Views » June 27, 2008 » Web Only

This Summer’s Trilogy of Truth

By David Sirota

The future of the media is cloudy. In this brave new world of YouTube, Facebook and 400 cable channels, book publishers are fretting about obsolescence. But books have survived radio and television for the same reason they will survive the Internet. Human life is simply too complex to be represented by a news spot or a blog post — and three new tomes demonstrate how books will always be the necessary instruments for deeper analysis. They are a trilogy of truth in this era of misinformation.

The media coverage of the presidential primary has vacillated between racism, over-hyped controversies and fluff reporting. If all you knew of Barack Obama was what daily television reported, you would know only that because he’s black and doesn’t wear a flag pin, he is supposedly a radical America-hater, but because he’s black and likes shooting hoops, he’s supposedly a fantastic basketball player. Left largely ignored is John McCain — that is, until you read Cliff Schecter’s The Real McCain.

Though Schecter wields a partisan axe, the facts in his handy paperback speak for themselves — facts like McCain flip-flopping on the very campaign finance issues that have gotten him billing as a “straight-talking” reformer. During this crisis moment for journalism, The Real McCain dares to do some old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting about the Republican presidential nominee.

Of course, to win the White House, the candidates are campaigning as agents of consensus — “uniters, not dividers,” as polarizer-in-chief George W. Bush once said. But as much as that pabulum has dominated the presidential debate, it glosses over a little-explored phenomenon that Bill Bishop uncovers in The Big Sort. The veteran journalist documents how Americans are segregating themselves not only by race, class and religion — but also by political ideology.

The Big Sort cites a wide array of data to prove this reality — the most compelling being election results. During the closely fought 1976 election, about a quarter of Americans lived in landslide counties (i.e. those that voted for a candidate by more than 20 percentage points). By the 2004 election, about half the country lived in such counties.

This “clustering of like-minded America,” as Bishop calls it, explains why Republicans and Democrats feel so foreign to each other. Such alienation has bred more partisanship among voters, which is then reinforced by campaign tactics focusing not on unifying themes, but on mobilizing the parties’ bases. Worst of all, the Big Sort reflects how party and political ideology has become a big factor in Americans’ self-image and lifestyle choices — a cultural shift that could impede efforts to unify the country around issues. That’s a tragedy considering the possibilities of consensus and coalition-building around globalization.

According to polls, Americans of all political stripes oppose our country’s job-killing, environment-destroying “free” trade policies. The media perpetuate these policies by depicting this opposition as unsophisticated and uninformed about economic history. But Ha-Joon Chang’s new book, Bad Samaritans, proves who the Luddites and know-nothings really are.

Tracing centuries of economic policies, the Cambridge University economist shows that today’s industrialized countries did not build up their economies through “free” trade. They did so through strategic tariffs that incubated and preserved crucial industries. Chang says that far from an enlightened policy championed by altruistic good Samaritans, “free” trade is being used as a weapon by the rich against everyone else.

At some point after reading this column, you will inevitably get annoyed at whatever drivel is being presented as the day’s “breaking news.” But instead of tuning out completely, go pick up one of these books. Much of the media may be a “vast wasteland,” as Federal Communications Commission Chairman Newton Minow once said. But that just means you have to bypass the wasteland to find the real story.

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• Reader Comments

  Granted, the new media are not enough. Not if you really want to know what’s going on.

  What we really need is an awareness of history — recent and the past century will do for a start.

  The “clustering of like-minded America” is actually what Republicans and Democrats have as common ground. Any perception of the opposite is merely Kabuki being played out for the 6 o’clock news and other popular public propaganda sources.

  Eisenhower’s warning to be wary of the “military/industrial complex” should be revised to The Corporate/Congressional Complex.

  Free Trade, Free Enterprise, should be recognized as the same as Free Lunch — which Milton Friedman correctly pointed out there is “no such thing as”. The recent massive government intervention in the financial market rescue (the mortgage fraud) removes all pretense of “FREE” from intervention when not beneficial to Wall Street.

  Job protection is billed as a no-no. Tariffs to protect our companies are verbotten. Even inspection of imported food, medicine and toys is only a wink and passed through. Homeland Security is a joke and for a quick buck we’ll sell bridges, tollways — Hey, Buddy, what will you give us for the Statue of Liberty?

  For a historical precedent compare today’s US corporate influence with the 1930s support of Adolf Hitler’s rise to power by Germany’s major industrial leaders.

  “What’s good for Krupp is good for Germany,” is now the pattern for NAFTA, CAFTA, WTO and all the other pro-Globalization support groups and their techniques — down-sizing, right-sizing, off-shoring, and wage-lowering by digital out-sourcing.

  If you’re looking for truth — look to your own financial health prognosis.

  It is now nearly impossible for a family to live on one member’s income. Spendable income has been falling for three decades. Each year more citizens cannot afford health care. AND, while the hedge fund managers pay 15% income tax, the costs of Social Security and Medicare payroll deductions continue to eat into our middle class.

  We have:

  A Falling dollar — to pay off massive indebtedness at taxpayer’s expense

  Soaring inflation — 4.2% is a derivative of Hitler’s Big Lie technique (along with the CPI and unemployment fiction)

  Continuous Congressional investigations and studies rather than effective oversight and solutions. Anything to stall and avoid action. Each party can blame the other. How convenient.

  Congress should have pay and benefits equal to their constituents.

  Whoever moves into the White House matters little to the oligarchy’s army of lobbyists. They will continue to draw their salaries and bonuses (and in many cases their congressional pensions).

  Posted by whattheheck on Jun 28, 2008 at 4:14 PM

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