Columnist Opeyemi Parham

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My Cultural Creative Visit to the World of Moderns

The movie that should have been the blockbuster for the month of
November didn’t even come close. Michael Moore’s “Capitalism—a Love
Story” was in competition with the totally distracting movie “2012.”
Let’s keep The Masses asleep to their own pain and suffering. Let’s
actually play on their deeper psychological desires and wishes.

I am outside that Modern culture of malls and materialism.  Here is
what I saw, in that horrible film.  Moderns watching that film might
not notice the intense manipulation of their emotions.  It is no
accident that the hero—John Cusack’s character-- represents everything
to which Moderns SHOULD be waking up.  He is a writer, who writes
well, yet whose books don’t sell. He neglected his family in a vain
attempt to live up to the dominator culture’s role of husband and Dad,
then was divorced by his frustrated wife. As the movie begins, he is
sinking, and sinking fast.  He is employed as a chauffeur for a big
nasty Fat Cat.This is exactly the type of viewer that should be over
at “Capitalism—a Love Story”, getting an education on plutocracy,
dead peasant’s insurance  and gotcha capitalism. The promise of stuff,
and the reality of debt, exposed. But we aren’t at the Michael Moore
film.  We are at the big Blockbuster Fantasy.

Enter the end of the world, as we know it.  Mr. Failure has an
opportunity to re-invent himself, shining through adverse situations
one after another, ordeal after ordeal after ordeal, winning the love
of each member of his family back along the way, and guiding them to
safely take their place in the New World Order.  That is the narcotic,
designed for unhappy middle class American men. Ignore your
creativity, continue to just stuff it down.  A better day will come
for you, lottery style.

Then we move onwards, to the manipulative message for middle class
women.  John Cusack’s wife is described as having dropped out of med
school to support her family, when her husband was trying to write.
Her character arc, as the world falls apart, is clearly written by a
man.  Ms. Former Pre Med is portrayed as a woman who doesn’t even get
up off of her ass to SEE what is going on as they are escaping, but
simply cowers in the corner, guarding her children. The plot
development and character arc on this one feeds on Modern women’s
CONFUSION about their roles in their families.  Many are finding
that—without a sufficient connection to a consciousness raising men’s
movement (similar to what happened for women in the 1970’s)—their men
are behaving like adolescent boys.  Here, the adolescent boy grows up;
he morphs into the man of her dreams (despite a pretty decent step-dad
to her children who has entered the picture, but is too “geeky” to
merit a place in the New World Order), The couple, reunited,  come out
of the ark into the sunlight together, Mr. Adam and Ms. Eve.

No Lillith, anywhere in the picture.

There is a homogenized version of the above scenario for us African
Americans, too.  We are represented, magic negro style, in the
characters who earn their place in the New World order. Yes, we take
meritocracy values forward, with us.  In this case, the man is smart.
And the woman is the daughter of the president.   No, I don’t consider
her title of “Doctor” (a PH.D in art history) a suggestion that she
has actually EARNED her spot; it is her status as the daughter of the
president and her drop dead gorgeousness that gets her a “yes” vote.

Dare I continue on to the manipulative psychological messages for
middle class Modern children? In a culture of broken families,
children viewing this movie are presented with the option every child
of divorce longs for; their biologic parents are reunited.

And, having been so blatant in seeding this “my family is gonna win
the lottery as the world ends”  this movie grinds it in, laughing in
our faces with a few other disturbing messages:

     The brilliant brown scientist from India, the one who discovered
the disaster that will take us all out, isn’t even picked up to take a
place on the ark with his family.  Oh well.

    A mysterious figure whose wealth is evident, but whose political
position is never fully explained (Oliver Platt’s character), is
always at the right hand of the president. When the political ship of
our democracy begins to go down, he places himself in charge AND STAYS
IN CHARGE.

     Fat Cats buy space in the arc at a billion euros a ticket. We are
manipulated into actually rooting for these scandalous plutocrats to
be successfully saved.

Why is all this of any importance? Because I pay attention when I am
feeling manipulated, emotionally.  I remember the comments after 9/11
that some folks made: “I felt like I was watching a movie”

PAY ATTENTION: forces out there want to shape Moderns’ reaction to a
real life catastrophe.  Post “2012: The Movie” don’t be surprised if
Modern Americans react to the next volley of severe weather as we
ratchet it up on global warming with something like: “What an
opportunity to get back together with my ex!”

--
                        Opeyemi  413-336-1291
“Be who you are, and say what you feel, because the people who mind
don't matter, and the people who matter don't mind"
Dr. Suess

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Columnist Daniel A. Brown

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Paranoia strikes deep

Violent words can lead to violent actions

We live in a bubble here in western Massachusetts. While citizens of Franklin County have been submerged in rain, tomato blight and the pros and cons of the proposed bio-mass plant, it seems as if the rest of the nation has gone stark, raving mad. Because we are lucky to reside in a part of the country where people are both educated and intelligent, you’d have to do some serious searching to find local citizens who would support the following actions and beliefs. Armed men intimidating politicians at town hall meetings. A sitting president verbally insulted as he speaks to Congress. Accusations that this same president is a Socialist, a Communist, a Nazi and a Fascist, an illegal alien, a Muslim and, not least of all, the Anti-Christ who will surrender the United States to the New World Order (remember that?).

All this over health care?

Obviously, none of this has anything to do with reforming the American health care system. That would be as nonsensical as an ocean of volcanic hatred generated by reworking your car insurance policy. What is happening now is what historically occurs during times of economic stress when too many people feel frightened and powerless to have any control over their own lives. It explains why the civilized, intelligent and industrious German people could turn into a nation of monsters during the years of the Third Reich. Adolph Hitler was nearly washed up until the Great Depression hit and he was able to ride the subsequent wave of anger and helplessness into power, designating scapegoats while appealing to a malignant form of patriotism. Were he alive today, he’d have his own radio talk show and a page on Facebook.

There is little logic on display here and (after finding out the hard way on the Internet); I’ve learned that there are few venues for rational discussion. Like brainwashed cultists, members of extreme political ideologies divide the world into Traitors and True Believers and facts are mostly an impediment to rants. What is frightening is that people like this are willing to hold contradictions as truths and believe things that a smart 5^th grader would laugh at. You know them by now: “Death Panels” to kill Granny; Obama brainwashing American schoolchildren to become Commies, Obama as Hitler (apparently the Nazis conquered Europe to implement the public option? Who knew?) etc. That this frenzy of lunacy and paranoia is being ignited and exploited by demagogues like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and lesser known radio screamers goes without saying.

And, yes, there is a racist component, carefully expressed in code, which is sparked by the reality of an African-American in the White House. It should not be surprising seeing that right-wing conservative ideology defended racial segregation fifty years ago and a century before that, defended slavery. But I will join my voice to fellow columnists, Gary Sanderson and Jim Culleny, in believing that it’s only a matter of time before a latter-day Timothy McVeigh comes out of the shadows and starts killing Americans in the name of anti-(liberal) government resentment. Beck, Limbaugh and company are having a grand time with all this and raking in the dough. But what they don’t seem to know (or care about) is that their crazy, irrational words are eventually going to lead to crazy, violent actions. They are reaping the whirlwind and might, too late, come to understand that their irresponsible divisiveness will have a negative effect on the country they supposedly love.

They would do well to take into account the example of Jean-Paul Marat, one of the most feared of the leaders of the French Revolution. Marat was not so much a political leader as a journalist at a time when print media was the Internet of its day in terms of its influence and effectiveness in reaching a wide audience. French revolutionary journalism was not only widespread but incendiary in ways that, by comparison, makes Beck and company sound like Grandma Moses. Their writers were out for blood, literally, and Marat’s newspaper, “The Friend of the People”, howled the loudest. And, in a viable warning to today’s hate mongers, they got their wish. Marat’s printed rantings, stoking the fear and paranoia of its contemporary citizenry, led to what was known as the September Massacres whereby mobs murdered thousands of men, women, and children being held in the Parisian prisons for no other crime than being the “Other”.

Marat justified his actions by declaring that he was expressing “The rage of the People”. Rush, Hanitty, Savage, and Beck could claim the same excuse. But Marat was no Joe the Plumber. He was a physician and scientific experimenter who spoke five languages and was once in the service of the royal family. His venom was fueled, not by political concerns, but more by the need for revenge for the years he felt ignored by the scientific establishment. Unable to gain acceptance by the status quo, he decided to turn against it with lethal consequences. One wonders how many of the inflammatory radio ranters are equally motivated by their own human weaknesses.

But what goes around come around. If you spew hatred and fear, those same energies will eventually come back to bite you (a process also known as the law of karma). Marat fell victim to his own passions by being stabbed to death by someone as nihilistically patriotic as himself. His vitriolic peers in the revolutionary news media met similar fates, often being condemned by their former supporters. I’m not wishing for violence to arrive at the doors of the current crop of rage exploiters. Instead, I am asking whether they are bringing out the best or the worst in the American people,

And, if the latter, why are they doing it?