Why Bush Loves West Wing
or The Sacred Agenda of the Free Market Fundamentalism
Last night, April 21, NBC aired another episode of West Wing.
There is only one, single overriding reason and that is the promotion of free market fundamentalism’s sacred agenda.
I has been noted since the early 80’s that the public media has not just been taken over, censored and abused by the neo conservatives, but that it is the ultimate tool in the arsenal to promote the sacred agenda of free market fundamentalism which includes the stipulation that criticism of all other issues is permitted in order to more effectively validate the sacred agenda. The media and West Wing are encouraged to incite controversy about the smoke screen issues that in no way inhibit the sacred agenda of free market fundamentalism. These issues are real, but are useful since they are divisive, divert the public from the true agenda and do not interfere with free market fundamentalism; such smoke screen issues include race, sexism, ethnic cleansing, abortion, education, minor wars, etc.
West Wing has long been a tool in this media arsenal, and last night’s episode was a shinning example of its true function in action. The episode presented two issues; outsourcing of American jobs and media monopolization.
These issues were presented in a cascade of outright lies:
1st Lie: Wages.
In the year 2000 the industry
standard in America for a top level, senior programmer with twenty plus years
experience was around $75/hour as a contractor and about $50 /hour as an
employee. In
West Wing presented the case as
$40/hour in
The implication here is meant to portray the distribution of wealth as benign if not downright ethical. It is argued to be a natural process of Free Market Capitalism and therefore sacred, ethical and unstoppable. It is also implies that less wealth is being stolen from the American middle class than is the case, and furthermore, that more wealth is being redistributed to deserving Indians than is the case.
The metaphor of an impoverished
Indian is used as example of the good that free market fundamentalism is doing
for
2nd Lie: Job Numbers
The episode portrays an hypothetical example of 17,000 high-tech, high-pay programming jobs lost from some American industry. It is said to lead to over 3 million jobs.
In actual fact, there are already millions outsourced. Many are lower paying factory and telephone call-center jobs, but a significant portion of high-tech and high-pay jobs have been simply amputated from the American economy. These jobs represented middle class consumers of products.
The lie here is one of scale. By representing the loss as less than it is they are disguising the slippery slope that is leading to the elimination of the American middle class and to its plunge into third world status.
3rd Lie: Free Markets Create Jobs
This slogan is repeated again and
again. It is true that free market fundamentalism creates jobs. But they are
not necessarily jobs in
This lie is so important to the sacred agenda that West Wing repeats it over and over as if it were a mantra of universal truth. The need to have actors shout it out and repeat it over and over is an indication of West Wing’s true assessment of its audience’s intellectual ability. It is, in fact, an insult to their intelligence; to uncritically accept some slogan that has no basis in fact, is unsubstantiated, asserted without proof and without debate or argument. The only thing that free market capitalism creates is an opportunity to extort the wealth, human labor and resources from huge populations of wage slaves. When some geopolitical class of wage slaves and economic cattle such as the American middle class become too expensive and who threatens to democratically instigate regulation on corporate greed and free market profits, that class is destroyed.
A few years back West Wing ran an episode with a similar slogan. This time the overpaid actor yelled “Free markets prevent war” or words to that effect. It is worth noting that when an actor shouts something in near hysterical rage, or it is repeated over and over, it is to portray credibility for some slogan that has no basis in fact, is unsubstantiated, asserted without proof and without debate or argument. The idea that free markets prevent war would be laughable if it were not so pathetic. This coming, as it does, from the single most warlike nation to have ever existed in human history, at a time of near epidemic, chronic and global wars of economic plundering and ethnic cleansing; at a time of full scale imperial invasions of sovereign nations; and at a time hovering on the brink of true global, world war. All of these wars are rooted in the practices of free market fundamentalism.
The only new and high-paying jobs that will be created in America from now on will not be high-tech or pertain to the creation and production of new products; they will be in the emerging master class of owners and managers. Managers are the task master of wage slaves who produce something useful, or at least salable. Unfortunately, middle class wage slaves are being exterminated in America, and in addition, there will soon be no products left for wage slaves to produce. Now the slaves can be emancipated; that is, left to die by attrition. Presumably the new manager class will have to turn to the task of managing lesser managers. Note the new explosion of MBA programs in American universities. MBA’s produce nothing. They manage other people who do produce something. Products and producers are on the endangered species list in America. And so is its consumer market.
4th Lie: Natural Distribution of Wealth
The episode implied that America is too rich in proportion to global population. This is true. The episode, however, went on to do all it could to disguise the fact that free market fundamentalism is not distributing the wealth plundered from the American middle class, but is stealing profits based on economic slavery.
Using West Wing’s hypothetical example of wages at $40/hour American versus $10/hour Indian wages, the $10 is supposed to justify the distribution of wealth to the suffering third world impoverished. It is in fact much less and goes only to the already wealthy. But that $30/hour difference does not go into paying Americans for R&D to create new technologies and products. It goes into the pockets of the management/ownership class and into corporate profits. This wealth that is simply stolen from the American middle class and does not go to the impoverished of India. It is neither more nor less than piratical booty for the new corporate buccaneers.
5th Lie: Compensation/Retraining
Instead of gracefully transferring wealth from middle class America to the actual impoverished of the third world, only a pittance goes to the wealthy of the third world, the majority is stolen booty and the American middle class wage slave is slaughtered without warning and without a single social safety net; no insurance, no retirement, no health care, no job, no financial security. Just “Get out. Nothing personal. Only business.”
This could have been done by regulating a slow attrition, or even a redistribution of jobs over time without totally eliminating the American work force. But is not being done in a humane way in order to cater to the rapacious greed for profits by free market fundamentalism and to eliminate an American electorate with dangerous pretensions of democracy.
Retraining is the cruelest joke of all. There are no new high-paying, high-tech jobs to retrain for, and there are none on the horizon since the capacity for Americans to create such technologies and products has been destroyed right along with the jobs.
The only retraining for high paying jobs that will be available in America from now on will be for the MBA/Manager/Owner class. This is called a service economy; a term without meaning and without any basis in fact. The jobs are called service sector jobs. They are not in production nor in high-tech. The unemployed American programmer had better dust off his butler’s suit.
The unstated assumption of the sacred agenda as it is portrayed in West Wing is that America as a consumer market is being abandoned. In one, or at most two generations there will be no significant market in America and it will begin is phase as a third world client state of richer, producing supra-national interests.
6th Lie: The Hypocrisy of Self Congratulation
West Wing is no doubt justifiably proud of the skill with which they delude the American public, especially the intelligent progressive liberal demographic. No doubt they sleep without a toss or a turn fluffed up in their financial security and the self congratulation of having served the public weal by presenting the intelligent progressive liberal point of view.
Regarding the inconsequential smoke screen issues, they do in fact present the intelligent progressive liberal point of view. Regarding the sacred agenda of free market fundamentalism they represent only the forces of predatory economics and economic slavery.
In particular West Wing has no credibility regarding the economic issues or the economic suffering of anybody on planet earth.
The first reason is because of who owns West Wing; NBC and its shadowy network of media conglomeration.
The second and more important reason is the producers, actors, and writers of West Wing itself. Their jobs are not being outsourced to India, as yet. They are getting paid obscenely high salaries to portray issues of the economic suffering of other human beings. This wealth and profit extends to West Wing’s associated distributors, television markets, cable, foreign distribution, etc. etc.
On air, the actors weep huge salty tears, frown, grimace, obsess, worry, become indignant, grumble and kick their jaws over the unfortunate and unstoppable economic suffering of the less fortunate. That is why it is called acting.
In realty, the actors whistle all the way to the bank to deposit their check for outrageously high weekly wages. The weekly wages of West Wing and all its associated markets and industries is very probably in excess of the total monthly wages of every programmer in India. Unless they care to make full disclosure of their total wages and profits, West Wing representation of itself as a spokesmen for intelligent progressive liberalism regarding issues of economic suffering is at best a cruel and cynical joke.
Regardless, West Wing has no moral standing to comment on the economic suffering of millions. The reason for the very existence of West Wing is to justify the very predators who have caused the suffering in the first place.
As self-styled purveyors of the intelligent progressive liberal veneer but as actual employees of free market fundamentalism and its sacred agenda, West Wing and all of it associates have sold their right to consider themselves as intelligent progressive liberal icons and the self congratulation of being on the ethical high ground.
Either they do not know that they are dupes free market fundamentalism and are being used to promote the sacred agenda, or they do know and are more than willing to be used in exchange for rapacious and outlandish wealth.
In the first case they are too stupid to have any credibility as intelligent progressive liberals. In the second case, they are morally bankrupt and have no ethical credibility.
The only morally reprehensible whore is one who takes the money and lies by portraying the transaction as love.
7th Lie: Progressive Veneer vs. the Sacred Agenda of Free Market Fundamentalism
The most dangerous lie of all is how the media and West Wing portray themselves as icons of intelligent progressive liberalism, but are in fact the premiere tools in the service of free market fundamentalism and its sacred agenda of global predatory economics and the care and feeding of supra-national corporations.
This is the primary use of and the reason for the media takeover and the existence of programs such as West Wing, to promote the sacred agenda, to deny the public access to the actual state of affairs and to diffuse public opinion in the event they occasionally wake up and take note of unethical and catastrophic economic holocausts.
The sacred agenda of free market fundamentalism remains disguised and undisclosed in media in general and in West Wing in particular: which is, the total domination, control and abuse of the public media, and the unfettered global economic plundering of free market capitalism without criticism, without debate, without democratic approval, and certainly without the slightest hint of regulation.
And that is why West Wing is on NBC.
The second issue presented in the aforementioned episode is that of media monopolization. It was presented as an off-handed comic relief and as a fait acomplis. It is a compliment to the high skill of West Wing’s producers and writers that the issue was incorporated and diffused in combination with the job outsourcing issue. It stands as a masterstroke of cynical irony. It is, of course, a major dismissal and disguise of the magnitude of the issue by portraying the monopolization of the media as a natural phenomenon of social Darwinism and of free market fundamentalism. Big fish eat little fish.
Their cynical presentation of the opposing view is dismissed with the false claim that smaller media simply can’t do the job. This is yet another unsubstantiated and boldly stated lie, once again put forward without debate, proof or facts. Smaller, independent media is not only a life and death requirement of a functioning democracy, but they have in the past done the job all too well, and smaller independent media can still do a superior job today. The job being to inform an intelligent democratic electorate, and not filling the coffers of corporate greed.
By being unable to do the job it is supposed to mean that they can’t do the job without enough profits to care and feed the hunger for corporate greed, and even more importantly, would not do the job of dominating, controlling and censoring the media in order to justify free market fundamentalism. Accurate reporting would probably lead to the swift control of markets, an outcome which is emphatically contrary to the sacred agenda.
West Wing is the single most visible metaphor for the veneer of intelligent progressive liberalism. Actually, it is the strongest metaphor for how the monopolization the media has contributed to the extermination of American democracy and why GW Bush will be the next president.
It proves that the audience demographic that flatters itself as being intelligent progressive liberalism is neither intelligent nor progressive if they can swallow without complaint this highly polished pack of lies presented by West Wing. Like West Wing itself, this audience is either too stupid to analyze what it is being fed, or does not care and has the moral fiber of slime mold. The best that can be said is that this audience is delusional, and desperately wants to believe that their comfortable life style has nothing to do with the suffering of billions around the globe and the destruction of the American way of life including their own comfortable life style and their own loss of the democratic means of redress. In this case they have opted to be ostriches with their heads deeply buried in the sand and patiently awaiting slaughter to become low fat Big Macs.
This intelligent progressive liberalism veneer of the media in general and of West Wing in particular allows free market fundamentalism and its elite to promote and de-claw its most sacred agenda to its most dangerous opponent, an intelligent and activist electorate. Bush loves West Wing because it is one of the the most effective tools promoting his agenda and because it will contribute magnificently to his coming reelection.
Time to watch Good Morning Third World.
Michael Andrews, 22 April 2004