American Idols
My new book, The God of Scientism, argues that modern scientism, attempting to replace religious beliefs with the “objective scientific truths” ended up instead just replacing one set of beliefs with another, a more pernicious one. As a side effect, it also replaced the religion and the monotheist god with a gaggle of Hollywood idols. This article is about these idols and their role in manufacturing the US public opinion.
Contemporary Western culture prides itself on its rational approach, unassailable reason and ice-cold logic, all of which presumably will make the traditional religion obsolete. As we stop reading books, we happily line up in front of TV or movie screens controlled by Hollywood broadcasters or a mobile phone screens controlled by Silicon Valley Google, Facebook, and Twitter. On all of these screens, we obediently worship the glorious pantheon of our new secular idols, from Hollywood movie and TV actors to mass media news anchors, moderators, and talk show hosts, to social networking idols, even politicians. Sometimes it is not easy to tell who is who.
Work of media idols parallels the work of bureaucrats operating from the shadows of the deep state and both groups answer to their Wall Street owners. The job of an idol is not to entertain or inform, but to manufacture the opinions of huddled masses. Hollywood idols were doing their job extraordinarily well until recently, they are attractive, intelligent and they are talented and sensitive artists. Above all, however, they must be charismatic. Our educational system and our mass media provide them with exclusive access to the US audiences so they can form a desired public opinion, such as the current belief that 2016 US elections were manipulated by Putin, rather than by FBI or CIA.
There are privileges to being an idol, but there is a price to pay as well, often in the form of opioid addiction, as we have seen from examples of actors like Charlie Sheen, Alec Baldwin, Lindsey Lohan, Amanda Bynes or Britney Spears, and pop singers like Michael Jackson, Prince, Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, Sinead O’Connor, Christine Aguilera, Courtney Love, Chris Brown, Justin Bieber and others.
For idols to be properly worshipped, however, mass media must first silence the religion, Christian religion to be specific. A good example was last week’s Easter Sunday, when Facebook censor banned the Franciscan University ad, depicting Jesus on a cross for “shocking content,” “excessive violence” and “sensationalism.” At the same time, Hollywood’s actor and an amateur painter Jim Carrey’s recent tweet and depiction of the imaginary gruesome death of both sons of Donald Trump is apparently “fantastic”.
But even in the age of Reason, humans do not abandon religious faith lightly. A good example is the desert festival Burning Man, which exhibits attempts of modern men to return to religion, albeit in a concealed, techno-pagan form. According to Tesla founder Elon Musk: “Burning Man is Silicon Valley”, but in addition to hordes of computer executives and Hollywood stars reveling in freely available sex and drugs, there is also a temple where the participants post messages to their dead relatives, get “baptized” during various ceremonies and where Susan Sarandon was spreading the ashes of Timothy Leary. Even the final ceremony of torching a 100 feet tall statue of Burning Man reminds me of the pagan festivities I witnessed as a boy where peasants in remote Slovak villages welcomed the arrival of Spring with a procession and burning of a wooden effigy of goddess Morena.
How important is the role of charismatic, or as Zbigniew Brzezinski put it “magnetic,” personalities for the mass media propaganda? The short answer: very important. Author of Propaganda, Edward Bernays pioneered the use of movie screen magnetic personalities during the tobacco industry successful PR campaign converting masses of young American women to this deadly habit in the early part of the 20th century. Working for the American Tobacco Company, he created the “torches of freedom” campaign which raised women purchases of cigarets in the US from 5% to 33% percent and which was eagerly embraced by the feminist leaders. Here are some “glamor” photographs of famous Hollywood actresses, all ready to pick up and carry the “torches of freedom.”
Almost a hundred years later, the technology changed but the demand for charismatic idols stays the same. Priyanka Chopra (ABC TV show Quantico) and Claire Danes (Showtime TV show Homeland) exceptional IQ, good looks, and charisma are critical for their job as FBI and CIA recruiters.
Male idols play an important role too. In 1998, Saving Private Ryan, Matt Damon’s character traded his biological brothers for the government issued “band of brothers.” In 2015, Matt teamed up with NASA and Elon Musk to recruit Mars colonists for a one way trip to Mars in the movie Martian. Amazingly, thousands of real people signed up for the trip after the movie came out.
Music idols are equally if not more important and they too rely on enormous supporting infrastructure. Beyonce easily transitioned from her 2013 Super Bowl halftime show Black Panther persona dressed in bullet lined outfit to a 2017 Grammy awards look of a Pagan Fertility Goddess in chain string bikini.
In a major change from the relatively independent musicians of the 60’s and 70’s, 80’s saw the rise of a new kind of Pop music idols who brought the mass manipulation of teenagers to a whole new level. Some of these pop stars were not even trained musicians, and some actually did come from the movie industry. Many of contemporary music idols started as child actors in Disney empire, such as Miley Cyrus, who morphed from Disney’s Hannah Montana to a twerking sex idol, but Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, and others came from Disney.
“TV personalities” and political pundits job is to whip their audiences into an emotional frenzy, dividing them into two violently opposed, “left-wing right-wing” factions with false metaphors of “diversity”, “Inclusivity” and “equality”, while they themselves enjoy the rather exclusive status and multimillion-dollar salary packages. Even kindly Oprah, who earned $290M in 2011 according to Daily Mail, is not about the fray and played a crucial role in 2008 presidential elections.
And who did she help to get elected? A young but charismatic freshman senator Barack Obama, who was picked from virtual obscurity in 2008 to become the president of the US. Mass Media glossed over his radical history and some questionable friends and portrayed him as the true champion not only of black community but every “progressive” cause. In my view, Barack Obama, more than his predecessors, showed no signs of independent will, dutifully preaching to US citizens the gospel of globalism via the teleprompter, while pilling additional $10 trillion to our national debt. Yet, when I speak to my progressive friends, I am struck how many of them consider Barack Obama to be the best American president. Bernays was right; propaganda works through endless repetition even when we know we are being manipulated.
Finally, a whole new type of well-funded idols is emerging in the fight to kill the Second Amendment in an unlikely person of David Hogg. Isn’t it rather remarkable that a lowly “engaged high school student” can gain unlimited access to mass media, topple politicians, “right wing” journalists, change the laws of the country, even eliminate the 2nd Amendment?
For now, thanks to the mass media, propaganda still works. Many of us were hopeful that Internet would put an end to the era of idols. It did not happen, at least not yet. Is there any force which could compel the establishment to relinquish the power over the masses of US citizens? Perhaps there is. After the internet of information dies, a new type of internet will arise from its ashes, an internet of values. Cryptocurrencies, in the form of the first generation Bitcoin, second-generation Ether, third generation EOS and other modern distributed cryptocurrencies are evolving at speeds which bankers like Nouriel Roubini or Joseph Stiglitz cannot fathom. But that is another story.
