Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All

Friday, August 10, 2007

Bill O'Reilly: Democracy = Blackmail

[via Media Matters]:
During the August 9 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly claimed: "[W]hat people don't understand is that these Internet bloggers give messages to these candidates: 'If you don't do what we tell you to do, we will trash you and try to interfere with your fundraising…. [I]t's a danger to have blackmailers, which is what these bloggers are, active in the political process."

Like Robert Novak's recent unadorned unapologetic public pining for a return to monarchy reminded us (as if we needed reminding), US Movement Conservatism is simply Old School Aristocratic hostility to democracy making its usual ugly idiotic mischief.

Again, when O'Reilly refers here to what "people don't understand" it is crucial to be clear that by "people" he doesn't mean the "people," as in "We the People" --- because, after all, the hundreds of thousands of progressive political "bloggers" are surely included among the "we" of the American people. No, O'Reilly clearly means by the "people" only those whom he thinks of as the "real people," the "people who count," the "proper people," according to O'Reilly's lights, "our kind" of people. And these are, it would seem, the very "people" who feel it is "a danger" when any people different from them talk back to established authorities, testify to their own experiences, voice their various concerns, call attention to the many problems that have been too neglected but which we might easily collectively have a go at addressing to the benefit of all if we would only try for once.

What O'Reilly means by "blackmail," flabbergastingly enough, is a government that is responsive to the demands and desires of the people whose government it is. What O'Reilly is decrying as "blackmail" is the very notion of democracy itself, the idea that people should have a say in the public decisions that affect them.

Let's be clear. For Bill O'Reilly, democracy is indistinguishable from blackmail. It's as simple as that.

What this means is that Bill O'Reilly hates democracy (ironically enough, it doesn't mean necessarily that Bill O'Reilly is above blackmail himself). This is not sloganeering or hyperbole but straightforward entailment.

O'Reilly would almost certainly deny his hatred of democracy. Perhaps he is even in denial about this hatred of democracy in his own heart. But there is no getting around the fact that the political blogosphere, progressive, conservative, utopian, critical, boisterous, vulgar, celebratory, angry, provocative, unpredictable, and all, is what democracy looks like (as the much loved march chant puts the point); and, therefore, to hate "the bloggers" (in general, since, of course one can easily admit that there will be particular posts and blogs that aren't expressions of democracy, no small number of which O'Reilly himself would likely approve of) is to hate actual democracy, to hate one of the ways in which democracy is actually and gorgeously being practiced and expressed in the world today.

1 comment:

jimf said...

> US Movement Conservatism is simply Old School Aristocratic
> hostility to democracy. . .
>
> [I]t is crucial to be clear that by "people"
> [Bill O'Reilly means]. . . the "real people," the
> "people who count," the "proper people," according to
> O'Reilly's lights, "our kind," the "people" who feel
> it is "a danger" when any people different from them
> talk back to established authorities. . .

Bit of a lout, bit of a bully-boy. . .

My own background is a bit different, of course. But privilege
carries responsibility! I am a loyal servant of Her Majesty,
trained in the spirit and tradition of service to the State.
Not that one necessarily holds a more common background in contempt,
of course. Though I daresay we started something when we began
letting fellows like that climb the greasy pole. . .

A must-watch:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/cinema/features/house_of_cards.shtml

Apropos George Lakoff, though, he (like Noam Chomsky before him)
seems to have strayed beyond the boundaries of cognitive psychology into
politics (carrying his cognitive linguistic framework with him).
I ran into _Whose Freedom? The Battle over America's Most Important
Idea_ in the bookstore a few months ago, and I should look for
it again (or one of Lakoff's previous political books).
http://www.amazon.com/Whose-Freedom-Battle-Americas-Important/dp/031242647X
It seems to be a rehash of a couple of earlier books -- _Don't Think of an
Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate -- The Essential Guide
for Progressives_
http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Think-Elephant-Debate-Progressives/dp/1931498717
and _Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think_
http://www.amazon.com/Moral-Politics-Liberals-Conservatives-Think/dp/0226467716

From the Amazon-excerpted _Washington Post_ review:

"The progressive and conservative definitions of freedom that Lakoff lays out
here are rooted directly in the categories he first discussed at length
in _Moral Politics_. Conservatives, he argues, believe in a "strict father"
morality in which the male parent has unquestioned authority over
dependent children, while liberals believe in the "nurturant parent" model,
in which a less hierarchical parental authority allows for more empathy,
more caring, fewer orders.

With regard to freedom, these two thought-habits lead their adherents toward
very different conclusions. To progressives, freedom means the expansion of
rights and opportunities; it includes not just freedom to do positive things
but freedom from certain negative aspects of life (want and fear, as
Franklin D. Roosevelt famously said in 1941).

Conservative freedom, in contrast, is dispensed by the father figure,
and it cannot survive without morality and order -- that is, immorality
and disorder threaten society so profoundly that freedom cannot be maintained
in the face of them. From the conservative point of view, writes Lakoff,
abortion and gay marriage 'represent threats to the very idea of a
strict father family -- and threats to their idea of freedom.'"

Looks entertaining, though I don't know if it's going to help
the Democrats win any elections.

Steven Pinker doesn't seem to think much of Lakoff's political
theorizing, according to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Lakoff

And oh goody, here's **another** linguist weighing in on political
discourse:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talking_Right
http://www.amazon.com/Talking-Right-Conservatives-Latte-Drinking-Volvo-Driving/dp/1586485091

"Playing with the hopes and dreams of a daughter, now gentle, now hard,
rebuking and rewarding, chastising and forgiving. The pleasures of a father.
Of a father of daughters. What greater power is there than that?
Why should a man want more? Why should I yearn to be everybody's daddy?"

-- Francis Urquhart ("FU" to his friends), in _House of Cards_
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098825/quotes