The only reason David Frum feels free to speak the truth about a few things is because he has been so thoroughly ostracized from the Republican Party and its wingnut welfare system that he has nothing left to lose. He can’t get on Fox News anymore, so it’s easy for him to denounce it. There’s no chance that any major think tank will ever employ him again, so he can denounce the think tanks. He’s suddenly liberated.
We have a term for what concerns David Frum. We call it “The Stupid.” There is a small cadre of conservatives (e.g., Frum, Kathleen Parker) who are trying to address the collective turn of the right towards something that truly resembles severe retardation. But, honestly, they don’t have a chance.
Frum explains why, even if he still holds out hope:
Over the past two decades, conservatism has evolved from a political philosophy into a market segment. An industry has grown up to serve that segment—and its stars have become the true thought leaders of the conservative world. The business model of the conservative media is built on two elements: provoking the audience into a fever of indignation (to keep them watching) and fomenting mistrust of all other information sources (so that they never change the channel). As a commercial proposition, this model has worked brilliantly in the Obama era. As journalism, not so much. As a tool of political mobilization, it backfires, by inciting followers to the point at which they force leaders into confrontations where everybody loses, like the summertime showdown over the debt ceiling.
But the thought leaders on talk radio and Fox do more than shape opinion. Backed by their own wing of the book-publishing industry and supported by think tanks that increasingly function as public-relations agencies, conservatives have built a whole alternative knowledge system, with its own facts, its own history, its own laws of economics.
The Stupid is a moneymaker. The Stupid is a market.
And The Stupid makes people behave as if they’ve had a lobotomy. How do you fix something like that?
The fatal demise of capitaism…where money is hoarded and the markets are told the hoarders are speaking directly with God.
“The Stupid makes people behave as if they’ve had a lobotomy. How do you fix something like that?”
re-education camps?
.
Rightist, fascist governments always will attack the students, intelligentsia and labor union leaders. Get rid of leadership in order to control the masses.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Reminds me of Goethe’s old Sorcerer’s Apprentice story, Der Zauberlehrling, except there’s no wise old master sorcerer who will return to stop the bucket brigade.
Good one AG!
Thank you.
AG
Without negative reinforcement, stupid rules. In 2010 stupid won the House and nearly won the Senate. Even if it does not win the White House in 2012, stupid will likely retain the power to block any worthwhile legislation.
“How do you fix something like that?”
I think about this all the time and I think there are answers but what is required is so complex I don’t know if it can be done.
What do you think the answers are?
Frum also seems deluded to assume that all good conservatives want lower taxes and smaller government. The truth is that they want lower taxes for me and smaller government for thee. His chronology is off as well, since he wants to believe the stupid started in 2008. It started decades before that but 1993 was certainly a definite break away from consensus and shared values and towards permanent and total kulturkampf. That was when Newtie and Rush became standard bearers of permanent grievance and the magic of “the market”.
You write:
“The Stupid” is not just a right wing establishment, Booman. MSNBC is as “stupid” as is Fox News. The NY Times is as “stupid” as is the NY Post. It’s just a more intellectual stupidity. A stupidity posing as smart instead of going after the mentally challenged. But smart people can be stupid too, as your own ongoing affair with Barack “The Stylish Murderer” Obama illustrates so well. Obama is NY Times and Bush II was NY Post. Two sides of the same fence. Two sides of the same farce.
You think that you are somehow “smarter” than the lobotomy cases who follow Fox News? Naaaahhh…you’ve just got more brain power. But not enough, apparently. “Smart” people can be lobotomized too. Lobotomy by media. Same shit, different knife.
That goes for the middle media, too. You know…the “fair and balanced,” so-called “take no sides media” like CNN and CBS/NBC/ABC?
They are all on the same side. They are all owned and controlled by massive corporate interests and those massive corporate interests’ intelligence cops.
Once again…sigh…witness the ongoing non-personing of Ron Paul, the only national politician to speak any semblance of the truth about what is happening here.
The right wing media ignore him as much as possible and so do the middle and left wing media. And thus so do their various lobotomized viewers. I swear, if he won they’d relegate his acceptance speech to the back pages.
How do you “fix” this? Left, right or center? Turn the force-feeding media off, off, off!!! If you want information, cherry pick it from the b[various news feeds on the netr. They are still broad enough that a much larger picture emerges and they do not technologically hypnotize the viewer nearly as effectively as does TV. Don’t look at or listen to the talking heads, Booman. They are one and all full of shit and you cannot turn away from their programming when you are watching them.
You want a broad “news” feed?
45 careful and discerning minutes with Google News, the Drudge Report, the Daily Beast and Huffington Post will tell you which way the wind is blowing from every direction.
Bet on it.
Turn that TV off, Booman. Stop taking delivery of the NY Tsimmes and the Washingtoon Post. Step away from the media force feed trough. Pick and choose more. You seem to write 2 or 3 articles a week about how lame his, that and the other communist is. So what!!!??? That scene is so over!!! David fucking Frum!!!??? Please. The only people who put any stock in his mumblings are the same kinds of fools who got taken by Bernie Madoff.
There’s a New World a’comin’, Booman. Those Occupy kids the approach of whom you seem to so distrust? Theyknow better. An extended discussion about David Frum or Kathless Parker-style blather among the OWS folks? Unimaginable. Like taking the politics of Oprah Winfrey or Martha Stewart seriously. Joke time. Like believing that Barack Obama isn’t owned lock, stock and barrel by the PermaGov. But they ‘ll talk about Ron Paul. I know. Been there, did that, just before the Bloomberg raid. Been there with my son’s friends, too. Smart 20-somethings, the scientific version thereof.
Check it out or get left behind. The whole control mechanism is breaking down. The media are already over; they just don’t know it yet.
Watch.
AG
I just upgraded to a new operating system on my computer and it is “correcting” some of my mistypings in strange ways.
Like this:
“You seem to write 2 or 3 articles a week about how lame this, that and the other communist is.”
Not “communist,” operating system!!!
“Columnist!!!”
Duh.
Gotta go through some more computer purgatory to disable that little helper. We are being helped to death on every level. Maybe the Luddites were right.
Sigh…
AG
“And The Stupid makes people behave as if they’ve had a lobotomy. How do you fix something like that?”
Declare them brain-dead and turn off the life support.
Frum’s mother was one of the truly great CBC journalists back in the 70s and 80s. She was a celebrity. Both her kids rebelled against her liberalism. In a way, Frum is coming back to the fold now that he is through adolescence.
But I don’t think that he is anywhere near liberalism. He has rejected teapartyism, but that does not make him a liberal. He is very clear about that. I too see a difference.
I’ve thought this for a while, but slowly I think this could be right. Maybe if he wasn’t so thoroughly rejected he’d actually embrace The Stupid, but that’s not the case. He’s said many times recently that Krugman’s been right, he’s been wrong. Same with Andrew Sullivan. I think they’re still philosophically conservative, but pragmatically they understand that economic inequality means democratic instability. So while they might not believe the government should fix it through the tax code, they’ve been shown that there’s simply no other way.
if teh stupid is a market, then the response is to find and invest in new markets, like obama did in 2008. teh stupid is saturated and trying to penetrate it would be like trying to market a new cigarette. (would you really want to anyway?) gotta capture growth markets like teh young and teh brown-skinned and teh 99%ers and teh 99%-curious while they are still in fact growing.
Frum just tossed in a good point over at CNN when they were talking about Newt’s latest suggestion to have a janitorial grand manager with all the kids doing the work at schools.
His comment was that the media was missing Newt’s strategy; ie, when one is caught red handed with both fists in the Freddie Mac cookie jar toss out a story asking for abuse of small children to get the media off Newt’s tail. Thanks David.