Netflix and Facebook and Magnificent Egos

By Christopher Manion Published on June 1, 2018

Hollywood kingpin Harvey Weinstein, a platinum supporter of Barack Obama, was arraigned last Friday in New York on charges of rape and assault.

In the same news cycle, Obama announced that he sealed a multimillion dollar deal with Tinseltown’s new kingpin, Netflix.

Normal people might shy away from associating with Hollywood moguls while Weinstein’s handcuffs and ankle bracelet still glitter in the sunlight. It certainly didn’t appease the “Me Too” crowd to hear Weinstein’s lawyer announce that “Mr. Weinstein did not invent the casting couch in Hollywood” — as a defense.

But Weinstein’s fall leaves a vacuum that Obama longs to fill. Like Weinstein, he wants to “train” America.

“We hope to be a voice … through Netflix and through my foundation, where we’re identifying and training the next generation of leaders here in the United States and around the world. So they can start sharing their stories and cooperating,” he said.

Please Support The Stream: Equipping Christians to Think Clearly About the Political, Economic, and Moral Issues of Our Day.

For Hollywood, Obama was a natural. And the family of Netflix exec Ted Sarondos has been “sharing and cooperating” with Obama for years. The family raised over a million dollars for Obama, and Obama named Mrs. Sarondos to serve as U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas in 2009.

The Gravitas of Glitz

Not to be undone, Hillary Clinton told a fawning crowd at Harvard on Friday that she’d like to be CEO of Facebook. “It’s the biggest news platform in the world,” she said.

Neither Clinton nor Obama mentioned their dear friend and megadonor Weinstein, who at present is a friend in need if there ever was one. Perhaps it was mere coincidence that their announcements overlapped with the news about their friend, news which must have simply devastated them. Their pain was so deeply personal that their media acolytes dared not inflict more by asking forbidden questions.

With their dear friend so scandalously exposed, why didn’t this duo go into mourning? Well, optimism lives! They’d already been rejected by the country at large. So it’s not surprising that they sought solace in the always dependable “Boasts of the Coasts” — Harvard and Hollywood.

Glitz has its own gravitas, and so does money. Senate approval of a cushy ambassadorship for a well-heeled donor is not the rule on the Foreign Relations Committee, where I worked for years, but it was an unhappy exception on too many occasions. And hubris never goes on a hunger strike. Like that overgrown, murderous weed in The Little Shop of Horrors, it screams: “Feed Me!”

Money and Power: “Is This All There Is?”

A lot of billionaires want influence and popularity. What makes this crowd different?

Well, they’re “naturals.” Facebook is the biggest news platform in the world. Netflix will soon be the biggest movie platform in the world. Don’t the anointed first families of decadence deserve to run them?

One recalls Mustapha Mond, the “World Controller” in Brave New World. His image always looms close to Orwell’s Big Brother. Which is more prophetic? In current patois, it’s sort of an existential tension.

Obama makes it clear. He doesn’t want to teach the next generation. He wants to train them.

But there’s no tension between the goals of Weinstein, the Obamas and the Clintons. They represent the cultural Left’s unanimous desire not only to enjoy, but to control the abundant and incessant flow of propaganda advocating the collapse of American culture.

Obama makes it clear. He doesn’t want to teach the next generation. He wants to train them. In public school they  learned to feel, and (as Thomas Sowell points out), when they feel, they think they’re “thinking.”

They are well-prepared for Obama’s training. As Hannah Arendt observed, “The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any.”

Obama and Hillary will be glad to form all the conviction that the next generation needs — whether they want it or not.

Channeling Orwell

Obama wants Netflix. But why would Netflix want Obama? And why would Facebook ever want Hillary?

Rocker Bob Seger comes to mind: “I used her and she used me and neither one cared/ We were getting’ our share.”

The elite’s old order has been exposed. It is collapsing. They are desperate, and they’ll grasp at anything that looks like a life preserver.

Netflix is about to take over Hollywood and Obama adds heft and a good bit of intimidation, should anyone from that sullied cesspool object too much. After all, as Joe Biden once observed, Obama’s “clean.”

And why would Facebook want Hillary? Politics, sure, but more: She’d bring along her cultural version of Ike’s Military-Industrial complex to destroy everything that is good, pure and holy in the American culture.

Americans will soon endure a nonstop avalanche of slop. Fictional Deplorables will “cling to their Bibles and their guns” as one Netflix offering after another mocks Obama’s favorite targets of ridicule and Facebook continues to count anything sensible as “hate speech.”

As they channel Orwell, we will be inundated with a combination of Netflix’s Versificator Machine and Facebook’s Memory Hole. And both will abound in the “Two Minutes Hate.”

Many among the elites undoubtedly smirk — in private, of course — at the prospect of these two, riding high in the saddle of sheer moral pestilence. Sure, envy will abound, but it will be drowned out by terror. The elite’s old order has been exposed. It is collapsing. They are desperate, and they’ll grasp at anything that looks like a life preserver.

For the rest of us, best cling to our Bibles and our guns.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Like the article? Share it with your friends! And use our social media pages to join or start the conversation! Find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, MeWe and Gab.

Inspiration
Military Photo of the Day: Stealth Bomber Fuel
Tom Sileo
More from The Stream
Connect with Us