear what he or she has to say. I try to encounter facts in the news before consuming opinion about those facts and that news).
Jesse Dollemore on YouTube featured a clip two days ago of Laura Ingraham on her show The Ingraham Angle (TIA), where she let her audience know that General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had contracted Covid. here at DKos also covered this very TIA segment. As news goes, it is newsworthy that General Milley fell ill; but she didn’t treat it quite that way. Here is Dollemore’s treatment (begun at 1:53 in embed below):
This is a new low, even for Ingraham. To give you an idea how outrageous this is, there is no evidence—at least that I’m aware of—that any prominent liberal or never-Trumper talk show host laughed or applauded at Trump catching COVID-19. No matter how much I despise Trump, there is no way I would have been okay with anyone rejoicing at him catching this deadly virus. Nor would it be acceptable to rejoice at anyone, no matter how sleazy they are, catching COVID-19. (emphasis mine)
The Daily Beast, too, had this to say:
“Laura Ingraham is often described as someone in favor of ‘Christian values,’” [Father] James J. Martin, editor-at-large of Jesuit magazine and consultant to the Vatican's Secretariat for Communications, tweeted on Tuesday. “But the last time I checked, we're supposed to love our enemies, not celebrate when they get sick. Jesus had compassion for the sick; he didn't laugh at them. Not sure when hate [became] a Christian value.”
And the Fox News host’s estranged brother, Curtis Ingraham, was even harsher in his assessment of his sister. “My sister’s malevolence gives the term ‘schadenfreude’ a whole new dimension,” he shared on Twitter. “And did that cross around her neck get in the way of her clapping?! Just curious.”
Departure: What the Trump Clan is communicating
It’s at this point I’d like to turn to remarks that Donald J. Trump Jr (DJT JR) made on December 19th at the most recent TPUSA conference. TPUSA is the project of Charlie Kirk, the guy who had a follower recently stand up at a town council and ask, into a live microphone, “When do we get to use the guns?” Kirk, through TPUSA, also attempts to shape Covid policy.
DJT JR lamented the GOP’s supposed lucklessness as a party (as well as a strong in-group) and suggested instead, in a sales pitch, that those prospective voters reconsider their overall strategy. (I treat DJT JR’s segment in full here [which, incidentally, began in this very diary; I retain many points below].)
If we get together, they cannot cancel us all [voice breaks, incidentally, exactly at all]. All right? They won’t!
And this will be contrary to our beliefs [uses pointed-index hands to gesture in opposite rotations], because I’d love not to have to participate in cancel culture. I’d love that it didn’t exist. But as long as it does [points both hands skyward], folks, we’d better be playing the same game. [again, a canceling gesture with “no, no” hands]
Okay? We’ve been playing T-ball for the last half a century, while they[‘ve] been playing hardball and cheating. Right?
We’ve turned the other cheek. I understand! [gestures with a double-handed, open-palm signal of closing, ending, finality, negation]
I understand, sort of, the Biblical reference [shakes his head no, gestures with open hands no] . . .
I understand the mentality [another open, waving, clearing motion; also communicating open-mindedness] . . . .
But it’s gotten us [zeroes out his forefingers and thumbs behind his skull while simultaneously thrusting hands upward] nothing.
It’s gotten us nothing. [gestures negation] While we’ve ceded ground in every major institution in our country.
In these very short 1:45 seconds, DJT JR is imploring the audience to eschew the lessons from the Sermon on the Mount and to accept nihilism, specifically Nietzschean nihilism that declares that God is dead and that, precisely because God is dead, the world belongs to the “masters” of the world.
As might now means right—“again”—it is their birthright if they simply take it. This entails rejecting 1) neighborliness as prescribed by the Golden Rule, and 2) non-retaliation. This is important, because this fascist movement bases itself on the idea that not only is their audience’s status overall threatened by risk, due to changing times and demographics, it is also being pursued and persecuted, a narrative which in a survival setting would necessitate a pre-emptive attack as a method of aggressive defense. This, translated, is simply justified violence. They’re providing a pretext for the acceptance of violence as a method of overthrow.
He is by implication promising to restore all pre-civil-rights-era unspoken understandings of white supremacy.
This restoration of white supremacy would manifest itself as (being modeled after) a deference culture. As it turns out, before the civil rights era, the South was just such a culture.
Similarly incidental, such a return to a region-wide (or, in the case of fascist overthrow, nationwide) adoption of this attitudinal expectation would overlay almost exactly with the kind of deference inculcated in many conservative churches, especially fundamentalist Christian churches which already adhere to a Manichean (good vs. evil), chiliastic (that is, the Endtimes) worldview. These worshippers ostensibly are precisely the people to whom DJT JR is pitching most directly: Give up your most precious tenets. He is trying to convert them, basically over to the diametric opposite of their currently held beliefs.
swapping of values
Other evidence that the GOP and their operatives are seeking to radically alter the value system of the fascist movement’s new adherents comes from, speak of the deuce, Laura Ingraham. Back in August, she had as a guest on her show John Taffer who also hosts a reality show. His is called Bar Rescue, where he performs Gordan Ramsay “Hotel Hell”/HGTV Extreme Makeover Home Edition-type remodels of failing taverns, bars, and dives.
The way Taffer’s show is structured, the clientele of the establishments come from all walks of life (especially the lower classes—a lot of the neighborhoods where these bars are located are a bit shabby, or otherwise are showing signs of economic strain). However, Taffer himself deals primarily with the owners of the bars. This means that his clientele on the show are all small businessowners. He too is a businessowner.
In August, just as the entirety of the media ecosphere had reared up to wound Biden for daring to withdraw from Afghanistan, that’s when Taffer went on Ingraham’s show. The topic was unemployment and the relief benefits due to remain ongoing through that next month. Ingraham and Taffer exchanged theories as to why more people weren’t returning to work. (Remember, right-wing media outlets at this time were telling their viewers that the virus was no big deal, while simultaneously shaming viewers, trying to get them to take on guilt for staying home and thus supposedly not contributing to the economy).
The two commiserated in public. Here’s Newsweek (emphasis mine):
[Taffer said,] “We're incentivizing people to stay home. What if we gave that additional unemployment benefits to employers to incentivize people to go to work?"
Ingraham then chimed in and asked what would happen if the unemployment benefits were cut off.
"Hunger is a pretty powerful thing," she said. "I don't mean physical hunger because people who truly are in need, need help. I'm talking about people who can work but refuse to work."
Shortly after, Taffer made similar comments and supported Ingraham's remarks by comparing the current unemployment situation to military dogs.
"I have a friend in the military who trains military dogs and they only feed a military dog at night because a hungry dog is an obedient dog," Taffer said. "Well, if we are not causing people to be hungry to work, then we're providing them with all the meals they need sitting at home."
It’s just as appalling as it sounds when viewed instead of simply read. It’s shocking, for me, to encounter folks who have no compunction openly discussing using starvation as a motivational tool. These are purely capitalistic-minded people we’re talking about here, looking strictly at bottom lines.
TREATMENT OF ‘THE INGRAHAM ANGLE’
(airdate January 17, 2022)
So, to return to Ingraham’s show this past Monday, with Raymond Arroyo, who is apparently well-known in his circles for his anti-vax commentary. I’m going to post the transcript in full and give a partial treatment:
[Two-head-perspective (aka “shot”) with Ingraham in left panel, Arroyo on right]
Ingraham: Before we go, it’s time for another edition of? [gestures to Arroyo, an almost-handoff] What?
Arroyo: Positively boosted!
Ingraham echoes Arroyo.
[At this point, the shot cuts away to an animated-cartoon full-screen panel. This is not computer generated animation; this is more like what is associated with Saturday-morning traditional children’s cartoons and similar fantastic illustrations. The cartoon features circus-like music in the background, replete with comic slide-whistles, while three hypodermic needles—with smiley faces—appear in succession and also alternate forwards and back in terms of depth from the viewer’s perspective.]
In total, the panel sets up for the audience that what is to follow is cartoonish, a fantasy, to be taken light-heartedly without any bad feelings; it’s just a game. This is important, because the human brain processes cartoons in particular, specialized regions of its neuroarchitecture. It does not process cartoons in the same way as it does normal reality—that is, cartoons are not subject to the truth-testing process. The audience, already primed to take Ingraham's news entertainment show as actual news journalism, is ready to further suspend their disbelief for this upcoming segment, because the host has given them permission to do just that.
[The two-head-perspective returns. Arroyo is grinning, with full teeth. Again, this is being presented as silly.]
Ingraham: All right. The triple-vaxxed, Joint Chiefs’ Chairman Milley? [begins clapping, with hands visible] Our favorite Mark Milley tested positive for Covid yesterday!
Arroyo [smiling]: Yes.
Ingraham: And who else? General David Berger, the Marine Corps. commandant—
Arroyo: Mm!
Ingraham: —and also . . . positively boosted!
Arroyo: We—well, Laura, the positively boosted club [here he gestures to the camera with a pointed finger] has now reached the Vatican. The Holy See’s boosted Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Paralin, who just dropped a vaccine mandate on Vatican employees—
[Ingraham strains between a huff and a laugh.]
Arroyo: —firing many of them—he has tested positive, according to a reporter, Ed Pentin.
[At this point, the two-head-perspective is joined by a third panel, filling the majority of the area of the visual panel; this is a still shot of the Cardinal in his official capacity.]
Arroyo: Paralin, interestingly enough, cast doubt on religious exemptions to vaccine mandates last week.
Ingraham: Wow.
Arroyo: We wish them all the best, Laura.
Ingraham: Well, we certainly hope they’re all—[she pulls her full upper body physically away from the camera]—healthy and fine. Um, but stop pushing your mandates on us.
Because the panel has been presented as being in jest overall, the sentiment Arroyo expresses can properly be identified as sarcasm.
What Ingraham does, however, is more pernicious. She also engages in sarcasm, with the “healthy and fine” comment. However, precisely because she’s saying it sarcastically, what she’s really wishing is harm. It’s rendered as fantastical harm, because that’s the framing this segment coopts in order to get the audience members to let their guards down. It’s supposed to be light-hearted, so they “get” to laugh. What she’s doing is giving them permission to laugh at the theoretical deaths of their political targets.
She’s encouraging the hate that had already been stoked upon the personage of Milley (as I’m sure Fox has lampooned him for months since his “white rage” comments) and is now partly directing, partly allowing every audience member to transform that hate into sublimated death wishes. (This is a death cult.)
Arroyo: [gesturing a wafting-up with both hands from abdomen to chest, suggesting a return to health] Positively recover. [Arroyo audibly begins snickering.]
Ingraham: Alright, Ray—”Positively recover,” Raymond. We’re almost doing that—[gestures back and forth with alternating open hands toward the camera, then shimmies her shoulders]—that yin-yang! [Ingraham dissolves into laughter.]
Deeper indications
At this point, what is being communicated is just abject negative identification with empathy toward these Covid-stricken people. What Ingraham and Arroyo signal through their sarcasm is that viewers should root for the demise, the snuffing, of their political opponents, and take pleasure in such cheer.
Dieter D. Hartmann, in his “Anti-Semitism and the Appeal of Nazism” (Political Psychology, 1984]), lets open this window:
Sigmund Freud noted . . . that for children, “to have died” means to be gone away forever, no longer to trouble the survivors. The child, in Freud’s view, does not distinguish the way and means that bring about such absence. A death wish basically is for someone to be gone, away and out of sight, forever. Such is infantile imagery; but it lingers on in the adult mind. A death wish, therefore, need not include the wish to kill or to see somebody die. Killing might add cruel satisfaction, but it is not indispensible. The Nazis did not want individual sadism; they wanted a world without [those they demonized most,] Jews. (p. 638, emphasis added)
The cultists also indulge in this urge to act as agents or encouragers of death when they actively encourage their true believers to go completely anti-vax, let alone anti-mask. These folks are increasingly all showing particular constellations of traits that identify followers of Trumpism, which was the precursor to our current fascist movement: A Washington Post analysis, just published yesterday, of data from the most recent WaPo/University of Maryland public opinion poll (December 17-19, 2021) finds that Americans who don’t believe institutional racism is a problem are more likely to consider Jan. 6 a protest, not an insurrection, as well as believe Trump’s filmy fraud claims about the 2020 election. This dovetails with previous research, which had already linked another, overlapping, Trump demographic—Christian nationalists—with strong anti-vax attitudes.
wise warning
Jason Stanley tells us that in all rational debate, the speakers seek to establish what is called the common ground:
The content of an assertion will be a piece of information, and if the assertion is successful, then that information will become part of the body of information that provides the context for the subsequent discourse.
The common ground of a conversation is the “information in common, or presumed to be common,” in a discourse. (p. 131)
According to [the philosopher Robert] Stalnaker’s account of communication, successful communication takes the form of ruling out situations. (p. 131)
This is an elegant picture of successful communication. An assertion is made; it is a proposal to add a proposition to the common ground. It is debated and, if accepted, added to the common ground. This leads us to rule out possibilities that we had previously entertained. (p. 132, bolding mine)
The most pernicious propaganda, Stanley says, bypasses rational will and thus evades rational discussion or scrutiny. He speaks specifically of the use of linguistic tricks to forcibly elevate certain topics into the common ground without any mutual agreement, thus carting in whole blocks of information that the audience may not have consented to consuming. It is a foisting of information into public space for deliberation without any deliberation itself.
The not-at-issue content of an utterance is not advanced as a proposal of a content to be added to the common ground. Not-at-issue content is directly added to the common ground. For this reason, not-at-issue content is in general “not negotiable, not directly challengeable, and [is] added [to the common ground] even if the at-issue proposition is rejected.” This characterization of not-at-issue content is supported by much linguistic evidence; the evidence mostly involves when it is legitimate to retract a claim. The not-at-issue content is often “semantic, part of the conventional meaning.” (p. 135)
[D]enying the speaker’s claim is naturally understood as denying what is asserted, while agreeing with what is presupposed. (pp. 135-36)
[I]t is not easy to deny this content. It is difficult to respond to (6) [the statement “It must be raining outside”] by responding with “that’s wrong, you are soaking wet.” The communicated content that the agent did not witness the rain herself is something that would be very odd and rude to challenge. So doing would suggest that the agent is deficient in some way, rather than merely ordinarily misinformed. It is not-at-issue content, rather than at-issue content. (p. 137, all bolding mine)
Ingraham and Arroyo insert, uninvited, their depravity directly into the audience member’s cartoon-area of imagination, and encourage the audience member to adopt that depravity as his or her own. Using a very localized area of mentation immunized from truth- or reality-testing, this propaganda is uploaded by these two hatchet-wielders of disinformation, directly into their followers’ imaginations. This is not simply erroneous or dangerous. This type of propaganda has the power to be transmogrifying for those followers’ inner selves, as this type of corruption of ideals, again, bypasses rational argument.
It’s actually difficult for me to describe the levels of depravity these two basically backhoed into the backyards of their viewers’ brains. As Goebbels himself knew, people are far more receptive to receiving information when it is surrounded in entertainment, like a candy coating. Goebbels laced his medicine with sugar; Ingraham, in this instance, could be considered a direct heir.
Our time to act is finite
In December, I penned an open letter to all members of the American Christian clergy (and all in that community who might be in a position of leadership). I asked them to recognize the danger that is the Trump clan and what they mean to do: to usurp the Christian church as it exists in any recognizable form. They mean to transform the value system of the American Christian church into one that celebrates violence as a means to power, that thrills in the subjugation and desolation of others, that at this very hour stokes the thirst of bloodlust.
The braintrustTM of this movement means to break the American (assumed and now very background/underlying) Protestant value system (conventionally-high work ethic, an ethos of charity, and an ideal of reciprocity via observance of the Golden Rule). These traducers mean to cure their adherents: not of Covid, but of empathy and kindness. These Trumps and their acolytes proffer what self-psychologists call soul-murder. That’s the least of the mayhem they mean to green-light internally in their followers. We need to combat this growing ideological attempt at an overrun.