SOME WICKED: Dashiell Brown's Blog

So I’m waiting at the grocery store for a prescription, and I noticed one of my favorite magazines on the racks and started thumbing through it: Adbusters. And they seem to have a new agenda promoting Generation O. I think “O” stands for Obama, or maybe it stands for “Obey”. Either way they are one and the same: this new generation O is riding the O train full on–undergrads everywhere seem to be getting degrees in government. Why? Jobs, of course. The government’s hiring everyone, come get your job before someone else does. Wait? Did I just say that? No, there’s no competition here, we are the government, that means as long as there’s taxpayers to flip our bills, there’s more jobs to be had by everyone! Get on board! (Of course, people don’t seem to be worried about what happens when you have less taxpayers around and thus nobody to tax from anymore–what are government subjects going to do then? Yep, that’s right, get their access to youtube revoked.)

So I’m flipping through Adbusters which is way more dense than I remember (I used to have a subscription), and I notice an Exxon Mobil ad smack dab in the middle! It was about how green Exxon Mobil is becoming. Needless to say, I was floored. Flabbergasted. Befuddled. I stared at it in wonder, thinking this must be another one of those joke ads that Adbusters is filled with, makes their name on, but I couldn’t find the humor. 

What the hell is happening to Adbusters??? Are they seriously taking Exxon Mobil’s $ to advertise in their anti-ad, anti-corporate magazine??? (Edit: No, but their fake ads are getting too real. These are “fake”, but the point is, I wouldn’t be surprised if these ads were real the way the world’s going, real ads mock us all the time. Unsatisfied with your life? Feeling empty? Then KFC will make you happy, etc. Want to escape from your mundane existence? Buy this car! I’ve also seen real commercials for Shell and Chevron telling us how important the forests are and have nothing to do with the products they’re selling. These ads in adbusters are frightening because they could be real. The Greens have an agenda and Big Oil is going to have to placate them somehow. Not only that, but Adbusters has its own agenda and has its own logo, brand, products, etc.)

Then I saw something also worth mentioning. It’s not so disturbing as it is interesting: Kalle Lasn, the main editor dude of Adbusters and writer of Culture Jamming, wants the NY Times to run an op-ed piece about the hypocrisy of Israel being allowed to have nuclear weapons, but no one else in the Middle East is allowed to. Yep, it’s hypocritical alright. And could you imagine if NY Times ran an op-ed about it??? a ha ha ha ha! Wouldn’t that cause an upset! But we all know because of the way the media works (See Noam Chomsky and his explanation of media filtering in Manufacturing Consent) this ad ain’t ever going to run, even if Adbusters could raise the money from their loyal subjects. But how are they trying to raise the money? Just send Adbusters 10 bucks.

Well, when I read that, I almost fell on my head from a sudden thought: if we lived in a society without capitalism, the supposed enemy here, none of us would even have 10 bucks to give to support such a cause, there certainly wouldn’t be a NY Times to run such an impossible ad, and Adbusters wouldn’t even exist because, just as NY Times would never run a piece about Israel’s nuclear facilities, the government would never let a free-thinking publication like Adbusters exist either. Could you imagine the Chinese or Cubans getting together, raising some cash, and then cranking out an underground publication denouncing all those who are in power? Ain’t gonna happen, folks. Not only that, and it’s sad to say it, but Adbusters does cost money, you know. Dominion wasn’t going to let me take it off the shelf for free. So I have to buy it. And so do you. And so do their readers. And yet the entire magazine is telling me that capitalism has failed us, that it is not the right system for us, that we must all live according to our needs, but the magazine is also mocking the very system that is allowing the publication to survive, and even prosper. Without capitalism, there would be no Adbusters. There would be no ads to bust, no companies to mock, no subjects with money to donate, no access to a printing press to print their anti-capitalist rants, not to mention all the authors that submit their articles or excerpts from books they wrote, also for sale in evil capitalist book stores, and these same authors never would have been allowed to print their articles railing against the system either.

Adbusters is a cool concept, but their message is getting a bit too hypocritical for my tastes and way out of hand. It needs to stop trying to shoot down such a grandiose target as capitalism and start directing their anger to specific companies and the wrongs they have made and why other companies are a better “bang for your buck.” They do this to an extent, and that’s fine. But when they say that capitalism has failed or it’s an inferior system…of course it’s inferior, but up until now, it’s the only one we got, and now people want to jump on the “O” train to hack this system to pieces? Where do people think they are going to go on this train with Big G in the front as engineer? Do they think they are going to go forwards as more of the private sector is dictated? Do they want to go to the point where they wake up and are told the Government is shutting down your operation called Adbusters because it’s too subversive and “would give people bad ideas?” Do people even want to go forwards or do they want to go backwards? Where the hell do you want to go people? Culture jam all you want, but don’t bite the hand that feeds you. Before you know it you’ll just be a slobbering head asking for more baby food and you can’t fight any longer because you’re hands and feet have been cut off for writing an article that put your leader in a bad light. Yep, Generation “O” must stand for Obey. No questions asked.

see their EDIT:  ”joke” ad for the gas companies (the last picture) on the back here: http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/82

here’s a discussion about defending the hypocrisy of adbusters.

his point is adbusters has to use the modern means available to them to spread their message. and he’s right. i’d like to know what other alternative means there’d be if not our modern, “capitalist” ones? as far as i know, in any other system, no one would have the right to spread a message unless they were in power. it would be illegal. the cream rises to the top by being cream. the dregs sit at the bottom. the coffee’s in the middle. this is never going to change. someone will always be in power, and those in power control those without it. That’s The Wall. In this case, the consumers really have the power and they actually dictate what they buy and what they don’t. Why do you think GM’s going down? No one’s buying their crap. And what does the government do? It gives them billions of dollars. Smart move, people.

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It cracks me up when I get junk mail telling me I can help prevent global warming by turning my lights off for an hour. And it doesn’t surprise me in the slightest that no difference gets made, but Time Magazine has a great article about the impact Earth Hour had last year: nil. But as the article states, that’s not the point, “because climate change is essentially a political problem, and the language of politics is symbolism.” Exactly. Turning off your lights for an hour wasn’t to save electricity or reverse global warming. It’s a political move. In other words, global warming clearly has nothing to do with actual science, it’s clearly a political game. Earth Hour is meant to make people more conscious of “climate change.” I just wonder how much electricity, not to mention all other kinds of fossil fuels, gets wasted in making an Earth Hour campaign, including all the junk mail that comes with it. 

Speaking of wasteful spending and wasting resources, The Onion does a great job of mocking the phenomenon with this video.

Sony Releases New Stupid Piece Of Shit That Doesn’t Fucking Work
 

And now with Obama going on the way he does about carbon taxes, the economy is in, and will be in, shitloads more trouble than before. Just like how sending me junk mail so I can save the planet doesn’t make any sense, neither does forcing companies to charge more for their production to create jobs, and thus making everything far more costly, make any sense either. If it costs me more to produce, then I’m not going to be able to give you low prices, and then you can’t afford it, and because you can’t afford it, I can’t hire more people because no one’s buying my stuff. 

People need to go back and read Animal Farm, 1984, Brave New World. I know Atlast Shrugged has been back on the table now, and for good reason. 

Now having said that…I hate a wasteful economy, and I hate commercials, and I hate supporting corporations, etc. But I have to put my foot down when it comes to letting an inept government try to do the exact same thing. Not only is it wealth transfer, but it is ideological transfer. Capitalism creates jobs. Jobs create happy, productive, dishwasher-buying consumers. Do we really want to criticise the market the way we are, the angry populist masses? No, my life doesn’t center around going to the mall, and I really can’t stand the mall, but I am starting to see, in this economy gone sour, the point of the mall–it created jobs for people to buy more stuff, and on goes the cycle. But…the more I read about the mess we’re in, the more I realize the majority does seem to be getting it wrong, and I think it’s because they’re pissed, and rightly so. But their anger is directed at the wrong folks. The minority are the ones that create the jobs, not the majority. So to punish the minority and try to control/manipulate/coerce the minority into doing the govt’s bidding, well… into the Orwellian world we go. People seem to forget that business owners are responsible for hiring other people. Without them, I’m sorry to say, but we wouldn’t be hired. You would be out of a job. Of course the government won’t think twice about taking your former boss’s dough and using it to give you a government job, which I am also helping pay for against my will. 

So now that so many are getting laid off, of course the ones that hired you in the first place are going to be the target of your anger. But they are not the ones you should be angry at. Black is becoming white and vice/versa. 1984, we’re coming! Please wait up. We want to be controlled because we can’t control ourselves. It’s sad, indeed, but unfortunately, it looks like it’s what people want. Hell, the way my schools taught me, I don’t really know how to go out and create work for myself either. Business was never a requirement in school. Nor was money management. In fact, I was too stupid as a teenager to realize that my school curriculum was forcing me into majoring into the most useless subject of all: ineptitude. But if it’s purpose was to make us dependent on their system, which it clearly is, then they get an A+.

Speaking of the follies of bureaucracy, here’s my review of the Cohen Brothers great film, “Burn After Reading.”

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It’s funny that so many people caused so much uproar about Facebook’s policies that Facebook withdrew their changes to make the people happy. Just imagine if people were as passionate about changing the economy or their stance on war–would the government actually change their policies to appease the people? I guess we won’t know until the people get as excited about their country’s troubles as they did about Facebook. The government can screw us over, but Facebook can’t, I guess. Yes, Facebook is being idiotic, and though I have an account, I can’t say I like it all that much. But if the people can affect change like this, then should’nt it extend to even greater, more important matters?

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