Words&Dirt

“The movement that Milton Friedman launched in the 1950s is best understood as an attempt by multinational capital to recapture the highly profitable, lawless frontier that Adam Smith, the intellectual forefather of today’s neoliberals, so admired––but with a twist.  Rather than journeying through Smith’s ‘savage and barbarous nations’ where there was no Western law (no longer a practical option), this movement set out to systematically dismantle existing laws and regulations to re-create that earlier lawlessness.  And where Smith’s colonists earned their record profits by seizing what he described as ‘waste lands’ for ‘but a trifle,’ today’s multinationals see government programs, public assets and everything that is not for sale as terrain to be conquered and seized––the post office, national parks, schools, social security, disaster relief and everything else that is publicly administered.

Under Chicago School economics, the state acts as the colonial frontier, which corporate conquistadors pillage with the same ruthless determination and energy as their predecessors showed when they hauled home the gold and silver of the Andes.  Where Smith saw fertile green fields turned into profitable farmlands on the pampas and the prairies, Wall Street saw ‘green field opportunities’ in Chile’s phone system, Argentina’s airline, Russia’s oil fields, Bolivia’s water system, the United States’ public airwaves, Poland’s factories––all built with public wealth, then sold for a trifle.  Then there are the treasures created by enlisting the state to put a patent and a price tag on life-forms and natural resources never dreamed of as commodities––seeds, genes, carbon in the earth’s atmosphere.  By relentlessly searching for new profit frontiers in the public domain, Chicago School economists are like the mapmakers of the colonial era, identifying new waterways through the Amazon, marking off the location of a hidden cache of gold inside an Inca temple.

Corruption has been as much a fixture on these contemporary frontiers as it was during the colonial gold rushes.  Since the most significant privatization deals are always signed amid the tumult of an economic or political crisis, clear laws and effective regulators are never in place––the atmosphere is chaotic, the prices are flexible and so are the politicians.  What we have been living for three decades is frontier capitalism, with the frontier constantly shifting location from crisis to crisis, moving on as soon as the law catches up.

––The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, by Naomi Klein, pg. 304-6

“The whole point of trash television is to titillate and shock the public, so it is hard to criticize it without sounding titillated or shocked.  To splutter with outrage is to play into the hands of those who produce such programs, whether they are American, Russian, Indian, or Chinese.  But to defend trash television as a ‘new kind of public forum’ in which a ‘diversity of voices’ may be heard––a perspective that has migrated from the academic field of cultural studies into entertainment journalism––is to give it far more credit than it deserves.

When faced with the downward spiral of our popular culture, most Americans neither splutter nor theorize.  We shrug, laugh, or change the subject.  It is only when we travel to a country very different from America that we develop a more critical attitude.

Case in point: Matt Cool (not a pseudonym) is a young American living in China who has written about the experience of appearing on a dating show produced by a Henan Province TV channel.  ‘Having no concern about my reputation, humiliation, or face, I agreed to do it,’ he confesses.  Partway through his six-day stint, Cool realized that ‘many of the competitions…were rigged’ and ‘about half the cast…were actors or spies from other networks.’  He soldiered on, agreeing to stage a ‘romantic date’ with a female participant: ‘I was instructed to tell her…that she was my one true love, and we should run away together.’  Then, after the show ended, he learned that the young woman had ‘apparently thought the whole thing was real.’  Hoping to apologize for ‘lying to the girl,’ and ‘to expose the show for being fake,’ he agreed to be interviewed by a local tabloid.  But then he realized his ‘big mistake’:

When the article came out, next to a picture of me the headline read: ‘I’m very naughty, I just came to play.’  The newspaper published all sorts of interesting facts I never knew about myself…like I ‘came to China because the job market was tough in America.’…I didn’t mind some of the inaccuracies…But falsities that play into stereotypes Chinese people have about Americans bothered me.  They portrayed me as a playboy and called me a typical American.

Matt Cool may have learned his lesson, but most Americans have not.  Without much reflection, we repeat the cliché that a steady diet of degrading talk shows and reality shows is ‘the price we pay for freedom.’  This may be true in America.  But in authoritarian regimes like Russian and China, people pay the same price and get nothing for it.  That is, they are free to wallow in degrading entertainment; indeed, they may be encouraged to do so by up-to-date autocrats like Vladimir Putin.  But they are not free to change the channel and watch something better and more truthful.”

––Through a Screen Darkly: Popular Culture, Public Diplomacy, and America’s Image Abroad, by Martha Bayles, loc. 1800