This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Billary Clinton And The Perfection Of Consumerist Narcissism
Submitted by CHarles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,
In this perfection of consumerist narcissism, the only goal is maximizing private gain by whatever means are available.
I don't think it's coincidence that Bill Clinton's presidency and Christopher Lasch's landmark analysis The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations both date from the same year, 1993.
Clinton solidified the modern presidency's narcissistic obsession with public approval (the political equivalent of "likes" on Facebook) and the exploitation of that popularity for maximum self-enrichment.
The relentless charm offensive and rapacious exploitation of Billary's proximity to power has yielded a fortune once reserved for tech titans and hedge fund superstars:
Hillary And Bill Clinton Report $139.1 Million In Taxable Income Since 2007
This sum doesn't include the tens of millions vacuumed up by the Clinton foundation machine, which distributes tribute to further the interests of the Clinton dynasty under the convenient guise of charity.
This is not to single the Clintons out as bad eggs in an exemplary system; it is to identify them as the stars of a thoroughly corrupt system. The Clintons did not make the political system; they have simply proven themselves the most adept at milking it for fame and fortune.
If the system encourages raking in millions, why not rake in millions? You'd be crazy not to. If we could skim $250,000 for a short speech on the travails of ageing Lotharios (or whatever else we wanted to blather on about), would we turn it down?
In this system, sincerity is what you spray-paint on whatever position that polls identify as popular. Hillary is especially adept at changing her accent to align with what her machine has identified as the dominant class in the audience of the moment.
Presidents in the culture of narcissism are caretakers, not leaders. When bank profits are at risk, the president OKs deregulation or bailouts to insure bank profits are unfettered by capitalism.
If the National Security State needs approval for more drone strikes, the president duly approves whatever the Deep State wants.
The party affiliation of the president makes little difference. The agenda remains the same: further state centralization of political and financial power, and expanding leverage of private wealth over this increasingly centralized power.
A citizenry reduced to narcissistic consumerism is unable to resist centralization and the financial oligarchy that controls the central bank/state machinery.
Lasch saw the rise of consumerism and the resulting rootless cosmopolitanism of the modern economy as the wellsprings of our culture of narcissism. For Lasch, the relentless commoditization of life disrupted the natural social relations of family, social reciprocity and the workplace, depriving individuals of these sources of meaning and replacing them with an empty consumerism that worshipped fame and celebrity.
The marketplace's commoditization of everyday life--both parents working all day for corporations so they could afford corporate childcare, for example--created two alienating dynamics: a narcissistic personality crippled by a fragile sense of self that sought solace in consumerist identifiers ( wearing the right brands, etc.) and a therapeutic mindset that saw alienation not as the consequence of large-scale, centralized commoditization and financialization but as individual issues to be addressed with self-help and pop psychology.
In Lasch’s view, both of these dynamics ignored the loss of authenticity that resulted from the commoditization not just of production but of every aspect of everyday life. In this sense, Lasch’s social analysis is an extension of Marx’s original insight into the alienating dynamics of commoditized wage-work, in which workers and their work were both interchangeable.
Lasch’s analysis brings us to the source of modern alienation: it’s not just employees who are interchangeable--employers are equally interchangeable. The interchangeability of work, employees, employers, products and services is the key characteristic of commoditization.
Politicians and political parties are interchangeable, too. That is the essence of commoditization: all the parts of the system are interchangeable.
Those closest to the sources of money and power reap the gains because proximity to power is the key point of leverage in a system of narcissistic self-absorption and commoditization.
The Clintons' phony sincerity, shameless self-aggrandizement and voracious appetite for cash offered in exchange for political favors is the perfection of a system in which authenticity has been commoditized and all social relations have been reduced to financial transactions.
In this perfection of consumerist narcissism, the only goal is maximizing private gain by whatever means are available.
Of related interest: The Age of Acquiescence: The Life and Death of American Resistance to Organized Wealth and Power
»
- 16303 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -
I love that haircut! Just love it!
... is it fact or fiction? ... you be the judge ... >>> "Bill & Hillary Clinton: A Life of Violating People" >>> http://1984arkansasmotheroftheyear.blogspot.ca/2012/02/chelsea-clinton-is-biological-daughter.html
These speech fees are nothing else by briberies for the past and future services the low-life Clinton due provides.
The Hill Bill-ies of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. or, Shrek and Palpatine, also known as Darth Sidious.
CLASSIC!!!
Mr. Banzai:
This is disturbing.
Billary's biggest enemy = the internet.
They're going to need an NSA budget to keep the wolves from the door.......unless they already have one!
A corrupt liar & cheat married to a sexual predator who likes to hang with a pedopohile... A real quality couple soon to be back in the fudgepacker's house.
Someone better do us all a favor and please send some of those "precision bombs" towards a few targets in DC that house those traitors-pretendin-to-be-patriots.
That Hillary is the most admired woman in this world, and the droner-in-chief is the most admired man, for several years running in Gallup polls tells you all that you need to know about the American people.
You can be as corrupt or psychopathic as you want to be, the only thing that counts is that $600 haircut or the pastel pantsuit or the taupe suit.
Forward
They, the people, are predominantly minorities. The white approval percentage a stupid, gullible women, and metrosexual men.
That's what happens when a society turns it's Men into Women.
http://www.alternativenaturalremedies.com/news/bisphenol-a-the-chemical-...
They aid Obama was smart too, that turned out to be bullshit as well.
Correction: woman is spelled that way only if you are a man. It is womyn. Do not demean them.
And Clinton left the country with a stock market exploded bubble, unfettered mega banks(glass Stegall) and a gutted intelligence. Not all the bad guys are on our side...there are actually people that love to destroy western civilization. What Obama will leave is much much worse!
>> unfettered mega banks(glass Stegall)
The repeal of Glass-Steagall was done through the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, a wholly Republican concoction, landed on Clinton's desk veto proof. Not that the Clintons, and anyone remotely associated with them, arent' sculduggerious shit bags, but the repeal of Glass-Steagall was on your boys.
Clinton knew how Arkansas paid for drugs shipments - cash to Vince
Not true, greatbeard:
"The final version of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act passed the House by a vote of 362-57 and the Senate by a vote of 90-8. This made the bill "veto proof", meaning that if Clinton had decided to veto, the bill would have been passed anyways. Having said that, if Clinton truly didn't want the bill to become law, he could have vetoed the bill in a symbolic gesture, but this did not happen.
Many people point to the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act as a major reason why the financial sector imploded in 2008.
When it comes to pointing fingers, both parties get the blame. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act was co-sponsored by three Republicans, signed into law by a Democratic president and had the overwhelming support of both parties when it was eventually passed"
Also, greatbeard:
"Crucial to the passing of this Act was an amendment made to the GLBA, stating that no merger may go ahead if any of the financial holding institutions, or affiliates thereof, received a "less than satisfactory [sic] rating at its most recent CRA exam", essentially meaning that any merger may only go ahead with the strict approval of the regulatory bodies responsible for the CRA.[3]. This was an issue of hot contention, and the Clinton Administration stressed that it "would veto any legislation that would scale back minority-lending requirements." [4]
And, finally:
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Rubin+calls+for+modernization+through+reform+of+Glass-Steagall+Act-a016955462
and the Pecker in Chief kept in office by agreeing to every fucking thing the Chinese, GOP, and BANKSTERWANKERS wanted!
the FUCK
You are fucking absolutely incorrect. It was Robert Rubin, Sandy Weill and Larry Summers that concocted and slithered thru the halls of Congress looking for someone like Phil Gramm to support and attach his nae to the repeal.
Brooksley Born head of the OCC at the time tried to point out the obvious problems with the repeal but was hounded out of office by the trio above.
Weill had already used his Travellers Insurance company to buy Salomon Bros., and was lining up Citibank, before the repeal. Where did Rubin get paid $250MM from after leaving Clinton admin in 1998?
Know what the fuck is going on before spouting the Big media , neo Bolshevik bull shit story...
Yes the good and virtuous Republicans bamboozled by the Democrats. You folks who make endless excuses for the other shit bags, the Republicans, are a hoot. Yes, yes, yes, your Republicans are going to save us. Idiot.
You are a low brow simpleton, and have always been so here on ZH. I let you slide , because you are innoculous but this time you are going to get slammed, doosh.
Don't over step your limited range.
How Glass Steagal was repealed in very obvious to anyone with knwoledge enough of the financial markets and how they work within DC politics. Rubin, Summers, and Weill orchestrated that with Clinton. Gramm etc... were willing lemmings to the Bill, but just watch who made the $$ afterthe Bil was passed you shortsighted, low brow moron.
Never refer to someone who is far more insightful than you as an "idiot". Learn from people who have a wider experoie and skill set than you. Now STFU.
On one hand the Marxist Democrats. On the other hand neo-fascist Republicans. You keep up the love fest for those Dems greatbeard. See where that gets you.
What difference does it make?
It's interesting that many people like these narcissistic, sad clowns. Overall, it's just part of a totally corrupt, rotting empire.
It just goes to show you the average intelligence of people...Zero.
" Everyday Peeples "
That is interesting. The only folks you find that hate Bill are the sexually repressed, the "isIS" crowd, and the Hillary lovers are the "poor Hillary, she's so strong to overcome what Bill did" crowd. It's a vicious circle.
Of course, there's a whole menu of grievances, as can be seen here in the ZH comments, but the two examples above are the ones that resonate with large numbers of the population. It's an interesting dynamic.
Dick van Dyke
Hitlery will have us in a war in her first year.
I assume you mean a new war, not one of the current ones....
Meh. I blame the Baby Boomers. Hillary Clinton is the class president of the Baby Boomers.
The selish, arrogant Economic Moat Builders of the 20th Century.
The Me Generation - the 1st who had the idiot box fulkl-time and it blew the heads up of many far beyond reason. Still hung over from the 60's and 70's and their kids just can't stop taking selfies.
Oh grandma!
Can I have some money grandma?
Come on nana you got lots and lots of money.
Grandpa says you do. He says "There's a lot more where that came from"
There have been career politicians in the past. But, no family, not even the Kennedy’s, has ever turned politics and political power into a profitable family business quite like the Clintons have (Chelsea earned that $600k training job as a field reporter on her own ya know, and organizations really do want to pay $100k for ten minutes of her deep polital and economic insights - yea right).
I bet someone in the Democratic Party is already having wet dreams about a Hillary / Chelsea ticket in 2020 while Bill continues to rake it in on the speech circuit and the Clinton Foundation. Spoiler alert, it’s Hillary.
They're a gilded facade over a terminally rotted culture.
I'm not a fan of the Clintons, nor the Bushs, but we cant blame them for the use of a charitable foundation. The wealthy have been using (abusing) them since they were created back when the federal income tax was created. They are ways to dodge taxes, provide money to "worthy" causes, and pay friends or relatives who work for the foundation. Oh, and when the owners of the foundation die, there is no estate tax on it. These foundations are everywhere and when you see rich actors or sports stars with one you know they are in on the scam. At least 10% of the money goes to a worthy charity unlike simply moving the money to an offshore account. For politicians it is a convenient way to sell influence. Good luck getting these folks to change the laws.
Oh, yes indeed. I know of (and do some work for) a Foundation that was set up by the owners of a health-products manufacturing company. The Foundation solicits donations on an enormous scale and enlists all kinds of celebriities (including the Clintons and Bushes), to give away the health products manufactured by the same family's (very much for-profit) company. The Foundation buys the items from the Corporation, at full face value, which is a relatively high price for such products. The family draws most of their income from the Foundation. They're billionaires, or very close to it. They certainly hang around with billionaires. It's always very important to them how I invoice for my work; some of it has to go to the Foundation and some to the Company.
When the best opportunities a society affords its members are scams, that society is circling the drain. And there is no industry in America growing like scammery.
Christopher Lasch was great - his books are fantastic !!!
Revolt of the Elites is the story of how we got here
http://www.leaderu.com/ftissues/ft9408/seaton.html
http://www.scottlondon.com/reviews/lasch.html
hillary-godzilla 2016
Christopher Lasch's The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations was first published in 1979, not 1993. I remember this because my dad (a political science professor) was very taken by it when it first came out, and I was still living at home. By 1993 I'd been living on my own for 10 years.
Interestingly, around 1980, the politician who best embodied what Lasch was talking about was Ronald Reagan. And, truthfully, when thinking about Reagan and Clinton (either Clinton, and either Bush and Obama too, while we're at it), the proper response is, "Same Difference." They're all products of their times. In times with a different dynamic, different politicians would come to the fore.
In modern America, the idea of what used to be considered social responsibility is despised, and as a result, society has been atomized, commoditized, and sold to the highest bidder (or shuffled off to cronies for pennies on the dollar). Then we complain about the lack of meaning in our society and the nihilism that ensues.
This happens to every Empire as it passes its peak and starts on the path of decline. For a while people indulge in denialism, and then bizarre nostalgic fantasy for a "Good Old Days" that never existed; usually through moralism, authoritarianism, and attacks against scapegoats perceived as parasites and betrayers. But the momentum can't be derailed at that point; the Empire isn't falling due to a loss of morality but rather due to the inherent parasitism of Empire in the first place.
Interesting. Fits right in with the Bill is immoral meme... something worth thinking about...
now cue: huma and weiner,, to whit this story: Trump is still shining lights in dark corners...
"But he told congressional intelligence committee leadership last week in writing that 'none of the emails we reviewed had classification or dissemination markings' – meaning there's no evidence Clinton knew what she was doing.
But 'Huma knows all those emails,' Trump insisted on Wednesday, 'and she's married to a deviant who has a big mouth.'
Trump also was aghast at last week's news that Weiner has accepted a $100,000 salary as an advisory board member at MWW, a crisis-communications firm.
'He just went to work for a public relations firm!' Trump blared. "
If the system encourages raking in millions, why not rake in millions? You'd be crazy not to. If we could skim $250,000 for a short speech on the travails of ageing Lotharios (or whatever else we wanted to blather on about), would we turn it down?
Charles Hugh Smith proves once again that he doesn't understand shit. What's the point? That the Clintons are simply opportunists who do what anyone else would do under the same or similar circumstances? Drivel. They operate this way because they have no conscience. Hundreds of thousands of Libyans are dead because of Hillary. This is not mere opportunitism. These are evil doers. Evil. If you were on a tropical island and Jeffrey Epstein presented you with a 14 year old girl, would you fuck her Charles? Would you be crazy not to?
"If you were on a tropical island and Jeffrey Epstein presented you with a 14 year old girl, would you fuck her Charles?"
Well, you have really got Bill's and Hillary's attention now. They're both demanding to know the island's GPS coordinates now.
The Clintons make a bubbling, fetid, foul-smelling cesspool look like a pristine, clear, mountain, spring-fed pond...
I'm gonna really enjoy watching these two scumbags being sentenced...
I will rejoice when the Clinton's heads are spiked onto pikes.
Hillary's head on a pike will greatly improve her looks.
Charles, Outstanding piece. As usual, a fan of yours.
Monica Lewnski must have felt alienated when she got on her knees under the Oral Office desk and did the tube steak boogie on Bill's willy only to be paid in SPERM instead of CASH, Hugh-Smith. Monica's narcissism, and her proximity to power must have been what prompted her to salivate so much at the Conditioned Stimulus (CS) after the 'deep state' Classically Conditioned her to respond like one of Ivan Pavlov's dogs.
Back in the 60s Flip Wilson used to say 'the Devil made me do it', today Hugh-Smith is attempting to promulgate the belief that narcissism alone, and CASH, are the two prime motivators that fund political largesse in the land of the indentured into servitude, and the home of the SLAVE.
Oh Monica, don't stop, yeah, yeah, yeh, rightthere, yeah, that's it, now do that thing again, Monica, yeah, that's it yeah, don't stop, baby.
Monica (if that is her real name) probably got paid in other lucrative ways via her Mossad masters. And to understand just really what is Mossad, is understand probably its chief agent at the very present ..
Now to understand even more, requires some study ..
And understand this about the aforementioned source:
Israel: Roytov, exiled and “disappeared”
Christopher Lasch's The Culture of Narcissism came out in the 1970s.
Everyone had a copy.
Now we are at NARCISSISM 9.0
Technically, Charles, it's Hillbillery.
Hillary Clinton cannot be allowed to become president. Her treachery, propensity for criminal behavior and her depraved indifference for her fellow Americans, makes her at the moment, the most dangerous woman in America.
so what youre saying is that it's not billary's fault. it's the public's fault.
so what , prey tell is the socialist ass bullshit fucking 'populist' solution?
what.................EDUCATION?
WAKE THE FUCK UP.
the solution is facism of one color or another.
the public is at fault and now they shall be spanked.
it's only 10% of the 'public' that is comprised of reasonable individuals. it always has and always will be this way.
90% of people are fucking fucktards that either are thieves, useless, saboteurs, intentional slags, flowkwads, or other backfacing pintoslakers.
how can you every fix that. you cannot. and that's why facism works so well.
it doesn't try to fix the fucked. it just lies to them and clears space in the human political termite mound the same way a forest fire clears the rotwood away in a forest.
and as always, the most capable of teh 10% of rational people who must leave, almost always do. that's why refugees and immigrants are ALWAYS SO VALUABLE. it's not just that they are desperate and willing to do desperate things to compete, it's that they are usually the creme of the crop of people left that poor.
Clinton solidified the modern presidency's narcissistic obsession with public approval (the political equivalent of "likes" on Facebook) and the exploitation of that popularity for maximum self-enrichment.
SO... A politician. All politics is corrupt, and all politicians can be found lacking, I am forced to judge by the track record of the previous Clinton years which was the last time we had a vibrant middle class, you know before the 15 years of class warfare that have destroyed the once happy middle income American. I also look at that troop of BABOONS the GOP has put up against Hillary, or the unelectable fringe candidates like Sanders, and I have to conclude it does not matter, whatever your opinion of her Hillary will be the next president in the largest popular vote landslide in American history. Feel free to let your heads explode, but I warn you if you get brains on my machine I am going to make you pay for the clean up.
At a minimum, Billary is with high probability guilty, at the very least via mere association, and at the same co-conspirators within the following:
As to the maximum? Reading between the lines via this document, will certainly provide all clues .. (and then some)
Ready and waiting!
Matching "His" and "Hers" cells, clean sheets, and a mint on the pillow.