Regarding imagology vs. reality, interesting link. Seems true to me, but I think some of the problem lies in actual reality. I grew up in a congested, urban area. I thought it was insane that citizens could own handguns. My ideas weren’t skewed by a dishonest media or false statistics; people were literally killed by other people with handguns daily within a few mile radius of my residence. It was a legitimate concern.

Every time the federal government passed a law to restrict gun ownership I was grateful. However, it never occurred to me that my reality might not be the same reality as a rancher in Montana or a home owner in Oklahoma.

The problem you and Kundera write about is real, but it is also the case that more and more Americans live in congested, urban areas. The government necessary to control a populous in a crowded urban area is more restrictive than what is necessary to govern small towns and rural areas.

Not only do we have an issue where the imagology is skewed towards central planning, we have an issue where the reality of a majority of Americans is skewed towards central planning.

Regarding income inequality and incongruent growth in certain professions; I chalk it up to two separate reasons.

A certain (small) percentage of entertainers have always done well in our society; elite athletes, actors, musicians, dancers, comedians, network news anchors, authors, even public speakers like Sam Clemens and Joel Osteen.

The other group are the people closest to the money; stock brokers, salesmen, CFOs and CEOs, real estate speculators…

Excellent point regarding economic disconnect. Radio host Andrew Wilkow sometimes laments that just once he’d like to get a thank you card from someone on Welfare. He says it as a sort-of joke, but it’s an important point. Nobody wants to humiliate anyone who legitimately needs public assistance, but when the folks receiving it have no understanding that there is a living, breathing human being on the other end (me) doing with less to provide the money a dangerous precedent is set.

As you write, it’s the “Government’s money” and why shouldn’t we all have more?

Your mention of memetic warfare is congruent with the idea of the Gramscian march through institutions that Neo has oftentimes referenced. Memetic warfare is the strategy, the Gramscian march is the tactic.

I think it also points out the great disadvantage of conservatives. They believe that they can persuade with facts and logic (I commit this sin all the time) where we fall shor tis in the development of precisely those memes which become an autonomically accepted cultural norm.

That is why, even in my comments here, I oftentimes refer to false premesis. In fact I can’t think of a single Progressive argument that is NOT based upon a false premise (which has become a culturally accepted meme).

This was addressed, as you’d expect, by Star Trek:

“The Cloud Minders”

In this episode David Gerrold and Oliver Crawford explore two societies disconnected from reality.

1) The elites are up in the clouds — literally — and TOTALLY disconnected with their economic sustainence

2) The trogs are down in the depths — literally — and totally stunted, mentally, by mind altering chemicals in their immediate environment. [ Gerrold and Crawford may well have been alluding to alcohol, pot, and the rest of recreational chemistry. ]

The elites wallowed in self-indulgent ignorance…

The trogs dumbed themselves down… (unwittingly, natch)

Of course, both factions bitterly resented anyone bringing unwelcome information. Drama requires conflict.

&&&&

What no fiction writer has addressed is the deliberate injection of toxic memes into a polity as a long-term, slow-motion form of total warfare.

What America has to face up to is enemies that are as antagonistic as ever — but who realize that they can’t prevail in a stand-up fight.

So, their attack has morphed into ‘memetic warfare.’

I fault Bush for not realizing this character of modern conflict. It can be largely defeated from the presidential lectern. Meme manipulations can’t suffer exposure.

But, by going the other way: “Islam is a religion of peace” Bush buttressed Muslim memes.

CAIR uses the ROP card at every turn.

Until CAIR is exposed — America’s day of revelation is delayed.

Weirdly, even Romney is quiescent about the ROP.

Muslim influence monies ought to be entirely banned — as an adjunct to the War on Fanaticism.

It’s THE classic, ‘high-information’ — (high-knowledge?) — role that denies the analyst-broker any direct influence on events.

For example, on August 11, 1982 I predicted that America was about to enter a staggering super bull market. On August 12, I predicted that it would last pretty much for a generation — decades.

So from August 12th through August 17th I was phoning everyone I knew — and even calling cold.

I could not get a single person to invest. All of my peers were silent — waiting for my face-plant.

Then, mid-day August 17th (early by Honolulu time) Henry Kaufman hits the broad tape: he saw what I saw. He’s got ALL of his money LONG.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average leaps 38.79 points. It was the 4th largest one-day bull move until then. (It’s been beaten.

http://www.net-comber.com/mx.html

http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970204251404574344230339019304

http://www.amazon.com/On-Money-Markets-Street-Memoir/dp/0071360492

Much of modern, sophisticated employment is as disconnected with results as stock broking. Strangely, the more disconnected, the higher the pay checks:

Advertizing
Propaganda
K-street corruption
Corrupt law — eg Holder’s protection of Big Finance
Performance arts
Corrupt securities trading — high frequency trading

All of the above have seen explosive wage growth — way above the national averages — however defined.

They also create worlds that are self-corrupting. Too soon one begins to believe ones own schtick.

Barry Soetoro is at the apex of such a myth-pyramid.

From Neo’s Imagology post:

the scale of modern life makes it impossible to know about things in the way people in a village used to know what was going on in that small arena. And so we are dependent on image shapers and the media to construct a reality for us, and we are often none the wiser that it is a distorted reality.

A current case in point. A comment from John Hinderaker’s current column “The Profound Stupidity of Liberalism on Display”:

Thomas Edward Wictor · Top Commenter · Lewis and Clark College

There’s no thought going on. I spent three months debunking every lie told about the Israeli Defense Forces during Operation Protective Edge. I was interviewed by Israeli TV.

Someone sent a link to the BBC report [to?] Orla Guerin, directly [sic] her to my debunking of the fake Gaza sniper shooting, in which the poor young man in the Green shirt was the victim of firecrackers.

“Absolute rubbish,” she replied.

So I tried to ask her what was rubbish about my analysis, and I found out that she had preemptively blocked me.

You can lead a horse to water . . .

The link to Hinderaker:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/09/the-profound-stupidity-of-liberalism-on-display.php

Imagology vs. reality.

When most people live in large, congested urban areas with little exposure to the work necessary for fundamental survival (farming, animal husbandry, textile manufacture, lumber processing…) they lose the sense of local community necessary to make our Republic work.

This is also true economically. It is easy to believe in the benevolent, bottomless pitcher of the welfare state because our economic system has made the welfare dollar light-years distant from its source just as technology has made us light-years distance from skills needed just to exist.

People simply don’t understand that a dollar must come from somewhere because the government never runs out of money.