The Purple Koolaid Playtime Show!

Elia Kazan Called It

This prescient scene from the classic 1957 film, "A Face In The Crowd", foretold of the rise of advertising and marketing tactics in the broadcast era; how that would influence American politics... and how it was savvy to appeal the lowest common voting denominator.  (This entry would have been more towards the beginning of the blog if this particular clip had been on YouTube back then).

 

 

 

The Age of Contrarians

This was an idea I originally conceived in early 2019, but didn't get around to finishing until April of 2020 when the lockdowns started.  The word "Contrarian" seemed natural for a sing-song kind of spoof, and I knew there was a song out there that the word could fit into.  Hmmmm...  (To get the references, look up "Age of Aquarius" on YouTube).

I'm seeing parallels between the Social Media era and the drug culture of the 60s. Both social media and recreational drugs are methods of escapism as well as connecting with "subcultures". This will be a theme in the next few posts.

 

 

Koolaid: Have It Your Way!

I’m back.

Hard to believe that 15 years have passed since I started this blog, during the height of the Bush era. 2005 was also the year YouTube and Reddit launched. Twitter didn’t launch until the following year; as did the public debut of Facebook (which eventually edged out earlier platforms such as MySpace and LiveJournal).

The iPhone had yet to be introduced; making its consumer market debut in 2007.

In late 2008 I landed a job which occupied most of my waking hours and involved international travel. So the blog pretty much went dormant. During this time, I was privileged to experience — and gain some timely insights into — overseas manufacturing, global trade and market competition.

Approaching Narita Airport

Then the current Covid-19 situation upended that schedule, and here we are again, at this, Post #100.

Surprisingly - no, actually unsurprisingly - many of the entries written in the previous 12-15 years have aged well. The events of the past several years (especially the rise of social media platforms) have made it all quite relevant. …Very, very relevant, in fact.

But while I spent the last decade occupying most of my time with work matters and the world-at-large, it seems like a significant portion of the American public has retreated into various insular virtual worlds enabled by social media platforms.

The effect is not unlike leaving an experiment 10 years ago and then returning to see the results. Or maybe like that Mike Judge movie, although not quite as dramatic.

One thing I was wrong about was the prediction that our country would be able to “inoculate”ourselves against mind-viruses through education. The keyword here is “education”, and that takes time. It also requires a more dispassionate mindset, when emotion is often the easiest way to influence people.

What’s rather disconcerting is the fact that the American psyche seems to have been hacked very easily by the most rudimentary of tactics. “Us vs. them” is one of the oldest narratives in the political playbook, but even more than that, it’s a “dumbed down” version that seems to channel people's inner 8-year olds.  In just a few short years, it’s become the norm for politicians and grown adults on major media networks to fling grade school insults at each other. It’s like a Twighlight Zone episode in which a satirical writer for “The Simpsons” or “South Park” wakes up and finds real life imitating their scripts.

I blame certain media empires which have decide to turn politics into a sporting match where one cares more about their “side” winning over all else. (Also the impulsive and graffiti-like Twitter). Everyone and their grandma now thinks they’re being edgy and relevant by name-dropping various political references even though they probably couldn’t pass a pop quiz on the Constitution if their life depended on it.

Anyhow, enough rambling. Here we go…

 

 

New Definitions

Lumpy Thinking:

Another term for the Fallacy of Composition.  It's famously employed by politicians, pundits, and anyone who wants to paint an overly simplistic "us vs. them" scenario.

It's closely associated with bait-and-switch tactics that attempt to associate one idea with another. Such as:

Godbranding:

A bait-and-switch tactic in which the presenter uses God and the Bible in association with their personal opinions and ideas -- which leads to followers assuming that if someone criticizes the presenter's ideas, they are also criticizing the idea of God.  (E.g.:  "You're trying to disprove God by criticizing Harun Yahya's skull identifications" Reply: "You're Godbranding your ignorance".)

Pee-Wee Herman Creationist

A creationist who believes that by utilizing the playground tactic of hijacking the opponent's accusations and turning it back on them  ("I know you are, but what am I?") it will make them even with their opponent.  For example, creationists accusing scientists of not doing "real science". (This tactic has also become a favorite of right wing pundits).

Ouroborass

Similar to the concept of a snake eating its tail, except the ends are switched. Kind of like this famous picture:

This is in regards to the phenomenom of writers, philosophers, political pundits, etc. who have taken an insightful idea off onto a tangent and beyond the realm of batfoolery:

I'm reminded of reading a lengthy essay by Dave Sim, the creator of a once-celebrated independent graphic novel (Cerebus the Aardvark). Entitled "Tangents", Sim goes off on an elaborate, misogynistic diatribe where he describes -- in laborious and excruciating detail- -- topics like spanking, buttocks and women oogling over pet poodles... eventually wrapping it all up to the earth-shattering "conclusion" that all white women consider black men to be the equals of cats and dogs.  O_o

This practice can be found across all political persuasions, when the pursuit of an idea eventually becomes an exaggerated and corrupted caricature of said idea.

Fundies are famous for plumbing its deepest depths, but unfortunately, I've even seen Richard Dawkins descend into Ouroborassness. Perhaps no one is immune to this... I think it demonstrates the limits of human comprehension and the mind's tendency to want to organize and simplify information vs. the messiness and vastness of reality (although it might make for amusing premises and plot devices in cartoons and science fiction). 

When in doubt, simply consider that there might be exceptions to the rule!