Overton Window: Chapter 3-4
Aug. 19th, 2010 02:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyChapter 3
This chapter abruptly shifts gears with a painful screech and some sort of report on the growing threat of right-wing terrorism. I suspect this is the only bit of accurate information in the book. Anarchist readers may be amused to know that Earth First!, Earth Liberation Front, green anarchists, and “seed-bankers” all get a mention, right along with Nazis and teabaggers. Apparently the point of the report is to make torturing these guys palatable to the American public, or something. I don’t think you really need to enlist the services of a PR firm to make torturing far-right douchebags palatable to the American public. Just think of how many times I watched that video of Christopher Hitchens getting waterboarded, and he’s not nearly as bad as a teabagger.
(What am I going to do without Christopher Hitchens to kick around anymore? I am genuinely sad that he’s dying.)
The report belongs to Arthur Gardner’s—Noah’s dad—newest client, a fellow named Purcell who’s a rising star in the Department of Homeland Security, and presumably also the employer of the sniper I was rooting for in the prologue. The report was leaked, Noah somehow made the Illinois National Guard the fall guys, but Arthur is still pissy. He monologues about some shit that happened in 1989, and it is boring. Then there’s some stuff about bottled water, which is also boring. He then starts talking about the 2004 tsunami (he was on vacation in Sri Lanka. Okaaaaay) and how it’s just like the Wall St. bailouts. I have no idea if Arthur is supposed to be a boring old man who babbles about things no one cares about—the description seems like he’s supposed to be tough, austere, and sharp rather than doddering—but if the intention is to make him seem vaguely senile, Beck is doing a swell job. Perhaps he is trying to establish Noah as an unreliable narrator, viewing his father as stern and regal while the old man is, in reality, crapping into his Depends.
Nah. I think it’s just shoddy writing. He also comes across as an insensitive ass with lines like: “My holiday was cut short, and two hundred and fifty thousand people in the region lost their lives.” I think he’s supposed to be the main villain of the story, though, so I guess it’s okay.
Blah blah blah economic crisis, apparently illustrated with Venn diagrams and such. I am not sure how you can illustrate the current economic crisis with Venn diagrams.
Okay, not really that hard.
Essentially, Arthur tells the government guys that they created the economic crisis and will be blamed for it. For whatever reason, they are shocked—SHOCKED!—by this statement, and breathlessly ask him what to do.
The answer is pretty much what you’d expect from the prologue: Create a crisis, then be the people there to pick up the pieces when it’s time to rebuild. You know, kind of like what Mike Harris tried to do with Ontario’s education system. The funny thing is that while Arthur claims mostly leftish influences for his plan (“Woodrow Wilson, Julian Huxley, Walter Lippmann, Cloward and Piven, Bernays and Ivy, Saul Alinsky.”), this is really the doctrine of neoliberalism and neoconservatism, as described in Naomi Klein’s Disaster Capitalism. The intellectual predecessors whom Arthur names were all proponents of incremental social progress rather than violent revolution. It’s an interesting rhetorical technique, to say the least, reminiscent of the classic “I’m rubber, you’re glue” argumentative strategy that prevailed in second grade.
Arthur’s final monologue for the chapter is just as politically convoluted:
Contemplate, if you will, the confusing and contradictory politics of Glenn Beck. Here, we have the Big Bad laying bare his Evil Plan for Global Domination. He discounts communism as a failed experiment. He embraces an extreme sort of capitalism—perhaps even Objectivism. This is Bad. We know it is Bad because the Bad Guy says it. But it is also the elitist ideology advocated by the teabaggers. Take the American health care debate, for example—the issue that really gets Beck and his supporters going. Survival itself is reserved for the economically fit, and everyone else can just die.
Then it gets worse:
THAT IS A WOBBLY SAYING, GLENN BECK. YOU CANNOT HAS.
Where I think he’s going with this: You know how neo-Nazis believe that Jews are somehow responsible for both communism and capitalism? I asked a neo-Nazi about this once. He told me that Jews believe in capitalism for themselves, and communism for everyone else, which I thought was a very interesting theory. This almost rates as a conspiracy theory. I’ll give it a .5 because he doesn’t explicitly come out and say it’s the Jews, though if you pay close enough attention to the far right, the dog whistle can be faintly heard.
Chapter 4
In this chapter, Noah is sent out of the room to make a bunch of phone calls and invite people to some sort of top-secret meeting. There are no names attached to the phone numbers, and half the people he calls are using scramblers or “some sort of voice-alteration gizmo” so I imagine some awkwardness ensued.
*ring ring ring*
Anonymous: Hello?
Noah: Hello, is [mumblemumble] there?
Anonymous: I’m sorry, could you speak up?
Noah: I’d like to speak to *COUGH*.
Anonymous: Is this a telemarketer?
He catches one name, and it’s a guy who is the most likely nominee for the next U.S. Treasury secretary and the current president of the New York branch of the Federal Reserve. We don’t get to hear the name but I’m assuming it ends in –berg.
Then Noah burns the paper with the numbers on it, as instructed. Because PR firms don’t own shredders.
Conspiracy count: 2.5
This chapter abruptly shifts gears with a painful screech and some sort of report on the growing threat of right-wing terrorism. I suspect this is the only bit of accurate information in the book. Anarchist readers may be amused to know that Earth First!, Earth Liberation Front, green anarchists, and “seed-bankers” all get a mention, right along with Nazis and teabaggers. Apparently the point of the report is to make torturing these guys palatable to the American public, or something. I don’t think you really need to enlist the services of a PR firm to make torturing far-right douchebags palatable to the American public. Just think of how many times I watched that video of Christopher Hitchens getting waterboarded, and he’s not nearly as bad as a teabagger.
(What am I going to do without Christopher Hitchens to kick around anymore? I am genuinely sad that he’s dying.)
The report belongs to Arthur Gardner’s—Noah’s dad—newest client, a fellow named Purcell who’s a rising star in the Department of Homeland Security, and presumably also the employer of the sniper I was rooting for in the prologue. The report was leaked, Noah somehow made the Illinois National Guard the fall guys, but Arthur is still pissy. He monologues about some shit that happened in 1989, and it is boring. Then there’s some stuff about bottled water, which is also boring. He then starts talking about the 2004 tsunami (he was on vacation in Sri Lanka. Okaaaaay) and how it’s just like the Wall St. bailouts. I have no idea if Arthur is supposed to be a boring old man who babbles about things no one cares about—the description seems like he’s supposed to be tough, austere, and sharp rather than doddering—but if the intention is to make him seem vaguely senile, Beck is doing a swell job. Perhaps he is trying to establish Noah as an unreliable narrator, viewing his father as stern and regal while the old man is, in reality, crapping into his Depends.
Nah. I think it’s just shoddy writing. He also comes across as an insensitive ass with lines like: “My holiday was cut short, and two hundred and fifty thousand people in the region lost their lives.” I think he’s supposed to be the main villain of the story, though, so I guess it’s okay.
Blah blah blah economic crisis, apparently illustrated with Venn diagrams and such. I am not sure how you can illustrate the current economic crisis with Venn diagrams.
Okay, not really that hard.
Essentially, Arthur tells the government guys that they created the economic crisis and will be blamed for it. For whatever reason, they are shocked—SHOCKED!—by this statement, and breathlessly ask him what to do.
The answer is pretty much what you’d expect from the prologue: Create a crisis, then be the people there to pick up the pieces when it’s time to rebuild. You know, kind of like what Mike Harris tried to do with Ontario’s education system. The funny thing is that while Arthur claims mostly leftish influences for his plan (“Woodrow Wilson, Julian Huxley, Walter Lippmann, Cloward and Piven, Bernays and Ivy, Saul Alinsky.”), this is really the doctrine of neoliberalism and neoconservatism, as described in Naomi Klein’s Disaster Capitalism. The intellectual predecessors whom Arthur names were all proponents of incremental social progress rather than violent revolution. It’s an interesting rhetorical technique, to say the least, reminiscent of the classic “I’m rubber, you’re glue” argumentative strategy that prevailed in second grade.
Arthur’s final monologue for the chapter is just as politically convoluted:
We stand at a crossroads; the civilized world stands at a crossroads. Down one path all men are created equal: equal in poverty, equal in ignorance, equal in misery. Down the other is the realization of the brightest hopes of mankind. But not for all men; that was a brief experiment, tried and failed. Abundance, peace, prosperity, survival itself—these coveted things are reserved for the fittest, the deserving, the most courageous of us, the wisest. The visionaries.
Contemplate, if you will, the confusing and contradictory politics of Glenn Beck. Here, we have the Big Bad laying bare his Evil Plan for Global Domination. He discounts communism as a failed experiment. He embraces an extreme sort of capitalism—perhaps even Objectivism. This is Bad. We know it is Bad because the Bad Guy says it. But it is also the elitist ideology advocated by the teabaggers. Take the American health care debate, for example—the issue that really gets Beck and his supporters going. Survival itself is reserved for the economically fit, and everyone else can just die.
Then it gets worse:
“Now,” Arthur Gardner said, his voice just above a whisper, “while the tide is in our favor—come with me. You can still save yourselves, and in so doing, you can help us build a whole new world upon the ashes of the old.”
THAT IS A WOBBLY SAYING, GLENN BECK. YOU CANNOT HAS.
Where I think he’s going with this: You know how neo-Nazis believe that Jews are somehow responsible for both communism and capitalism? I asked a neo-Nazi about this once. He told me that Jews believe in capitalism for themselves, and communism for everyone else, which I thought was a very interesting theory. This almost rates as a conspiracy theory. I’ll give it a .5 because he doesn’t explicitly come out and say it’s the Jews, though if you pay close enough attention to the far right, the dog whistle can be faintly heard.
Chapter 4
In this chapter, Noah is sent out of the room to make a bunch of phone calls and invite people to some sort of top-secret meeting. There are no names attached to the phone numbers, and half the people he calls are using scramblers or “some sort of voice-alteration gizmo” so I imagine some awkwardness ensued.
*ring ring ring*
Anonymous: Hello?
Noah: Hello, is [mumblemumble] there?
Anonymous: I’m sorry, could you speak up?
Noah: I’d like to speak to *COUGH*.
Anonymous: Is this a telemarketer?
He catches one name, and it’s a guy who is the most likely nominee for the next U.S. Treasury secretary and the current president of the New York branch of the Federal Reserve. We don’t get to hear the name but I’m assuming it ends in –berg.
Then Noah burns the paper with the numbers on it, as instructed. Because PR firms don’t own shredders.
Conspiracy count: 2.5
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-08-19 07:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-19 07:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-19 10:31 pm (UTC)I thought money was just made up by people in the air and on wires, or these days in wireless air, and that it was all based on who says what will happen and people betting on it and imaginary money appearing and disappearing thus. So it couldn't possibly be possible to spend it all as it isn't a tangible lump in the first place.
It is all so confusing. And I'm sure I'm not stupid.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-20 12:16 am (UTC)Correct.
It's the greatest punchline in history.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-20 10:01 am (UTC)It is all so confusing when people talk as if money was made of trees or something, rather than air.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-20 01:00 pm (UTC)Sorry, I cannot get myself into the right mental space to go and argue about this with anyone, but since most governments seem to run on debt and be in constant massive deficit I don't see how that would be an argument anyway. Plus obviously, how about not spending money on new nuclear weapons etc etc blah blah.
But no. Since banks are no longer required to hold anything of actual value to back up the numbers in their computers, I can't see how it's possible to spend it all either.
Okay, no doubt it's more complicated than that in some obscure way, but I think no one actually understands how economics really works today. Including me, but me less than people who think the money is actually real money sitting somewhere being real.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-19 07:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-20 12:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-19 07:21 pm (UTC)Again?!
Aren't there any new scapegoats?
It's because we're all rich, isn't it? (I'm afraid to look at my overdraft).
no subject
Date: 2010-08-20 12:17 am (UTC)I suspect the Muslims will be a bit to blame because it's Beck.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-19 08:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-20 12:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-20 12:20 am (UTC)http://pdfcast.org/download/the-overton-window-by-glenn-beck.pdf
no subject
Date: 2010-08-19 09:47 pm (UTC)You're actually READING this?!?!
Look, if you were looking to go all sado, you could've joined a leather club or something.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-20 12:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-19 10:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-20 12:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-19 10:28 pm (UTC)Completely different language.
But it's ok - I don't really want to know.
Aren't seed bankers nice people who collect seeds and put them in Norway underground so that after the world ends we will still have seeds to grow food?
Aren't I a green anarchist?
I didn't know Christopher Hitchens was dying. I didn't know he was right-wing, just that he doesn't like God much.
I am going to have a bath.
Night night!
no subject
Date: 2010-08-20 12:22 am (UTC)Christopher Hitchens used to be a liberal and then 9/11 happened and he got pro-war and pro-torture. And then he got less pro-torture after he agreed to be tortured on camera. Anyway, he's dying of cancer and I am upset about it. Generally I'm all "good riddance" when pro-war, pro-torture people die, but he has given me years of entertainment and I find him interesting in addition to being wrong.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-20 05:19 am (UTC)