A weekend for books

I’ve been reading all weekend, along with wondering what it is I should have been doing. I’ve finished one book, started AND finished another, and have finally started on what I am sure is going to be the ultimate manual for active citizenship in the twenty-first century.

First, I finished American Gods by Neil Gaimon.
The premise of the book is essentially that it is human belief that creates and sustains gods and all the folk and fauna of myth and legend. That they are real, and living amongst us. And that America is a bad land for gods.

It’s an amazing book. I think as a postscript to this post, I’m going to excerpt about a page and a half from it. Also, it was wonderful to me, and my knowledge of myth and mythology is pretty light. For those of you out there who actually know mythology, it should be doubly delightful. It is one of those books that can make you think just by the tale it tells, not because it wants to make you think.

The second book, Bringing Down the House, is just a book about some MIT folks who made a lot of money beating blackjack in Vegas. It almost makes me want to take the time to learn to count cards, and it makes me want, again, to go back and get a math degree.

Finally, Taking on the System is Markos Zuniga’s Taking on the System. I’m only on chapter three, but already I have learned alot.

As a primary example, take street protests.

My mother and I once had a conversation about activism in the 21st century. I talked about the netroots, and she talked about how she felt that modern activists were…not lazy, but unproductive because they didn’t take to the street. I countered that in modern times, street protests were largely ineffective…but I couldn’t tell her why. The reason postulated by Kos is that any form of protest or attempt to influence power in the country must of necessity be a story and narrative told in the form through which most people get their information. In this day and age, that form is broadcast media. Protests are ineffective because they no longer draw a media narrative that examines their underlying causes, but either ignores the protest or focuses on the superficial fact that a protest is occurring, often with a viciously sarcastic feel of “hippyness” smothering the report.

My first brush with this fact of modern life was in 2003, when the Iraq war was starting and millions of people around the world gathered together to protest the war in what I now know were unprecedented numbers with very legitimate concerns. I watched the leadup to the Iraq war on CNN, because at the time, I had not really begun to follow the political world and believed the conventional wisdom…that CNN was somehow more liberal, or at least more balanced than the other network news stations. I figured if anyone would tell the story with some accuracy, it would be CNN.

As I watched the protests, CNN used long camera shots of milling groups of people, closeups of the myriad of people diluting the protests with their pet hippy issues, (Legalize pot! Outlaw animal testing!), and speeches that failed to stir much passion from the onlookers. I still remember some poor young kid, probably actually a great organizer, attempt to start the crowd in a chant of “not in our name!”, and failing miserably.

Now, somewhat older and believing – as older folks do – myself to be wiser, I know that this was the narrative that the media wished to establish…and I at it up, hook, line, and sinker.

What Kos explains is that any movement attempting to influence power must properly draw the attention of the media as it exists in it’s current time, and influence that media to tell a narrative that is compellingly supportive of the movement’s cause.

He cites three examples. First, Ghandi’s use of newreels, catapulting what would have been a localized march and the responding brutality onto the international scene, thus setting an international narrative and public pressure against the British government. Second, the anti-war movement of the 60′s, and it’s use of mass stage protests and virulent visuals to create never before seen on TV scenes of protest which then narrative and conventional wisdom that americans in general were against the war. Finally, he demonstrates how 40 years of over-use of street protests and the rise of the 24 hour news agencies had over-diluted street protests and made them into almost more of a hindrance than a help to getting your story into the mainstream consciousness. (Ok…he says they don’t help. I think they hurt, because the media narrative that has accompanied street protests throughout my short adult life has always been negative.)

Anyway…books one and three I highly recommend, and the second book is a very pleasant quick read.

UPDATE 29 SEPT 2008:

Kos has another chapter that details when street protests and other activism is effective and when it fails. Hopefully I’ll throw another post up later with a synopsis.