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Cheerleading and Class Warfare
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During the 8
year, nightmarish administration of George W. Bush, I remember thinking
to myself that this had to be the low point. For someone calling
himself "the decider" to be the president of the country where I
resided, not to mention the most powerful military on the planet, had
to be some kind of joke, right? Perhaps a test to demonstrate the
shortcomings of the system? Just to see who was paying attention,
maybe? But no, it was real. All we could do is watch the
assault on civil liberties in amazement as a guy who could barely
complete a full sentence without embarrassing himself signed one
"signing statement" after another, invoking "executive privilege" at
every turn and, of course the fear-mongering to justify adding more to
the already massive, global military build-up. It could hardly
have been more obvious who Bush was really working for.
And today, the
same fundamental problems continue under a different, presumably
"progressive", administration, going into president Obama's fourth
year. The over-reaching legislation persists, and the sense of
desperation has become even worse, not because this administration is
worse, but because they're doing the bidding of the same overclass, and
because the underlying, deteriorating economics are time sensitive.
What is happening is part of a continuity that involves both
parties equally, but more importantly, the collaborating, big business
interests that control them. What's most surprising is not that
we have oligarchy. It's unfortunate, but understandable.
What's far less understandable is that many still refuse to
acknowledge it. Instead, we have the nauseatingly stale rhetoric
of the political blame game. We have cheerleading and log
rolling, while the elephant in the living room goes largely
ignored.
It's not as if
we're lacking in reasons to acknowledge the reality. Howard Zinn
has asserted that the system in the US was designed that way from the
very outset, alluding to the "mythology" surrounding the Founding Fathers, and
referring to the US Constitution as "not simply the work of wise men trying to
establish a decent and orderly society, but the work of certain groups
trying to maintain their privileges, while giving just enough rights
and liberties to enough of the people to ensure popular support." (1) Gabriel Kolko elaborated
comprehensively on how it was big business that promoted the government
"reforms" and "regulations" of the so-called "Progressive Era". (2)
Noam Chomsky characterized the Trilateral Commission today
as "drawing from Wilsonian
progressivism, Woodrow Wilson's own view that an elite of gentlemen,
with elevated ideals, should govern in order to sustain stability and
righteousness," and described
the Roosevelt administration and its "planners"
who designated an area called the "Grand
Arena" which had to be "dominated"
by the US, and speaking of "later
liberal administrations" which
contended that "if we control the
Middle East, we can control the world--that's where the energy
resources are." (3) According to David Rothhkopf, author of "Superclass:
The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making", the "superclass" number around 7000, at
least as of 2008 when the book was published. In other words,
they are one in a million. (3a) But alas, if we accept these truths, then the
two parties
begin to look too much like one. They also begin to look like a
circus side show.
There ceases to be any point to
our beloved mudslinging, cheerleading, log rolling, and magical
thinking.
And even many of
our leading historians and intellectuals, despite their brilliant
critiques of their own party and the entire political process in
general, often adhere to that party, and maintain advocacy for
political action. It seems almost as if there is
no other way to promote social change other than through the political
apparatus. Considering the enormous wealth that goes into
maintaining the myth of democracy, from the legions of think
tanks on both sides of the political tracks, all funded by big business
and/or their "philanthropic" (irony of ironies ... ) foundation
counterparts, this isn't really all that surprising. To top it
off, these think tanks are often affiliated with (if not housed
on) major universities. No wonder that "large swathes of academia are little more than
publicly funded mechanisms for disseminating and producing an
ideologically-driven world view,"
as one reporter put it. (4) In 1954, Congress established
the Reece Committee to investigate the premier tax exempt,
philanthropic foundations (Rockefeller, Ford, Carnegie and a few
others) and their efforts to control the US education system.
But the committee was disbanded when it found that our biggest
"philanthropists" were promoting "oligarchical
collectivism", which "could not have occurred peacefully, or
with the consent of the majority, unless education in the United States
had been prepared in advance to endorse it ." (5) Thousands of scholars have
recieved fellowships and scholarships from "charitable"
foundations. It's no surprise then that academia sings their
praises, not to mention teaches their brand of business, in an ongoing
process of social engineering to mold the public mind into something
more in keeping with the demands of the industrial age.
Of course a big
part of maintaining the myth of democracy is promoting
partisanship. This is fundamental in creating the illusion of
countervailing forces, battling it out to produce some kind of magical
balance. So there is no shortage of studies, reports,
projects, task forces, etc ... which claim to be defending civil
liberties, the Bill of Rights, Constitution, etc ... Some are
shamelessly partisan, like the liberal "Cry Wolf Project," while
others are misleadingly "non-partisan," like the
conservative "Generation Opportunity." But what they
have in common is they are almost always connected to think tanks,
the writers of the script and the
directors of the production. It doesn't matter if the think tank
is conservative or progressive. What matters is that they are all
funded by the obscenely wealthy, ie; those who stand to gain the most
by maintaining the status quo. Nor does it matter if the funders
are into pharmaceuticals, oil, banking, philanthropy, or anything else.
What matters is that they are collaborating cronies who meet routinely,
behind closed doors, in both national and international round table
groups, which are accountable to no one. And while they're busy
setting the stage for globalization, controlling education, the media,
and the public mind, they would like nothing more than to keep the "ignorant and meddlesome outsiders"
(to borrow from Walter Lippmann) distracted with log rolling
theatrics. They are more than happy to write the scripts and put
up the money.
Of
course then, people's movements have political roots. They have
their genesis in a society where partisanship not only is tolerated but
is coddled and nurtured. If a movement's political agenda
doesn't reveal itself at the outset, it will eventually. This
isn't just about viewership. It's about
social engineering and societal stability. So, take the current
"occupy" movement, for example. All the establishment and their
media cronies have had to do is present this movement in a negative
light through far right media tools like Glenn Beck or FOX News, and
about half of the people paying attention disassociate from it right
from the get go, even before they begin to look into it. That's a
pretty big hit to take for any movement in its infancy.
Meanwhile the other half line up like wind-up toys to
support it, too often for no other reason than the fact that they (or
their influential friends) hate FOX News, et al ...
Civics ought not to work this way, where both sides do things for
the wrong reasons, often attracting our youth who have only just
begun to think about politics. "We the people" have been
neutralized by this bipolar disorder. The right neutralizes the
left and vice-versa.
We are, in effect, self-censoring. Divide and conquer has
worked. We feed our healthy, innate sense of civic duty
through this apparatus. We live vicariously through this
soap-operatic charade which gives log rolling and posturing real value.
All this does is give us a false sense of achievement. It
helps us to feel better.
The occupy
movement is already being heralded as a resurgence of that same
political ferment of the 1960s. This time around, goodness be
praised, they're not passing out acid. But the end result will
likely be the same. Organization requires a proportionately large
investment
of time relative to the return on that investment, and a strong
possibility for provocateurs and violence. But worst of all,
these movements act as a pressure release valve, resulting in the
diffusion of very healthy, radical energy. Howard Zinn
asserted, “electoral
politics drain the energies of the resisters into the channels of the
system.” (7)
This energy, if better
directed, has far more potential to realize social change through the
withdrawal of our support from the corrupt system, which can be done in
many ways. This is why people's movements are so often co-opted,
if not ill-conceived from their very outset. (8) And
whether keeping subversive and dissident energy from
self-organizing more naturally, or neutralizing that which has already
organized, the net effect is similar; very little change - and
certainly
no fundamental change. Indeed,
the
"counterculture" may be the star witness here. Counterculture
icons, like the "Weather Underground" and the "Black Panthers" were
unapologetically violent, in fact, it was their modus operandi.
Others were obsessed with drug use. The "Yippies", founded
in 1967, "organized marijuana smoke ins across North America",
even as late as the 1980s. In fact, a smoke-in on the
fourth of July was a Yippie annual tradition in Washington
DC. Though more known for their theatrics,
political satire, and pranks, they were nonetheless involved in many
riots, as any highly intoxicated, large group is bound to be. "Some of the Miami protests were larger and more militant
than the ones in Chicago in 1968." (8a) In 1964, Ken Kesey
and The Merry Pranksters travelled across the country in a bus to
confront conformity, to "propagate LSD use" (9) and to
promote the expansion of consciousness. A few years prior (1959),
Kesey was involved in the CIA funded Project MKULTRA, studying the
effects of psychoactive drugs, including LSD. According to Kesey,
he didn't find out until later, through the research of his friend,
Allen Ginsberg, that the whole thing had been CIA funded. (10) To
his credit, Kesey, a very gifted writer, eventually grew more and more
disillusioned with the 60s drug culture he had helped to promote.
Meanwhile, the fundamentals of the system remained unchanged.
In fact, just a few years prior to Project MKULTRA, the
Federal Highway Act had passed (1956) yet another example of the
sacrosanct status of the public subsidization of industry elites.
As author Michael Dawson put it; "after careful sheparding by a special Eisenhower
administration committee headed by a scion of the billionaire duPont
family, whose main corporation not only manufactured 'the explosives so
necessary for road construction, but . . . also owned a substantial
portion of General Motors'; and after intense macro-marketing
efforts by a web of business interests from the construction, concrete,
asphalt, rubber, and, of course, automotive and oil industries; the law
passed. (11)
In
short, regardless of any amount of protest, government sanctioned
global hegemony of giant
corporations enjoys a continual, meteoric rise . And would the monied
interests of the establishment rather you be blowing off
steam waving a sign in the streets, or waiting patiently in the comfort
and safety of your own home, networking in the familiarity of
your own community, developing sustainable economy and food security?
Will less
traditional participation in civics put an end to oligarchy? No,
probably
not. At least not in the short run. But it will free up
some time. How many of us are awash in free time? But
more importantly, burning the proverbial pom-poms will help put an end
to an age old tradition of ideological divisiveness which
has eroded the fabric of humanity, of community, of family, and of
friendship. We've all seen it, probably many times over. No
one ought to allow themselves to be convinced of something as absurd as
there being a superior race, culture, religion, or political
group. Yet this is precisely what happens, ad nauseam. This
is precisely the card that the overclass plays, time and time again, to
keep the vassals in their place. Some will say this is "normal"
behavior. Maybe it is. But so are many maladaptive
responses. There's a far better question: Is it good?
It seems acceptable to assert that your affiliation,
whatever it might be, is best for you. But that's very different
from asserting that your affiliation is inherently superior. It
should be enough that your affiliation works well for you or that
you're proud of it. If that isn't enough, then there's an
ulterior motive, whether you're aware of it or not. This elitist
attitude is perhaps most obvious in the realm of organized religion,
some more than others, but it's every bit as pervasive and dangerous in
the realm of politics. And anyone who has adopted this attitude
only reveals that they place a higher value on their
innate hankering to distinguish themselves than they do on truth,
substance, and principle. We all want to distinguish ourselves
somehow, sure. That's fine. But at any cost? Here
is where the problems arise. Especially when it's painfully
obvious we're being gamed by the overclass, whose fortuitous position
on the pyramid rests upon division and class warfare, maintained by the
established, half baked, divisive, ideological orthodoxies.
Cheerleading and
drug addiction make an interesting comparison. But the addict is
more honest. The drug addict tends to be economically
marginalized and
doesn't try to hide his very
simple agenda; some immediate relief. Cheerleaders tend to
be much better off economically, as they assume the noble posturing of
transformative social change, simultaneously downplaying their broader
agenda,
which is, whether consciously or not, to feel better. Nothing
wrong with wanting to feel better. But we can do without the
deception, whether deliberate or not, and we can also do without the
crippling, ideologic division, which is inherently supportive of
the status quo, especially when none of the ideologies have a leg to
stand on anyway. Both the crack
addict and the log rolling cheerleader actively
pursue a quick fix ideal that they badly need to let go of, not unlike
self-stimulating, lever-pressing, lab rats. Until we get that
monkey off our backs, a very mediocre content, far below our potential,
resting on easily debunked, ideological mythos, will have to suffice,
as will the class struggle inherent therein.
Perhaps it was Ed Bernays, widely considered one
of the founding fathers of public relations, who said it best, when he
asserted that scientific manipulation of public
opinion is necessary to overcome chaos and conflict in society;
(12)
"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of
the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element
in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of
society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling
power of our country. ... We are governed, our minds are molded, our
tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard
of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society
is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this
manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society.
... In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of
politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we
are dominated by the relatively small number of persons ... who
understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It
is they who pull the wires which control the public mind."
Bernays studied the work of his
uncle, Sigmund Freud, and believed that the people were dangerous
because they were guided by irrational, unconscious impulses.
Thus they had to be manipulated and lied to in order for society to
function. By the way, Bernays was deeply involved with both the
US government and many private corporations. For an interesting
study,
trace this idea, the idea that people are inherently dangerous and
require deception and looking after by the enlightened few, back
through time, from today's Trilateral Commission and their
admitted fear of democracy, to Bernays in the early to mid 20th
century, to the framers of the US
Constitution, back to Hobbes and Machiavelli, and all the way back to
the the Greek
philosophers, especially Plato and his "noble lie."
Most of all,
have fun with it, and formulate your own response to it. Yours is as
valid as any other, as valid as any "organizing" or "direct action"
that you will probably find getting foisted upon you again and again.
In fact, yours is what they fear the most.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"The
voice of the people has been said to be the voice of God; and however
generally this maxim has been quoted and believed, it is not true in
fact. The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or
determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct,
permanent share in the government." - Alexander Hamilton
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notes:
1 - From "A
People's History of the United States" ( p. 97-101) Online
versions extant and easily found.
2
-
Kolko's "The Triumph of Conservatism" - The Free Press, 1963.
Also see - http://word.world-citizenship.org/wp-archive/795
3
- http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=5870
... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeMxM6fW_vE
3a - http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xgk4e0_david-rothkopf-reveals-the-superclass-elite_news
... http://www.amazon.com/Superclass-Global-Power-Elite-Making/dp/0374272107
4
- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/06/11/crywolf
5
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Dodd
7
- From "A
People's History of the United States" (p.
232)
Online versions extant and easily found.
8
- See Professor Michel
Chossudovsky; "The
Anti-globalization Movement is Funded by the Corporate Elites" - http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=21110
8a
- (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youth_International_Party -
under "Street Protests")
9
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_lysergic_acid_diethylamide
10
- http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=139259106
11
- http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/55khc7bf9780252072642.html -
p. 119
12
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiKMmrG1ZKU ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZ8ZvYNlxiM
* Don't
miss the 4 hour documentary on Bernays, "The Century of the Self" -
available on youtube, in its entirety. It isn't devoid of
propaganda, but it explains a lot.
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