From Deer Hunting with Jesus (Joe Bageant, 2007) pp258-9
A media-generated belief system functions as the operating instructions for society. Television shows us how successful people supposedly behave, invest, and relate to each other. Through crime shows it demonstrates what will happen if we don’t behave. Television shows us what an awful place the world supposedly is. Like clockwork, there is the nightly bloodletting through televised wars and domestic murders, interspersed with detective Lenny Briscoe finding corpses at 7, 8, and 11 p.m. weekdays. Television shows us whom we should hate (Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, for starters). Anything outside of its parameters represents fear and psychological free fall. Anything outside of it is dirty, unpredictable, incomprehensible, and pocked with risk and tragedy.
Of course millions of Americans do not completely succumb to the hologram, mostly as a result of a true higher education, especially in the arts and humanities. They are capable of understanding that the tragedy of a million deaths in the Sudan or the destruction of the planet’s atmosphere are just as real and possibly more important than a Redskins game or this week’s special at Popeye’s (although Popeye’s does make some damned good biscuits). Yet scarcely one in fifty working-class Americans understands this.
But it is not they who are responsible for the slow dismantling of our educational system that has taken place under both Republican and Democratic administrations. The people who have gained the most from that system are the most to blame for its destruction, particularly the upper middle class and the affluent suburban classes that serve the administrative needs of the’ empire—its commissars, lawyers, public accountants, and stock brokers. These are the catering classes, the men and women whose identity is granted them by the corporation, the brand for which they work. After all, it is the brand that makes possible the accumulation of goods that confer their social standing and ensure they will never be forced to drink tap water or live in a modular home like Nance. In much the same way that old-line fascists dutifully served the state, so the catering classes, both liberal and conservative, serve the brutal American brand of market capitalism. Without them, none of it could possibly work. That’s why they must be purchased at a higher rate than the proles. They are more to blame because there are more of them, and between them they have the only true power of revolt. No one would dare openly crush them (even though they too are quietly being weakened). Blame the ruling class? The ruling class is too obvious, too easy. We all see them, even though they are unseeable.
That anyone in the laboring classes sees anything at all is a sheer miracle, given what passes for news reporting. The once noble craft of Ida Tarbell and Edward R. Murrow is now in the hands of praise-seeking pawns of corporate media, drawn from the middle and upper classes. From their narrow, protected vantage point, they can imagine only two kinds of societal stories: (1) worshipful portrayals of the rich, famous, and politically powerful, and (2) tearful glamorizations of crack whores and illegal immigrants. These are the kinds of stories that entertain or stir the emotions of the middle class but do not threaten the status quo. The men and women who produce these stories have no more clue that they have been brainwashed than do the poor working slobs. And if they did know, they might not care because they are comfortable enough and even a bit glamorous.
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