Djelloul Marbrook

In a Manichean society like ours it’s perhaps inevitable that we would pay more attention to the tone and demeanor of language than its content. This being so, we would seem doomed to be jerked around instead of enlightened.

I think this may account for the popularity of hate radio and television—that cheap sop chucked at us by irresponsible media bosses instead of financing real

Poster, Triumph of the Will

journalism. There is a great deal of random, loose anger in the land because we know our taxes aren’t giving us good government while lobbyists’ money is buying vested interests exactly what they want.

So anyone who seems as certain about things as the hate radio and TV hosts and political ideologues stokes our anger, while people who try to shed light on matters strike us as wishy-washy. In such a black-and -white environment choices always seem stark, and belligerence wins out over common sense and thoughtfulness.

What we remember about George W. Bush and what Dick Cheney reminds us of is that they seemed certain about everything, and the more truculent they sounded the better we liked it. We listened to the tone and demeanor of their words, not their content or context. We listened to them as Iranians listen to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as Germans once listened to Adolph Hitler. Did they sound good! To be reminded, watch Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will; you’d think Hitler was a sweetheart.

We are perhaps peculiarly susceptible to Manicheanism—seeing all life as a struggle between the forces of good and evil—because of our Puritan roots. But we have other roots, not least our Native American roots and those of our millions of immigrants. So we should be as wary of Manichean thinking as we should be of conducting our affairs as if our heritage were exclusively Northern European. And we should be as wary of the prophet Manes as the god Mammon, but instead we have embraced both while at the same time subscribing to platitudes about values.

Words do not convey meanings alone. They’re freighted with emotion. When we find our politicians making war on everything—drugs, terrorists, crime, etc—we should suspect they have chosen jerk-the-dummies-around words, simple-minded words that prey on our fears and our prejudices—lynch-mob words instead of making-a-case-to-the-jury words.

If we are going to entertain the notion that filmmakers are responsible for not encouraging violence we should at least be willing to entertain the notion that Big Media should take care not to incite prejudice and encourage ignorance. And that raises indispensable questions about capitalism itself. Is it free to cheat us, to wrest usurious interest rates and fees from us, to lend money under predatory terms, to lie to shareholders, to swindle investors?

And if capitalism is not free to pick our pockets and devastate the economy for the benefit of the few, who says so, and who is supposed to do something about it? Not the government, say conservatives, because that would be socialism. Whoo-hoo! Then who? Self-regulating crooks? Yeah, that works. We have a large and growing predator class and a shrinking middle class, and we need to examine every cause for this, a task Big Media is not up to. Whenever we think about the disappearing middle class we should consider that what has replaced it is a growing predator class.

Hate radio and TV is inextricable from these larger questions, because it’s an aspect of a corporate America that refuses to take responsibility for sustaining the kind of moderate, equable cultural environment in which democracy may thrive. Instead it is creating and feeding a hotted-up media environment that pretends to entertain and enlighten us but actually inflames and sickens us—the prerequisite for authoritarian government and strongmen.

When we listen to the cocksure talk show hosts we should picture Benito Mussolini strutting on his balcony, adoring masses tirelessly saluting Der Fuhrer, and we should remember how easy it was for them to come to power—they seized the media—and what happened afterward.—DM