WB: Tickling the Limbic System

October 23, 2006

Billmon:

[L]imbic politics is definitely here to stay, and if the winners in such a system have an almost congenital tendency towards utter incompetence when it comes to actually governing (an advanced cerebral function if ever there was one) nobody ever said the American system of government — or America itself — has to last forever.

Tickling the Limbic System

Posted by b on October 23, 2006 at 05:14 UTC | Permalink

Comments

Ya know, abolishing political advertising isn’t that far off from keeping the details of an upcoming trial out of the news (Britain, Canada) to avoid jury bias.
Well that doesn’t work very much anymore thanks to wide access to the Internet.
How about keeping election results off the air until the west coast votes? Oops.
But I do agree that regulating the use of public airwaves — what some people call the commons — is an excellent solution to the politics in media problem.
A good question might be how did this actually came about in Britain and Canada. My guess is “fear of the corrupting US media.”
How to do this in the US?

Posted by: jonku | Oct 23 2006 6:42 utc | 1

By the way, it’s not just the Republicans.

Posted by: Rowan | Oct 23 2006 8:39 utc | 2

@Rowan #2
Agreed!, it is dire that people understand that…

Posted by: Anonymous | Oct 23 2006 10:13 utc | 3

grrr #3 was me…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 23 2006 10:21 utc | 4

Speaking of the Limbic System, another psychological disenfranchisement tool is the use of methodical cognitive dissonance:
President Bush: It’s Never Been “Stay The Course” youtube vid…
It’s a form of control.

When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone,’ it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.’

~Through The Looking Glass

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 23 2006 11:05 utc | 5

When studying the fundamental characteristics of a crowd we stated that it is guided almost exclusively by unconscious motives. Its acts are far more under the influence of the spinal cord than of the brain. In this respect a crowd is closely akin to quite primitive beings. The acts performed may be perfect so far as their execution is concerned, but as they are not directed by the brain, the individual conducts himself according as the exciting causes to which he is submitted may happen to decide. A crowd is at the mercy of all external exciting causes, and reflects their incessant variations. It is the slave of the impulses which it receives. The isolated individual may be submitted to the same exciting causes as the man in a crowd, but as his brain shows him the inadvisability of yielding to them, he refrains from yielding. This truth may be physiologically expressed by saying that the isolated individual possesses the capacity of dominating his reflex actions, while a crowd is devoid of this capacity.
The varying impulses to which crowds obey may be, according to their exciting causes, generous or cruel, heroic or cowardly, but they will always be so imperious that the interest of the individual, even the interest of self-preservation, will not dominate them. The exciting causes that may act on crowds being so varied, and crowds always obeying them, crowds are in consequence extremely mobile. This explains how it is that we see them pass in a moment from the most bloodthirsty ferocity to the most extreme generosity and heroism.
— from the crowd, gustave le bon

howard beale (sad, resigned, weary) :

Last night, I got up here and asked you people to stand up and fight for your heritage, and you did and it was beautiful. Six million telegrams were received at the White House. The Arab takeover of C.C. and A. has been stopped. The people spoke, the people won. It was a radiant eruption of democracy. But I think that was it, fellers. That sort of thing isn’t likely to happen again. Because, in the bottom of all our terrified souls, we all know that democracy is a dying giant, a sick, sick dying, decaying political concept, writhing in its final pain. I don’t mean the United States is finished as a world power. The United States is the most powerful, the richest, the most advanced country in the world, light-years ahead of any other country. And I don’t mean the Communists are going to take over the world. The Communists are deader than we are. What’s finished is the idea that this great country is dedicated to the freedom and flourishing of every individual in it. It’s the individual that’s finished. It’s the single, solitary human being who’s finished. It’s every single one of you out there who’s finished. Because this is no longer a nation of independent individuals. This is a nation of two hundred odd million transistorized, deodorized, whiter-than-white, steel-belted bodies, totally unnecessary as human beings and as replaceable as piston rods —

Posted by: b real | Oct 23 2006 19:11 utc | 6

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