Straight From Zeeshan's Dumb Blog

Since my earlier posts on Zeeshan's blog Twilight of the Idle (I would link here, but it's not even worth looking at) are not being put to any good use (and since I haven't been able to come up with any new ideas in months) I've decided to move my posts to this blog, in the hopes that more than zero people will be exposed to them. I'm also going to try to retool them a little bit, because they seem to be lacking in some major ways. Anyways, here's the first one:

"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate."

- excerpt from The Common Good, by Noam Chomsky

I was talking to Zeeshan the other day about my experience watching The O'Reilly Factor while on hallucinagenic drugs, and I remarked at how ridiculous the whole show seemed to me. I was dumbfounded that people actually took it seriously. But then I started to realize that the ideas being espoused were really not all that different from those of the liberal sector of the country. The difference between liberal propaganda and conservative propaganda is almost enitrely rhetorical. Obviously there are some relatively important actual differences between the Democrats and Republicans, but ultimately they both support the same social structures, ideologies, and institutions. They just do a very good job of covering up the obvious similiarities by advocating slightly different approaches to politics and by constantly expressing distain for the other party. After watching The O'Reilly Factor again while completely sober, I realized just how important that particular strategy is. It wasn't that I was so much more put off by Bill O'Reilly's viewpoints than, say, those of my parents, it was that I was completely put off by his semantics and unflinching hatred for "the other side". And this phenomenon is not exclusive to Bill O'Reilly or even conservatives. Almost all of mainstream political thought is governed by these two main principles. And my good friend Noam has artfully illustrated this point in the above quote.

In this country, we have freedom of speech. But just because we're allowed to think and say anything doesn't mean we can.

Notes: This is a horrible post in many ways. First of all, I started off telling my readership that this tripped was inspired by psychadelic subtances, which probably doesn't do much for my credability. Secondly, I used only one show as my "evidence", and on top of that it was a show considered by most liberals to be laughably conservative. Finally, I didn't use any concrete examples of the superficial versus the actual differences between mainstream liberals and mainstream conservatives. I'd rather just put this post out right now and give myself a feeling of momentum than spend the next week editing this article so it can be acceptable, so I'll put up a new post later as either a replacement for this one or as some sort of addendum.