…things to say about this current mess, I’ve gone back to a couple of the past century’s most famous social thinkers. So have some other present-day commentators.

I’m about a third of the way through a dog-eared used paperback copy of Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media. The pop-critic’s best known “serious” book popularized the catch phrases “the medium is the message” and “global village.” But it also presented a detailed, reasonably coherent worldview, built around the human senses and how various generations of media effect/extend/attack/desensitize/alter them. He claimed it was the phonetic alphabet, more than roads or weapons or force of will, that brought about the Roman Empire, and by extension the later western powers’ conquests around the world. My the mid-20th century (the book came out in ’64; he was working on it as early as ’59), the “cool medium” of TV (as defined by the degree of the audience’s attention and involvement) was overtaking such “hot media” as radio and movies. This, McLuhan claimed, was starting to change North American society’s whole perceptions and attitudes.

A recent symposium in NYC discussed how these and other McLuhan theories could be used to try to make sense of the current nonsense.

Certainly, the war is the ultimate example of what later PoMo media theorists called “The Spectacle.” It’s both a real war with real death and a media event made with an eye toward home-front PR. TV has become a “hotter” medium since McLuhan’s time (more detailed, less aloof), and live war coverage is “hotter” still. Sleaze-talk radio, the Bushies’ favorite medium, is ultra “hot” by McLuhan’s definition: It not only gives a dumbed-down, one-sided worldview, it orders its listeners precisely how to respond—with anti-intellectual, passive-aggressive obedience.

I’ve previously referred to demagogue radio as a 24-hour version of the “Two-Minutes Hate” scene in George Orwell’s 1984. Lots of folk have noticed the increasing parallels between Orwell’s world and ours. Among them: A new satirical student group, Students for an Orwellian Society. (Slogan: “Because 2003 is 19 years too late.”)

Certainly we’ve got a milieu of economic catastrophe for all but the members of the “inner party,” a regime that loves war, loathes sex, vilifies rational thought, and thrives on fear. The regime wants total knowledge and control of every citizen’s thoughts, words, and deeds. It preaches eternal self-sacrifice for the masses but reserves untold priviliges for itself. Its media minions disseminate nonstop war “coverage,” deliberate detailed lies, exhortations toward “patriotic” fervor, and demonizations against all perceived opponents.

But today’s Republican INGSOC doesn’t yet have the total power its agenda ultimately requires. It might never attain that total power. In the Internet age, information and communication may be unstoppably diffuse, despite the monopolistic efforts of Fox and Clear Channel. Neotribalism, multiculturalism, and the media’s own push toward fractured demographics mean there’s no undifferentiated mass of “proles” to be easily controlled.

But a gang that can’t get total power can still inflict a lot of damage trying to get it.