Tea party group offers summer camp

[Amaranth]

So...Has "political Correctness" officially lost all meaning?

It's been hanging by a thread, but I'm pretty sure this one got it.

[Mlle Antéchrist]

Incidentally, those companies air a bunch of "Sell us you gold!" commercials (Mostly Dollars4Gold) up here in Canada, buy up our crappy old jewelery for cheap, then re-sell it at higher prices to Americans via Goldline, et al.

[demodocos]

In the minds of the teabaggers, it's all merely necessary counter-propaganda.

Deliberately Overthinking It: My Little Pony and Totalitarian Propaganda

The role of entertainment, especially that of children's entertainment, in the spreading of ideological propaganda has been addressed before. Largely depending on which way the ideological accusation leans (with, or against, the audience's bias) and the extremism with which the accusation is laid as to whether the claim is greeted with passing sobriety or simply laughed out of the room.... it is something of a paradox that claims that popular entertainment "influences the minds of the young" is greeted with such skepticism--- even though we rely on children's entertainment to do that very thing. (If we don't think entertainment influences people, whence Sesame Street?) I would suggest that the rise of skepticism is due to the over-influence of the past on our perception of propaganda. When one says propaganda, one does not normally associate the word with "subtlety."

Instead one tends to picture men with funny mustaches and silly uniforms pounding on podiums, and garish posters portraying "the enemy" as a befanged ogre trampling the populace; triumphalist radio broadcasts and broad primary-color oversimplifications. We tend to forget that the art of ideology might have learned a few new tricks since the days of WWII. Propaganda and ideology-- the arts of permeating a culture with an idea-- are merely another form of advertising, and advertising has come a long way from the days of "Eat At Joes". Hard sell, soft sell, grassroots, astroturfing, viral campaigns... just to brush over the high points. The art is subtle. And one of the first things the advertisers learned in subtlety is that if you want people to wear purple top hats with wings on the side, you don't have to stand on a soapbox and yell, "Buy This HAT!!".... it is a thousand times more effective to be seen going about one's business, merely WEARING the hat. In short order wearing the hat (no matter how ridiculous the thing looks) goes from weird to boring, becomes normal, then accepted, then imitated... till it's inconceivable that any proper gentleman EVER went out of doors without his purple bewinged top hat on.... and then they're doing the work for you; they promote and even enforce what was once aberrant as perfectly normal, because they can no longer imagine that it was any other way.

That is the art being exercised in entertainment today; the popularizing of totalitarianism as an accepted meme. Not that the people popularizing it are even aware of it; they are simply enmeshed so deeply in the meme by prior forces that they present it---wear it on their sleeves-- without comment or even acknowledgement.

Why am I harping on totalitarianism? Because it is, pardon the analogy, the total summation of countless problems in our society. Dozens of the grievances the rational, objective and moral have against our modern culture spring from the same root and nest under the same canopy: totalitarianism. The belief that all good comes not from God but from Government; that not only would it be best if society, community, economy, religion, family and even the environment itself were under the control of a totalitarian State but that such a state of affairs is only natural and obvious.

I will not waste much time on restating the monstrous evil this folly represents; history states it well enough. The twentieth century is hip deep in the corpses of totalitarian states; both man and nature suffered under lash of overweening power. Men and women died in breadlines in totalitarian USSR; and as to nature, the unending chain of environmental calamities in the national parks bears testament of what destruction even well-meaning government bureaucrats and scientists can wreak in their ignorance, trying to run Nature like a government office.

No, I won't belabor the obvious. The focus of this column is addressing the means by which this disastrous state of affairs is being indoctrinated as GOOD and NORMAL to our people and our children. There are countless examples of such normalizing in entertainment.... and mentioning them routinely earns scornful laughter. But not much in the way of reasoned counter-arguments, I note....

In the 80s, one good example was the Smurfs. A communal village where all was held in common and run and administered by a single central authority...The communist archetype for the Smurf village was so obvious that it was an openly stated joke-- "Commie Smurf." we forgot that the joke was going right over the heads of the target audience. Dozens of shows with similar flavor--- small magical commune of wondrous creatures, all good shared, all labor shared, etc--- came and went in the 80s, and noone noticed an entire generation of children were growing up enraptured with the happy fantasy of a magical marxist utopia.

Another avenue down which the "more government is GOOD for you" bandwagon went was the comics industry and the superhero genre. Over the past decades it has become routine to portray superheros---once the very epitome of individualism and autonomy--- as being supervised, licensed or even outright owned by the government. An entire Crisis was created in the Marvel Comics universe to facilitate it: the Civil War; where the heroes of Earth divided down the middle and fought each other over the issue of government registration. The creators have openly stated their surprise at negative fandom reaction when the pro-reg side won, because the PRO-registration side was the one that was supposed to be "right".

And in the Marvel movies we have SHIELD, which in the eighties comics battled alien invaders, but in the 21 century steals private property, jackboots over top of researchers, and breaks into private citizens' homes and informs them they've been "recruited...."

Then there's Jack Parr and family in "the Incredibles," who were implicitly government employees and forbidden to do heroics for decades by government regulation. The fact that they were sued and decommissioned was criticized, but nobody thought to criticize the fact that the government was given that much authority over them in the first place...

The trend goes clear back to the sixties, where squeamish television executives required Adam West's Batman to be officially deputized.... see kids? More government equals BETTER. Remember that when you hit eighteen and can vote.

Another one that should send a chill down your back is that it was the STATED POLICY in the children's entertainment industry that in any cartoon about a group of characters, there should be one character who was the complainer-- and that the complainer was ALWAYS WRONG....

Negative propagandizing, that is to say where the alternatives to collective totalitarianism is attacked, can be seen as well. One fairly recent example is the video game "Bioshock," where the villain of the piece is a man who builds an underwater city, "Rapture," which is repeatedly described as "Objectivist" and "Ayn Randian," and which falls into nightmarish anarchy.... even thought the principles upon which Rapture is run (controlled by a single, tyrannical dictator, government censorship, execution of dissidents, anti-religious oppression, etc.) are anathema to Objectivism....

Let's leave it at this: it is self-evident that the overwhelming attitude of children's entertainment is "yay more government."

Why am I harping on this? Because recently the topic was brought to the forefront of my mind yet again; this time by a NEW show and its fanbase. The show I'm speaking of is My Little Pony:Friendship Is Magic.

To begin at the beginning, the show is set in the world of Equestria, a land of magical ponies (and unicorns and pegasi. you get the idea). It is ruled over by two magical alicorns (winged unicorns), Princess Celestia and Princess Luna, who raise and lower the sun and moon, respectively. Everything in Equestria is run by the ponies: even nature (as if that didn't follow from their rulers controlling the moon and the sun.) The Pegasus ponies control the weather, literally pushing clouds around to bring rain or sunshine as needed; the earth ponies tend to the plants and animals; and the unicorns with their varying magical powers fit all the gaps in between. They dictate when it will rain, when it will shine, when it will snow, when the leaves will fall, even when winter will begin and end. In fact, their whole ecosystem is so completely controlled that the only place where nature follows its own lead, the Everfree forest, is regarded with superstition and fear. They live in a perfect garden world, controlled completely by their benevolent rulers.

If the above description doesn't make you twitch a little, you haven't been paying attention. The creators of the show either do not notice, or worse, do not care about the unfortunate implications of their worldbuilding.

Let's start with the obvious. Beginning with the straight up fact that "the government"-- the ruling princesses-- raise and lower the freaking sun and moon. The existence of life itself in Equestria depends upon the benevolence of their seemingly immortal, unelected leaders.

This is expanded further to the government as a whole as you consider that their whole ecosystem is controlled at every point as well... and apparently by government dictate. The weather, the seasons, even the migratory and hibernating cycles of the wild animals, are controlled.... and explicitly government controlled, with all citizens "deputized" to bring it about on time and on schedule. In Spring the animals have to be physically awoken from hibernation, birds LED BACK from the South and provided with hand made nests, flowers, grass, etc have to be manually planted--- even the snow has to be manually removed (ep. "Winter Wrap-Up")... the leaves have to be encouraged to drop in the fall ("Fall Weather Friends")...rain, snow, thunder, lightning, and even RAINBOWS are made to order, and it's implied that the pegasi literally HAND CRAFT all the snowflakes that fall in the winter ("Sonic Rainboom").

This practically SCREAMS "massive bureaucracy." No, more like massive, gigantic, monstrous, brobnidagian, Hippopotamic. Especially in light of the fact that much of what they do is demonstrably unnecessary and wasteful busy-work.... there is no feasible reason that they would have for wasting resources on fabricating thunder and lightning (which are not only materially useless but quite explicit hazards. It would be like paying road crews to plant land mines in potholes!) It's been demonstrated that rainbows can form in the "normal" way--- sunlight on rain-- or even by a single pegasus pony(ep. "Boast Busters", "Sonic Rainboom") without need for the manufactured ones from Cloudsdale. And the notion that even an army of pegasi could handcraft enough snowflakes for an entire snowfall, much less an entire WINTER, is ridiculous (ep. "Sonic Rainboom")... especially as they're only making snow for other ponies to shovel off the hills in the spring (ep. "winter Wrap-Up") They used to joke that the Soviet Union kept men employed by employing half of the men in a town to dig ditches, the other half to fill them back in. In Equestria they're doing it literally! And the very existence of the Everfree forest, with "Plants growing untended, animals caring for themselves, and clouds that move all on their own" (ep. "Bridle Gossip") shows that huge swathes of the ecosystem really don't need micromanaging at all. The whole setup smacks of a candy-land bowlderized version of the centralized planning of the Soviet Union... absent, of course, any of the real world disastrous consequences of such overweening micromanaging.

Granted, while the evidence to the contrary is thin on the ground, it's still pretty weighty. First off, there is explicitly obvious private property, and private commerce. Applejack (one of the main characters, an Earth pony) owns Sweet Apple Acres, a substantial apple farm, along with her family... and spends a great deal of time on doing her best to make it prosperous and PROFITABLE. At one point she even sets up shop selling apples right in the royal palace (ep. "the Best Night Ever.") Rarity (a unicorn) is a fashion designer and owns her own dress shop. There are several other private businesses in Ponyville as well-- a florist's, a restaurant, a bakery, etc. Buying, selling, promoting and advertising are part of Applejack and Rarity's regular vocabulary. This could all be attributable to the writers' lack of insight as to what HAPPENS to private property and private commerce in a totalitarian state, but taking the details as they lie, capitalism is alive and well in Equestria.

so how do these two realities reconcile?

Not in any explicit way.

In this case, it's not obvious or stated, but it's first of all notable that the ponies in Equestria don't merely CHOOSE to control the weather and the ecosystem.... they HAVE to. Their planetary system is geocentric--- that is, a world orbited by a small, artificial/magical moon and sun. this means first of all that their planet does not rotate from night to day, nor does it have large gravitational pull from the sun or moon... which in turn means no tides, no ocean currents, no jet streams-- all products of both the Earth's rotation and the pull of the Moon and Sun upon the ocean and atmosphere. As these are, among other things, vital systems for heat exchange on a planet and the source of weather and cloud movement, the inhabitants of Equestria HAVE to step in and artificially induce the weather to keep their world inhabitable.

Also there would be no magnetic field, which would mean that many migratory animals WOULD need to be guided....

While many of the things they do are cosmetic or even completely meaningless (rainbows, hand made snowflakes), it doesn't change the core necessity of having a hands-on approach to their ecosystem. In essence their world is comparable to an artificial space station... a central bureaucracy is necessary to keep the water potable and the air breathable.

But is it feasible to have a free economy and by extension a free society in a world where the government is in charge of the very rain and air?

Presumably, and most necessarily, yes.

The reason we in real life (or at least the sensible among us) do not attempt to control the ecosystem beyond small-scope and immediate-environment purposes is because it is too big, too powerful, and too complex and chaotic a system for us to control, and our short-sighted dial-twiddling of its already self-balancing systems serves to do nothing but cause ourselves grief.

The Ponies of Equestria on the other hand control their ecosystem from the Sun itself on down. It's a small, contained system which they themselves have built from scratch. But there is one chaotic self-balancing system in their experience which they will have learned they CANNOT control.... the free market, that is to say, "human" nature. All things considered, they must have to struggle against systemic chaos constantly to maintain control of their artificial ecosystem.... and that having dealt with that, they would take one look at human/pony nature and comprehend that is more chaotic than any storm, and more susceptible to the vagaries of the Butterfly Effect than any atmosphere. Or more cynically, those who would be of a mind to control others' choices and free will would find their hooves already far too full just keeping the climate on an even keel to muck about with the economy or the open market. To hell with regulating trade, I just spent a month keeping a hurricane at bay. Handle it yourselves.

The fact that the most pivotal part of their cosmology is based around emotional attributes and virtues (the six elements of harmony: honesty, loyalty, charity, laughter, kindness, friendship) bespeaks a respect for the mystery of the motivation of living beings, and suggests that they would be timid indeed about trying to ride THAT particular brand of lightning...

To paraphrase "Kung Fu Panda," they may be able to dictate when and where and how a peach stone will be planted... but no amount of royal decree will make it grow into anything but a peach, and not a moment sooner than it chooses. That private property, private enterprise, and free commerce take place in Equestria indicates that the Princesses are wise enough to realize this, and they leave the people and the open market darn well enough alone.

Nevertheless, without some effort at correction, the show itself falls badly into the Unfortunate Implications valley. While much of what I've listed above can be inferred if you sit down and reflect, ***the target audience isn't known for introspection.*** (Nor, let us be honest, are most people. But the point stands.) At the age demographic the show targets, passive absorption, not thoughtful debate, are the norm.

In fact the pro-totalitarian message is virtually explicit in several episodes... with Twilight Sparkle, in her capacity as Princess Celestia's protege, marching in, bypassing the Mayor and issuing orders till everything is straightened out. "winter Wrap-up" being the most straightforward example. The ponies' efforts to make Spring arrive on schedule turn out to be a disaster,**until a self-appointed authority, Twilight Sparkle, steps in and takes charge.** Even TVTropes noted with some cynicism that the take-away message of the episode was "Yay Bureaucrats."

There's no way to avoid saying it: while the show is marvelously done and VERY entertaining, its just another example of the creators not being aware of the unfortunate implications of what they're saying. While the overt message of the value of friendship is a worthy one, the audience is still going to walk away with the unintended message as well: that if we just put the right people in charge of EVERYTHING, we'd all live in a sugarbowl utopia...

rhjunior.livejournal.com/512699.html

Just a random blog entry from a right-wing blowhard I stumbled over today. I think this totally exposes the paranoid mindset behind such initiatives.

I'm still trying to extract submittable portions of this tract, but it's like a downpour of crazy.

[Iosa the Invincible]

The ironic thing is that Orwell wrote 1984 as what he thought the future would be like under communism (or more specifically, Stalinism). I wonder what his response to Teapartiers and their uber-capitalism would be like.

[demodocos]

Pfft... Orwell was living in the 1940s, he didn't have to speculate about such things since most people remembered Nazi Germany pretty well.

[lighthorseman]

Are you a wingnut family tired of sending your kids to Vacation Bible School? Well now you have another option -- you can send them to a Tea Party summer camp in beautiful Tampa, Florida. Just imagine all of the fun activities your kids can take part in, like:

Map-drawing exercises, where your kids can learn how to draw new, conservative maps that place Hawaii within the borders of Kenya or Indonesia and put Lexington in New Hampshire instead of Massachusetts.

History workshops where they can learn that Adolf Hitler laid the groundwork for the killing of six million Jews by first giving them affordable access to health care. They'll even get to take home a t-shirt that says "Obamacare: Where every Dr. is named Mengele."

The Living Constitution, a seminar that will feature Herman Cain explaining to the children why the federal government has no authority over bankruptcy despite the fact that Article 1 explicitly gives them that power. And special guest Michelle Bachmann will explain why she just adores the Constitution even though she thinks the census that it mandates every 10 years is a Muslim socialist plot to destroy America.

And what would a summer camp be without arts and crafts? At the Tea Party summer camp, students will learn to forge their own Obama birth certificates. Any student who manages to fool Orly Taitz with their forgery and prompt her to file another pointless lawsuit over it will get free tuition to next year's camp.
But that's not all. Victoria Jackson will show them how to do handstands and delight them with stories about her glory days when she and Jon Lovitz would spend hours at hotel bars trying to convince strangers that they really are funny and that they know David Spade personally.

At night we'll sit around the campfire, roast marshmallows and tell ghost stories like the Tale of the Creeping Sharia, stories that we'll use to teach the kids the importance of checking under their bed and in their closets for Muslim boogeymen every night before they go to bed.

Sign up now!

scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2011/06/tea_party_summer_camp_for_kids.php#more

[booley]

Must not make a comparison to Hitler Youth.

Must not make a comparison to Hitler Youth.

Must not make a comparison to Hitler Youth.

I must not Godwin.
Godwin is the thread killer.
Godwin is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my Godwin.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the Godwin has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

But damn these guys make it hard sometimes!

Seriously!? Indoctrinating kids at camps?!

[Smurfette Principle]

I will not make puns about Animal Farm.

I will not reference Red Scarf Girl.

I will not refer to the coordinators as "zombies," "Nazis," "Imperial Stormtroopers," or "Cybermen."

Actually, screw that last one. "You will become like us! Upgrading is compulsory!"

[lighthorseman]

What's wrong with Imperial Stormtroopers?

[Jodie]

So it's Bible camp with a political twist. Yawn.

[demodocos]

Jun 16, 2011 16:27:01 GMT -5 lighthorseman said:

What's wrong with Imperial Stormtroopers?

Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy

(calling their marksmanship skills into doubt is probably the biggest insult to a group obsessed with guns, such as the tea party movement)

[booley]

Jun 16, 2011 16:29:19 GMT -5 Jodie said:

So it's Bible camp with a political twist. Yawn.

I thought bible camp with a political twist was called Bible camp.

[Old Viking]

The examples sound lamer than hell. I think what they'll end up with is a bunch of bored, irritable children.

[Thejebusfire]

So what, does one kid get to hoard most of the candy and bubble blowing liquids and say, "I got mine fuck you."

[itachirumon]

Why yes, yes he does. And when they do their anarchy exercises he gets to shoot the other kids when they try to redistribute the wealth to stop the massive recession/depression flood of children crying about fairness.