The Media and Think Tank Politics

First, I would like to express my appreciation to the members of this workshop for producing such a timely and thought provoking document. I begin by quoting a few statements from the Report, statements that inform me, that activate skin-gut-neocortical resonances in me, and that point, perhaps, toward future augmentations of the project.

Our aim, then, is to understand the conditions which legitimate or even foster such fluidity of movement between governments, think tanks, commerce and warfare.

(p. 3)

...what interests us..are the..movements between concepts, institutions, technologies, warfare and political life.

(p. 6)

...it is only with the establishment of the RAND Corporation in the 1940’s that as fluid and intimate relation as currently exists between think tanks, the military and the state apparatus first begins to appear.

(p. 7)

we are largely uninterested in these qualifications (“liberal” or “conservative”) concentrating instead on movements between concepts, networks and institutions that cannot always be usefully fixed with such pre-given categories”

(p. 14)

Thus neocortical warfare opens a ‘quest for metaphysical control.’

(p. 23)

Hoffman: ‘Terrorism assumes a transcendental dimension, and its perpetrators are thereby unconstrained by the political, moral or practical constraints that seem to affect other terrorists.’

(p.35)

The point is that the think tank/ military/state network organized to locate, decipher, and fight terrorists has become too much like the enemy it defines. While the usual division between liberal and conservative categories does not work well to outline this danger, the authors also do not mimic the voice of neutrality and objectification that think-tank analyses purport to provide. Instead of objectifying the enemy and seeking keys to manipulate domestic constituencies in predictable ways, they seek to expose, to engage, and to align themselves with constituencies who are concerned about the tenor of contemporary politics. My point here is that the authors should articulate closely and explicitly the perspective from which this machine is appraised, particularly since the standard of appraisal does not fit neatly into the slots provided by liberal think tank perspectives and conservative think tank perspectives.

Moreover, the electronic news media must be folded more closely into an analysis of the state/military/think tank network. If the military has hesitated to take the lead in identifying domestic enemies and mobilizing popular energies — a reluctance that is now on the wane — there is an indirect route. The twenty-four hour news channels are now regularly visited by retired generals, intelligence experts and representatives from right wing think tanks. They provide a continuous focus on potential terrorist threats, readiness to swamp other news with these concerns, cheer leaders for military invasions, and readiness to minimize the Falluja massacre, Abu Ghraib and the Guantanamo Gulag. They now form a constitutive part of the complex described in the “Network” piece.

Media politics is neocortical politics, a politics that often helps to plant visceral seeds of fear on the lower registers of the body/brain/culture network and then harvests those plants later when it is time to twist the terrorist threat in favor of Bush domestic and foreign policies that in fact have little to do with it.

And electoral politics is infused with the same techniques. What moderate or liberal talk shows — besides “The Daily Show” — exposes how the image-word-rhythm sound campaign of the Bush administration worked, how it resonated with the underlying proclivities of its core constituencies, and how the code adopted enabled its authors to retain a modicum of deniability to other voters not paying close attention. Forget the “Swift Boat” ads for now, probably orchestrated by some of the consultants highlighted in the “Network” essay. Consider the recurrent media image of a masculine, steadfast President with his sleeves rolled up, juxtaposed to that of the opponent feminized as a flip-flopping, French loving dandy. The dandy tacks back and forth on a wind surfer while the voice-over charts his changing positions on issues. The implicit contrast is to masculine, steadfast military leaders, right wing talk show hosts, and tough think tank analysts always one step ahead of the non-state enemy. This media machine first...