Entertainted

Madame M:

You bring in stark focus how passive we are about, and sometimes even willing embracers of, the surveillance state. Everybody watches everybody, but not to uplift them or even to check their ethics, but merely to be entertained. How oracle-like Postman, who wrote his book before the era of the World Wide Web, seems to all this.

Yes, this Cult of Distraction is sobering to those who still resist it. You point out the example of the woman and her husband on the Springer show, yet there is a possibility that they may not be merely dupes, but as Hedges intimates repeatedly, so desirous of participation in the celebrity culture that they will do literally anything for their 15 minutes of fame. As for the compassionless, discern-less cheerleader with the mocking smile, alas, Madame, I have seen that many times in many otherwise attractive women. Your phrase “as if beauty earns her the right to be cruel,” recalled many unpleasant memories. Those women may be the bitch now, but karma will be the bitch eventually, maybe even after this life.

Hedges does a pinpoint job of conveying how this celebrity-spectacle (and, as you’ve put it, abrasive) culture promotes the view that an improved appearance will not only solve all relationship and self-esteem troubles, but may even be more important than employment, money, etc. “Only a life with status, physical attributes, and affluences is worth pursuing. The American oligarchy, 1 percent of whom control more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined, are the characters we envy and watch on television…and told that if we want it badly enough…we too can have everything. We are left, when we cannot adopt these impossible lifestyles as our own, with feelings of inferiority and worthlessness. We have failed where others have succeeded.” (26) This is how, as Thomas Frank alludes in his book “What’s The Matter With Kansas?”, we can see legions okaying tax relief for billionaires. After all, those people reason, those billionaires should pay less tax and not be “punished,” because we ourselves could become like them!

And the illusion is never far. Hedges: “The flamboyant lives of celebrities and the outrageous characters on television, movies, professional wrestling, and sensational talk shows are peddled to us, promising to fill up the emptiness in our own lives.” (27) And even beyond that, “faith in ourselves, in a world of make-believe, is more important than reality. Reality, in fact, is dismissed and shunned as an impediment to success, a form of negativity. Those who question, those who doubt, those who are critical, those who are able to confront reality and who grasp the hollowness of celebrity culture are shunned and condemned for their pessimism.” (27)

What does this mean for we American human beings? Hedges says we become a commodity, used up and replaced. “The juxtaposition of the impossible illusions inspired by celebrity culture and our ‘insignificant’ individual achievements, however, eventually leads to frustration, anger, insecurity, and invalidation. It results, ironically, in a self-perpetuating cycle that drives the frustrated, alienated individual with even greater desperation and hunger away from reality, back toward the empty promises of those who seduce us, who tell us what we want to hear. We beg for more. We ingest those lies until our money runs out. And when we fall into despair, we medicate ourselves, as if the happiness we have failed to find in the hollow game is our deficiency. And, of course, we are told it is.” (29)

People look around and see “everyone,” including the entertainment media that passes for news reporting, talking about celebrities, athletes, politicians, etc., and their dramas (often manufactured) and personal lives, and yet find too few who care about genuinely important things that affect the nation, the society, and the world. To modify a well-known phrase, it may be no measure of realism to be realistic inside a culture of omni-present illusions and delusions.

One reader of Hedges had this insight: “To the list of illusions that Mr. Hedges provides, I'd like to add one more: the illusion of inclusion. This is the illusion that we all have whereby we believe that we will be included among the fortunate few because misfortune happens only to those who deserve it. There are plenty of people who understand that the corporate model is one in which there are squeezers and those who are to be squeezed. This model requires a plantation economy morality that exalts the insiders and denigrates the outsiders. Those content with this arrangement obviously view themselves as insiders even when they work for companies that are actively shedding employees. Many of these people are happy to be making good money for digging shallow graves, never stopping to wonder if maybe someday one of those graves might be their own.”

Our “empire of illusion,” slips its velvet noose around our consciousness and our consciences, and dilutes our wills along with our focus. And so we ignore signs of impending disaster, apparently trusting in some unseen force to make it all right, or at least to make it all work out somehow, as if arrogantly believing that God will protect this place regardless of the actions or inactions of its inhabitants. The planet degrades, global capitalism brings not blessings but hardships and cruelty to many, we remain addicted to declining fossil fuels (a measure of insanity in every way), the near-collapse of financial markets via casino capitalism is followed by no true reform and so full collapse always looms as a possibility, and the dangers and connections of overpopulation almost never intrude on our delusive and illusive processes that pass for conscious thought.

Morality and decency effectively get obliterated. Hedges: “Education, building communities, honesty, transparency, and sharing are qualities that will see you, in a gross perversion of democracy and morality, voted off a reality show. Fellow competitors for prize money and a chance for fleeting fame elect to ‘disappear’ (Professor’s Note: an ominous word, bringing to mind the disappeared of Latin American countries from death squads and secret prisons) the unwanted. Life, these shows teach, is a brutal world of unadulterated competition. Life is about the personal humiliation of those who oppose us. Those who lose deserve to be erased. Compassion, competence, intelligence, and solidarity with others are forms of weakness.” (30)

This book is a rich treasure, to be mined for a plethora of gems and jewels. It is also like a wake-up jolt from a real Morpheus disconnecting us from the Matrix, to live in reality as human beings, not as manipulated slaves of illusion at every turn.

I have a lot more to expel on just this breath of wind alone. But this is a good pausing point. Back to you Madame!