I have a problem with party politics and the falsity of this whole left-right R-D business. I don't like Olbermann's direction of his statement.
Yes, this was the unspoken acknowledgment in the room: that Olbermann was targeting O'Reilly, Palin, Beck, etc while also taking some share in the blame to misdirect that obvious dig. I get you here, and I'm sure it wasn't lost on most Americans either.
I was trying to bring attention to his message - in a bubble, free from the associations he already has.
He is implying that the killer's behavior stems from political rhetoric. To my mind, this is further empowering the false paradigm in which people seem to be stuck. That makes statements like these more polarizing than you think.
I still believe he's speaking in broader terms, as though it weren't specifcally the behaviour of the killer or specifically the politicians to be paid attention to, but rather the large inertial movements of classes to which politicians and the likes of the killer belong to.
What he's trying to say is being said through a collectivist filter, and that is what ruins it.
Because it betrays what he's saying, since it's pointed toward those I first mentioned, and not genuinely at
everyone? Or because he's attempting to draw in the responsibility of everyone, without recognizing an actual culprit? (I'm leaning towards the latter.)
Parties only exist for one reason: to win elections.
Funny - that rings truer of our own parliamentary arrangement where we don't actually elect our leaders,
the parties do.
Mass media and campaigning are designed to captivate individuals. It isn't within reason to expect that they tone down. Instead, individuals must divert their attention away from their grasp and back towards their own humanity.
I believe this to be dismissive of the forces at work in America, though not in itself untrue. The social hegemony of your news stations, which battle each other and obsess over reductivist political ideologies, are undeniable formers of American social standards and belief.
The problem that American news has created, is that it's
entertaining. This is problematic because it carves out a psychology of appeal, one that's committed to avoiding risk through innovation. It's much easierand saferto be critical than to make yourself vulnerable through innovation. The presenters are all headstrong, charming, confident individuals who are dazzlingly eloquent in the ideas they put forth and criticize. More often than not, though, they're prone to sensationalism, and to focusing on the how, the who, the where, and the why, but very little of the
what that exactly constitutes most government ideas or policies and how the ideas may actually affect America.
Of note is my general experience with Americans (those members of the broader population, less informed by history and international affairs than by US news stations), who tend to err either conservatively or liberally on more personal social issues, but generally descend to clichéd pocket-picked ideas on economics and social management & leadership, reflecting the simple principles regurgitated ad nauseum by the press and elite. When pressed on details, however, you would be surprised how much people differ in principle and what they didn't even realise they stood for - because discussion of politics is practically taboo in such a country where it's seen as a personal attack on someone else's liberty to confront the validity of their belief systems. (The unexamined life is not worth living, after all.)
The greatest difference I find between the two media cultures is how undeniably boring Canadian and British opinion-pieces & news feels after watching O'Reilly, Coulter, Maddow, or Olbermann glitter on screen.
Despite that, I find the ideas - the hypotheses and innovations of leadership theory - coming from UK & Canada to be much more inviting of discussion and avant garde (though we're certainly not free from all the political in-fighting, bickering, and squabbling.) America's pop-political discourse is so painfully stagnant, simplified, and archaic, though, that one feels cave-manish simply entertaining the ideas.
I don't believe the situation is particularly innate to your country - just look at FDR - but I feel that the culture of Washington and those who aspire to it has probably grown to become so self-interested that it can't help but act and react in increasingly reflexive, damaging, protective fashions, which rest on the manipulation of fallacious exploitations of America's constituents, making it virtually inevitable that this sort of uncompromisingly polarised psyche has arisen.
I think that if Americans are going to start holding themselves accountable to their own humanity, examples will have to be set that aren't formed in the offices of a PR firm. Examples are going to have to be set that don't expect some kind of adulation or reward for that showing of 'humanity'; in short, genuine human beings who are concerned for their community - and not the "community" that's so often bandied about by US neocons. A cursory glance at the well-stocked industry of city mayors you retain will reveal this sort of human character in office still exists, though seems to
evaporate at the state level.
The nature of this assassination attempt is, I think, a simple manifestation. People often react this way in cultures of extreme ideological tension, there is a degree of predictability of this sort of thing. No doubt the people who've been rejected in their applications to the armed forces feel the need to lash out - who wouldn't feel burned by their country as they're denied by it when they're so frequently guilted into fighting for it or supporting those who do? It's practically textbook, though I'd never go as far as to describe the situation as unremarkable or expected. He seems to me a sort of Travis Bickle character, which, while an outlier, is still certainly an existent class of citizen that shouldn't be ignored.
Anyway, my cat just threw up and I forgot how I was going to conclude this thing when I got back; I may finish my piece if it comes to me, or if other considerations come to the fore.
-G.
Tragedy really brings out the best of America doesn't it?
I'd really like foreigners to know that we aren't all crackpots in America...I promise!
No, but you still have to live with them all.
)
