In last week’s video, we explored how the progressive movement of the 19th century set the stage for what Tom Wolfe dubbed “Starting from Zero,” in which millennia of knowledge could safely discarded and the CTRL-ALT-DLT keys be pressed to reboot mankind.

What could go wrong? Well, other than the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, WWII, Communist China, Communist Cuba, Communist Vietnam and Communist North Korea.

Fortunately though, America managed to avoid a complete Start From Zero, and Europe and Japan were lucky enough to be rebuilt by mid-century American liberals still relatively confident about the benefits of western civilization.

But Harry Truman, Secretary of State George Marshall, and JFK all left the building long ago. What passes for “liberalism” today, is anything but; it’s much more interested in, as Hillary infamously said in 2004, taking things away from you for the common good.

Hence the systemic attempts to ban:

• DDT
• Nuclear power
• Hydroelectric dams
• Guns
• Light bulbs
• Domestic oil drilling
• And on and on, because everything is either caused by global warming, or causes it.

And thus, in the second decade of a new millennium, progressives against progress force us to boldly march…Forward into the past!

Click on the above video to watch; a handy portable/embeddable YouTube version is available here. For 60 or so previous editions of Silicon Graffiti, click here and just keep scrolling. And thank you once again for your continued readership (and viewership!) over the last nine years of blogging.

Say what you will, but personally, I’d like to think the post we’re doing to commemorate the ninth anniversary of our humble little blog is –hopefully! — slightly more interesting than our very first post here.

To officially kick off another year of blogging, here’s our latest Silicon Graffiti video, the first of a two part series, in which we look at several attempts by the left to, as Tom Wolfe would say,  “Start from Zero,” and hit the CTL-ALT-DLT keys on western civilization. We’ll explore:

• The rapid social and technological gains western civilization was making in the 19th century before…

• …The arrival of Marx, Nietzsche, and other nascent “progressives,” to upset mankind’s Etch-a-Sketch.

• Nietzsche’s 1882 “God is Dead” aphorism, which ol’ Friedrich definitely considered to be a two-edged sword.

• How World War I set the stage for the rest of the horrors of the 20th century, via a quote from Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism.

• A la Woody Allen in Annie Hall, an awards ceremony for the most bloodthirsty leftwing tyrant of the 20th century.

• How the Bauhaus and other elements of the Weimar Republic were helping Germany “Start from Zero,” even before the Nazis arrived.

• A mournful 1966 Time magazine cover echoes Nietzsche, followed by more sixties reprimitivization, Haight-Ashbury style.

A handy portable YouTube version of the above video is also available at, not surprisingly, YouTube.

And tune in next week, when we go Forward into the past, and watch the left punitively decide that if they can’t get mankind to start from zero, they can take things away for the common good, to paraphrase Hillary, and return us, piecemeal to zero.

In the meantime, click here for 60 or earlier editions of Silicon Graffiti.

And thank you for stopping by over the last nine years!

Update: Welcome readers clicking in from:

• Instapundit
• Gateway Pundit
• Glenn Beck’s The Blaze
• The Brothers Judd
• The Pajamas homepage
• The PJM Tatler
• S.T. Karnick

Cross-posted at Right Wing News, and at PJTV.

Late Update: Part II of this video is now online. Click to boldly go…“Forward, Into the Past!”

But this was far from the first time that a narrative was preformed—or very quickly assembled in the wake of a shock event.  We try to place the MSM’s response to the Giffords shooting with some earlier attempts by the MSM to force the facts like a pretzel to fit an existing storyline:

• Krugman versus the clip-art.
• Camelot and the Prefab Narrative.
• Katrina: Iraq without Iraq.
• Airbrushing Rev. Wright out of the media.
• “N-Word 15 times.”
• Katie and Mayor Mike go looking for the Times Square Bomber in all the wrong places.
• “To be fair, there were some good reasons to steer the coverage initially in this direction.”

Tune in here to watch:

A handy portable, easily embeddable YouTube format of the video is also available. And click here for three years worth of earlier editions of Silicon Graffiti.

Yes, I’m back in the one-man Logan’s Run biodome once again, the same place I ducked into last year to ward off all the global warming swirling about me. But I’m a little worried that, like Minneapolis’ Metrodome, the roof of my humble crystalline abode won’t hold up under the weight of the oncoming snow, either.

Let’s find out! And in the meantime, thank you for another year of your support. Please check out our earlier videos by clicking here, and the rest of the blog, by clicking here. Have a Merry Christmas if we don’t see you around the Blogosphere again before December 25.

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“Deliberations lasted only about one hour, a swift verdict considering the six-day length of the trial in a downtown Dallas courtroom.”

Glenn adds, “Pretty much as I predicted. More background here.”

TV critic Ed Bark, who I believe has covered Aguilar’s initial story and its fallout from the start wrote on Monday:

Aguilar was suspended with pay by the station on Oct. 16, 2007, the day after her controversial exclusive interview of then 70-year-old West Dallas salvage business owner James Walton. She approached him in a sporting goods store parking lot, where he had a new shotgun in his possession after previously shooting and killing two alleged burglars within three weeks time. Her nearly 14-year career as a Fox4 reporter officially ended on March 6, 2008, when Fox4 exercised its option to drop her at the halfway point of her latest two-year contract.

Aguilar was paid her salary throughout that period under a standard “pay or play” provision in reporters’ contract. The station also paid her for 90 more days after opting not to pick up the second year of her contract. Her husband, John, continues to work at Fox4 as a newscast director.

In his 45-minute closing argument to the jury, Shaunessy said that Fox4′s action solely had to do “with the fact that Rebecca Aguilar for more than 10 years was a bad employee.”

The Walton interview, a flashpoint throughout the trial, “was an ambush interview from the start,” jurors were told.

It certainly appeared that way based on the video; which was the subject of a very early edition of my Silicon Graffiti video blog, way back in April of 2008. It was the subject of a takedown notice from KDFW, the aforementioned Dallas-based Fox affiliate, which my crack legal team was able to defend. As a result, it seems to be one of the few video copies of this incident left on the Web:

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

Roger Kimball, the publisher of Encounter Books, the co-publisher and co-editor, along with Hilton Kramer, of  The New Criterion, and the author of his own Roger’s Rules blog here at PJM:

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James Lileks of Lileks.com, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune and its Pop Crush blog, Ricochet.com, National Review, and from time to time, PJM:

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

Rob Long of National Review, Ricochet.com, and formerly of TV’s Cheers:

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

Michael Walsh, the founding editor of Andrew Breitbart’s Big Journalism site, and, under his David Kahane pseudonym, a regular contributor to National Review Online, and the author of the new book, Rules for Radical Conservatives:

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

And for all of our previous videos, click here and just keep scrolling.

Featured in this video:

• My interview with social media consultant Brian Reich, who’s working with the Learning Channel to promote their upcoming show Sarah Palin’s Alaska, from the folks who brought you Survivor and the Apprentice.
  
• A clip from Sarah Palin’s Alaska, released by TLC just in time for Blog World.
• Hugh Hewitt’s interview with Scott Monty, the Ford Motor Company’s new media guru.
• My interview with Lt. Col. Andre Dean from the US Army, recorded in their large milbogger booth at BlogWorld.
• Plus more from the floor of the Blog World exhibition.

Click on the video below to watch:

For more from Blog World, check out the latest edition of PJM Political, which features more from representatives of the Learning Channel on Sarah Palin’s Alaska, plus my interviews with Hugh Hewitt, and Rick Calvert, the CEO and founder of BlogWorld.

And for 60 or so previous editions of Silicon Graffiti, just click here and keep scrolling and watching.

• Andrew Jackson is often attributed as saying, “One man with courage makes a majority.”
• Franklin D. Roosevelt comforted the nation when he said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
• Harry Truman famously said, “The buck stops here.”
• And John F. Kennedy reminded Americans, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”

Needless to say, Harry Reid, the Democrats’ Senate Majority Leader since November of 2006, has failed to live up to this proud heritage on a titanic scale.

Which is why, from The Home Office in Carson City, Nevada, Silicon Graffiti is proud to present, The Top Ten Harry Reid quotes!

Number 10: Get this man a Claritin!

Number 9: The Peasants are Revolting!

Number 8, Beware the Evil-mongers!

Number 7: Jobs, Jobs, Jobs.

Number 6: The Senator as psychiatrist.

Number 5: Newspaper jobs saved or created!

Number 4: Harry Supports the Troops.

Number 3: Beltway Babies Say Goodnight.

Number 2: When Harry met Barry.

And after that racial epithet, Harry doubles down! Which brings us to The Number one quote from the Harry Reid super gaffe-o-matic 76 machine: Harry stands up for diversity and freedom of choice:

“I don’t know how anyone of Hispanic heritage could be a Republican. Do I need to say more?”

No Harry, you’ve said enough. Which is why it might be time to take a nice long vacation come November.

What say you, Nevada?

(YouTube version available here for those with slower Web connections.)

And for almost 60 previous editions of Silicon Graffiti, click here and just keep scrolling.

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Update: Wow, this video is getting results already…

Update: Welcome to those clicking in from:

• The PJM Homepage
• Instapundit.com
• Hot Air
• National Review Online
  
• Free Republic
• Legal Insurrection
• Ricochet
  
• The Mark Levin Show

If you’re new to the blog, please check out the rest of the posts here; chances are there’s quite a bit you might enjoy.

In any case, this effect was surprisingly easy to do. It’s another model from the Digimation Model Bank, which I rendered out in Photoshop, and then placed onto a nested track in Adobe Premiere Pro. I chromakeyed myself into the shot, adjusted the size of that element to be proportional with the size of the tank. I then placed that track onto the background plate (with a couple of other tanks for the Model Bank behind it), and then used keyframe animation to move the combined shot of myself and the tank into the frame. Hopefully all of the stock footage of real soldiers, the binocular mask I created in Photoshop, and (especially) all of the sound effects help to further sell the shot.

And if not, fortunately, it’s followed by the Holodeck effect I created to further remind viewers that it’s all make-believe anyhow.

And on the flipside, here’s a video that’s sort of the reverse of what I did. It’s shot on location, in costume, but with cardboard guns, and even a cardboard tank. The result is a sort of Dadaesque look at how the typical war movie is created, reminding viewers how much of the verisimilitude of war films such as Full Metal Jacket and Saving Private Ryan comes from documentary-style handheld camera work, sound effects, and layered elements such as smoke and muzzle fire (which are now available to anyone for purchase as stock footage to be composited later):

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Swap out the cardboard guns for the real thing, and they’re almost ready for Pallywood.

(H/T: Viral Footage.)

Related: And speaking of Sympathy for the Devil…

But then, these days, a commander always has to secure both the real and the media battlefield if he hopes to win. Or as Gerard Van der Luen of American Digest wrote in May of 2009:

The Media is how America fights its civil wars. In this war at least half the country is both under-served and is painfully aware it is being under-served and lied to.

In 2007, author William Gibson wrote the phrase the “Cold Civil War” for one of his science fiction novels. That led blogger April Gavaza, also known as the “Hyacinth Girl,” as well as Mark Steyn to pick up on the concept a year later. Back in 2008, one could argue that the Cold Civil War was indeed cold, but things began to heat up a bit the following year.  In early 2009, President Obama took office, and quickly ramped up spending and government regulation to unsustainable levels, prompting Rick Santelli of CNBC’s famous cri de coeur in February of 2009, thus helping to launch the Tea Party revolution as we know it. And while the Tea Parties are the first exposure for many to what Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit.com likes to call “out of doors political activity,” their ultimate battlefield is inside the TV screen and inside the Web browser.

But of course, as General McChrystal’s blunder illustrates, the media isn’t just where wars are fought domestically, as we discuss in the latest edition of our Silicon Graffiti video blog, where we’ll explore:

• MSNBC, a division of once stately NBC, itself co-owned by General Electric, another venerable and respected brand name, speciously attacking half of its potential audience as racist.
• Richard Landes’ 2005 look at the Palestinian propaganda factory known as Pallywood.
• The Gaza flotilla, a Pallywood-style production that sailed into primetime American MSM coverage almost as smoothly as ABC’s old Love Boat series.
• The flip video camera and its impact last month on Bob Etheridge (D-SC), Alexi Giannoulias (D-IL) and Helen Thomas (D-Hezbollah).
• Meet Toronto’s Badge #3478.

And more!

Incidentally, this video is scheduled to be posted at Hot Air later on Tuesday (and a big thanks to Ed and Allah for asking me to be part of the team sitting in during the Big A’s vacation this week) which helps bring things full circle: the  “Vent” videos which ran from about 2006 through 2008, featuring Hot Air’s “Boss Emeritus” and produced by the site’s early video producer, Bryan Preston, were my inspiration for launching the Silicon Graffiti video blog series here at Ed Driscoll.com. Michelle and Bryan were definitely early adopters to the fusion of blogging and video, and I learned much from their pioneering work.

Or at least, I think I did! Decide for yourself by clicking here to scroll through 60 or so previous editions of Silicon Graffiti from January of 2008 to the present.

Update: In the comments, B.L. Smith traces the “Cold Civil War” phrase back to a 1962 Ayn Rand column in the L.A. Times, and quotes from it at length; click here to read.

But then, it usually begins with Ayn Rand, to coin a phrase.