|
CounterPunch
December
7, 2002
How Alternative
is Alternet?
Information Prozac
by ANIS SHIVANI
How alternative is Alternet.org? It altercates
with mainstream liberalism as its alter ego. Like much of progressivism.
But that's as far as it will go.
Let's look at the November 19 issue.
Terrence McNally interviews Mark Hertsgaard, who's written The
Eagle's Shadow: Why America Fascinates and Infuriates the World
(Bloomsbury, 2002). Why do others hate Americans? What about
us do they love? The same questions that the Bush administration,
and liberals, pose--except with slightly different answers.
Or are they that different?
Begin with the joke about corrupt countries
like Cuba sending in observers after failing to understand the
absurdity of the electoral college. In this narrative, election
theft becomes something we can joke about. Normalized, so we
can go on with more pressing business. Like--like what? Nothing
here that the New York Times hasn't said more eloquently.
Buy into the establishment myth that
before September 11 Americans lived in a land of fantasy and
make-believe, not knowing much about the rest of the world, what
they thought of us and what their hatred might want to inflict
upon us: "And if we're honest we'll admit that before September
11 we never paid attention to the rest of the world." Really?
The "we" here is the alternative reader in the heartland
who's only lately become interested in foreign policy, because
now he knows that people far away can hit us at home? This reinforces
the myth of America as separate and isolated from the rest of
the world. And is it really that we haven't paid attention before,
or--as "we" drive SUVs at the price of blood, and spew
waste at the cost of ruining the environment--have "we"
accepted the terms of the bargain?
The idea for Hertsgaard is to portray
an image of American naïveté all throughout. This
makes the problem more manageable. If only the good-hearted
American people knew what their government was up to, how destructive
our economic policies are for the environment, how corrupted
our politicians by corporate money, what an obscene conspiracy
of Monsanto to mess up the world with genetically modified food--if
only Americans knew all this, they would be shocked, enough to
force their representatives in Congress to live up to the true
American spirit of generosity and goodwill toward the rest of
the world, and to those less privileged amongst ourselves.
Thus the raison d'etre of the alternative
press. Outdo the New York Times in bringing to the public's
awareness the horrible things our government does in our name.
The myth must be maintained that there
is a crucial difference between our government and ourselves.
Question that myth, and the whole rationale for the kind of
reporting Alternet and its innumerable progressive siblings engage
in collapses.
"I think on September 11 we learned
the hard way that what outsiders think does matter," says
Hertsgaard. We will have to be shocked out of our apathy. We'd
rather be in our own skins, pay little or no attention to the
messy reality in far-away places. But this is a luxury we can't
afford anymore.
Also confirm the establishment narrative
about how the rest of the world was spurred to deep sympathy
for us after September 11, but that our unilateralism soon after
alienated these same sympathetic people. In France and Germany
and Britain and many other places, people did visibly demonstrate
in support of us right after September 11. But was it in support
of America - or the American ideal, which is to say, that which
they wish they had more of in their own polities? Also, were
the people who showed distress outnumbered by those who were
inwardly pleased that America finally had its rude awakening?
Maybe--after the initial shock of the spectacle wore off--there
were far more around the world, even among supposedly sympathetic
countries in Western Europe, who thought the unthinkable?
But if we start questioning like that,
then we mess with the establishment narrative that the rest of
the world loves America (the country as it is, its actual culture,
its actual politics, not America in the most abstract sense of
political freedom, global and universal to the point that the
word America becomes meaningless as a reference in time and space)
and that all we have to do to maintain this goodwill is be a
little more observant of diplomatic protocol as we go about ruling
the world.
Maybe the people around the world who
hate what America--the entity in time and space, apart from the
ideals of the founding political texts--really stands for, the
height of narcissist materialism, at any cost to human well-being,
outnumber those who love America even in nominal terms.
We don't know that. And that doesn't
change only because many people love American music and movies.
But Hertsgaard insists, "The distinction, between America
and Americans is a crucial one. It lies at the heart of foreigners'
ambivalence about the United States." Maybe Hertsgaard
needs to listen better. Maybe "foreigners" recite
what they're expected to say, and make that "crucial distinction."
But maybe what they're really thinking is, We hate America itself,
but you're a nice white reporter with a good head of hair, and
we can't really diss you as a person, or your people--so we'll
go along with the distinction.
If the notion is offered that people
hate what America really represents, then we get into the much
harder question of why that is, rather than a problem of managing
perception. The latter is not all that different from the Bush
administration hiring Madison Avenue executive Charlotte Beers
to manage public relations as we redraw the map of the Middle
East.
The alternative press wants you to believe
that "You can love your country and oppose your government."
Really? You can? Think about it. Are these really separable?
Who elects these people? Who buys these products that give
the corporations so much power to control politics? Who refuses
to be shaken off their asses to do anything even if their personal
freedoms are annihilated?
Progressivism is a matter of fine-tuning,
refinement, not radical thought and action. If you want to call
that alternative, that's your choice.
Hertsgaard talks about Europeans seeing
the Democratic party being to the right of their conservative
parties. Is that also a mistake of perception that can be corrected
by giving out the right information? It used to be that the
Republican party of the 1950s and 1960s, on many issues, was
to the left of the Democratic party now. The Republicans were
the party of racial progressivism, not the Democrats, until the
1960s. When race was made an issue, neither the Republican nor
Democratic party could stand up under the criticism. Criticism
by whom? The people of America, or large numbers of them anyway,
right? Is this a matter of perception management?
Convey back to Americans that the rest
of the world basically thinks fondly of us. Terrorists in Cairo
are fond of Kirk Douglas movies. Egyptians may be upset about
America's policy toward Israel, but as one salesman tells Hertsgaard:
" . . .we also know that many of you Americans disagree
with your government about that, because you have good minds
and you are allowed to think for yourselves." Not far from
the establishment position that we have the freedom to think
for ourselves. Not very alternative. As Bush says, "America
is goo-ood."
What can Americans do? We can "start
by listening" to allies abroad, people like the Egyptian
salesman quoted above. And our government will follow suit,
right?
Is empire really that flexible? Not
very far from the CFR position. Not very alternative.
Hertsgaard thinks we "don't share"
enough of our wealth. Maybe a lot of them don't want anything
to do with our stinking wealth. Maybe it's a more metaphysical
problem.
Reform is a marketing problem. Market
more slickly than the government, and Americans will come around.
"They do envy us, but not in a resentful
way. They want to have it for themselves." Another questionable
proposition, on which much of foreign policy reform rests. They
want to be like us, more or less. Maybe some people--many people--reject
wealth and power of the kind we have altogether? How would Hertsgaard
know? That's too alternative for the alternatives.
It was Kyoto that really set the world
against us. Maybe, but it seems too esoteric an issue for many
of the starving around the world to care about, or even know.
This fits into the establishment narrative of American initiative
to manage the earth's atmosphere, its very future at the macro
level. And the U.S. as the only country with the ultimate say
in administrating the earth's future. The other side of this
coin is missile defense, space weapons. Bush doesn't believe
in greenhouse warming, but he wants to ensure a safe earth for
us anyway.
A former Czech environment minister tells
Hertsgaard that we Americans set the example on everything--the
world watches us closely to figure out how to go. A massive
boost to our ego, no? This is the old progressivism's narcissism
minus any chance of reform.
Blame the media. Blame it on Murdoch,
the most powerful man in the world. And his deputy, Roger Ailes.
This exempts Americans themselves. It's the media, stupid!
They've taken over. They won't let the truth get through.
Hence the need for alternative journals that will speak the truth
more liberally than the liberals.
Once Americans find out that 350,000
Iraqi children have died because of our sanctions--by God, they're
going to be pissed off! They're going to demand that their government
stop these genocidal actions! Same for Palestine! They just
don't know (forgive them, father, for they know not what they're
not told by Murdoch the traitor). So 24/7, the alternative press
must remind us of the horrors in Palestine and Iraq and wherever
else the American media dare not go. Once enough momentum builds
up--through sheer awareness raising--things will change.
So the myth, "They don't care because
they don't know! Because they are not told! Because our media
doesn't report that!" Let's fix that. Let's tell them.
The American people are goo-ood!
The high-school dropout at 7/11 doesn't
know, never will, and can't afford to think about things like
that. It's outside her range. The middle-class suburbanite
already knows at some level. If he wanted to know more, he could.
He doesn't need the alternative press for that. The library
is good enough. There are plenty of books on all this. Is the
alternative media's rationale to shortcut the process of people
going to the library, instead accessing information quickly and
easily through the internet? Will that make the difference?
Should information be so cheap anyway? Doesn't that cheapen
everything?
After the trauma of last year, every
good liberal is trying to show how deeply he believes in the
goodness of America. Hitchens and Corn, and the rest of the
alternative camp. By saying that America is basically a sound
project--with a bit of suasion aimed toward good-hearted citizens
to let them see we don't have to be quite this unilateral--they're
out-Bushing Bush.
The Reaganites understood, Hertsgaard
says, that only repetition matters in the era of the "Palace
Court" press. So let's co-opt this technique. Let liberals--alternatives--take
repetition to even greater lengths. 24/7 Palestine. 24/7 Iraq.
Create our own drumbeat. Our own noise. Whoever is loudest
wins. That's the main alternative press credo for today.
Hertsgaard hopes--in regard to where
"the levers of change are going to be" - that body
bags coming from Iraq might do it. If the verbal message doesn't
get through to the basically good-hearted American, the spectacle
of body bags will do it. First, body bags won't come home.
We have fought no real wars since Vietnam, and we won't again.
Second, if they do, the message can be managed.
John K. Wilson claims in How to Win
Arguments and Influence People: A Practical Manual for Pragmatic
Progressives (NYU Press, 2001) that all progressives need
to do is copy the right's playbook in getting their message across.
Of course, throughout he keeps saying that we don't want to
be duplicitous like the right, but that's his argument anyway.
Build think-tanks like the AEI and Heritage. Build the progressives'
version of the Goldwater movement. Wait thirty years. Start
with the school boards. In the meantime, hope for body bags.
(They can't hope for economic collapse anymore - it happened
already and it didn't faze the electorate one bit.) It's the
body bags, stupid!
It's basically the New York Times's
argument too.
And they've long been outwitted.
Hertsgaard says, "I think that what
really needs to happen, in terms of making political change in
America, is to copy the way the right-wing made political change."
It's the message, stupid!
To hold this position, alternatives must
believe that most of America is basically with them. On health
care, education, abortion, gun control. Yes, but if you run
an ad scaring people about socialized medicine, they'll run for
the Goldwater/Reagan clones every time, not the Green party naïfs.
The working class as the agent of social
change has ceased to exist. The middle-class, even if declining
and insecure, has made its peace with the status quo. So who
is the agent of change?
Hertsgaard, like other alternatives,
finds it in Americans who don't vote, "because they've been
alienated from the political process." Today's muckrakers
are going to entice them back into the political process? It's
not even a matter of that. The two parties don't want most of
these voters joining the electorate, which might muddy the waters
for them. They'd rather depress the vote, for their own reasons.
Besides, these people are not going to vote. They don't read
Alternet.org--or much of anything. The old party machines that
used to bring in large numbers of what today would be the non-voting
public were killed mainly by the progressives of the last century.
Without mass parties--and there's nothing to make us believe
that anything like that is in the offing--these votes won't materialize.
"Richard Nixon got out of Vietnam
not because he wanted to, but because any President would have
had to bow in front of that popular pressure." Except that
my reading is that we prosecuted the war in Vietnam as far as
we could, and only got out when the establishment decided it
was hopeless. Didn't war in Southeast Asia escalate after the
mass protests of the late sixties?
A rather large number of lies--or at
least misinformation and disingenuousness--for just one interview
in the alternative press, don't you think?
But it's all like that. Feeling crushed
by the victory aura of Bill O'Reilly? Come to Alternet.org or
its companion therapists and get your daily Prozac info-feed.
The world is about to get so much better! Even if Wellstone
died--the Wellstone spirit lives!
"I think that Jim Hightower has
the right idea, going around the country with his Rolling Thunder
Revue, organizing people." Yes, and Granny D. too. And
Michael Moore. And Ani Di Franco. And Melissa Etheridge. And
Phil Donahue, when he can get time off from MSNBC. In about
the year 2032, we should be set for the "majority"
to come to power, and give the people what they want: a living
wage, intact Social Security, women's right to choose, national
health care. The polls say that people want all that. The polls
would also say that most people want eternal love. Immortal
life. A personal god. So?
"But we've been out-organized by
the right. It's really that simple." There's no content
in the alternative media, because that is their essential message.
It's the organization, stupid!
"In a democracy, the numbers eventually
matter." Meanwhile, in the real world, Iran-contra felon
John Poindexter is working on Total Information Awareness, they're
talking in elite circles about starting a domestic intelligence
agency like in Britain, an oversight court has formally loosened
restrictions on wiretapping, and in Michigan they're stopping
people in random traffic checks to see if they're terrorists
(or Alternet.org readers). The Homeland Security Department
is to be made exempt from the Freedom of Information Act, drug
companies from vaccine lawsuits, and insurance companies from
terrorism insurance beyond a certain limit. So the new department
will set us up for the next terror attack, protect the drug companies
when they go wrong vaccinating us, and insure private businesses
for losses. The government is officially in the business of
managing terror "attacks" at all stages, from conceptualization
to final disposition.
Do people not already know these things?
C-SPAN viewers have been treated to total information awareness
on Total Information Awareness and the fascist provisions of
Homeland Security. Perhaps the alternative media will tip the
critical mass.
In the same issue of Alternet.org is
an article called "Bush Bashing" by John Powers of
L.A. Weekly. It's not clear what his point is, but it
seems to be that we're too much into worshipping Bush's power.
It's addled people's judgment, this perception of illimitable
power.
First, it is illimitable power--as
near as it can be in a democracy with some remaining formal trappings.
Second, is it again only a matter of perception? If Powers
tells us (who?) that Bush isn't all-powerful, then will his power
in fact decline?
Start with a quotation from the always-handy
George Orwell. Poor Orwell! The real Orwell wrote the most
influential book of the twentieth century to make precisely the
point about power's total inescapability.
Powers says that Bush's midterm election
victory wasn't as extensive as people think. Carville should
ashamed of making such a sorry spectacle of himself on election
night. " . . .anomalous-seeming midterm results are not
unprecedented," alternative readers are assured. Really?
That anomalous? Cosmically anomalous? The American people
are goo-ood! They didn't really validate Bush's fascist
agenda. We must not accept that.
Powers indicts the pack of reporters
in Alexandra Pelosi's HBO documentary about campaign 2000, Journeys
with George, for being "lemmings who weren't about to
risk their asses by asking the candidate tough questions."
Actually, the Bush press corps had plenty of skeptical reporters.
They just weren't as naïve as the alternative media. The
documentary is a frightening picture of the collaboration of
all--not the least the fascist-looking audiences at Bush's stump
speeches, crazily supporting the Crawford moron because they
"like him," although they couldn't tell you why--in
the nightmare we're living with. This is one Pelosi I could
die for (or at least ask out for a drink). It's only the "progressives"
who feel the need to hammer into our dull heads that we need
to rise and dream! The postmodern press corps is too sophisticated
for that. The reporters didn't "fawn" on Bush--they
and Bush were equally aware of the postmodern spectacle being
played out. Pelosi was smart enough to know that the emptiness
of the campaign was the content. And didn't Bob Roberts
take care of that ten years ago? Nobody was taking advantage
of anybody else. Pelosi 1, Powers 0.
It's not the media bosses. It's the
stupid people, stupid!
Powers feels that the mainstream press
has legitimized Bush at every level. But who does the press
report on behalf of?
The press are not "power worshippers."
That's personalizing it, psychologizing it.
If we place the press in the web of power
and interest that it really belongs to, the trail works it way
backward all the way to the--very goo-ood people of America.
Powers complains that "left-liberal"
media have gone crazy bashing Bush. Alterman has gone crazy
asking "why reporters can't flat out call Bush a liar,"
Mark Shields and Bill Moyers have gone hysterical. But Powers's
own project is to tell people about Bush's lies.
In this postmodern society, there are
no lies. Everything is out in the open.
The Times's Paul Krugman has gone
nuts--Bush has driven him crazy--says Powers. He's lost his
Ivy League demeanor. Powers has a chip on his shoulder when
it comes to the Ivy League. Krugman teaches at Princeton--that
doesn't square with the alternative media's image of a populist
progressive. You've got to be working in the trenches with the
people, swilling beer with illegal Mexican immigrants, wearing
your baseball cap backwards and not letting on that you're worried
if you're fat like Michael Moore--like they do at the LA Weekly
and Village Voice offices. And date someone from the
working-class.
You've gotta be cool, not Ivy League.
Leave the passionate criticism to the real alternative
media, will you please, columnists at the New York Times?
And that includes you, William Safire of the privacy-obsessed
column!
Mock Gore Vidal's elitism. That always
works. Set his elitist detachment against the real alternatives,
the populists in Levis. " . . .his [Vidal's] interpretation
of American history has always focused on the very elite that
he himself was born into, thereby putting him (unlike the rest
of us slobs) at the center of our national history. This is
his own version of power worship." Vidal as power-worshipper?
He's become a real convenient scapegoat for the alternatives.
They make fun of his conspiracy theories, because that doesn't
let us focus on the goo-ood American people gradually
bringing their representatives in office back in line.
What we're really seeing playing out
in these essays is not some new information that we need to have--it's
the evolving narrative of the so-called left-liberals' or progressives'
own place in a polity that has no place for them.
Now let me go read the New York Times,
where they don't pretend to be what they're not, trying to push
us back to the way liberals and conservatives used to be in the
1950s before anti-people politicians took over the parties.
The most populist position is the most
elitist one. Figure that one out, Hertsgaard and Powers.
Anis Shivani
studied economics at Harvard, and is the author of two novels,
The Age of Critics and Memoirs of a Terrorist. He welcomes comments
at: Anis_Shivani_ab92@post.harvard.edu
Yesterday's
Features
Jeffrey St. Clair
Panda
Porn:
The Marriage of WWF & Weyerhaeuser
Saul Landau
Bush the Comedian:
Poindexter, Abrams and Now Henry K.
Romi Mahajan
Malign
Money and Misguided Multiculturalism
Jan Oberg
Time for an Intellectual Intifada!
Margie Burns
Another Lucky Bush Brother
Pierre Tristam
Woodward's Bush
Edward Lazarus
FISA, Conservatives, National Security & States' Rights
Jack McCarthy
Amos King: a Buddhist Warrior on Death Row
Alexander Cockburn
American
Journal:
Kissinger & the Great Beast: 666
CounterPunch Available Exclusively
to Subscribers:
- CounterPunch Special:
The Persecution of Gershon Legman by Susan Davis: Smut, the Post Office, Commies
and the FBI;
- Reeling Democrats: Is Pelosi the Answer?
- Gandhi v. Hitler: the Secret Race for the Nobel
Prize;
- Sullying Mario Savio's
Memory;
- Lynching Then and Now;
- Earn While You Learn: Chris Whittle and Child Labor;
The Case of the Pompous
Professor;
- The Class Struggle in
Boston: All that
Effort, But What Did They Get?
Remember, the CounterPunch website is
supported exclusively by subscribers to our newsletter. Our worldwide
web audience is soaring , with about seven million hits a month
now. This is inspiring, but the work involved also compels us
to remind you more urgently than ever to subscribe and/or make
a (tax deductible) donation if you can afford it. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe
Now!
Or Call Toll Free 1 800 840 3683
home / subscribe
/ about us
/ books
/ archives
/ search
/ links
/
|