Summer Harvest

Ooh, how utterly titilating! A televised debate in which You– that’s right, You, Time Magazine’s Person of the Year– get to use Your YouTube to ask questions to HONEST TO GOODNESS POLITICIANS who are running for President of the United States! So 3,000 people submitted video questions to the popular site, which were summarily vetted and rejected or accepted by CNN and aired before Democratic candidates. Yes indeedy, folks! This here is 21st Century Popular Politics! It’s the Power of the Internets in All of Its Glory! Hooray for our country, where People Actually Get to Ask Questions of Other People! YEEEE-HAW!

What. An. Absolute. Farce.

Can I repeat that, but a little louder this time?

WHAT. AN. ABSOLUTE. FARCE.

From the article:

The debate kicked off with a series of questions from voters that moderator Anderson Cooper described as “not making the cut.”

They included a questioner dressed in a Viking outfit, a 5-year-old posing a question about Social Security and a man in a chicken costume.
————-
The video questions came in all forms — people facing the camera straight-on, people in makeup, people with flash cards. There were the two men from Tennessee and their “Red State Update” asking if the candidates were hurt by all the attention given non-runner Al Gore as well as a man who sang about how much tax he paid. And then there was the talking snowman with a question about global warming.

Hey, HOW’S THAT FEEL? Your dumbass video about a talking snowman got shown on CNN in a real life political debate! Way to step up the quality of political discourse in this country. KUDOS!

Equally disgusting were segments like this:

Interspersed with the questions and answers were videos the campaigns had produced themselves.

Edwards’ video took a swipe at Republicans, who had raised the issue of his spending $400 for haircuts, with a video that showed the haircuts of President Bush and embattled U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales morph into images from Iraq and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to the tune of the song “Hair” from the musical of the same name.

One of the highlights came when a YouTuber asked the candidates to look to their left and say one thing about that person they liked and one thing they disliked.

Edwards said he liked Clinton’s service to the country, as well as her husband’s. But Edwards looked at the salmon-colored jacket Clinton wore and said jokingly, “But I don’t know about that jacket.”

Way to go, Edwards. Reduce two of the most hideous and tragic disasters of this generation into a BIG FUCKING JOKE ABOUT HAIR. WAY TO RISE TO THE OCCASION (AND THE BAIT) YOU BIG FUCKING ASSHOLE! “Ooh, look at how hilarious I am! I can take a stupid attempt to belittle me by a bunch of jerk-offs and turn it into a vapid and disturbing ‘funny.’ Ha ha, those people all DIED!” Edwards, you Great Big FUCK, you’ve officially made the “hair” discussion a talking point once again, all the while illustrating how SIMPLE RESPECT AND DECENCY are ALIEN to POLITICIANS WANTING TO GET A LAUGH!

The Clincher, though, and the Whole Point behind the title of this post, is the following paragraph, hilariously illustrative of Everything Wrong with Politics (period/full stop):

Most observers agreed that none of the candidates debating at The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina, particularly outshone their rivals, doing nothing to challenge Sen. Hillary Clinton’s position as the Democratic race’s front-runner.

An average of 11 national polls taken in June put Clinton in the lead at 40 percent to Sen. Barack Obama’s 25 percent and 14 percent for former Sen. John Edwards. The rest of the field was in single digits.

So wait a second….

All of that work put in by all of those thousands of people who made videos…

All of that self-righteous hullaballoo over how this was Populism Writ Large for Our Modern Age…

All of that pablum about how this was a revolution in Citizen Journalism…

AND IT DIDN’T MAKE ONE GOD DAMNED DIFFERENCE! That TERRIBLE NIGHTMARE HILLARY CLINTON is STILL THE FRONT-RUNNER BY FAR!! Even though John Edwards got to make fun of her jacket, even though Kucinich got to remind us ONE MORE FREAKIN’ TIME that he didn’t vote for the War, even though Barack Obama got to underline his Connection to the Black Man, HILLARY IS STILL WAY AHEAD!

Really, this is not me being angry, this is me LAUGHING MY ASS OFF!

….okay, deep breath.

Folks, let’s take a step back for a moment and ask ourselves: what’s really going on here? What’s happening underneath the… oh, in the spirit of things, let’s call it the ‘toupee of stupiditude’ on display. In order for a “Democratic” Society to most effectively wield its propaganda, it needs to offer individuals the illusion of participation.

This is really ingenious, actually. The Political Industry (and yes, it’s an Industry in the truest sense of the term) realized during the last election that the Internet (”Netroots”) was becoming integrated into political dialogue. Political Industrialists were paying attention to DailyKos, Free Republic, et al, and how they altered (ever so slightly) the discourse in American (and world) politics. Bloggers and “web journalists” expected the Political Industry (and especially the Media) to shiver and quake in fear at the Power of the People!

Instead, the opposite happened. Just as those who fight the Empire are doomed to become the Empire (vide the aforementioned DailyKos, etc.), so the Empire knows that the best way to undermine the Underground is to purchase it. So, Google buys YouTube, CNN solicits questions from YouTube users, average Joe Citizens think “hey, that’s that site where those dudes blew up a coke bottle with mentos– it’s Populist!” and tune in to watch Democratic Candidates say the same goddamned things they always say.

Cui bono? Think of it this way: anyone who bothered to submit questions likely already knew the answers their candidate would deliver; it’s all a big performance. It would have been more honest (and more interesting!) if the question solicited had been the candidates’ favorite line from Hamlet. The politicians, in a way, benefited greatly from this, because although debate questions are usually vapid and useless, they’re also usually asked by people who know what they’re talking about. Instead, they got to deal with no-brainers posed by clods dressed like vikings and talking snowmen.

The questioners certainly didn’t benefit from the debate; it was all choir-preaching, and they wasted good time and bandwidth in order for a chance to be on TV that they might not otherwise have had. Meanwhile, their questions did absolutely no good. Pro-Hillary Clintonistas got to bolster their already strong opinions that she should win, and anti-Hillary Clintonistas had absolutely no effect on national discourse since she ostensibly “won.”

The viewers didn’t benefit from the debate, any more than they’d benefit from having tuned in an episode of “Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?” “Er, hyuk hyuk, do you agree that global warming is bad?” CNN’s showcase of the “worst” submissions was such an obvious derivative of shows like American Idol and America’s Got Talent, where the “worst” entries are always given a segment for a larf, underlines that this was simple entertainment, nothing more or less. “Hey, who cares about those poor Iraqi kids who are dying, or the fact that my aunt can’t afford to have her tumor removed? Check out this guy dressed like a Viking! LAUGH as John Edwards makes fun of Hillary’s jacket!”

So who benefitted? I’ll tell you who: the fucking ARCHONS, that’s who! They’ve successfully realized that the Internet, far from being some grassroots threat, is an AMAZING tool they can use to convince the average person that he or she actually has some influence in political discourse. Far from being the new modus for the modern pamphleteer, it’s become the testing ground for every single act of propaganda the Archons and their lackeys in the Political Industry want to throw at us.

“Hey, I sent a video question to YouTube that got shown on CNN and answered by Barack Obama! I influenced American politics! What a great country!” Yeah, go on believing that allll you want. Keep on believing your vote counts, that your opinion on anything other than which celebrity does the best foxtrot actually matters. Keep thinking that any one of these seven assholes who paraded up and down on CNN last night actually gives two shits about you, will somehow actually improve on society instead of turning it into a slightly different version of the same goddammed thing. The same goes for Republicans, Green Party Members, even the Libertarians (and before you start in on that duplicitous tool Ron Paul, you might want to consider that whole “sheer insanity and possible racism” thing he’s so fond of).

Folks, if you want to be an effective activist, you cannot do it in the Archons’ kitchen. As soon as you agree to their terms, even if it seems like you’re getting a great deal, you’ve lost. You, Person of the Year, Do Not Control Your Government. Your Government Controls You.

Unless, of course, you’re able to take your stand, and become Transparent to the Cosmic.