Neo-Realism & Las Marginalistas

Propaganda, Bandit Capitalism, and Cultural Entropy

The current phone hacking and police bribery scandal in Merry Olde England has focused worldwide attention on Bandit Capitalist in Chief, 80-year old Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch, an Australian by birth and American by naturalization—famous for his hands-on management style–while shutting down his chief tabloid offender, News of the World, denies his own culpability, saying,” I feel that people I trusted — I don’t know who, on what level — have let me down, and I think they have behaved disgracefully, and it’s for them to pay. And I think, frankly, that I’m the best person to see it through.” (NYT, July 20, 2011)

During Rupe’s testimony, a stand-up comedian interrupted the proceedings and attempted to augment the dissembler’s commentary with a plate of shaving cream aimed at the face of Fox News. Though the cops in attendance at the parliamentary hearing were not competent to stop the comedian, Murdoch’s 42-year-old wife, Wendi, delivered a roundhouse punch in defense of her man, according to video and news reports.

Hence Murdoch, the man who has prospered by converting journalism into a slot machine paying out huge jackpots, while also converting politicians into representatives of the bigotry and bandit capitalism, was been saved from further farce by his January-December marriage or merger.

Nobody better illustrates the corruption of civil government than Murdoch, who has turned respected news organs into propaganda machines for delimited unregulated capitalism. He’s the most public face and representative of income inequality—even as his television and print empire appeals to the lowest common denominator—prejudice, family pain, public humiliation of commoners and celebrities alike, and the destruction of democratic processes on a world-wide basis.

Below Maureen Dowd comments on Murdoch’s Murgatroyds and his ingenuous and revealing remarks. When it comes to class and commentary and how politicians and their puppet masters—and even Popes and Cardinals–try and conceal their movidas behind false accents, nobody writing in the media today is more incisive, witty, and fun to read than Maureen:

“His most revealing moment was when he volunteered his admiration of Singapore, calling it the most “open and clear society in the world.” Its leaders are so lavishly paid, he said, that “there’s no temptation, and it is the cleanest society you’d find anywhere.”

“It was instructive that Murdoch chose to praise a polished, deeply authoritarian police state. Maybe that’s how corporations would live if they didn’t have to believe in people.”—(Dowd NYT, July 2011.)

But there’s more and more that can be applied to local politics, media, and economics when you see how all the threads connect and produce false consciousness due to media propaganda. Murdoch represents a way to profit on local prejudices. Commentators on radio or ersatz reporters about, for instance, the last couple of years of talk (not reporting) about the Taos Municipal Schools follow in Murdoch’s wake.

In a related issue, Thomas Friedman comments on the differences between Germany and Greece. His remarks also capture the distinction between American industrialists, who once made things and how the new privateers seek government contracts. Just as farmers once worked the land and traded and bartered with local merchants, so today’s politicos work the state and federal programs but produce little in the way of tangible assets.

Friedman on Euro Econos

“Germany is the epitome of a country that made itself rich by making stuff. Greece, alas, after it joined the European Union in 1981, actually became just another Middle East petro-state — only instead of an oil well, it had Brussels, which steadily pumped out subsidies, aid and euros with low interest rates to Athens.”

“The natural entrepreneurship of Greeks was channeled in the wrong direction — in a competition for government funds and contracts. To be sure, it wasn’t all squandered. Greece had a real modernization spurt in the 1990s. But after 2002, it put its feet up, thinking it had arrived, and too much “Euro-oil” from the European Union went back to financing a corrupt, patrimonial system whereby politicians dispensed government jobs and projects to localities in return for votes. This reinforced a huge welfare state, where young people dreamed of a cushy government job and everyone from cabdrivers to truckers to pharmacists to lawyers was allowed to erect barriers to entry that artificially inflated prices.”– NYT, July 20, 2011

The Return of Sanity?

We don’t know yet. But by pointing out that “the emperor has no clothes,” maybe the Brits will stop inviting Rupert Murdoch in the back door to meet with Prime Ministers. Maybe the American cops, FBI or New York’s finest, will investigate the damage done to civil society by the chief Bandido for crimes against the state. Maybe Obama will find his cojones and govern like a leader—make the rich pay and cut the fat from government. Even this morning, according to reports, the “Gang of Six (Senators)” offered a more nuanced approach to budget making: Cut spending, close loopholes.

Maybe we will start making stuff.

Local Options

Oddly enough, here in Taos, the community is beginning to ignore local government and its “too big to fail” private-public partners like the Coop or the unimaginative private sector in general. The Art Gallery business, like the Taos Chamber of Commerce, seems like a quaint reminder of yesterday.

Today artists sell out-of-town, door-to-door or over the Internet. Vendors at the Bridge police themselves and the area while patiently selling their goods and earning a marginal living in a self-regulated and civil environment. Recycle stores are coming on strong. And food security is uppermost in everyone’s mind.

Indeed, local gardening and vegetable making, you might say, is where the action is. The local economy is moving into the “sustainable survivable mode.” Do-it-yourself homegrown energy resource models are just beginning to make inroads in emulation of earth-ship technology.

Most of you know about the Saturday farmer’s market at the Town of Taos parking lot. According to reports, Taos Pueblo’s Wednesday farmer’s market is a stunner and will expand to sell on Fridays. New Buffalo is sponsoring a farmer’s market in Arroyo Hondo. Who knows how many folks trundle by each other’s houses with eggs, fruit, vegetables for trade and sale.

Centralized planning failed in the Soviet Union. In Taos the historic principle of “Small is Beautiful” is making a comeback, as the “Constant Gardener” becomes a commonplace. Sure, we’ll have a mix of local and national connections but the days of the monolithic bureaucracy and redundant culture of business and government combined can be undermined by us—Neo-Realist members of Las Marginalistas.