Politicians are punching bags

Politicians are a psy-op. They are a psy-op now. This has not always been the case, but they are now.

📺 It’s important to watch all of the BBC film series Can’t Get You Out of my Head, but I just want to tune folks into episode 4. 📺

In this segment, Curtis really nails one of his most important points: politicians don’t have any real power any longer because there are no longer well organized masses of people undergirding them. ⚡⚡⚡

A politician like Theodore Roosevelt could take on the Trusts because he had masses of people on his side who would back him up. They gave him clout with other politicians and the courts.

But now the unions, the civic organizations, the churches have all been eviscerated. There’s just not enough power in organized people. Further, people are so individuated that they will abandon an organization if they even slightly disagree with any of its choices.

Now politicians are punching bags for the corporate interests who put them there. If they take the public resentment for the monied interests, they will pay to keep them power. If they ever actually lose an election, they will set them up in a cushy job.

Look at former Senator Rick Santorum.

(((The link I posted above won’t stream in the U.S. I found the episode pirated on YouTube. Sorry Adam 😦. I’d post the link but by the time anyone ever finds this blog the link will be dead, so just pop the name of the series into YouTube or your streaming platform of choice.)))

🎥 So, Adam Curtis is a filmmaker I’m new to, but Dasha talks about him a lot on Red Scare. He has this very unique way of making films. He’s like an archival DJ, though he claims to just be a political journalist who is savvy about music. 🎬

I mentioned Curtis’ films as part of the inspiration for my post about my three wishes for America. When I wrote that, I had watched three of the six films. Now I’ve seen five. I plan to take off the final, epic tonight.

They are very intriguing films. I take notes as I watch them just to help keep me focused and to lock in all the topics as best I can. I think I’ve taken 20 pages of notes in my notebook going through these. They are amazingly rich.

But so far, part four is really the money shot. Activists should really start thinking about taking the fight to monied interests, not their cronies in the world legislatures.

✊ More than that, though, activists should really think about how they can truly bind people together. Until people start functioning as units committed to each other, there is little hope of effectively competing with money. 🤑