Image here. Sadly, we lost the mustache war to the Brits.Tuesday, April 16, 2019
Episode 125: I Want You, Two
Play Now!We're still at that turning point in history in this episode, this time when one country used the proven techniques of its ally to reverse a campaign promise and involve itself in a Great War. Hence, Episode 125: I Want You, Two.Image here. Sadly, we lost the mustache war to the Brits. In this episode, I read from: Tim Wu's The Attention Merchants: The Epic Struggle to Get Inside Our Heads; from two articles of Columbia Magazine, published by the Washington State Historical Society; and from the Wikipedia entry on the 1917 Espionage Act. I play a bit of Pee Wee Herman from the 1985 movie Pee Wee's Big Adventure, and through the episode work the 1917 Billy Murray version of George M. Cohen's "Over There". KMFDM backs Chuck Mertz in the intro.I'm releasing this and all my episodes under a Creative Commons 4.0 attribution, share-alike, and non-commercial license.
Image here. Sadly, we lost the mustache war to the Brits.
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Looooooved the gratuitous Peewee quotes!!
ReplyDeleteYou mentioned that "it was a different time". But I'm not so sure. I think the vindictiveness, the hatred and desire to punish a faithless ally, a traitor, in a spectacularly cruel manner, to make a public example... (Even moreso than the actual enemy, with whom they have a rather more businesslike relationship)... I think that hasn't changed one iota. What has changed is the execution, so to speak.
Back in the 1930s, the laws, imprisonment, and if all went well a nice public execution, were the only outlets for that urge. But what our modern culture of convenience in general, and the Internet in particular, have done is to reduce the lethality of the outlets, yet make them so ubiquitous. Flaming, doxxing, trolling, bad ratings, these are all fundamentally clique-ish ideas and many of us participate in or deal with these things on just about a daily basis.
Likewise the internet has helped us refine our positions and stances to such a high degree, that most of us end up spending all day screaming at people for desertion from our own 'Army of One'
Hey, Kevin,
DeleteLooooooved the gratuitous Peewee quotes!!
And really, who doesn't?
You mentioned that "it was a different time". But I'm not so sure.
You might be right. It's tricky drawing comparisons between a time of outright war backed by a very concerted propaganda effort, and today, with the various fronts of various war-like efforts scattered about.
We lack that clarity of definition today, that clamoring for focus and insistence of truth, that defines periods of more intense emphasis on priority. Without it, I think, people are reaching out to do as you say, "screaming at people for desertion from our own 'Army of One'".
What's missing from our situation today, I think, is the ubiquitous nature of political ideologies, closely-held and widely accepted, that will suffer in the Red Scare just after the Great War. These are being attacked, subtly and not, in the Wilson/Creel propaganda efforts, just as the Hun was officially. (Consider especially the labor drives I mentioned in this episode.)
It's probably beyond the scope of my efforts to document this time, simply because I would have to share soooo very much just to set the stage for the argument to stick. Ah, well.
Later!