Daily Kos: Indiana Malkin and the Slightly Scary Neckware of Doom
So this is what we’ve (well, I say “we”, but I mean a small subset of American patriots who, having absolutely no intention of doing anything meaningful for their country that involves getting out of their chairs, spend their days looking for secret terrorist messages in television commercials) been reduced to. We’re examining the fashion statements of donut ads and parsing them for hints of surreptitious Islamic culture. We’re locked into a mortal combat against those that casually accessorize without remembering that we are at war; we’re mere weeks away from probing the hidden alliances of the doilies on our grandmothers’ coffee tables.
We are a nation that sees images of Jesus on toast. Admit it; there was absolutely no possibility that we would not eventually devolve to this point.
The most fearsome message of The Fashion Menace is that it has shown, once again, just how absurdly simple it would be for Osama bin Laden to bring America to its knees. It would be trivial; it requires only a rudimentary knowledge of American culture and social weaknesses.
To bring America to its knees, all Bin Laden must do is make his next video while drinking from a can of Coca Cola. The nation would erupt in chaos; Coca Cola sales would vanish into nothingness. In his next video, he could casually munch potato chips; the entire snack industry would collapse. One after another, he could film himself driving an American car; he could insert himself into a Girls Gone Wild video; he could appear next to a caveman, or a gecko, or Captain Crunch; he could enroll in DeVry University. On the day he refinanced his home at new historically low rates, the United States housing market would collapse irretrievably. One by one, he could decimate the entire economic fabric of America merely by association. Not one person in fifty would be willing to buck social trends and still buy Coca Cola if Bin Laden was seen drinking it; our consumer-based economy would be destroyed.
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And how about those “freedom” fries?!
When everything devolves into symbolism, what reality will exist?
The same reality that has always existed, and always will exist until it doesn’t.
Everything else has always been illusion…
In high school, I had to read S. I. Hayakawa’s “Language in Thought and Action” for an English class. It taught me a lot about the difference between symbol and reality, “The word is not the thing, the map is not the territory”, etc. Knowing that difference is crucial to being able to see accurately what is happening in the world. Our leaders lack of understanding and deliberate manipulation of the media and the populace is shameful.
“Symbols and things symbolized are independent of each other; nevertheless, all of us have a way of feeling as if, and acting as if, there were necessary connections. For example, there is a vague sense that we all have that foreign languages are inherently absurd; “Foreeigners have funny names for things; why don’t they call things by their right names?” This feeling exhibits itself most strongly in those American and English tourists who seem to believe that they can make the people of any country understand English if they just shout it loud enough. Like the little boy who is reported to have said, “Pigs are called pigs because they are such dirty animals,” they feel that the symbol is inherently connected in some way to the thing symbolized…..”
“… There would be little point in mentioning these incidents if we were all uniformly and permanently aware that symbols are independent of what is symbolized. But we are not. Most of us have, in some area or another of our thinknig, improper habits of evaluation. For this, society itself is to blame: most societies systematically encourage, concerning certain topics, the habitual confusion of symbols with things symbolized…In our society, we are encouraged to go into debt in order that we may display, as symbols of prosperity, shiny new automobiles. Strangely enough, the possession of new automobiles even under these conditions makes their “owners” feel prosperous. In all societies, the symbols of piety, of civic virtue, or of patriotism are often prized above actual piety, civic virtu, or patriotism. …
The first of the principles governing symbols is this: The symbol is not the thing symbolized; the word is not the thing; the map is not the territory it stands for.” — S.I Hayakawa, “Language in Thought and Action
I guess I meant what reality will remain in human discourse.
Burning a flag is (at least arguably) symbolic speech (what it is actually is disposing of a piece of personal property by fire). Wanting flag burners to be criminally prosecuted is a desire based on failure to separate symbol from reality. I have long wondered about the words “I pledge allegiance to the flag . . .” Shouldn’t one’s allegiance be to country, if anything?
Anyway, you make thoughtful posts as always.