The Wisdom of Solomon

It was kind of a slow week, and then all of a sudden we got several good articles. So several updates today. Probably.

First came across Norman Solomon through his book “The Trouble With Dilbert: How Corporate Culture Gets the Last Laugh.” In it he takes Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert) for not writing cartoons that expose the horrors of large corporation capitalism. He also argues that by providing a safety valve for workplace anger, Scott Adams prevents the workers from getting mad enough to organize and change the system.

One of the ways you can tell an ideologue is that he is satisfied with the suffering of others if he believes it will lead to the changes he’s advocating. Norman Solomon wants to see capitalism over thrown, and as such is unhappy when management gives the workers some of the things they demand. He’d rather the workers suffer so that they will get angry enough to completely destroy the system.

Such thinking is not unique to the left. Certainly there are right commentators who take pleasure in the problems of California, which they attribute to Liberal Politicians.

Solomon’s latest article is a portrait of the future 50 years hence, in which there is only one media company (with the catchy name AT WONDERS), and the air is so bad that you have to wear a gas mask outside. Cheery. Of course in the future we’ll all have giant domes so the gas mask scenario isn’t really the future.

Solomon’s critiques of media are pretty much always old school, and ignore the internet. There are a lot of metaphors for the internet. Here’s one. It’s an infinite frontier. It’s being colonized. There are large ranches and small farms and tiny vegetable garden’s (like the site you are currently viewing.) Most people still get their news from Mainstream sources perhaps, but the numbers shrink ever year.

Now the Internet isn’t the best counter to the mainstream media. As I document pretty regularly, there are hundreds of different points of view online, all with “facts” backing them up. I personally like that. I like that I can visit websites of all different political factions and ideals.

But remember rule #1, which I haven’t mentioned yet, but is true. Ideologues hate democracy. You see the internet allows points of views from most American’s, and probably eventually all Americans. But if points of views are available everywhere, doesn’t that devalue the value of any one point of view? If an Ideology points the One True Path to ideology, than why have other points of view? Tough question. Because it’s clear on many issues that there is one right answer, and differing points of views don’t seem to add much value.

Still I believe in noisy boisterous and occasionally angry democracy.

Still to come, an analysis of Michelle Malkin’s “A Generation of Skanks” and Your Weekly Rush. Come on back.