{"id":18359,"date":"2010-11-07T23:12:48","date_gmt":"2010-11-08T04:12:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fryeblog.blog.lib.mcmaster.ca\/?p=18359"},"modified":"2010-11-07T23:12:48","modified_gmt":"2010-11-08T04:12:48","slug":"quote-of-the-day-mendocracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/macblog.mcmaster.ca\/fryeblog\/2010\/11\/07\/quote-of-the-day-mendocracy\/","title":{"rendered":"Quote of the Day: “Mendocracy”"},"content":{"rendered":"

httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=h3hMODMyed8<\/p>\n

In just 38 seconds you can witness the way Fox News cuts and pastes its lies together
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

Rick Perlstein explains<\/a> how a mendocracy works:<\/p>\n

Political scientists are going crazy<\/a> crunching the numbers to uncover the skeleton key to understanding the Republican victory last Tuesday.<\/p>\n

<\/a>But the only number that matters is the one demonstrating that by a two-to-one margin likely voters thought their taxes had gone up, when, for almost all of them, they had actually gone down. Republican politicians, and conservative commentators, told them Barack Obama was a tax-mad lunatic. They lied. The mainstream media did not do their job and correct them. The White House was too polite\u2014”civil,” just like Obama promised\u2014to say much. So people believed the lie. From this all else follows.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Frye cites Orwell on the social degradation of language in \u201cThe Primary Necessities of Existence\u201d:<\/p>\n

Then there are various epidemics sweeping over society which use unintelligibility as a weapon to preserve the present power structure.\u00a0 By making things as unintelligible as possible, to as many people as possible, you can hold the present power structure together.\u00a0 Understanding and articulateness lead to its destruction.\u00a0 This is the kind of thing George Orwell was talking about, not just in 1984<\/em>, but in all his work on language.\u00a0 The kernel of everything reactionary and tyrannical in society is the impoverishment of the means of verbal communication.\u00a0 The vast majority of things that we hear today are prejudices and cliches, simply verbal formulas that have no thought behind them but are put up as a pretence of thinking.\u00a0 It is not until we realize these things conceal meaning, rather than reveal it, that we can begin to develop our own powers of articulateness. (CW <\/em>12, 747)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=h3hMODMyed8 In just 38 seconds you can witness the way Fox News cuts and pastes its lies together Rick Perlstein explains how a mendocracy works: Political scientists are going crazy crunching the numbers to uncover the skeleton key to understanding the Republican victory last Tuesday. But the only number that matters is the one demonstrating […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events"],"yoast_head":"\nQuote of the Day: "Mendocracy" - The Educated Imagination<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/macblog.mcmaster.ca\/fryeblog\/2010\/11\/07\/quote-of-the-day-mendocracy\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Quote of the Day: "Mendocracy" - The Educated Imagination\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=h3hMODMyed8 In just 38 seconds you can witness the way Fox News cuts and pastes its lies together Rick Perlstein explains how a mendocracy works: Political scientists are going crazy crunching the numbers to uncover the skeleton key to understanding the Republican victory last Tuesday. 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