Miriam:
Stay tuned. We should be getting some positive answers soon. Maybe not
tomorrow, but soon.
Richard
On 5/17/2016 11:08 AM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > The Bernie or Bust Movement Shows No Signs of Slowing Down
________________________________________
The Bernie or Bust Movement Shows No Signs of Slowing Down
By Peter Gaffney [1] / Salon [2]
May 16, 2016
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For months now, my Facebook feed has been clogged with inspirational posts
about Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders getting arrested at a civil rights
rally. Bernie Sanders's modest tax returns. Bernie Sanders with a bird. Now
that the delegate math is stacked against him, my Facebook feed is full of
panicky moralistic posts about how Bernie or Bust is going to ruin
everything, that it's time for Sanders supporters to give up on ideological
purity and unify behind the presumed nominee.
But the case for giving up on Sanders is turning out to be as difficult to
make as the one for nominating him. Could it be that the Bernie or Bust
movement, however righteous or quixotic, is not about Sanders at all, but
another symptom of a high-rolling advertising-driven culture that has eroded
all our trust in the social contract? I mean, if you're looking for someone
to blame, Edward Bernays is your man, not Sanders-and certainly not anyone
who plans to write in Sanders's name on a general election ballot.
Bernays, who was Sigmund Freud's nephew, is the one who brought advertising
into everyday life, not as billboard and print ads but as real events. In
other words "public relations," a term he also coined. Bernays kicked off
his "torches of freedom" campaign for the American Tobacco Company in 1929
by hiring women to pose as suffragists in the Easter Sunday Parade and light
up on cue [3]. The point was to convince more women to smoke, but the whole
campaign was dressed up as a grass-roots political movement. In 1954, "the
father of spin" was hired by the United Fruit Company to set up local media
in Guatemala that would coordinate [4] with the CIA to topple the
democratically elected government.
But corporate accounts were only a side-job for Bernays. His career really
took off when he set up shop in Washington, D.C., with the motto "If you can
use propaganda for war, you can certainly use it for peace." Working for
every president from 1924 to 1961 (besides FDR), his notion that politics
should be treated as a form of lifestyle advertising inspired a new
generation of political consultants. It was Dick Morris, for example, who
convinced Bill Clinton in 1994 to drop the platform he won on and adopt, in
Morris's words, a "consumer rules philosophy." [5] This formulation is
misleading. As Adam Curtis argues in his award-winning BBC documentary "The
Century of the Self," this formulation is misleading. In the world of
advertising, it isn't the consumer that is king. It is the unconscious.
Consultants like Morris have worked hard to convince leaders in both parties
that they should ignore the better angels of our nature and speak directly
to our unnamable fears and desires.
Is it any wonder that a country buried to its eyeballs in propaganda would
treat the first honest politician to come along as some kind of messiah? And
is it so unreasonable that Sanders's more enthusiastic followers should balk
at conventional party-unifying tactics as we transition from primary to
general election? Ironically, tragically, the Bernaysian strategies of
Debbie Wasserman Schultz and others in the Democratic leadership have turned
out to be very bad PR for Hillary Clinton, at least for a certain
constituency. To be sure, Clinton can thank these same strategies for her
frontrunner status. She has emerged from the primaries with the image of a
savvy power broker who knows how to get things done inside a broken system,
not least by virtue of the cronyism built into the primary process. This is
the "New Democrat" ideal, right? The shrewd and alert face of transactional
politics. Our very own Karl Rove.
As Matt Taibbi points [6] out, this strategy is more divisive than party
leadership understands. It betrays a fundamental willingness to capitalize
on-and exacerbate-the most urgent problem we face in American political
culture: the crisis of a representative democracy in which representation,
statistically speaking, does not exist (as found, for example, by the 2014
Princeton study [7]). Bernays's project of turning politics into a
sub-discipline of advertising has been so successful we no longer have a
functional public sphere.
Sanders, of course, is no saint. His success raising large funds on small
donations has given him plenty of advertising muscle to flex, and by all
accounts he has flexed it. But here we need to make an important
distinction. It is one thing to advertise your position to potential
constituents in a contest of ideas. This is about engaging constituents-a
function of the public sphere. It is another thing entirely when advertising
is your platform. This is political realism: the doctrine that power can and
should beget more power. Political realists do not deal in constituents,
they deal in consumers. And putting one in charge of fixing America's crisis
of trust, incrementally or otherwise, is like putting the petroleum industry
in charge of clean energy. Unfortunately for Democrats, this is also where
Clinton utterly fails to distinguish herself from a candidate like Trump.
There is ample evidence that voters in 2016 demand a political system that
appeals to their rational judgment, not one that preys on the unconscious.
Perhaps party leaders, for all their posturing, really were afraid of a New
Deal Democrat like Sanders. Perhaps they were so busy with the work of
selling Clinton they didn't have time to read the writing on the wall.
Either way, their heavy-handed endorsement has only served to remind
reformist-minded Democrats that they are part of the problem. Their only
hope now is that Trump's screaming orange face will scare us back to
Clinton's side. Who knows? Maybe they are right.
But if we really want to treat the problem-not just the symptoms-I would
recommend that we stop wringing our hands on cue and take the Bernie or Bust
movement for what it really is. Not the ideological purity of dreamers, or
the bad sportsmanship of losers, but a struggle to do something responsible
with our faith in politics now that we've found it again. That's why the
"vote blue no matter who" slogan, typically accompanied by a photo of
Trump's face exactly as it will appear in our post-election nightmares, is
so terribly misguided. The whole thing has the look-feel of a Bernaysian PR
trick.
As usual, rank-and-file Democrats want to wait until it's too late and then
crucify the messenger-that's been our strategy ever since Ralph Nader
"spoiled" the election in 2000. Isn't it time we tried something new?
Because the political life of a country is like a relationship. The more you
ignore the crisis, the uglier it's going to get. And, make no mistake,
Donald Trump and his brownshirt flavored rallies are also a symptom of this
crisis. That's why the question "Wouldn't Hillary Clinton do better for our
country than Trump?" is so badly formulated-not to mention that it has the
same foul smell as the prepackaged consent typically served up by both
parties, no doubt on the advice of their PR teams.
Yes, it's gotten that bad. And for many voters, this November will be a time
to decide not who to vote for, but how to enact a newly awakened political
will, one that aims to correct the anti-democratic tactics of both parties.
Bernie or Bust is no doubt a foolhardy and extreme position, not least
because it is bound to create all kinds of bad PR for the reformist cause.
In the big picture, however, it looks like our best chance-perhaps our only
chance-to deliver a long awaited verdict on a disastrous New Democrat agenda
responsible in part for every bad decision from the Iraq Resolution to
Citizens United.
More importantly, the write-in vote is our last chance to call bluff on the
iron fist of political realism, which Democratic leadership have raised
again and again against their own constituents by playing us off against
bogeymen like Trump. A century of treating the public sphere as if it were a
sub-discipline of advertising has robbed us of all but the bluntest of
political instruments-without, for that matter, delivering us from the
obligation of using them.
[8] Peter Gaffney is a professor of philosophy, visual culture, and the
public sphere at University of Pennsylvania and the Curtis Institute of
Music, and also editor and co-author of "The Force of the Virtual: Deleuze,
Science and Philosophy (2010, University of Minnesota Press)
Share on Facebook Share
Share on Twitter Tweet
Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [9]
[10]
________________________________________
Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/bernie-or-bust-movement-shows-no-signs
-slowing-down
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/peter-gaffney
[2] http://www.salon.com
[3] http://nyti.ms/24uxFWb
[4] http://nyti.ms/1VMhT4a
[5] http://bit.ly/1VQJhhx
[6] http://rol.st/1SlJu83
[7] http://bit.ly/1W9DrDj
[8]
http://www.salon.com/2016/05/15/bernie_or_bust_will_save_us_the_foul_stench_
of_lesser_evilism_has_made_our_politics_useless/
[9] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on The Bernie or Bust
Movement Shows No Signs of Slowing Down
[10] http://www.alternet.org/
[11] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > The Bernie or Bust Movement Shows No Signs of Slowing Down
The Bernie or Bust Movement Shows No Signs of Slowing Down
By Peter Gaffney [1] / Salon [2]
May 16, 2016
AddThis Sharing ButtonsShare to FacebookShare to TwitterShare to Google+More
AddThis Share optionsShare to Email
For months now, my Facebook feed has been clogged with inspirational posts
about Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders getting arrested at a civil rights
rally. Bernie Sanders's modest tax returns. Bernie Sanders with a bird. Now
that the delegate math is stacked against him, my Facebook feed is full of
panicky moralistic posts about how Bernie or Bust is going to ruin
everything, that it's time for Sanders supporters to give up on ideological
purity and unify behind the presumed nominee.
But the case for giving up on Sanders is turning out to be as difficult to
make as the one for nominating him. Could it be that the Bernie or Bust
movement, however righteous or quixotic, is not about Sanders at all, but
another symptom of a high-rolling advertising-driven culture that has eroded
all our trust in the social contract? I mean, if you're looking for someone
to blame, Edward Bernays is your man, not Sanders-and certainly not anyone
who plans to write in Sanders's name on a general election ballot.
Bernays, who was Sigmund Freud's nephew, is the one who brought advertising
into everyday life, not as billboard and print ads but as real events. In
other words "public relations," a term he also coined. Bernays kicked off
his "torches of freedom" campaign for the American Tobacco Company in 1929
by hiring women to pose as suffragists in the Easter Sunday Parade and light
up on cue [3]. The point was to convince more women to smoke, but the whole
campaign was dressed up as a grass-roots political movement. In 1954, "the
father of spin" was hired by the United Fruit Company to set up local media
in Guatemala that would coordinate [4] with the CIA to topple the
democratically elected government.
But corporate accounts were only a side-job for Bernays. His career really
took off when he set up shop in Washington, D.C., with the motto "If you can
use propaganda for war, you can certainly use it for peace." Working for
every president from 1924 to 1961 (besides FDR), his notion that politics
should be treated as a form of lifestyle advertising inspired a new
generation of political consultants. It was Dick Morris, for example, who
convinced Bill Clinton in 1994 to drop the platform he won on and adopt, in
Morris's words, a "consumer rules philosophy." [5] This formulation is
misleading. As Adam Curtis argues in his award-winning BBC documentary "The
Century of the Self," this formulation is misleading. In the world of
advertising, it isn't the consumer that is king. It is the unconscious.
Consultants like Morris have worked hard to convince leaders in both parties
that they should ignore the better angels of our nature and speak directly
to our unnamable fears and desires.
Is it any wonder that a country buried to its eyeballs in propaganda would
treat the first honest politician to come along as some kind of messiah? And
is it so unreasonable that Sanders's more enthusiastic followers should balk
at conventional party-unifying tactics as we transition from primary to
general election? Ironically, tragically, the Bernaysian strategies of
Debbie Wasserman Schultz and others in the Democratic leadership have turned
out to be very bad PR for Hillary Clinton, at least for a certain
constituency. To be sure, Clinton can thank these same strategies for her
frontrunner status. She has emerged from the primaries with the image of a
savvy power broker who knows how to get things done inside a broken system,
not least by virtue of the cronyism built into the primary process. This is
the "New Democrat" ideal, right? The shrewd and alert face of transactional
politics. Our very own Karl Rove.
As Matt Taibbi points [6] out, this strategy is more divisive than party
leadership understands. It betrays a fundamental willingness to capitalize
on-and exacerbate-the most urgent problem we face in American political
culture: the crisis of a representative democracy in which representation,
statistically speaking, does not exist (as found, for example, by the 2014
Princeton study [7]). Bernays's project of turning politics into a
sub-discipline of advertising has been so successful we no longer have a
functional public sphere.
Sanders, of course, is no saint. His success raising large funds on small
donations has given him plenty of advertising muscle to flex, and by all
accounts he has flexed it. But here we need to make an important
distinction. It is one thing to advertise your position to potential
constituents in a contest of ideas. This is about engaging constituents-a
function of the public sphere. It is another thing entirely when advertising
is your platform. This is political realism: the doctrine that power can and
should beget more power. Political realists do not deal in constituents,
they deal in consumers. And putting one in charge of fixing America's crisis
of trust, incrementally or otherwise, is like putting the petroleum industry
in charge of clean energy. Unfortunately for Democrats, this is also where
Clinton utterly fails to distinguish herself from a candidate like Trump.
There is ample evidence that voters in 2016 demand a political system that
appeals to their rational judgment, not one that preys on the unconscious.
Perhaps party leaders, for all their posturing, really were afraid of a New
Deal Democrat like Sanders. Perhaps they were so busy with the work of
selling Clinton they didn't have time to read the writing on the wall.
Either way, their heavy-handed endorsement has only served to remind
reformist-minded Democrats that they are part of the problem. Their only
hope now is that Trump's screaming orange face will scare us back to
Clinton's side. Who knows? Maybe they are right.
But if we really want to treat the problem-not just the symptoms-I would
recommend that we stop wringing our hands on cue and take the Bernie or Bust
movement for what it really is. Not the ideological purity of dreamers, or
the bad sportsmanship of losers, but a struggle to do something responsible
with our faith in politics now that we've found it again. That's why the
"vote blue no matter who" slogan, typically accompanied by a photo of
Trump's face exactly as it will appear in our post-election nightmares, is
so terribly misguided. The whole thing has the look-feel of a Bernaysian PR
trick.
As usual, rank-and-file Democrats want to wait until it's too late and then
crucify the messenger-that's been our strategy ever since Ralph Nader
"spoiled" the election in 2000. Isn't it time we tried something new?
Because the political life of a country is like a relationship. The more you
ignore the crisis, the uglier it's going to get. And, make no mistake,
Donald Trump and his brownshirt flavored rallies are also a symptom of this
crisis. That's why the question "Wouldn't Hillary Clinton do better for our
country than Trump?" is so badly formulated-not to mention that it has the
same foul smell as the prepackaged consent typically served up by both
parties, no doubt on the advice of their PR teams.
Yes, it's gotten that bad. And for many voters, this November will be a time
to decide not who to vote for, but how to enact a newly awakened political
will, one that aims to correct the anti-democratic tactics of both parties.
Bernie or Bust is no doubt a foolhardy and extreme position, not least
because it is bound to create all kinds of bad PR for the reformist cause.
In the big picture, however, it looks like our best chance-perhaps our only
chance-to deliver a long awaited verdict on a disastrous New Democrat agenda
responsible in part for every bad decision from the Iraq Resolution to
Citizens United.
More importantly, the write-in vote is our last chance to call bluff on the
iron fist of political realism, which Democratic leadership have raised
again and again against their own constituents by playing us off against
bogeymen like Trump. A century of treating the public sphere as if it were a
sub-discipline of advertising has robbed us of all but the bluntest of
political instruments-without, for that matter, delivering us from the
obligation of using them.
http://www.salon.com/2016/05/15/bernie_or_bust_will_save_us_the_foul_stench_
of_lesser_evilism_has_made_our_politics_useless/[8] Peter Gaffney is a
professor of philosophy, visual culture, and the public sphere at University
of Pennsylvania and the Curtis Institute of Music, and also editor and
co-author of "The Force of the Virtual: Deleuze, Science and Philosophy
(2010, University of Minnesota Press)
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [9]
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.[10]
Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/bernie-or-bust-movement-shows-no-signs
-slowing-down
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/peter-gaffney
[2] http://www.salon.com
[3] http://nyti.ms/24uxFWb
[4] http://nyti.ms/1VMhT4a
[5] http://bit.ly/1VQJhhx
[6] http://rol.st/1SlJu83
[7] http://bit.ly/1W9DrDj
[8]
http://www.salon.com/2016/05/15/bernie_or_bust_will_save_us_the_foul_stench_
of_lesser_evilism_has_made_our_politics_useless/
[9] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on The Bernie or Bust
Movement Shows No Signs of Slowing Down
[10] http://www.alternet.org/
[11] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
