Poli-Rad Page
Below are the materials I may use in the 2008-2009 school year. At the end, there are also some additional item: An explanation of why middle class people vote against their own interests by Michael Moore (with supporting evidence from a Paul Krugman article). a comment to youth from Kurt Vonnegut, an essay by me about Columbine and the death penalty, and a commentary about "Neo-Liberalism" (the first few, blue, paragraphs will get the point across).
The George Carlin link is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKCnbVWZzvw
Worthington H.S. Class materials
Tom Harker e-mail: ukulele_man@yahoo.com
blog: http://www.ukuleleman.net/blog.html
Introduction:
Nobody knows any more about anything than you do.
Now, I’m not talking about facts like how many different countries exist in the world at any given time or how best to hard boil eggs. Different people do know more or less than one another when it comes to narrow, limited, or esoteric questions. But when it comes to contentious ideas, ideologies, cultural notions, and such; nobody knows any more about anything than you do.
One can plop an issue on a lectern and easily find a thousand “experts” to line up on one side screaming “Yes!!!” and another thousand to line up on the other side screaming “No!!!” We dummies are supposed to side with one “expert” or the other and get in his or her line, but on what basis?
We need to ask ourselves, “If experts know so much, why can’t they ever agree?” It makes no sense. Problems have solutions. Shouldn’t experts be best situated to address them? Sure, but they don’t. Why?
It’s because they don’t want to solve the problem; they want to get us to stand in their line.
Someone said, and I believe it, that every system is perfectly designed to produce exactly what it produces. If that is true, the design of the system is responsible for both the benefits and the problems it produces. It stands to reason that those who have problems will want to change the system, and those receiving the benefits will want to avoid changing it.
Now, ask again, “If experts know so much, why can’t they ever agree?”
Well, if the problem is solved, the system will be changed, and those who presently benefit may be less privileged than before. So, the game becomes “How can I appear to be addressing the problem while really only helping myself (maintaining the system)?” (the movies The Truman Show and The Matrix are good examples of this – see below).
Most often, maintaining the system will involve lies that change very little or nothing and disguise the problem rather than solve it. Sometimes – if the people are sufficiently outraged - it will mean that some competing group presently benefiting from the “problem” will be attacked by the more powerful and expected to make any necessary sacrifices to quiet the unrest, while maintaining both the basic problem and the benefits accruing to the mighty.
In any case, the “problem” is not the focus. Maintaining one’s own privilege is the agenda.
Listen to the “experts,” but don’t believe a thing they say, unless it makes sense to you!!!! Don’t believe anything I say, either, unless it makes sense to you!!!
Stephen Colbert: “Culture is a set of agreed upon opinions.”
Historically, every culture firmly believes wildly different “realities.” As long as the culture is maintained, that “reality” (e.g. the benefit of human sacrifice, the flatness of the earth, the divine right of kings, or the efficacy of Voodoo) IS the reality.
From The Truman Show: “We accept the reality of the world with which we are presented.”
We are born into a culture, and are defenseless vessels into which the official “opinions” are poured. Only later are we in a position to even think of questioning what, apparently, everybody else takes for granted.
From the 1st “Matrix” movie : “Let me tell you why you are here. You are here because you know something. What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life. That there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it is there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. That’s what brought you to me.
Do you know what I’m talking about?”
“The Matrix?”
“Do you want to know what it is?
The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us, even now in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window, or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes.
It is the world that has been pulled down over your eyes to blind you from the truth, the truth that you are a slave. The Matrix is a dream world built to keep us under control in order to change a human being into a power source for others.
As long as the Matrix exists, the human race will never be free."
“The Matrix” metaphorically presents the world as I’ve described it above. Most people live out their lives believing what they have been led to believe (by the dominant machine race) and seldom have the opportunity to discover that there is a different reality. Those who try to break out of what Stephen Colbert called the “set of agreed upon opinions,” have a difficult time as a result.
To help challenge the “givens” foisted upon us by our culture/society when we are young and as we grow up, I suggest “questioning the dominant paradigm” – so to speak. When one discovers a discrepancy in the official dogma, question it. Here are some examples:
Question the Matrix
1. If experts know so much, why don’t they ever agree?
2. Why do politicians spend so much money to get a job that pays peanuts?
3. If God saves the survivors of a disaster, who killed the victims?
4. Why do corporations give so much money to politicians who are elected by and responsible to the People?
5. If, as studies have shown, in most cases the amount of money spent campaigning determines the victor, what is “democracy” based upon – people or money?
6. If our nation’s foreign policy is aimed at “American Interests,” which Americans’ interests are they? Who benefits from pursuing “American interests”?
7. Why do the vast majority of people surveyed believe THEY will go to heaven but that most of the other people won’t?
8. If Cuba is our enemy because it is run by a “Communist dictator,” why do we like China?
9. If this nation was founded on “Christian” principles, how could it have accepted slavery?
10. In WHAT wars did soldiers fight and die to “protect our rights”? Especially the right to vote.
11. If a majority of voters in a state can outlaw gay marriages, could they also outlaw straight marriages?
12. If it makes sense to say, “Choose life; your mother did,” what about “Have sex with your mother; your father did”?
13. If a number of religions claim to be the one, true religion, don’t all but one HAVE to be wrong?
14. If, as some say, health care is a privilege not a right, does that mean that sick poor people have the right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but NOT life?
15. If a Christian is a capitalist, how can he try to run his competitors out of business?
16. If the “death tax” is so bad, why don’t we hear more dead people complaining?
17. If it is wrong to collect a welfare check for doing nothing, why is it OK to inherit Wal-Mart?
18. If winning athletes thank God, why don’t losers cuss him?
19. If we imperfect creatures are the product of God’s “intelligent design,” just how intelligent is He?
20. Were women denied the vote for so long because all men are created equal?
Reality is whatever the Emperor says it is.
October 17, 2004, New York Times Magazine - Ron Suskind, quoting an unnamed aide to George W. Bush:
The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
"Are you gonna believe me, or your lying eyes?" - Red Foxx
Can we KNOW anything?
I think we can. Is it easy to know things? I don’t think so. Is it good to know things? I think so. Is it easier to accept things than it is to know them? Sure.
Do people want to know things, or would they rather accept things they are told and act as if they are known? Good question.
It seems that, at least in terms of how things have been run historically, folks prefer to have their “knowledge” placed in their heads by someone else. Every “civilization” that has ever existed has rested on a dream world - created out of whole cloth, but nevertheless accepted by its people as real. Successive “civilizations” laugh at the “silly” notions of defunct cultures, but go to vicious war to establish the “truth” of their own. There are a lot of possible explanations for why this has always been the case, but I’m not getting into that now.
Instead, let’s look at the possibilities of doing it differently. Perhaps if enough people could become aware of the simple truth above about the relativity of cultural “truth,” it could lead to a saner, better world.
Here is a list of options. If forced to decide, which one of each pair would YOU choose?
Science ---------or------- Faith
Learning -------or------- Accepting
Education ------or------- Indoctrination
Thought -------or------- Feeling
Knowing -------or------- Guessing
Self ------------or------- Authority
Evidence ------or-------- Dogma
Activity -------or-------- Passivity
The Present ---or-------- the Past
Sanity ---------or------- Adjustment
Doubt ---------or-------- Certainty
Discovery -----or-------- Testimonials
Reality --------or-------- Virtual Reality
Objectivity ----or-------- Spin
Truth ---------or-------- Fiction
Freedom ------or-------- Security
Independence -or------ Dependence
Intelligence ---or-------- Emotion
Courage ------or-------- Cowardice
Explanations for the dream-world nature of “civilizations” can be found in the second options. The inherent difficulty of the first options – along with the ease of the alternatives - explains the attractiveness of the second options. Hence, the larger number of people choosing to accept the virtual reality imposed by the culture.
In reading an article on the use of aroma in Las Vegas casinos, I came across this comment:"Our olfactory receptors are directly connected to the limbic system, the most ancient and primitive part of the brain, which is thought to be the seat of emotion."
Our ancient, primitive natures DO make it easy for us to FEEL rather than THINK. Isn’t it ironic that many of the folks who most strenuously object to the notion of evolution – the idea that we descended from animals - are the ones relying disproportionately on their ancient, primitive (animal?) brain centers?
Though they may feel a necessity to do so, they don’t really NEED to. Each of us is equipped to make either the difficult choice or the easy choice. It really IS up to us. It all depends on whether we are courageous enough to use our neo-cortex rather than our limbic system.
Relevant Quotations:
“The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. ... To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies—all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.”
Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past."
—both above: George Orwell ( in “1984”)
To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle. --George Orwell
The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself... Almost inevitably, he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable. - H. L. Mencken
What good fortune for those in power that people do not think. —Adolph Hitler
Imagination is more important than knowledge. --Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)
All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them. --Galileo Galilei
Only when we know little do we know everything; doubt grows with knowledge." –Goethe
He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career." —George Bernard Shaw
"Only the small secrets need to be protected. The large ones are kept secret by public incredulity." ---Marshall McLuhan
With most people unbelief in one thing is founded on blind belief in another." --Lichtenberg
Man is what he believes. ---Chekov
"You don’t have any other society where the educated classes are so effectively indoctrinated and controlled by a subtle propaganda system – a private system including media, intellectual opinion forming magazines and the participation of the most highly educated sections of the population. Such people ought to be referred to as "Commissars" – for that is what their essential function is – to set up and maintain a system of doctrines and beliefs which will undermine independent thought and prevent a proper understanding and analysis of national and global institutions, issues, and policies". -- Noam Chomsky
Literal Interpretation of the Bible – Letter to Pres. Bush
Dear President Bush:
Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have learned a great deal from you.
I understand why you would propose and support a constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage. As you said, "in the eyes of God marriage is between a man and a woman." I try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can.
When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind the person that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination... End of debate.
I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some other elements of God's Laws and how to follow them.For example:
1. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this law applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?
2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?
3. I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanness - Lev.15: 19-24. The problem is how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.
4. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord - Lev.1:9. The problem is my neighbors, they claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?
5. I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or should I ask the police to do it?
6. A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination - Lev. 11:10, it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I do not agree. Can you settle this? Are there 'degrees' of abomination?
7. Lev.21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle-room here?
8. Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How should they die?
9. I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean. May I still play football if I wear gloves?
10. My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev.19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? Lev.24:10-16. Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair, like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)
Mr. Bush, I know you have studied these things extensively and thus enjoy considerable expertise in such matters, so I am confident you can help. Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging.
- Sincerely,
Oscar Wilde said:
“To believe is very dull. To doubt isintensely engrossing. To be on the alert is
to live, to be lulled into security is to die.”
“People go through their lives in a sort of coarse comfort, like petted animals, without ever realizing that they are thinking other people’s thoughts, living by other people’s standards, wearing practically what one may call other people’s second-hand clothes, and never being themselves for a single moment.”
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live. It is asking others to live as one wishes to live
We are often told that the poor are grateful for charity. Some of them are, no doubt, but the best amongst the poor are never grateful.They are ungrateful, discontented, disobedient, and rebellious. They are quite right to be so.
As for the virtuous poor, one can pity them, of course, but one cannot possibly admire them.
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.
As one reads history . . . one is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted.
If you want to tell people the truth, you had better make them laugh or they will kill you."
The Uke Man says:
Everything depends on
everyone pretending that
it’s Always been
This Way
(no beginning and no ending).
- - -
It’s life and death to those
On top
Not to let the bubble
(( ( pop ) ))
---
But to those
Down
On the bottom,
I say:
“Smoke ‘em!!”
- - -
(“if you’ve got ‘em.”)
Please Answer Yes or No
(answer quickly – don’t ponder over it but keep track of your answers – maybe print it out first and mark a “Y” or “N” for each one – there are no “correct” answers)
No one in America is “above the law.”
Over the years have our soldiers died in order to protect our rights?
Do you agree that “if you don’t vote, you can’t complain”?
Did God give us the Ten Commandments?
Are people on welfare lazy?
Is this a Christian country?
Is the policeman your friend?
Is capitalism good ?
Does everyone’s vote count?
Is there a Heaven?
In America is there Liberty and Justice for all ?
Is socialism bad?
Is there a Hell?
Can everyone escape poverty by working hard?
Are taxes too high?
Is voting “Them” out the best way to achieve change?
Is there a God?
Do you agree that the two-party system is best for America?
Over the years have soldiers died so that we could vote?
Can a Christian support capital Punishment?
Is it true that government can’t solve our problems?
Is Communism especially bad?
Does Satan exist?
Does the USA basically want to help the rest of the world?
Can a Christian be a capitalist?
Were unions once a good thing but are no longer needed?
Is there a right way and a wrong way to go about something?
Are Zeus, Thor, and Osiris fictional ?
Should a Christian oppose socialism?
Do our elected representatives represent us?
Should government be run like a business?
Is marriage between one man and one woman?
Are we fighting in Iraq to establish Democracy?
Is our government of, by, and for the People?
Can anyone grow up to be president?
Should we never discuss religion or politics?
Are our elected officials the best and brightest among us?
Now, look at your answers. There are established arguments on both sides of these issues. My intent was to group all the culturally “correct” views in the “Yes” column and all the culturally “incorrect” views in the “No” column. Whether you answered “Yes” or “No” is not the point of this exercise, however.
Ask yourself, no matter how you answered, “Can I give the opposing argument?” If so, then most likely your choice was “yours,” informed by your personal consideration. If not, then most likely that view is one placed in your head by the culture without your involvement.
The results of this exercise should give most people some reason to reassess at least some of what they thought they “believed.”
**************************************End ****************************
ADDITIONAL ITEMS:
FROM MICHAEL MOORE’s
Mike’s Election Guide 2008 pp. 113-16
8. Make Social Security Solvent Until the 22nd Century by Having the Rich Pay Their Fair Share. (page 113)
For many years now, the Republican elite has been on a singular mission. That mission has been to dismantle as much of the federal government as possible. The thinking is that by eliminating government programs that help the poor or disadvantaged, they, the rich, will pay less taxes.
That made sense to a majority of Americans, and so we have had a Republican in the White House for 20 of the last 28 years. Why would so many Americans approve of this strategy of being so cruel to their fellow, less-fortunate citizens? It’s a unique thing about us – we really, REALLY hate the riffraff, the destitute, the losers. They’re like lepers to us. We don’t want them around us, certainly not in our neighborhoods where they will bring down our property values. We don’t want to have to look at them on the street corner. We don’t want their kids going to school with our little precious ones.
But mostly we turn away because, in them, we see the possibility of our future. We know that deep down, there but for the grace of God, that could be us. We know how cruel our system of capitalism is, winners and losers – more losers than winners – and we know that we somehow lucked out and got to scrape by on the nicer side of town.
Once the idea of taking away from the poor caught on – so much so that the Democratic administration of Bill Clinton joined in on the dismantling – The Republicans tried, bit by bit, to close down the federal government. They convinced Congress and the president to privatize everything, from taking the census to running the mess hall on an army base.
And the cutbacks resulted in a huge tax savings for the rich - $410 billion since 2001. But by privatizing services – handing these jobs over to companies who had a fiduciary responsibility to make a bigger profit each and every year – it has ended up costing more money, and in many cases, not getting the job done half as well. When you hand an ice truck over to someone who doesn’t know where New Orleans is, and the ice truck is found still driving around Maine two weeks later, somebody is paying for this bill. That would be you.
And when they start a war in order to grab some oil, and that war ends up costing $2 billion a week for five-plus long years, well, the boys at the country club ain’t gonna be paying for that, either. Instead, the government just borrows the money from the rich man and then expects YOU to pay interests to him for the next 20 years.
Yet so much of the middle class wants to keep voting for Republicans because they promise to keep the poor in check – when all the time the ones getting the real body check are the middle class. The poor – don’t worry about them. They’ll survive, they always have. And sooner or later, as history shows, they’ll get fed up and come looking for us.
THE MIXED UP WORLD OF JOE THE PLUMBER
The Real Plumbers of Ohio
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: October 20, 2008
Forty years ago, Richard Nixon made a remarkable marketing discovery. By exploiting America’s divisions — divisions over Vietnam, divisions over cultural change and, above all, racial divisions — he was able to reinvent the Republican brand. The party of plutocrats was repackaged as the party of the “silent majority,” the regular guys — white guys, it went without saying — who didn’t like the social changes taking place.
It was a winning formula. And the great thing was that the new packaging didn’t require any change in the product’s actual contents — in fact, the G.O.P. was able to keep winning elections even as its actual policies became more pro-plutocrat, and less favorable to working Americans, than ever.
John McCain’s strategy, in this final stretch, is based on the belief that the old formula still has life in it.
Natural Raised Killers
By Tom Harker
A while back some angry kids went on a killing spree at their school, and the nation went on an hysterical binge. How could children - "good," wealthy, white children for-God's-sake - go on a violent rampage? It was un-American, unthinkable!! Everyone wanted an explanation of the inexplicable. About the best they could do was to lean on the “Goths” and other "misfits" who "obviously" suffered prominence-envy in comparison with their social betters. Here and there around the country diligent up-scale school officials imposed “zero tolerance” and took advantage of the immediately available psychological profiling programs so as to identify and label the potential “killers” and, thereby, provide a sense of security, responsibility, and hope.
Well, forget that. Let's face facts. Americans kill because Americans love to kill. "Columbine" was devastating not because it involved killing, but because it broke the rules. In America proper killing, is more than acceptable; it is honorable. Some of our greatest role models are killers, directly or indirectly. They are the ones (cops, vigilantes, CIA agents, the military)who kill people that "need" to be killed and those (prosecutors, judges, legislators, governors, presidents) who put the “hit” out on those among us who “need” to be killed.
We killed the indigenous people of this continent by the rules. We killed immigrant and native-born workers - by the rules - when they tried to unionize. We killed black Americans - by the rules - whenever they "needed" lynching. Around the world we have killed and continue to kill foreigners - by the rules - whenever it is said to advance American "interests" (regardless of the foreigners' interests); and Americans still kill "criminals" - by the rules - whenever we get the chance.
Heroes? Role models? There are plenty of natural-born killers in our Pantheon. Historically, the list of honored killers is lengthy, as is the list of those who "honorably" ordered killings: the "great" explorers, "kindly" Puritans, "valiant" Indian fighters, “sturdy” pioneers, "romantic" plantation owners, Manifest Destiny politicians, Rockefeller, Carnegie, the B&O Railroad, Pinkerton agents, coal companies, and a myriad of officially "honorable" presidents, congressmen, governors, judges, and mayors - just to mention a few.
Ronald Reagan killed a baby with a missile. George Bush the Elder gratuitously annihilated helpless, fleeing Iraqi troops. Ohio's Governor James Rhodes allowed protesting students to be killed. Bill Clinton ordered bombings that killed foreign civilians. Pat Robertson publicly supported assassination of America’s “enemies.” The current president, George Bush the Younger, proudly defends his home state's record use of capital punishment. Long ago, before any talk of attacking Iraq, ABC News big-wig/bad-wig Sam Donaldson demanded on his ABC Sunday-morning “news” program that Saddam Hussein be killed.
None of this even raises a mainstream eyebrow because it is all “by the rules.” We are allowed to kill those who “need” killing. Moreover, it is our duty to kill them, and our stature is increased by doing so. Those few who may argue otherwise are ignored, overwhelmed, or – if necessary – silenced.
At the same time, killing outside the rules is not only illegal but “wrong.” If a foreign head of state killed an American baby (not to mention, a president’s adopted grandchild as was the case in Reagan’s Libyan adventure), it would be unspeakably “evil.” Blowing up American soldiers is called “terrorism.” If some foreign leader advocated the assassination of Pat Robertson or Sam Donaldson, there would be a moral outrage (except, perhaps, on the part of Robertson’s understudy and ABC’s advertising executives ).
One American, the president, can “justifiably” blow up any building in the foreign world, thereby killing the folks who work there and still get his pension. The man who blew up a building in Oklahoma (America), killing numerous people, has been executed.
Clearly, the question of “violence in America” suffers from the old “do as I say, not as I do” syndrome. The obvious reality is that America is not against violence and killing. America sanctions killing, essentially licensing certain people, groups, organizations, and institutions to kill under certain circumstances and in accordance with various rules and procedures.
As a result, the message America sends its children (as well as its adults) is not “violence and killing are wrong,” but “killing without permission is wrong.” The message is not that human life is sacred, but that killing is commendable if the killer is sanctioned, but wrong if he is not. This is a low standard.
As a result, “unsanctioned” killers such as those at Columbine need not wrestle with the question “Is killing wrong?” ; obviously (and officially) it is not. No, the question is, “Am I, somehow, sanctioned to kill?” It seems the latter question is much more subject to rationalization than the former – especially in a nation awash with notions of individuality, self-determination, “intrusive/unresponsive” government, vigilantism, and revenge (as in “I’d pull the switch myself!”).
If America truly valued life, young people and others would have to face a real moral dilemma: breaking a taboo, but as it is, they can emulate presidents, judges, prosecutors, policemen, ministers, and TV “celebrities” by deciding for themselves who should live and die.
In his inaugural speech, George Bush the Younger said, that “no insignificant person was ever born,” but he did not address the relative significance of the 135 people he executed as governor of Texas, nor the significance of those innocent persons who most certainly have died over the years at the hands of sanctioned state executions. Talk is cheap, and cheap talk combined with “zero tolerance,” “outrage,” and “psychological profiling” will not end or even seriously reduce killing in schools, federal buildings, or anywhere else. Only a true respect for life can do that. As long as America has rules that sanction killing, many Americans, when faced with difficulties – real or imagined - will follow their own rules and kill. It’s the American way.
Noam Chomsky and the Struggle Against Neoliberalism
By Robert W McChesney
Monthly Review April 1, 1999
Neoliberalism is the defining political economic paradigm of our time - it refers to the policies and processes whereby a relative handful of private interests are permitted to control as much as possible of social life in order to maximize their personal profit. Associated initially with Reagan and Thatcher, neoliberalism has for the past two decades been the dominant global political economic trend adopted by political parties of the center, much of the traditional left, and the right. These parties and the policies they enact represent the immediate interests of extremely wealthy investors and less than one thousand large corporations.
Aside from some academics and members of the business community, the term neoliberalism is largely unknown and unused by the public at large, especially in the United States. There, to the contrary, neoliberal initiatives are characterized as free market policies that encourage private enterprise and consumer choice, reward personal responsibility and entrepreneurial initiative, and undermine the dead hand of the incompetent, bureaucratic, and parasitic government, which can never do good (even when well intentioned, which it rarely is). A generation of corporate-financed public relations efforts has given these terms and ideas a near-sacred aura. As a result, these phrases and the claims they imply rarely require empirical defense, and are invoked to rationalize anything from lowering taxes on the wealthy and scrapping environmental regulations to dismantling public education and social welfare programs. Indeed, any activity that might interfere with corporate domination of society is automatically suspect because it would impede the workings of the free market, which is advanced as the only rational, fair, and democratic allocator of goods and services. At their most eloquent, proponents of neoliberalism sound as if they are doing poor people, the environment, and everybody else a tremendous service as they enact policies on behalf of the wealthy few.
The economic consequences of these policies have been the same just about everywhere, and exactly what one would expect: a massive increase in social and economic inequality, a marked increase in severe deprivation for the poorest nations and peoples of the world, a disastrous global environment, an unstable global economy, and an unprecedented bonanza for the wealthy. Confronted with these facts, defenders of the neoliberal order claim that the spoils of the good life will invariably spread to the broad mass of the population - as long as the neoliberal policies that exacerbated these problems are not interfered with by anyone!
In the end, proponents of neoliberalism cannot and do not offer an empirical defense for the world they are making. To the contrary, they offer - no, demand - a religious faith in the infallibility of the unregulated market, drawing upon nineteenth century theories that have little connection to the actual world. The ultimate trump card for the defenders of neoliberalism, however, is that there is no alternative. Communist societies, social democracies, and even modest social welfare states like the United States have all failed, the neoliberals proclaim, and their citizens have accepted neoliberalism as the only feasible course. It may well be imperfect, but it is the only economic system possible.
Earlier in the twentieth century some critics called fascism "capitalism with the gloves off," meaning that fascism was pure capitalism without democratic rights and organizations. In fact, we know that fascism is vastly more complex than that. Neoliberalism, on the other hand, is indeed "capitalism with the gloves off." It represents an era in which business forces are stronger and more aggressive, and face less organized opposition than ever before. In this political climate they attempt to codify their political power and enact their vision on every possible front. As a result, business is increasingly difficult to challenge, and civil society (nonmarket, noncommercial, and democratic forces) barely exists at all.
It is precisely in its oppression of nonmarket forces that we see how neoliberalism operates - not only as an economic system, but as a political and cultural system as well. Here the differences with fascism, with its contempt for formal democracy and highly mobilized social movements based upon racism and nationalism, are striking. Neoliberalism works best when there is formal electoral democracy, but when the population is diverted from the information, access, and public forums necessary for meaningful participation in decision-making. As neoliberal guru Milton Friedman put it in Capitalism and Freedom, because profitmaking is the essence of democracy, any government that pursues antimarket policies is being antidemocratic, no matter how much informed popular support they might enjoy. Therefore it is best to restrict governments to the job of protecting private property and enforcing contracts, and to limit political debate to minor issues. (The real matters of resource production and distribution and social organization should be determined by market forces.)
Equipped with this perverse understanding of democracy, neoliberals like Friedman had no qualms over the military overthrow of Chile's democratically elected Allende government in 1973, because Allende was interfering with business control of Chilean society. After fifteen years of often brutal and savage dictatorship - all in the name of the democratic free market - formal democracy was restored in 1989 with a constitution that made it vastly more difficult (if not impossible) for the citizenry to challenge the business-military domination of Chilean society. That is neoliberal democracy in a nutshell: trivial debate over minor issues by parties that basically pursue the same pro-business policies regardless of formal differences and campaign debate. Democracy is permissible as long as the control of business is off-limits to popular deliberation or change; i.e., so long as it isn't democracy.
Neoliberal democracy therefore has an important and necessary byproduct - a depoliticized citizenry marked by apathy and cynicism. If electoral democracy affects little of social life, it is irrational to devote much attention to it; in the United States, the spawning ground of neoliberal democracy, voter turnout in the 1998 congressional elections was a record low, with just one-third of eligible voters going to the polls. Although occasionally generating concern from those established parties like the U.S. Democratic Party that tend to attract the votes of the dispossessed, low voter turnout tends to be accepted and encouraged by the powers that be as a very good thing since nonvoters are, not surprisingly, disproportionately found among the poor and working class. Policies that quickly could increase voter interest and participation rates are stymied before ever getting into the public arena. In the United States, for example, the two main business-dominated parties, with the support of the corporate community, have refused to reform laws - some of which they put on the boos - making it virtually impossible to create new political parties (that might appeal to non-business interests) and let them be effective. Although there is marked and frequently observed dissatisfaction with the Republicans and Democrats, electoral politics is one area where notions of competition and free choice have little meaning. In some respects, the caliber of debate and choice in neoliberal elections tends to be closer to that of the one-party communist state than that of a genuine democracy.
But this barely indicates neoliberalism's pernicious implications for a civic-centered political culture. On one hand, the social inequality generated by neoliberal policies undermines any effort to realize the legal equality necessary to make democracy credible. Large corporations have resources to influence media and overwhelm the political process, and do so accordingly. In U.S. electoral politics, for just one example, the richest one-quarter of one percent of Americans make 80 percent of all individual political contributions and corporations outspend labor by a margin of ten to one. Under neoliberalism this all makes sense; elections then reflect market principles, with contributions being equated with investments. As a result, it reinforces the irrelevance of electoral politics to most people and assures the maintenance of unquestioned corporate rule.
On the other hand, to be effective, democracy requires that people feel a connection to their fellow citizens, and that this connection manifests itself though a variety of nonmarket organizations and institutions. A vibrant political culture needs community groups, libraries, public schools, neighborhood organizations, cooperatives, public meeting places, voluntary associations, and trade unions to provide ways for citizens to meet, communicate, and interact with their fellow citizens. Neoliberal democracy, with its notion of the market uber alles, takes dead aim at this sector. Instead of citizens, it produces consumers. Instead of communities, it produces shopping malls. The net result is an atomized society of disengaged individuals who feel demoralized and socially powerless.
In sum, neoliberalism is the immediate and foremost enemy of genuine participatory democracy, not just in the United States but across the planet, and will be for the foreseeable future. It is fitting that Noam Chomsky is the leading intellectual figure in the world today in the battle for democracy and against neoliberalism. In the 1960s, Chomsky was a prominent U.S. critic of the Vietnam war and, more broadly, became perhaps the most trenchant analyst of the ways U.S. foreign policy undermines democracy, quashes human rights, and promotes the interests of the wealthy few. In the 1970s, Chomsky (along with his co-author Edward S. Herman) began researching the ways the U.S. news media serve elite interests and undermine the capacity of the citizenry to actually rule their lives in a democratic fashion. Their 1988 book, Manufacturing Consent, remains the starting point for any serious inquiry into news media performance.
Throughout these years Chomsky, who could be characterized as an anarchist or, perhaps more accurately, a libertarian socialist, was a vocal, principled, and consistent democratic opponent and critic of Communist and Leninist political states and parties. He educated countless people, including myself, that democracy was a non-negotiable cornerstone of any postcapitalist society worth living in or fighting for. At the same time, he has demonstrated the absurdity of equating capitalism with democracy, or thinking that capitalist societies, even under the best of circumstances, will ever open access to information or decision-making beyond the most narrow and controlled possibilities. I doubt any author, aside from perhaps George Orwell, has approached Chomsky in systematically skewering the hypocrisy of rulers and ideologues in both Communist and capitalist societies as they claim that theirs is the only form of true democracy available to humanity.
In the 1990s, all these strands of Chomsky's political work - from anti-imperialism and critical media analysis to writings on democracy and the labor movement - have come together, culminating in work like Profit Over People, about democracy and the neoliberal threat. Chomsky has done much to reinvigorate an understanding of the social requirements for democracy, drawing upon the ancient Greeks as well as the leading thinkers of democratic revolutions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As he makes clear, it is impossible to be a proponent of participatory democracy and at the same time a champion of capitalism or any other class-divided society. In assessing the real historical struggles for democracy, Chomsky also reveals that neoliberalism is hardly a new thing; it is merely the current version of the battle for the wealthy few to circumscribe the political rights and civic powers of the many.
Chomsky may also be the leading critic of the mythology of the natural "free" market, that cheery hymn that is pounded into our heads about how the economy is competitive, rational, efficient, and fair. As Chomsky points out, markets are almost never competitive. Most of the economy is dominated by massive corporations with tremendous control over their markets and which therefore face precious little competition of the sort described in economics textbooks and politicians' speeches. Moreover, corporations themselves are effectively totalitarian organizations, operating along nondemocratic lines. That our economy is centered around such institutions severely compromises our ability to have a democratic society.
The mythology of the free market also submits that governments are inefficient institutions that should be limited, so as not to hurt the magic of the natural laissez faire market. In fact, as Chomsky emphasizes, governments are central to the modern capitalist system. They lavishly subsidize corporations and work to advance corporate interests on numerous fronts. The same corporations that exult in neoliberal ideology are in fact often hypocritical: they want and expect governments to funnel tax dollars to them, and to protect their markets from competition for them, but they want to be assured that governments will not tax them or work supportively on behalf of non-business interests, especially the poor and working class. Governments are bigger than ever, but under neoliberalism they have far less pretense to addressing non-corporate interests.
Nowhere is the centrality of governments and policymaking more apparent than in the emergence of the global market economy. What is presented by pro-business ideologues as the natural expansion of free markets across borders is, in fact, quite the opposite. Globalization is the result of powerful governments, especially that of the United States, pushing trade deals and other accords down the throats of the world's people to make it easier for corporations and the wealthy to dominate the economies of nations around the world without having obligations to the peoples of those nations. Nowhere is the process more apparent than in the creation of the World Trade Organization in the early 1990s and, now, in the secret deliberations on behalf of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI).
Indeed, it is the inability to have honest and candid discussions and debates about neoliberalism in the United States and elsewhere that is one of its most striking features. Chomsky's critique of the neoliberal order is effectively off-limits to mainstream analysis despite its empirical strength and because of its commitment to democratic values. Here, Chomsky's analysis of the doctrinal system in capitalist democracies is useful. The corporate news media, the PR industry, the academic ideologues, and the intellectual culture writ large play the central role of providing the "necessary illusions" to make this unpalatable situation appear rational, benevolent, and necessary (if not necessarily desirable). As Chomsky hastens to point out, this is no formal conspiracy by powerful interests; it doesn't have to be. Through a variety of institutional mechanisms, signals are sent to intellectuals, pundits, and journalists, pushing toward seeing the status quo as the best of all possible worlds, and away from challenging those who benefit from that status quo. Chomsky's work is a direct call for democratic activists to remake our media system so it can be opened up to anticorporate, antineoliberal perspectives and inquiry. It is also a challenge to all intellectuals, or at least those who express a commitment to democracy, to take a long, hard look in the mirror and to ask themselves in whose interests, and for what values, do they do their work.
Chomsky's description of the neoliberal/corporate hold over our economy, polity, journalism, and culture is so powerful and overwhelming that for some readers it can produce a sense of resignation. In our demoralized political times, a few may go a step further and conclude that we are enmeshed in this regressive system because, alas, humanity is simply incapable of creating a more humane, egalitarian, and democratic social order.
In fact, Chomsky's greatest contribution may well be his insistence upon the fundamental democratic inclinations of the world's peoples, and the revolutionary potential implicit in those impulses. The best evidence of this possibility is the extent to which corporate forces go to prevent genuine political democracy from being established. The world's rulers understand implicitly that theirs is a system established to suit the needs of the few, not the many, and that the many therefore cannot ever be permitted to question and alter corporate rule. Even in the hobbled democracies that do exist, the corporate community works incessantly to see that important issues like the MAI are never publicly debated. And the business community spends a fortune bankrolling a PR apparatus to convince Americans that this is the best of all possible worlds. The time to worry about the possibility of social change for the better, by this logic, will be when the corporate community abandons PR and buying elections, permits a representative media, and is comfortable establishing a genuinely egalitarian participatory democracy because it no longer fears the power of the many. But there is no reason to think that day will ever come.
Neoliberalism's loudest message is that there is no alternative to the status quo, and that humanity has reached its highest level. Chomsky points out that there have been several other periods designated as the "end of history" in the past. In the 1920s and 1950s, for example, U.S. elites claimed that the system was working and that mass quiescence reflected widespread satisfaction with the status quo. Events shortly thereafter highlighted the silliness of those beliefs. I suspect that as soon as democratic forces record a few tangible victories the blood will return to their veins, and talk of no possible hope for change will go the same route as all previous elite fantasies about their glorious rule being enshrined for a millennium.
The notion that no superior alternative to the status quo exists is more farfetched today than ever, in this era when there are mind-boggling technologies for bettering the human condition. It is true that it remains unclear how we might establish a viable, free, and humane post-capitalist order; the very notion has a utopian air about it. But every advance in history, from ending slavery and establishing democracy to ending formal colonialism, has at some point had to conquer the notion that it was impossible to do because it had never been done before. As Chomsky points out, organized political activism is responsible for the degree of democracy we have today, for universal adult suffrage, for women's rights, for trade unions, for civil rights, for the freedoms we do enjoy. Even if the notion of a post-capitalist society seems unattainable, we know that human political activity can make the world we live in vastly more humane. As we get to that point, perhaps we will again be able to think in terms of building a political economy based on principles of cooperation, equality, self-government, and individual freedom.
Until then, the struggle for social change is not a hypothetical issue. The current neoliberal order has generated massive political and economic crises from east Asia to eastern Europe and Latin America. The quality of life in the developed nations of Europe, Japan, and North America is fragile and the societies are in considerable turmoil. Tremendous upheaval is in the cards for the coming years and decades. There is considerable doubt about the outcome of that upheaval, however, and little reason to think it will lead automatically to a democratic and humane resolution. That will be determined by how we, the people, organize, respond, and act. As Chomsky says, if you act like there is no possibility of change for the better, you guarantee that there will be no change for the better. The choice is ours, the choice is yours.
Robert W. McChesney teaches communication at the University of Illinois. His newest book is Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999). This article first appeared as the introduction to Noam Chomsky's Profit Over People (New York: Seven Stories Press, 1999).
The George Carlin link is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKCnbVWZzvw
Worthington H.S. Class materials
Tom Harker e-mail: ukulele_man@yahoo.com
blog: http://www.ukuleleman.net/blog.html
Introduction:
Nobody knows any more about anything than you do.
Now, I’m not talking about facts like how many different countries exist in the world at any given time or how best to hard boil eggs. Different people do know more or less than one another when it comes to narrow, limited, or esoteric questions. But when it comes to contentious ideas, ideologies, cultural notions, and such; nobody knows any more about anything than you do.
One can plop an issue on a lectern and easily find a thousand “experts” to line up on one side screaming “Yes!!!” and another thousand to line up on the other side screaming “No!!!” We dummies are supposed to side with one “expert” or the other and get in his or her line, but on what basis?
We need to ask ourselves, “If experts know so much, why can’t they ever agree?” It makes no sense. Problems have solutions. Shouldn’t experts be best situated to address them? Sure, but they don’t. Why?
It’s because they don’t want to solve the problem; they want to get us to stand in their line.
Someone said, and I believe it, that every system is perfectly designed to produce exactly what it produces. If that is true, the design of the system is responsible for both the benefits and the problems it produces. It stands to reason that those who have problems will want to change the system, and those receiving the benefits will want to avoid changing it.
Now, ask again, “If experts know so much, why can’t they ever agree?”
Well, if the problem is solved, the system will be changed, and those who presently benefit may be less privileged than before. So, the game becomes “How can I appear to be addressing the problem while really only helping myself (maintaining the system)?” (the movies The Truman Show and The Matrix are good examples of this – see below).
Most often, maintaining the system will involve lies that change very little or nothing and disguise the problem rather than solve it. Sometimes – if the people are sufficiently outraged - it will mean that some competing group presently benefiting from the “problem” will be attacked by the more powerful and expected to make any necessary sacrifices to quiet the unrest, while maintaining both the basic problem and the benefits accruing to the mighty.
In any case, the “problem” is not the focus. Maintaining one’s own privilege is the agenda.
Listen to the “experts,” but don’t believe a thing they say, unless it makes sense to you!!!! Don’t believe anything I say, either, unless it makes sense to you!!!
Stephen Colbert: “Culture is a set of agreed upon opinions.”
Historically, every culture firmly believes wildly different “realities.” As long as the culture is maintained, that “reality” (e.g. the benefit of human sacrifice, the flatness of the earth, the divine right of kings, or the efficacy of Voodoo) IS the reality.
From The Truman Show: “We accept the reality of the world with which we are presented.”
We are born into a culture, and are defenseless vessels into which the official “opinions” are poured. Only later are we in a position to even think of questioning what, apparently, everybody else takes for granted.
From the 1st “Matrix” movie : “Let me tell you why you are here. You are here because you know something. What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life. That there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it is there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. That’s what brought you to me.
Do you know what I’m talking about?”
“The Matrix?”
“Do you want to know what it is?
The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us, even now in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window, or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes.
It is the world that has been pulled down over your eyes to blind you from the truth, the truth that you are a slave. The Matrix is a dream world built to keep us under control in order to change a human being into a power source for others.
As long as the Matrix exists, the human race will never be free."
“The Matrix” metaphorically presents the world as I’ve described it above. Most people live out their lives believing what they have been led to believe (by the dominant machine race) and seldom have the opportunity to discover that there is a different reality. Those who try to break out of what Stephen Colbert called the “set of agreed upon opinions,” have a difficult time as a result.
To help challenge the “givens” foisted upon us by our culture/society when we are young and as we grow up, I suggest “questioning the dominant paradigm” – so to speak. When one discovers a discrepancy in the official dogma, question it. Here are some examples:
Question the Matrix
1. If experts know so much, why don’t they ever agree?
2. Why do politicians spend so much money to get a job that pays peanuts?
3. If God saves the survivors of a disaster, who killed the victims?
4. Why do corporations give so much money to politicians who are elected by and responsible to the People?
5. If, as studies have shown, in most cases the amount of money spent campaigning determines the victor, what is “democracy” based upon – people or money?
6. If our nation’s foreign policy is aimed at “American Interests,” which Americans’ interests are they? Who benefits from pursuing “American interests”?
7. Why do the vast majority of people surveyed believe THEY will go to heaven but that most of the other people won’t?
8. If Cuba is our enemy because it is run by a “Communist dictator,” why do we like China?
9. If this nation was founded on “Christian” principles, how could it have accepted slavery?
10. In WHAT wars did soldiers fight and die to “protect our rights”? Especially the right to vote.
11. If a majority of voters in a state can outlaw gay marriages, could they also outlaw straight marriages?
12. If it makes sense to say, “Choose life; your mother did,” what about “Have sex with your mother; your father did”?
13. If a number of religions claim to be the one, true religion, don’t all but one HAVE to be wrong?
14. If, as some say, health care is a privilege not a right, does that mean that sick poor people have the right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but NOT life?
15. If a Christian is a capitalist, how can he try to run his competitors out of business?
16. If the “death tax” is so bad, why don’t we hear more dead people complaining?
17. If it is wrong to collect a welfare check for doing nothing, why is it OK to inherit Wal-Mart?
18. If winning athletes thank God, why don’t losers cuss him?
19. If we imperfect creatures are the product of God’s “intelligent design,” just how intelligent is He?
20. Were women denied the vote for so long because all men are created equal?
Reality is whatever the Emperor says it is.
October 17, 2004, New York Times Magazine - Ron Suskind, quoting an unnamed aide to George W. Bush:
The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
"Are you gonna believe me, or your lying eyes?" - Red Foxx
Can we KNOW anything?
I think we can. Is it easy to know things? I don’t think so. Is it good to know things? I think so. Is it easier to accept things than it is to know them? Sure.
Do people want to know things, or would they rather accept things they are told and act as if they are known? Good question.
It seems that, at least in terms of how things have been run historically, folks prefer to have their “knowledge” placed in their heads by someone else. Every “civilization” that has ever existed has rested on a dream world - created out of whole cloth, but nevertheless accepted by its people as real. Successive “civilizations” laugh at the “silly” notions of defunct cultures, but go to vicious war to establish the “truth” of their own. There are a lot of possible explanations for why this has always been the case, but I’m not getting into that now.
Instead, let’s look at the possibilities of doing it differently. Perhaps if enough people could become aware of the simple truth above about the relativity of cultural “truth,” it could lead to a saner, better world.
Here is a list of options. If forced to decide, which one of each pair would YOU choose?
Science ---------or------- Faith
Learning -------or------- Accepting
Education ------or------- Indoctrination
Thought -------or------- Feeling
Knowing -------or------- Guessing
Self ------------or------- Authority
Evidence ------or-------- Dogma
Activity -------or-------- Passivity
The Present ---or-------- the Past
Sanity ---------or------- Adjustment
Doubt ---------or-------- Certainty
Discovery -----or-------- Testimonials
Reality --------or-------- Virtual Reality
Objectivity ----or-------- Spin
Truth ---------or-------- Fiction
Freedom ------or-------- Security
Independence -or------ Dependence
Intelligence ---or-------- Emotion
Courage ------or-------- Cowardice
Explanations for the dream-world nature of “civilizations” can be found in the second options. The inherent difficulty of the first options – along with the ease of the alternatives - explains the attractiveness of the second options. Hence, the larger number of people choosing to accept the virtual reality imposed by the culture.
In reading an article on the use of aroma in Las Vegas casinos, I came across this comment:"Our olfactory receptors are directly connected to the limbic system, the most ancient and primitive part of the brain, which is thought to be the seat of emotion."
Our ancient, primitive natures DO make it easy for us to FEEL rather than THINK. Isn’t it ironic that many of the folks who most strenuously object to the notion of evolution – the idea that we descended from animals - are the ones relying disproportionately on their ancient, primitive (animal?) brain centers?
Though they may feel a necessity to do so, they don’t really NEED to. Each of us is equipped to make either the difficult choice or the easy choice. It really IS up to us. It all depends on whether we are courageous enough to use our neo-cortex rather than our limbic system.
Relevant Quotations:
“The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. ... To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies—all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.”
Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past."
—both above: George Orwell ( in “1984”)
To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle. --George Orwell
The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself... Almost inevitably, he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable. - H. L. Mencken
What good fortune for those in power that people do not think. —Adolph Hitler
Imagination is more important than knowledge. --Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)
All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them. --Galileo Galilei
Only when we know little do we know everything; doubt grows with knowledge." –Goethe
He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career." —George Bernard Shaw
"Only the small secrets need to be protected. The large ones are kept secret by public incredulity." ---Marshall McLuhan
With most people unbelief in one thing is founded on blind belief in another." --Lichtenberg
Man is what he believes. ---Chekov
"You don’t have any other society where the educated classes are so effectively indoctrinated and controlled by a subtle propaganda system – a private system including media, intellectual opinion forming magazines and the participation of the most highly educated sections of the population. Such people ought to be referred to as "Commissars" – for that is what their essential function is – to set up and maintain a system of doctrines and beliefs which will undermine independent thought and prevent a proper understanding and analysis of national and global institutions, issues, and policies". -- Noam Chomsky
Literal Interpretation of the Bible – Letter to Pres. Bush
Dear President Bush:
Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have learned a great deal from you.
I understand why you would propose and support a constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage. As you said, "in the eyes of God marriage is between a man and a woman." I try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can.
When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind the person that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination... End of debate.
I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some other elements of God's Laws and how to follow them.For example:
1. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this law applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?
2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?
3. I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanness - Lev.15: 19-24. The problem is how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.
4. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord - Lev.1:9. The problem is my neighbors, they claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?
5. I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or should I ask the police to do it?
6. A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination - Lev. 11:10, it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I do not agree. Can you settle this? Are there 'degrees' of abomination?
7. Lev.21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle-room here?
8. Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How should they die?
9. I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean. May I still play football if I wear gloves?
10. My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev.19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? Lev.24:10-16. Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair, like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)
Mr. Bush, I know you have studied these things extensively and thus enjoy considerable expertise in such matters, so I am confident you can help. Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging.
- Sincerely,
Oscar Wilde said:
“To believe is very dull. To doubt isintensely engrossing. To be on the alert is
to live, to be lulled into security is to die.”
“People go through their lives in a sort of coarse comfort, like petted animals, without ever realizing that they are thinking other people’s thoughts, living by other people’s standards, wearing practically what one may call other people’s second-hand clothes, and never being themselves for a single moment.”
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live. It is asking others to live as one wishes to live
We are often told that the poor are grateful for charity. Some of them are, no doubt, but the best amongst the poor are never grateful.They are ungrateful, discontented, disobedient, and rebellious. They are quite right to be so.
As for the virtuous poor, one can pity them, of course, but one cannot possibly admire them.
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.
As one reads history . . . one is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted.
If you want to tell people the truth, you had better make them laugh or they will kill you."
The Uke Man says:
Everything depends on
everyone pretending that
it’s Always been
This Way
(no beginning and no ending).
- - -
It’s life and death to those
On top
Not to let the bubble
(( ( pop ) ))
---
But to those
Down
On the bottom,
I say:
“Smoke ‘em!!”
- - -
(“if you’ve got ‘em.”)
Please Answer Yes or No
(answer quickly – don’t ponder over it but keep track of your answers – maybe print it out first and mark a “Y” or “N” for each one – there are no “correct” answers)
No one in America is “above the law.”
Over the years have our soldiers died in order to protect our rights?
Do you agree that “if you don’t vote, you can’t complain”?
Did God give us the Ten Commandments?
Are people on welfare lazy?
Is this a Christian country?
Is the policeman your friend?
Is capitalism good ?
Does everyone’s vote count?
Is there a Heaven?
In America is there Liberty and Justice for all ?
Is socialism bad?
Is there a Hell?
Can everyone escape poverty by working hard?
Are taxes too high?
Is voting “Them” out the best way to achieve change?
Is there a God?
Do you agree that the two-party system is best for America?
Over the years have soldiers died so that we could vote?
Can a Christian support capital Punishment?
Is it true that government can’t solve our problems?
Is Communism especially bad?
Does Satan exist?
Does the USA basically want to help the rest of the world?
Can a Christian be a capitalist?
Were unions once a good thing but are no longer needed?
Is there a right way and a wrong way to go about something?
Are Zeus, Thor, and Osiris fictional ?
Should a Christian oppose socialism?
Do our elected representatives represent us?
Should government be run like a business?
Is marriage between one man and one woman?
Are we fighting in Iraq to establish Democracy?
Is our government of, by, and for the People?
Can anyone grow up to be president?
Should we never discuss religion or politics?
Are our elected officials the best and brightest among us?
Now, look at your answers. There are established arguments on both sides of these issues. My intent was to group all the culturally “correct” views in the “Yes” column and all the culturally “incorrect” views in the “No” column. Whether you answered “Yes” or “No” is not the point of this exercise, however.
Ask yourself, no matter how you answered, “Can I give the opposing argument?” If so, then most likely your choice was “yours,” informed by your personal consideration. If not, then most likely that view is one placed in your head by the culture without your involvement.
The results of this exercise should give most people some reason to reassess at least some of what they thought they “believed.”
**************************************End ****************************
ADDITIONAL ITEMS:
FROM MICHAEL MOORE’s
Mike’s Election Guide 2008 pp. 113-16
8. Make Social Security Solvent Until the 22nd Century by Having the Rich Pay Their Fair Share. (page 113)
For many years now, the Republican elite has been on a singular mission. That mission has been to dismantle as much of the federal government as possible. The thinking is that by eliminating government programs that help the poor or disadvantaged, they, the rich, will pay less taxes.
That made sense to a majority of Americans, and so we have had a Republican in the White House for 20 of the last 28 years. Why would so many Americans approve of this strategy of being so cruel to their fellow, less-fortunate citizens? It’s a unique thing about us – we really, REALLY hate the riffraff, the destitute, the losers. They’re like lepers to us. We don’t want them around us, certainly not in our neighborhoods where they will bring down our property values. We don’t want to have to look at them on the street corner. We don’t want their kids going to school with our little precious ones.
But mostly we turn away because, in them, we see the possibility of our future. We know that deep down, there but for the grace of God, that could be us. We know how cruel our system of capitalism is, winners and losers – more losers than winners – and we know that we somehow lucked out and got to scrape by on the nicer side of town.
Once the idea of taking away from the poor caught on – so much so that the Democratic administration of Bill Clinton joined in on the dismantling – The Republicans tried, bit by bit, to close down the federal government. They convinced Congress and the president to privatize everything, from taking the census to running the mess hall on an army base.
And the cutbacks resulted in a huge tax savings for the rich - $410 billion since 2001. But by privatizing services – handing these jobs over to companies who had a fiduciary responsibility to make a bigger profit each and every year – it has ended up costing more money, and in many cases, not getting the job done half as well. When you hand an ice truck over to someone who doesn’t know where New Orleans is, and the ice truck is found still driving around Maine two weeks later, somebody is paying for this bill. That would be you.
And when they start a war in order to grab some oil, and that war ends up costing $2 billion a week for five-plus long years, well, the boys at the country club ain’t gonna be paying for that, either. Instead, the government just borrows the money from the rich man and then expects YOU to pay interests to him for the next 20 years.
Yet so much of the middle class wants to keep voting for Republicans because they promise to keep the poor in check – when all the time the ones getting the real body check are the middle class. The poor – don’t worry about them. They’ll survive, they always have. And sooner or later, as history shows, they’ll get fed up and come looking for us.
THE MIXED UP WORLD OF JOE THE PLUMBER
The Real Plumbers of Ohio
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: October 20, 2008
Forty years ago, Richard Nixon made a remarkable marketing discovery. By exploiting America’s divisions — divisions over Vietnam, divisions over cultural change and, above all, racial divisions — he was able to reinvent the Republican brand. The party of plutocrats was repackaged as the party of the “silent majority,” the regular guys — white guys, it went without saying — who didn’t like the social changes taking place.
It was a winning formula. And the great thing was that the new packaging didn’t require any change in the product’s actual contents — in fact, the G.O.P. was able to keep winning elections even as its actual policies became more pro-plutocrat, and less favorable to working Americans, than ever.
John McCain’s strategy, in this final stretch, is based on the belief that the old formula still has life in it.
Kurt Vonnegut from "A Man Without a Country"
Human beings have had to guess about almost everything for the past million years or so. The leading characters in our history books have been our most enthralling, and sometimes our most terrifying, guessers.
May I name two of them?
Aristotle and Hitler.
One good guesser and one bad one.
And the masses of humanity through the ages, feeling inadequately educated just like we do now, and rightly so, have had little choice but to believe this guesser or that one.
Russians who didn't think much of the guesses of Ivan the Terrible, for example, were likely to have their hats nailed to their heads.
We must acknowledge that persuasive guessers, even Ivan the Terrible, now a hero in the Soviet Union, have sometimes given us the courage to endure extraordinary ordeals which we had no way of understanding. Crop failures, plagues, eruptions of volcanoes, babies being born dead - the guessers often gave us the illusion that bad luck and good luck were understandable and could somehow be dealt with intelligently and effectively. Without that illusion, we all might have surrendered long ago.
But the guessers, in fact, knew no more than the common people and sometimes less, even when, or especially when, they gave us the illusion that we were in control of our destinies.
Persuasive guessing has been at the core of leadership for so long, for all of human experience so far, that it is wholly unsurprising that most of the leaders of this planet, in spite of all the information that is suddenly ours, want the guessing to go on. It is now their turn to guess and guess and be listened to. Some of the loudest, most proudly ignorant guessing in the world is going on in Washington today. Our leaders are sick of all the solid information that has been dumped on humanity by research and scholarship and investigative reporting. They think that the whole country is sick of it, and they could be right. It isn't the gold standard that they want to put us back on. They want something even more basic. They want to put us back on the snake-oil standard.
Loaded pistols are good for everyone except inmates in prison or lunatic asylums.
That's correct.
Millions spent on public health are inflationary.
That's correct.
Billions spent on weapons will bring inflation down.
That's correct.
Dictatorships to the right are much closer to American ideals than dictatorships to the left.
That's correct.
The more hydrogen bomb warheads we have, all set to go off at a moment's notice, the safer humanity is and the better off the world will be that our grandchildren will inherit.
That's correct.
Industrial wastes, and especially those that are radioactive, hardly ever hurt anybody, so everybody should shut up about them.
That's correct.
Industries should be allowed to do whatever they want to do:Bribe, wreck the environment just a little, fix prices, screw dumb customers, put a stop to competition, and raid the Treasury when they go broke.
That’s correct.
That’s free enterprise.
And that’s correct.
The poor have done something very wrong or they wouldn’t be poor, so their children should pay the consequences.
That’s correct.
The United States of America cannot be expected to look after its own people.
That’s correct.
The free market will do that.
That’s correct.
The free market is an automatic system of justice.
That’s correct.
I’m kidding.
And if you actually are an educated, thinking person, you will not be welcome in Washington, D.C. I know a couple of bright seventh graders who would not be welcome in Washington, D.C. Do you remember those doctors a few months back who got together and announced that it was a simple, clear medical fact that we could not survive even a moderate attack by hydrogen bombs? They were not welcome in Washington D.C.
Even if we fired the first salvo of hydrogen weapons and the enemy never fired back, the poisons released would probably kill the whole planet by and by.
What is the response in Washington? They guess otherwise. What good is an education? The boisterous guessers are still in charge – the haters of information. And the guessers are almost all highly educated people. Think of that. They have had to throw away their educations, even Harvard or Yale educations.
If they didn’t do that, there is no way their uninhibited guessing could go on and on and on. Please, don’t you do that. But if you make use of the vast fund of knowledge now available to educated persons, you are going to be lonesome as hell. The guessers outnumber you – and now I have to guess – about ten to one.
Natural Raised Killers
By Tom Harker
A while back some angry kids went on a killing spree at their school, and the nation went on an hysterical binge. How could children - "good," wealthy, white children for-God's-sake - go on a violent rampage? It was un-American, unthinkable!! Everyone wanted an explanation of the inexplicable. About the best they could do was to lean on the “Goths” and other "misfits" who "obviously" suffered prominence-envy in comparison with their social betters. Here and there around the country diligent up-scale school officials imposed “zero tolerance” and took advantage of the immediately available psychological profiling programs so as to identify and label the potential “killers” and, thereby, provide a sense of security, responsibility, and hope.
Well, forget that. Let's face facts. Americans kill because Americans love to kill. "Columbine" was devastating not because it involved killing, but because it broke the rules. In America proper killing, is more than acceptable; it is honorable. Some of our greatest role models are killers, directly or indirectly. They are the ones (cops, vigilantes, CIA agents, the military)who kill people that "need" to be killed and those (prosecutors, judges, legislators, governors, presidents) who put the “hit” out on those among us who “need” to be killed.
We killed the indigenous people of this continent by the rules. We killed immigrant and native-born workers - by the rules - when they tried to unionize. We killed black Americans - by the rules - whenever they "needed" lynching. Around the world we have killed and continue to kill foreigners - by the rules - whenever it is said to advance American "interests" (regardless of the foreigners' interests); and Americans still kill "criminals" - by the rules - whenever we get the chance.
Heroes? Role models? There are plenty of natural-born killers in our Pantheon. Historically, the list of honored killers is lengthy, as is the list of those who "honorably" ordered killings: the "great" explorers, "kindly" Puritans, "valiant" Indian fighters, “sturdy” pioneers, "romantic" plantation owners, Manifest Destiny politicians, Rockefeller, Carnegie, the B&O Railroad, Pinkerton agents, coal companies, and a myriad of officially "honorable" presidents, congressmen, governors, judges, and mayors - just to mention a few.
Ronald Reagan killed a baby with a missile. George Bush the Elder gratuitously annihilated helpless, fleeing Iraqi troops. Ohio's Governor James Rhodes allowed protesting students to be killed. Bill Clinton ordered bombings that killed foreign civilians. Pat Robertson publicly supported assassination of America’s “enemies.” The current president, George Bush the Younger, proudly defends his home state's record use of capital punishment. Long ago, before any talk of attacking Iraq, ABC News big-wig/bad-wig Sam Donaldson demanded on his ABC Sunday-morning “news” program that Saddam Hussein be killed.
None of this even raises a mainstream eyebrow because it is all “by the rules.” We are allowed to kill those who “need” killing. Moreover, it is our duty to kill them, and our stature is increased by doing so. Those few who may argue otherwise are ignored, overwhelmed, or – if necessary – silenced.
At the same time, killing outside the rules is not only illegal but “wrong.” If a foreign head of state killed an American baby (not to mention, a president’s adopted grandchild as was the case in Reagan’s Libyan adventure), it would be unspeakably “evil.” Blowing up American soldiers is called “terrorism.” If some foreign leader advocated the assassination of Pat Robertson or Sam Donaldson, there would be a moral outrage (except, perhaps, on the part of Robertson’s understudy and ABC’s advertising executives ).
One American, the president, can “justifiably” blow up any building in the foreign world, thereby killing the folks who work there and still get his pension. The man who blew up a building in Oklahoma (America), killing numerous people, has been executed.
Clearly, the question of “violence in America” suffers from the old “do as I say, not as I do” syndrome. The obvious reality is that America is not against violence and killing. America sanctions killing, essentially licensing certain people, groups, organizations, and institutions to kill under certain circumstances and in accordance with various rules and procedures.
As a result, the message America sends its children (as well as its adults) is not “violence and killing are wrong,” but “killing without permission is wrong.” The message is not that human life is sacred, but that killing is commendable if the killer is sanctioned, but wrong if he is not. This is a low standard.
As a result, “unsanctioned” killers such as those at Columbine need not wrestle with the question “Is killing wrong?” ; obviously (and officially) it is not. No, the question is, “Am I, somehow, sanctioned to kill?” It seems the latter question is much more subject to rationalization than the former – especially in a nation awash with notions of individuality, self-determination, “intrusive/unresponsive” government, vigilantism, and revenge (as in “I’d pull the switch myself!”).
If America truly valued life, young people and others would have to face a real moral dilemma: breaking a taboo, but as it is, they can emulate presidents, judges, prosecutors, policemen, ministers, and TV “celebrities” by deciding for themselves who should live and die.
In his inaugural speech, George Bush the Younger said, that “no insignificant person was ever born,” but he did not address the relative significance of the 135 people he executed as governor of Texas, nor the significance of those innocent persons who most certainly have died over the years at the hands of sanctioned state executions. Talk is cheap, and cheap talk combined with “zero tolerance,” “outrage,” and “psychological profiling” will not end or even seriously reduce killing in schools, federal buildings, or anywhere else. Only a true respect for life can do that. As long as America has rules that sanction killing, many Americans, when faced with difficulties – real or imagined - will follow their own rules and kill. It’s the American way.
Noam Chomsky and the Struggle Against Neoliberalism
By Robert W McChesney
Monthly Review April 1, 1999
Neoliberalism is the defining political economic paradigm of our time - it refers to the policies and processes whereby a relative handful of private interests are permitted to control as much as possible of social life in order to maximize their personal profit. Associated initially with Reagan and Thatcher, neoliberalism has for the past two decades been the dominant global political economic trend adopted by political parties of the center, much of the traditional left, and the right. These parties and the policies they enact represent the immediate interests of extremely wealthy investors and less than one thousand large corporations.
Aside from some academics and members of the business community, the term neoliberalism is largely unknown and unused by the public at large, especially in the United States. There, to the contrary, neoliberal initiatives are characterized as free market policies that encourage private enterprise and consumer choice, reward personal responsibility and entrepreneurial initiative, and undermine the dead hand of the incompetent, bureaucratic, and parasitic government, which can never do good (even when well intentioned, which it rarely is). A generation of corporate-financed public relations efforts has given these terms and ideas a near-sacred aura. As a result, these phrases and the claims they imply rarely require empirical defense, and are invoked to rationalize anything from lowering taxes on the wealthy and scrapping environmental regulations to dismantling public education and social welfare programs. Indeed, any activity that might interfere with corporate domination of society is automatically suspect because it would impede the workings of the free market, which is advanced as the only rational, fair, and democratic allocator of goods and services. At their most eloquent, proponents of neoliberalism sound as if they are doing poor people, the environment, and everybody else a tremendous service as they enact policies on behalf of the wealthy few.
The economic consequences of these policies have been the same just about everywhere, and exactly what one would expect: a massive increase in social and economic inequality, a marked increase in severe deprivation for the poorest nations and peoples of the world, a disastrous global environment, an unstable global economy, and an unprecedented bonanza for the wealthy. Confronted with these facts, defenders of the neoliberal order claim that the spoils of the good life will invariably spread to the broad mass of the population - as long as the neoliberal policies that exacerbated these problems are not interfered with by anyone!
In the end, proponents of neoliberalism cannot and do not offer an empirical defense for the world they are making. To the contrary, they offer - no, demand - a religious faith in the infallibility of the unregulated market, drawing upon nineteenth century theories that have little connection to the actual world. The ultimate trump card for the defenders of neoliberalism, however, is that there is no alternative. Communist societies, social democracies, and even modest social welfare states like the United States have all failed, the neoliberals proclaim, and their citizens have accepted neoliberalism as the only feasible course. It may well be imperfect, but it is the only economic system possible.
Earlier in the twentieth century some critics called fascism "capitalism with the gloves off," meaning that fascism was pure capitalism without democratic rights and organizations. In fact, we know that fascism is vastly more complex than that. Neoliberalism, on the other hand, is indeed "capitalism with the gloves off." It represents an era in which business forces are stronger and more aggressive, and face less organized opposition than ever before. In this political climate they attempt to codify their political power and enact their vision on every possible front. As a result, business is increasingly difficult to challenge, and civil society (nonmarket, noncommercial, and democratic forces) barely exists at all.
It is precisely in its oppression of nonmarket forces that we see how neoliberalism operates - not only as an economic system, but as a political and cultural system as well. Here the differences with fascism, with its contempt for formal democracy and highly mobilized social movements based upon racism and nationalism, are striking. Neoliberalism works best when there is formal electoral democracy, but when the population is diverted from the information, access, and public forums necessary for meaningful participation in decision-making. As neoliberal guru Milton Friedman put it in Capitalism and Freedom, because profitmaking is the essence of democracy, any government that pursues antimarket policies is being antidemocratic, no matter how much informed popular support they might enjoy. Therefore it is best to restrict governments to the job of protecting private property and enforcing contracts, and to limit political debate to minor issues. (The real matters of resource production and distribution and social organization should be determined by market forces.)
Equipped with this perverse understanding of democracy, neoliberals like Friedman had no qualms over the military overthrow of Chile's democratically elected Allende government in 1973, because Allende was interfering with business control of Chilean society. After fifteen years of often brutal and savage dictatorship - all in the name of the democratic free market - formal democracy was restored in 1989 with a constitution that made it vastly more difficult (if not impossible) for the citizenry to challenge the business-military domination of Chilean society. That is neoliberal democracy in a nutshell: trivial debate over minor issues by parties that basically pursue the same pro-business policies regardless of formal differences and campaign debate. Democracy is permissible as long as the control of business is off-limits to popular deliberation or change; i.e., so long as it isn't democracy.
Neoliberal democracy therefore has an important and necessary byproduct - a depoliticized citizenry marked by apathy and cynicism. If electoral democracy affects little of social life, it is irrational to devote much attention to it; in the United States, the spawning ground of neoliberal democracy, voter turnout in the 1998 congressional elections was a record low, with just one-third of eligible voters going to the polls. Although occasionally generating concern from those established parties like the U.S. Democratic Party that tend to attract the votes of the dispossessed, low voter turnout tends to be accepted and encouraged by the powers that be as a very good thing since nonvoters are, not surprisingly, disproportionately found among the poor and working class. Policies that quickly could increase voter interest and participation rates are stymied before ever getting into the public arena. In the United States, for example, the two main business-dominated parties, with the support of the corporate community, have refused to reform laws - some of which they put on the boos - making it virtually impossible to create new political parties (that might appeal to non-business interests) and let them be effective. Although there is marked and frequently observed dissatisfaction with the Republicans and Democrats, electoral politics is one area where notions of competition and free choice have little meaning. In some respects, the caliber of debate and choice in neoliberal elections tends to be closer to that of the one-party communist state than that of a genuine democracy.
But this barely indicates neoliberalism's pernicious implications for a civic-centered political culture. On one hand, the social inequality generated by neoliberal policies undermines any effort to realize the legal equality necessary to make democracy credible. Large corporations have resources to influence media and overwhelm the political process, and do so accordingly. In U.S. electoral politics, for just one example, the richest one-quarter of one percent of Americans make 80 percent of all individual political contributions and corporations outspend labor by a margin of ten to one. Under neoliberalism this all makes sense; elections then reflect market principles, with contributions being equated with investments. As a result, it reinforces the irrelevance of electoral politics to most people and assures the maintenance of unquestioned corporate rule.
On the other hand, to be effective, democracy requires that people feel a connection to their fellow citizens, and that this connection manifests itself though a variety of nonmarket organizations and institutions. A vibrant political culture needs community groups, libraries, public schools, neighborhood organizations, cooperatives, public meeting places, voluntary associations, and trade unions to provide ways for citizens to meet, communicate, and interact with their fellow citizens. Neoliberal democracy, with its notion of the market uber alles, takes dead aim at this sector. Instead of citizens, it produces consumers. Instead of communities, it produces shopping malls. The net result is an atomized society of disengaged individuals who feel demoralized and socially powerless.
In sum, neoliberalism is the immediate and foremost enemy of genuine participatory democracy, not just in the United States but across the planet, and will be for the foreseeable future. It is fitting that Noam Chomsky is the leading intellectual figure in the world today in the battle for democracy and against neoliberalism. In the 1960s, Chomsky was a prominent U.S. critic of the Vietnam war and, more broadly, became perhaps the most trenchant analyst of the ways U.S. foreign policy undermines democracy, quashes human rights, and promotes the interests of the wealthy few. In the 1970s, Chomsky (along with his co-author Edward S. Herman) began researching the ways the U.S. news media serve elite interests and undermine the capacity of the citizenry to actually rule their lives in a democratic fashion. Their 1988 book, Manufacturing Consent, remains the starting point for any serious inquiry into news media performance.
Throughout these years Chomsky, who could be characterized as an anarchist or, perhaps more accurately, a libertarian socialist, was a vocal, principled, and consistent democratic opponent and critic of Communist and Leninist political states and parties. He educated countless people, including myself, that democracy was a non-negotiable cornerstone of any postcapitalist society worth living in or fighting for. At the same time, he has demonstrated the absurdity of equating capitalism with democracy, or thinking that capitalist societies, even under the best of circumstances, will ever open access to information or decision-making beyond the most narrow and controlled possibilities. I doubt any author, aside from perhaps George Orwell, has approached Chomsky in systematically skewering the hypocrisy of rulers and ideologues in both Communist and capitalist societies as they claim that theirs is the only form of true democracy available to humanity.
In the 1990s, all these strands of Chomsky's political work - from anti-imperialism and critical media analysis to writings on democracy and the labor movement - have come together, culminating in work like Profit Over People, about democracy and the neoliberal threat. Chomsky has done much to reinvigorate an understanding of the social requirements for democracy, drawing upon the ancient Greeks as well as the leading thinkers of democratic revolutions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As he makes clear, it is impossible to be a proponent of participatory democracy and at the same time a champion of capitalism or any other class-divided society. In assessing the real historical struggles for democracy, Chomsky also reveals that neoliberalism is hardly a new thing; it is merely the current version of the battle for the wealthy few to circumscribe the political rights and civic powers of the many.
Chomsky may also be the leading critic of the mythology of the natural "free" market, that cheery hymn that is pounded into our heads about how the economy is competitive, rational, efficient, and fair. As Chomsky points out, markets are almost never competitive. Most of the economy is dominated by massive corporations with tremendous control over their markets and which therefore face precious little competition of the sort described in economics textbooks and politicians' speeches. Moreover, corporations themselves are effectively totalitarian organizations, operating along nondemocratic lines. That our economy is centered around such institutions severely compromises our ability to have a democratic society.
The mythology of the free market also submits that governments are inefficient institutions that should be limited, so as not to hurt the magic of the natural laissez faire market. In fact, as Chomsky emphasizes, governments are central to the modern capitalist system. They lavishly subsidize corporations and work to advance corporate interests on numerous fronts. The same corporations that exult in neoliberal ideology are in fact often hypocritical: they want and expect governments to funnel tax dollars to them, and to protect their markets from competition for them, but they want to be assured that governments will not tax them or work supportively on behalf of non-business interests, especially the poor and working class. Governments are bigger than ever, but under neoliberalism they have far less pretense to addressing non-corporate interests.
Nowhere is the centrality of governments and policymaking more apparent than in the emergence of the global market economy. What is presented by pro-business ideologues as the natural expansion of free markets across borders is, in fact, quite the opposite. Globalization is the result of powerful governments, especially that of the United States, pushing trade deals and other accords down the throats of the world's people to make it easier for corporations and the wealthy to dominate the economies of nations around the world without having obligations to the peoples of those nations. Nowhere is the process more apparent than in the creation of the World Trade Organization in the early 1990s and, now, in the secret deliberations on behalf of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI).
Indeed, it is the inability to have honest and candid discussions and debates about neoliberalism in the United States and elsewhere that is one of its most striking features. Chomsky's critique of the neoliberal order is effectively off-limits to mainstream analysis despite its empirical strength and because of its commitment to democratic values. Here, Chomsky's analysis of the doctrinal system in capitalist democracies is useful. The corporate news media, the PR industry, the academic ideologues, and the intellectual culture writ large play the central role of providing the "necessary illusions" to make this unpalatable situation appear rational, benevolent, and necessary (if not necessarily desirable). As Chomsky hastens to point out, this is no formal conspiracy by powerful interests; it doesn't have to be. Through a variety of institutional mechanisms, signals are sent to intellectuals, pundits, and journalists, pushing toward seeing the status quo as the best of all possible worlds, and away from challenging those who benefit from that status quo. Chomsky's work is a direct call for democratic activists to remake our media system so it can be opened up to anticorporate, antineoliberal perspectives and inquiry. It is also a challenge to all intellectuals, or at least those who express a commitment to democracy, to take a long, hard look in the mirror and to ask themselves in whose interests, and for what values, do they do their work.
Chomsky's description of the neoliberal/corporate hold over our economy, polity, journalism, and culture is so powerful and overwhelming that for some readers it can produce a sense of resignation. In our demoralized political times, a few may go a step further and conclude that we are enmeshed in this regressive system because, alas, humanity is simply incapable of creating a more humane, egalitarian, and democratic social order.
In fact, Chomsky's greatest contribution may well be his insistence upon the fundamental democratic inclinations of the world's peoples, and the revolutionary potential implicit in those impulses. The best evidence of this possibility is the extent to which corporate forces go to prevent genuine political democracy from being established. The world's rulers understand implicitly that theirs is a system established to suit the needs of the few, not the many, and that the many therefore cannot ever be permitted to question and alter corporate rule. Even in the hobbled democracies that do exist, the corporate community works incessantly to see that important issues like the MAI are never publicly debated. And the business community spends a fortune bankrolling a PR apparatus to convince Americans that this is the best of all possible worlds. The time to worry about the possibility of social change for the better, by this logic, will be when the corporate community abandons PR and buying elections, permits a representative media, and is comfortable establishing a genuinely egalitarian participatory democracy because it no longer fears the power of the many. But there is no reason to think that day will ever come.
Neoliberalism's loudest message is that there is no alternative to the status quo, and that humanity has reached its highest level. Chomsky points out that there have been several other periods designated as the "end of history" in the past. In the 1920s and 1950s, for example, U.S. elites claimed that the system was working and that mass quiescence reflected widespread satisfaction with the status quo. Events shortly thereafter highlighted the silliness of those beliefs. I suspect that as soon as democratic forces record a few tangible victories the blood will return to their veins, and talk of no possible hope for change will go the same route as all previous elite fantasies about their glorious rule being enshrined for a millennium.
The notion that no superior alternative to the status quo exists is more farfetched today than ever, in this era when there are mind-boggling technologies for bettering the human condition. It is true that it remains unclear how we might establish a viable, free, and humane post-capitalist order; the very notion has a utopian air about it. But every advance in history, from ending slavery and establishing democracy to ending formal colonialism, has at some point had to conquer the notion that it was impossible to do because it had never been done before. As Chomsky points out, organized political activism is responsible for the degree of democracy we have today, for universal adult suffrage, for women's rights, for trade unions, for civil rights, for the freedoms we do enjoy. Even if the notion of a post-capitalist society seems unattainable, we know that human political activity can make the world we live in vastly more humane. As we get to that point, perhaps we will again be able to think in terms of building a political economy based on principles of cooperation, equality, self-government, and individual freedom.
Until then, the struggle for social change is not a hypothetical issue. The current neoliberal order has generated massive political and economic crises from east Asia to eastern Europe and Latin America. The quality of life in the developed nations of Europe, Japan, and North America is fragile and the societies are in considerable turmoil. Tremendous upheaval is in the cards for the coming years and decades. There is considerable doubt about the outcome of that upheaval, however, and little reason to think it will lead automatically to a democratic and humane resolution. That will be determined by how we, the people, organize, respond, and act. As Chomsky says, if you act like there is no possibility of change for the better, you guarantee that there will be no change for the better. The choice is ours, the choice is yours.
Robert W. McChesney teaches communication at the University of Illinois. His newest book is Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999). This article first appeared as the introduction to Noam Chomsky's Profit Over People (New York: Seven Stories Press, 1999).
posted by Ukulele Man at 1:00 PM
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