Premediation and Structure of Feeling

Raymond Williams coined the concept "structure of feeling," as my friend and colleague Jonathan Flatley reminds us, not only because "structure of feeling" "enables us to talk about the sociality of affect, but because it enables us to describe those structures that mediate between the social and the personal that are more ephemeral and transitory than set ideologies or institutions." "Premediation" in one sense functions as such an ephemeral and transitory structure, mediating between individual and collective affect, and in another sense could be seen to describe one of the strategies or frameworks such structures of feeling employ in mediating "between the social and the personal." In either sense, it is clear that at the present moment changes in structures of feeling invariably manifest themselves through our print, televisual, and networked media.

Seemingly overnight, the current structure of feeling has turned dramatically economic. The relation between individual and collective affect in our media environment has begun to focus almost obsessively on the current "economic crisis." Small talk--at Caribou or Starbucks, at PTA meetings or the high school cafeteria, in the workplace or over the dinner table, at CVS or Home Depot, in the library or the doctor's office--almost immediately turns to the crisis in the economy and the proposed bailout. People want to know: what is going to happen to the economy in the future, tomorrow, next week, after the election, and beyond?

This economic chatter is even more extreme on local, national, and global news media. In the US, CNN, Fox, CNBC, and MSNBC are populated with new faces and new charts and visuals, discussing the details of the mortgage and liquidity crisis, explaining the potential features of the proposed bailout, and most interestingly premediating what economic and social disasters would occur if we did not bail out Wall Street. Non-US media outlets like BBC, CBC, or Al Jazeera are similarly participating in this proliferation of economic scenarios.

Of course, all of these media formations are part of what I characterize as "premediation," as they concern themselves with furnishing the content of our media environment and modulating affective structures of feeling as we move into and through any number of potential futures. These structures of feeling, I would argue, which Williams describes as "emergent or pre-emergent," are not fixed and institutionally defined, but like premediation function as something like what, following Deleuze, I would call virtual structures, as potential individual and collective affective qualities and intensities from which actual personal and social structures emerge.

This discursive proliferation of media talking heads, historical narratives, and graphic formats concerned with the economy and the market crisis works to provide competing potential, not-fully-defined premediations of possible futures into which US and global citizens, corporations, collectivities, and nation-states find themselves thrown and among which they will have to navigate. Such structures of feeling operate ordinarily as part of our media everyday, but in periods of crisis and rapid affective change like this one their operations become much more intense and thus much more visible than at moments of relative quiescence or stability.

Premediating the Next Great Depression: "Won't Get Fooled Again!"

In a classic example of the Bush Administration's use of the strategies of premediation to further its own interests, Congress is once again on the verge of being suckered into approving a Bush Administration proposal that is guaranteed to cost the nation over a trillion dollars. The Bush Administration is succeeding in this effort not in response to a catastrophe but on the basis of the premediation of catastrophe. And as today's news headlines make plain, the chief beneficiaries of this "rescue plan" will be Wall Street financial firms, whose CEOs, executives, board members, and major shareholders are among the chief supporters and business partners not only of Republicans in the Bush Administration and Congress, but of Democratic politicians as well.

We've seen this episode before people!

Flash back to October 2002, when the Bush Administration came to Congress seeking authorization to conduct a war against Iraq, not because Iraq had attacked us but to pre-empt Iraq from attacking us. How did the Bush Administration persuade the Congress, the media, and most of the American public that this authorization was necessary? They did it by premediating the consequences of Iraqi possession of weapons of mass destruction and their distribution to terrorists, particularly to Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Print, televisual, and networked news media were filled with Bush Administration spokesmen, warning us about the consequences of letting Iraq act in this way, assuring us of their possession of these weapons and of their intent to distribute them to the very people who attacked us on 9/11 because they hate our freedom. You know the rest of the story. Thousands and thousands of deaths later, billions of dollars of damage to Iraq, trillions of dollars of US debt, much of it headed into the pockets of companies like Halliburton and the oil companies--and Congress and the public is finally fed up with funneling taxpayer dollars to this boondoggle.

But wait! Here's another boondoggle! The real-estate mortgage crisis threatens our very way of life, indeed it may even hate us for our freedoms! What should we do? Let's give a trillion dollars of our money to bail out Wall Street from its risk-taking and irresponsible speculation. Why? Not because of what has happened to our economy over the past eight years (which is significant enough), but because of what might happen to our economy if we do not give in to the Bush Administration's demands, if we refuse to accept Hank Paulson's premediation of another Great Depression in his briefings behind closed-doors in Wall Street.

This is, remember, exactly the same script the Bush Administration followed in 2002, only with different Congressional committees as their dupes. Flash back again to the Autumn of 2002. Remember the confidential briefing reports distributed to members of key Congressional committees but kept from the American public, the briefings that convinced people like Hilary Rodham Clinton of the threat posed by Iraq and the necessity of giving Bush authorization to initiate a war? Last Friday, on multiple news channels, an ashen Senator Chris Dodd told financial reporters of the catastrophic horrors that Hank Paulson had premediated for Dodd's Senate Banking Committee. Thus Dodd and other Senate leaders seem convinced (including McCain and Obama) that to prevent this catastrophe from happening the Bush Administration needs to be authorized to wage a pre-emptive war against the threat of another Great Depression.

To its credit, the Times details the feeding frenzy under way on Wall Street, even posting photographs and identifications of ten white guys angling to turn the bailout into a profit-maker for their companies:

Naming names is a good start. But what really needs to happen is that we need to remind ourselves and our elected representatives of the mistakes that were made in October 2002, when the powerful premediation of another 9/11 persuaded the Congress to authorize a absolutely unnecessary and tremendously costly war in Iraq. Here we go again, as the Bush Administration, Congress, and the global news media all participate in the premediation of another Great Depression, with the aim of persuading the Congress to authorize what will amount undoubtedly to more than $1 trillion in bailouts which, like the war in Iraq, will help the corporate friends, supporters, and business partners of those in the government at the expense, once again, of the American people.

As W liked to say in frightening us into a war in Iraq, "Fool me once, shame on you--Fool me twice, shame on me."

I prefer Pete Townsend:

"Won't Get Fooled Again!"

We'll be fighting in the streets
With our children at our feet
And the morals that they worship will be gone
And the men who spurred us on
Sit in judgement of all wrong
They decide and the shotgun sings the song

I'll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around me
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I'll get on my knees and pray
We don't get fooled again

The change, it had to come
We knew it all along
We were liberated from the foe, that' all
And the world looks just the same
And history ain't changed
'Cause the banners, they all flown in the next war

I'll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around me
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I'll get on my knees and pray
We don't get fooled again
No, no!

I'll move myself and my family aside
If we happen to be left half alive
I'll get all my papers and smile at the sky
For I know that the hypnotized never lie

Do ya?

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

There's nothing in the street
Looks any different to me
And the slogans are replaced, by-the-bye
And the parking on the left
Is now the parking on the right
And the beards have all grown longer overnight

I'll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around me
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I'll get on my knees and pray
We don't get fooled again
Don't get fooled again
No, no!

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss

Feeding Frenzy on Wall Street!

FRONT-PAGE HEADLINE, NEW YORK TIMES, SEPTEMBER 22, 2008:

"Big Financiers Start Lobbying for Wider Aid"

And on A20, where the article is continued:

"Big Financial Firms Start Lobbying, Seeking to Profit From Rescue Plan"

Wall Street refrain in re proposed Fed bailout: 

"There's MONEY to be made! 

There's MONEY to be MADE! 

THERE'S MONNNEEEEY TO BE MAAAAAAADE!"

"Irresponsible" Bailout

As a taxpayer who will have to help foot the bill for the massive bailout of our corrupt borrowing and lending system, I do not accept the fact that my family and I (and millions of other individuals and families who have been responsible economic citizens) should have to be responsible for rescuing other people and corporations from their irresponsible behavior.  As Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson reminded us just yesterday, "we all know" that the economic crisis we find ourselves in is a direct result of "lax lending practices earlier this decade [that] led to irresponsible lending and irresponsible borrowing."  Given that this is common knowledge, shouldn't those who have engaged in such "irresponsible lending and irresponsible borrowing" be forced to be responsible for their own actions?

Rather than begin by bailing out irresponsible corporations and individuals, the federal government should begin by protecting the investments of the millions of Americans who have behaved responsibly.  Why not devote half a trillion dollars to insure the savings, insurance, and investments of those of us who did not participate in the frenzy of irresponsible borrowing, or those companies who did not lend irresponsibly?  Once those who have behaved responsibly are protected, only then should the government turn towards bailing out those who, by acting so irresponsibly, have gotten the country into this mess in the first place?

I'm not an economist or a legislator, so I'm not certain how a principle like this might be put into place.  But perhaps one place to start would be to protect individual worth up to a certain dollar amount per person, protecting those with the least rather than, as this bailout promises to do, those with the most?

Premediating Economic Recovery

In what was arguably the most cynical speech yet in what has been arguably the most cynical campaign in the history of American presidential politics, John McCain took a page out of the Bush-Cheney playbook from the run-up to the Iraq War, attempting to premediate economic recovery under a McCain-Palin administration.  In a speech scheduled at 9:00 AM EST (8:00 AM in Green Bay, Wisconsin, where McCain and Palin found themselves this morning), McCain provided his own analysis of the current economic crisis (blame Barack Obama) and premediated the way in which a McCain-Palin administration would solve the problem.  McCain's speech attempted to premediate economic recovery in the following ways.

1. McCain's speech was scheduled in advance of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's scheduled 10:00 AM EST speech in which he was to announce a bipartisan agreement with Congressional leaders to establish a government-funded trust to secure the billions of dollars of failing mortgages that have led to the current financial crisis.  Thus McCain's address pre-mediated Paulson's address, trying to present McCain as getting the jump on the crisis.

2. In his speech McCain proposed a Mortgage and Financial Institutions trust that would work similarly to the solution that Paulson was to describe, except that McCain's proposed MFI would aim to address economic crises before they happened, pre-mediating rather than re-mediating these crises.

3. The conclusion of McCain's speech was timed to coincide with the opening bell on Wall Street, where stocks were universally expected to open significantly higher this morning.  The money shot for the speech was a split screen with McCain and the ritualistic ringing of the bell on the floor of the NYSE, which opened up nearly 400 points in less than 15 minutes.  Because of this brilliant theatrical maneuver, McCain's economic speech pre-mediated a sharp rise in the DJIA, as if he was in some sense responsible for its rise.

Given the prominent role played by former Karl Rove operatives, it is no surprise to see the McCain campaign employ the strategies of premediation that worked to mobilize Congress and American public opinion to support the 2003 invasion of Iraq.  These strategies, while powerful, may not have the same efficacy in a presidential campaign that they did when they were employed by a White House that could control the media landscape.  The Obama campaign will contest these narratives point by point in a way that did not happen in the run-up to the Iraq War.  If they are to be successful, however, they, too, will need to continue to employ their own premediation strategies, as they did so brilliantly in the primaries with their message of hope and change.  These strategies must be coupled with aggressive attacks on the McCain campaign's message and McCain's record (and Palin's lack).  But elections are about the future, and it is only by prevailing in the contest to premediate the next presidential administration that Obama and Biden can be sure that it is they, and not McPain, who will be inaugurated on 1/20/09.

 

The Rain in Spain is Raining on McCain

I know that the liberal press and left-wing blogosphere is belitting John McCain for an interview with a Spanish-language radio station, Radio Caracol Miami, in which he apparently failed to realize that Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero was the prime minister of Spain. McCain repeatedly answered quetions about his willingness to meet with Zapatero as if he was talking about a Latin American, not a European, leader.  But, come on, be fair.  McCain's interviewer, a woman, was speaking a heavily accented English.  When, in her last attempt to get him to understand the question, she said that she was talking about Europe not Latin America, McCain can be heard to ask, "What?  New York?"  If this woman can't learn to pronounce English names in a manner  that is clear enough for McCain to understand, is it fair to blame him?  Even if Arizona shares a border with Mexico....

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/McCain_asked_if_he_would_invite_0918.html

Credit Crisis/National Debt

As I watch CNBC report on the Fed's efforts to quadruple the amount of US$ available for foreign banks to lend to their borrowers hungry for dollars, I am reminded that the real crisis we face is not the price of securities but the credit crisis resulting in very large part from the sub-prime lending practices that proliferated during the past 8 years of Republican-controlled government. During these same 8 years, the Federal Budget has gone from having a surplus to having record deficits.  The National Debt now stands at something over $9 trillion ($9,000,000,000,000).

This raises a question: to what extent is the Federal Government's voracious appetite for cash related to the current credit crisis?  I'm no economist, but I can't help believe that there must be a connection.  And if there is, then shouldn't this be part of the message that the Obama/Biden campaign needs to be communicating to the American people?

My 2 cents--cash on the barrel.