Teleprompter Plutocracy

 

ASK NOT WHO READS THE TELEPROMPTER, ASK WHOM HE IS READING FOR.

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Tele = Greek for "At A Distance". Prompt comes from the Latin "promere", which means to bring forth. So when a politician uses a teleprompter, the question is: who is bringing forth that politician from afar? Answer therein.

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Here is the president of the USA on TV, announcing the "end" of the Iraq war. Whatever. Obama has announced many things before, and delivered the opposite, while calling it still something else (it’s no more operation "Iraqi Freedom", but operation "New Dawn"). The top US general in the Middle East (who looks like a villain in an horror movie, with the appropriate verbal delivery) already declared the USA would use force if things got out of control again. Meaning USA control, of course.

Of course Obama needs to read a teleprompter about the end of the Iraq war, because, otherwise, he would not know what to say. He called the Iraq war a "dumb war" in 2002. But the plan he is presiding over is to enjoy indefinitively the fruits, or rather the oil, of that dumb war with 50,000 soldiers and thousands of mercenaries. How clever is that?

But forget about Iraq. What is interesting is the presidential verbal delivery: big exorbited eyes reading the teleprompter, a machine sitting above the camera, with an haphazard gluing of invented emotions, while a hand delivers the J F Kennedy routine of waving, an index and thumb together for calm precision. A magical trick.

Certainly, if a lawyer came in front of a judge, and read from a teleprompter, that would not be tolerated. What is the difference between teleprompter reading and reading from notes? Well, when one reads from notes, there are basically two behavioral strategies: that of the old Stalinists, and that of readers who want their audience to believe that they genuinely believe in one what they read.

The old Stalinists read from a text, for hours. That looked completely canned. Everybody could see they were not genuine. They did not care, because they had the power, and that was their message. Being so obviously disingenuous was part of their oppression scheme. It said: ‘Look at us, we don’t believe in what we say, so we have to read it carefully, because it’s so disingenuous. But we can do so, because you can do nothing about it, and the proof is that we don’t care that we look so disingenuous. So don’t try a thing, you don’t have a chance.’

Indeed, it took 50 years to get rid of most Stalinist regimes.

If one wants, or needs, to read from a text when speaking, because one has a bad memory, while one wants to shows one’s face, eyes and emotions, to demonstrate to one’s audience one’s authenticity, one has to engage in a complicated mental gymnastic between reading a fragment of the notes, and projecting one’s mind, while recalling the corresponding emotions, when one verbalizes that fragment.

One uses the notes to make a memory recall, emotional and logical, each time one looks at a fragment of the notes. One reads a fragment quickly, then, having disengaged from the text, to look up at the audience, one goes back to the set of ideas and emotions connected to that fragment. The point is that part of one’s mind is recycled to some extent, and rises to the surface, at the moment of speaking. The notes act as a spark, the mind is engaged in fabricating the speech that is delivered, fragment by fragment. Spark, re-creation, spark, etc.

IT OUGHT TO BE UNLAWFUL FOR POLITICIANS TO READ FROM A TELEPROMPTER, JUST AS IT IS UNLAWFUL TO USE PERFORMANCE ENHANCING DRUGS. Normally intelligent persons do not use a teleprompter when speaking. A teleprompter is a performance enhancing device. Leave aside the fact only well financed politicians can afford them. A teleprompter allows to fake authenticity more than reading from a text. Indeed the politician can be much more of a complete puppet, while faking much more genuiness, when using a teleprompter.

Suppose you want a tall, lanky young man who is brown and looks like a sort of model at a distance. Suppose you find one who is willing to read whatever text you prepare for him, as long as you fork the money over, and offer power on a platter. Suppose you are a plutocrat. You have found your agent of misguidance. You will bring forth (prompt) the telegenic young man to present whatever misinformation you concocted to mislead and misinform the public, you will do it from afar: tele. You are using a "teleprompter" to do so. While filling your own pockets. As a plutocrat, you make war to the people. Nothing better than a Trojan Horse to ride in.

" In war, practice dissimulation, and you will succeed." (SunTzu; circa 500 BCE.)

Now suppose you are a voter, and you listen to the puppet saying whatever you want to hear. You will vote for the puppet, as long as you believe he is genuine. You will vote for the puppet, as long as you believe that the puppet is not a puppet. But it is much more difficult to find that out, when the puppet reads from a teleprompter. You observe his mechanical delivery, and emotional disengagement, and you naturally think: ‘It’s just the teleprompter.’ You would not tolerate such a masquerade from a normal speaker.

Somebody who is reading from a teleprompter is not processing the information. Such a person does not necessarily believe in anything he or she says. It is worse than in acting: at least an actor memorizes her, or his lines, and a good actor weaves them with emotion, just to effect recollection. So the mind of an actor mixes with her, or his discourse. Not so with a teleprompter reading robot.

Seeing Obama reading from his teleprompter that he was announcing the end of the war in Iraq, two things were obvious: he did not believe in anything he said, and he did not care. He was just reading what he had been told to read, that was his job, and he found it boring, and a bit uncomfortable, perhaps because there are limits to the sort of lying a gentleman will do. But it required careful observation to figure all that out, because of the teleprompter.

In any case, removing teleprompters from politicians will make the puppeteering harder. It is as many invisible strings cut off.

Meanwhile, there is little to do about Obama. His stimulus on infrastructure was only 66 billions (paid by July 2010, says the WSJ). Moreover there was no plan, besides helping the banking plutocrats, helping the military-industrial plutocrats, and the health industry plutocrats. Obama has professed his admiration for Reagan, and Reagan, another plutocratic puppet, knew that power trickled from the top (Reagan’s own life was a testimony to this, so it had got to be right: it felt good).

Obama’s strategy of helping the banks is sinking the economy. Trillions of dollars have been sent to the banks. At this point they get money for free, and reinvest it with the government on so called longer maturities to make more money, and call that profits. Toxic mortgages held by banks are sold to nationalized FNMA and Freddie Mac, which swallow them greedily, as ordered. Of course banks do not provide any money for the economy, although that is their FIDUCIARY DUTY, in exchange for the exorbitant privilege they have, and abuse, of creating most of the money of the realm.

Why should they provide money for the economy? The Obama economic team is their friend. Moreover the bank surge has created a fake GDP surge.

So, instead, one talks about side issues, such as China’s debasing of its currency. Changing the Chinese currency by even 100% would not change the problem: China has a plan, the USA does not. Obama’s stimulus on infrastructure (only $66 billion, as I said) was even then not concentrated on the edge of competiveness and efficiency, as it should have been (and is in China, or Germany, or France, and now Britain). Most of the enormous financial effort is in making war in the Middle East, and in allowing the banksters to stay so powerful that it was worth being friends to them.

Indeed, GDP reflects nothing important. Dues to the malignant growth of the financial sector, as that tumor gets enlarged, so does GDP.

Frank Rich denounce in an editorial on the Billionaires Financing The Tea Party. One will recognize in them, the one I used to call on the Tyranosopher web site, "Murderoch" (for his rabid pushing for the Iraq butchery). But there are other, like the immensely rich Koch brothers.

Obama got financed, at great sacrifice, by plenty of small people (including the author and his family). Some small people I know very well gave even more than the Fat Cats on Wall Street. Still Obama listened only to the later. Because the Fat Cats did not just offer money, they offered a future. They offered Obama and his economic team a dream: read the teleprompter, and all your wildest dreams will come true; vacations in 5 star hotels forever!

That was the surprise. Famous democrats in the past, such as LBJ, JFK, and FDR did not behave that way, as if greed were the  ultimate personal good. Instead, great democratic presidents of the past turned against the plutocratic class with a bellow and a vengeance. There were no less than four presidents of the USA in the twentieth century who took on the plutocrats. Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt "welcomed their hatred".

None of these presidents were naïve: three belonged to the plutocratic class itself materially, but they were free from it, spiritually. And Lyndon Johnson had seen it all, had seen the dirt before. Of course those presidents had not been selected as teleprompter reading robots; that particular trait of character did not exist yet. Now it does, and it’s most convenient to the plutocratic masters.

The great strategist Von Clausewitz points out that surprise demoralizes the enemy: “the surprise is, therefore, not only the means to the attainment of numerical superiority; but it is also to be regarded as a substantive principle in itself, on account of its moral effect.(Von Clausewitz’s "On War", "General Strategy".)

Obama has been the surprise the masters needed. Obama has done well for the plutocracy: he has demoralized the left. A deeply undermining job.

When Hitler came to power, his crucial trick was to gather support from the unemployed, the working class, and all those who desperately wanted change, from the bad economy. Behind Hitler were American, and German plutocrats (this is explained here and there on my sites). We have seen that movie before, but people were told it was not what it was. So it’s happening again. The fish rots by the head, so does a country.

Patrice Ayme

Tags: Inauthenticity, Teleprompter