www.MarkTAW.com/blog/LeftWingPropoganda.html (printable version)
Left Wing PropagandaI'm watching the Grammy's, and this guy is talking about how evil downloading music is. The rationale he gives is that musicians and songwriters are being hurt, and that new artists aren't getting their due. Now, we all know that that simply isn't true. He hired three kids (who looked embarrassed to be there) to download as many MP3's in a day as they could, and they downloaded 6,000. Uh. Right. Never mind that the record companies are evil and exploit just about everybody for their own profit.
So my friend Nicole tells me that she's been spending a lot of time on bushwatch.com. It seems that the foreign press covers more of the US's actions than US media does. Apparently two Frenchmen wrote a book called "Bin Laden: the Hidden Truth" that's well documented, and talks about the dealings the US had with Afghanistan and Al Queda and Enron leading up to the pre-emptive strike on the US. It's a best seller in Europe but isn't even available in the US. I countered with Noam Chomsky's "9-11" which probably contains the same types of information with less specifics and more of a general philosophical discourse and is selling fairly well in the US.
I guess it looks like Bush screwed up. I remember when he was running for presidency, my friend Beth, who lived in Austin at the time (the capital of Texas, which Bush was gov'ner of at the time), told me that Bush screwed up an apparently simple question. Someone asked him about his feelings towards a certain country, and he said "I just met with their Prime Minster so-and-so." Meanwhile the person he met with was from some other country, and the country in question doesn't even have a Prime Minister.
So Nicole goes on about how CNN had this picture of partying Afghanistan citizens with a sign that says "America: Think, why does the world hate you so much?" Trying to avoid a political conversation, and to let her know that I wasn't surprised, I said "You sound like me on September 12th." I sent out an e-mail in September some time (September was a month for mass e-mails) with links to an interview with Bin Laden, explaining that whoever it was that attacked the US probably had a good reason. Besides, no matter who attacked us, odds are the government just used it to advance some political agenda. Encroaching on our rights some more.
When the police installed sophisticated surveillance equipment in Washington Square Park, and was doing that sort of thing all over town, someone said "I'd be willing to give up 20% of my freedom for an 80% reduction in crime." It seems that that's the policy lately. The gov't seems intent on bringing us back to McCarthyism and legalizing programs like Carnivore (now Echelon).
Nicole was concerned that because she sent a check to some charity to help Afghanistan women and it never got cashed, and Bush apparently outlawed anti-US organizations and listed them as an anti-US organization that she might get arrested. I told her I'd get arrested long before she ever did. (After all, I post articles like this to my web site, donate money to WBAI (99.5 FM in New York), attend 2600 meetings, and watch movies about Kevin Mitnick. My Amazon.com wishlist has books by Noam Chomsky, on brainwashing, and Kubark the CIA counter-intelligence manual, released under the Freedom of Information act)
I dunno. These kinds of conversations are frustrating to me. I've been quietly left wing for a dozen or so years now, and to have other people discovering left wing propaganda and telling me about it is frustrating. In September, I assumed that September 11 was about some shitty US Foreign Policy, and didn't bother to investigate. Now because she's discovered the truth, I have to listen to her preach about it?
It's the same thing at work. This guy Anthony has been reading up on various conspiracy theories. Everything from Fluoride in the drinking water being about mind control to buying Machiavelli. At first it was cool, I told him about WBAI and loaned him a Noam Chomsky CD, but now I suspect I did him a disservice.
For a while I suffered from this sort of dichotomy. Working for a large financial corporation and being a musician, my own personal belief systems, my politics, etc. came into conflict. But I've made peace with that. See, I believe that nothing ever changes. There were no Good Ole Days, and things aren't any better anywhere else. Whenever people talk about things getting worse, I ask them "when were they better?" Typically they point to the 50's. A period when women were repressed, McCarthyism was beginning, the Korean War and Cold War were in full swing, etc. etc.
It's my belief that no other period in history was better or worse than this one. From slavery to wars to feudalism to raiding barbarians to plague to famine to industrialism, I can't see that any period of history was good for the people who lived in it. I tend to agree with Daniel Quinn (author of Ishmael) on this one. The agricultural revolution was the downfall of humanity. Until then nobody owned anything, we lived in the "lap of the gods" and ate whatever was readily available. As soon as we learned that we could control our destinies by growing our own food, we became territorial, we started warring with each other over land. Really, ever since then, mankind hasn't been happy.
I'm glad more people are getting a perspective other than the pentagon controlled mainstream media, and I understand that this is all just the pendulum swinging from one extreme to the other in their lives, but it's still annoying. I tried telling Nicole that I was aware of most of the things she was telling me, and she said "why aren't you doing anything about it?" I defensively said "I support the people who fight the fight" meaning donating money to WBAI, buying 2600 magazine, spreading the word about DeCSS and even sending e-mails about US Foreign Policy way back in mid to late September 2001.
Anthony too is convinced that somehow fighting the power is the way to go and that we have to educate ourselves. Personally, I think half the conspiracy theories out there are spread by the government to throw us off the scent. Things like Area 51, the X-Files, the Kennedy Assasination prevent the energies of conspiracy nuts from uncovering and spreading the word about Skull and Bones, the secret organization that President Bush allegedly belongs to, the truth about US foreign policy (as is readily available to anyone outside the US).
Maybe it's the fluoride in the water, but these things just don't seem that important to me. Things are fucked up, things have been fucked up, and things will remain fucked up. Noam Chomsky tells us that the Government exists so that citizens lobby the Gov't instead of attacking the Corporations. Look at the Microsoft Antitrust case - is anyone going to pursue it any further now? No. They put on a good show, and it placated the consumers. Daniel Quinn reminds us that we can't even see the walls of the cage, that's why any attempts to free yourself are bound to fail.
Just because you've recently discovered that we live in fucked up times, doesn't mean we didn't always live in fucked up times. You're just beginning to see through the caked on cover-up at what the beast really looks like. What I'm saying is don't mistake any person, or even government for the beast. The beast was unleashed thousands of years ago when we ate from the tree of knowledge and lost our innocence. As the Buddha teaches, the beast is your own perception, and you must free yourself from your perception in order to see clearly.
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page first created on Wednesday, February 27, 2002
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