TT's Lost in Tokyo — by TokyoTom

[I ran this originally as a “page” rather than as a “post”, when I had simply put up Zappa`s lyrics.  Since “posts” might be more visible to visitors I`ve decided to post this as well.]

I ran across some interesting and topical Frank Zappa lyrics the other day, so I`m putting them up here.

Does these resonate with anyone else?  I have noted a few thoughts further below.

I’m The Slime

I am gross and perverted
I’m obsessed ‘n deranged
I have existed for years
But very little has changed
I’m the tool of the Government
And industry too
For I am destined to rule
And regulate you

I may be vile and pernicious
But you can’t look away
I make you think I’m delicious
With the stuff that I say
I’m the best you can get
Have you guessed me yet?
I’m the slime oozin’ out
From your TV set

You will obey me while I lead you
And eat the garbage that I feed you
Until the day that we don’t need you
Don’t go for help . . . no one will heed you
Your mind is totally controlled
It has been stuffed into my mold
And you will do as you are told
Until the rights to you are sold

That’s right, folks . . .
Don’t touch that dial

Well, I am the slime from your video
Oozin’ along on your livin’ room floor

I am the slime from your video
Can’t stop the slime, people, lookit me go

I am the slime from your video
Oozin’ along on your livin’ room floor

I am the slime from your video
Can’t stop the slime, people, lookit me go.

Zappa speaks of the mass media, but one could easily say the same about
the political discourse coming not only from the MSM, but also from the
Bush administration and from each of the political parties, as well as
what we hear from various rent-seekers. They don`t discuss their own
agendas, but give us pap and slime.  This is what Glenn Greenwald is has been shining a spotlight on for some time, and now examines in the context of the recent Clinton – Obama debate, and discusses in his new book, Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics.

Manipulation by pushing and pulling on the strings of human nature
is the name of the game of those who wish to exploit us.   Preying on
our patriotism (as I noted in Goering and Madison on War) and feeding partisanship – which powerfully influences our perceptions, as I noted in a recent post, Nick Kristof on politics: why we conclude that I’m right, and you’re evil – has been a hallmark of the right, and particularly of the Bush administration
(viz., fear of “Islamofascists”, of gays, of baby-killers, of
“enviros”, of immigrants, of atheists, and of “America-haters”).

Interestingly, Andrew Sullivan asserts that the Clinton campaign is morphing into the Rovian right. 

Query:  Is Obama selling slime?

[P.S.  No, I am NOT self-identifying as a rent-seeker; and slime is not my game.]

I ran across some interesting and topical Frank Zappa lyrics the other day, so I`m putting them up here.

Does these resonate with anyone else?  I have noted a few thoughts further below.

I’m The Slime

I am gross and perverted
I’m obsessed ‘n deranged
I have existed for years
But very little has changed
I’m the tool of the Government
And industry too
For I am destined to rule
And regulate you

I may be vile and pernicious
But you can’t look away
I make you think I’m delicious
With the stuff that I say
I’m the best you can get
Have you guessed me yet?
I’m the slime oozin’ out
From your TV set

You will obey me while I lead you
And eat the garbage that I feed you
Until the day that we don’t need you
Don’t go for help . . . no one will heed you
Your mind is totally controlled
It has been stuffed into my mold
And you will do as you are told
Until the rights to you are sold

That’s right, folks . . .
Don’t touch that dial

Well, I am the slime from your video
Oozin’ along on your livin’ room floor

I am the slime from your video
Can’t stop the slime, people, lookit me go

I am the slime from your video
Oozin’ along on your livin’ room floor

I am the slime from your video
Can’t stop the slime, people, lookit me go.

Zappa speaks of the mass media, but one could easily say the same about
the political discourse coming not only from the MSM, but also from the
Bush administration and from each of the political parties, as well as
what we hear from various rent-seekers. They don`t discuss their own
agendas, but give us pap and slime.  This is what Glenn Greenwald is has been shining a spotlight on for some time, and now examines in the context of the recent Clinton – Obama debate, and discusses in his new book, Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics.

Manipulation by pushing and pulling on the strings of human nature is the name of the game of those who wish to exploit us.   Preying on our patriotism (as I noted in Goering and Madison on War) and feeding partisanship – which powerfully influences our perceptions, as I noted in a recent post, Nick Kristof on politics: why we conclude that I’m right, and you’re evil – has been a hallmark of the right, and particularly of the Bush administration (viz., fear of “Islamofascists”, of gays, of baby-killers, of “enviros”, of immigrants, of atheists, and of “America-haters”).

Interestingly, Andrew Sullivan asserts that the Clinton campaign is morphing into the Rovian right. 

Query:  Is Obama selling slime?

Here’s a very interesting piece by Kristof at the New York Times about the reactions of Obama and Clinton supporters, and introducing cognitive science studies of why more information often polarizes, rather than bringing people together. 

Divided They Fall

Simply, we are cognitively wired as tribal animals.  That means we are inclined to see “our side” as right, and the other side as lying and scheming.  And very clever rent-seekers know this and try to use it to jerk us around.

Ron Bailey of Reason has two similar posts up:

More Information Confirms What You Already Know

The Culture War on Facts

Anybody see any similarities for what passes for discussion of climate science generally, and at here at Mises?  I’ve got loads of examples for those who can’t seem to see it, or are interested in looking more.  Here are several, most recent first:

Climate spin: Who are the sneaky ones who changed “global warming” to “climate change”?http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2008/04/09/why-those-sneaky-enviros-changed-from-quot-global-warming-quot-to-quot-climate-change-quot.aspx

Thank you, Prof. Block, for feeding our confirmation biases

http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2008/02/26/thank-you-prof-block-for-feeding-our-confirmation-biases.aspx

Thanks, Dr. Reisman; or, How I Learned to Hate Enviros and Love Tantrums

http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2008/02/24/george-reisman-or-how-i-learned-to-hate-enviros-and-love-tantrums.aspx

Escape from Reason: are Austrians conservatives, or neocons, on the environment?

http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2008/02/19/cool-rationalists-or-conservatives-and-neocons-on-the-environment.aspx

Edwin Dolan: applying the Lockean framework to climate change

http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2008/02/14/edwin-dolan-applying-the-lockean-framework-to-climate-change.aspx

“Climate Change, Evidence and Ideology”

http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2008/02/06/quot-climate-change-cumulative-evidence-and-ideology-quot.aspx

John Baden: a Mt. Pelerin misanthrope/watermelon?

http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2007/12/17/john-baden-is-this-mt-pellerin-society-member-a-misanthrope-watermelon.aspx

Holiday joy: roasting “watermelons” on an open pyre!

http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2007/12/17/holiday-joy-quot-watermelons-quot-roasting-on-an-open-pyre.aspx

“Heroic” contrarians, proven wrong on AGW, make another slick cry for relevance at Bali

http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2007/12/15/quot-heroic-quot-expert-voices-proven-wrong-on-agw-make-another-slick-cry-for-relevance-at-bali.aspx

Who knows climate science? The Mises Blog!

http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2007/12/14/who-knows-climate-science-the-mises-blog.aspx

Goering and Madison on War

http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2007/12/11/madison-and-goering-on-war.aspx

Bali:  Murdoch & 149 Other Top Vile Collectivists/Capitalists Call for Global Poverty …

http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2007/12/04/murdoch-amp-149-other-top-vile-collectivists-capitalists-call-for-global-poverty.aspx

Tribal pigheadedness: RedState bans Ron Paul supporters

http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2007/10/27/tribal-pigheadedness-quot-the-simplest-way-to-explain-the-behavior-of-redstate.aspx

Libertarian denial; clever but not wise

http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2007/10/12/libertarian-reticience-other-than-to-bash-enviros.aspx

“No, your computer isn’t misfiring. Welcome to a new Wall Street Journal blog, Environmental Capital.”

So says the WSJ’s announcement of its new blog, which replaces its Energy Roundup blog and, in addition to continue to track daily energy news, will “go further, analyzing how the energy world, and all of business, is adapting to mounting concern about the planet.”  The blog description states that: “Environmental Capital provides daily news and analysis of the business of the environment. It tracks how growing green concern, particularly over climate change, is roiling established industries and spurring new ones – and how that shift is affecting investors, consumers and the planet.”

What’s up with the WSJ?  Is it growing dotty and green, like its new owner, Rupert Murdoch*?  Or is it struggling for market share as industry changes to reflect a changing environment? 

Inquiring minds want to know!

The new blog is here:  http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/

h/t to Andrew Revkin of the New York Times, who warmly welcomes the competition: http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/29/new-journal-blog-a-sign-of-murdochs-green-bent/

* Murdoch, owner of Fox News, has made a personal commitment that his businesses will become climate neutral. In a recent speech, he stated his reason plainly. “I am no scientist. But I do know how to assess a risk — and this one is clear. Climate change poses clear, catastrophic threats. We may not agree on the extent, but we certainly can’t afford the risk of inaction.”

[update below]  Fundamentalist states on an interesting thread: “Most Americans are outright socialists; the rest are socialist sympathizers. They believe that only the government can save them from capitalists.”

In response, I raised the following questions:

Do you think Jefferson was wrong when he urged:

“I hope we shall crush … in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.
–Thomas Jefferson to George Logan, 1816.
http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff5.htm

The concentrated wealth and long lives of corporations have long made them a special and powerful class of rent-seekers, eliminating liability for shareholders and vanquishing restrictions on life and acceptable business activities. Are citizens wrong to seek to counterbalance corporations, using in part the very tool of government that corporations have effectively seized?

Let me add here the comment that while ultimately the way forward lies in hacking back government, one cannot deny that rent-seeking by corporations has been and continues to be a major factor in politicizing and hardening conflicts that could otherwise be resolved privately.  While bashing “socialists”, “enviros” and other citizens groups, it behooves us not to forget the 800 lb. gorilla in the room.

[update in response to comments:]

I agree completely that the best way to lessen rent-seeking is to reduce the rents that are available through government. 

This implies smaller government, but also suggests that we can make progress by focussing on breathing more life into the federalist structure of power-sharing with the states, the checks and balances between the branches of government, by limiting the ability of either political party to get a local lock on power by gerrymandering.

I appreciate the agreement that citizens are not wrong to seek to counterbalance corporations, but you’ve missed a point.  Corporations are the 800 lb. gorilla not because of ongoing corporate welfare – that’s simply the effect.  Their powerful advantages over citizens in influencing government comes from their size and financial power, which derives from legislative grants of unlimited life, unlimited purposes and limited liability for their investors.  To reduce government, some effort must be made to moderate these advantages.

In a post of the same title at at NRO, Jerry Taylor and Peter Van Doren of Cato do a great job of demonstrating  there is absolutely no relationship between energy policy and national security.

However, they forgot to provide the answer to their own question – Republicans are “unhinged” on energy strategy for a very simple reason – because “energy security” is a very convenient way of justifying a meddlesome and paternal big government, and the Republican administration is in charge of the pork spigots and can control the flow of favors to special interests. 

Do Taylor and Van Doren find the Republicans “unhinged” only because they expected that Republicans actually meant their disavowals of “nation building” and the like?  Though Americans seem to share a congenital idealistic streak, I suspect that they are not that naive. 

No doubt the Dems will also find “energy security” to be a convenient way to aggrandize their own power, reach into Americans’ pocketbooks to direct federal largess their friends and to keep the US involved in the internal affairs of other countries.  They will have been aided by a Republican administration that was more liberal in the assertion of the right to exercise power than many Democratic administrations that preceded it.