Friday, May 27, 2016
1960s Redux?
The current movements on college campuses that focus on racism, sexism, and the lack of diversity in faculty and in programs is somewhat reminiscent of the early 1960s when students who were opposed to the U.S. war in Vietnam started to ask questions about their education and about the operation and control of colleges and universities. The response of college administrators at the time was to try to bring students into the conversation and to get them involved in solving the many problems that they were protesting. At the time, these actions by college administrators would be described as a form of "repressive tolerance" by Herbert Marcuse, a political philosopher. The idea was troubling, because it required thinking about something that was positive--"tolerance"--as a new form of control. Current student activism is limited because it lacks the strong national support of an anti-war movement or a civil rights movement, and it is unclear as to whether the current movement has any 'legs." We do not see any continuation of the current social movement until there appears on the scene a modern-day Mario Savio who will call upon students "to put their bodies on the gears of the machine."
Tuesday, May 10, 2016
Democracy for Dummies: America's Secret Plan for World Domination
This is a proposal that was written in the year 2000 for a book about American society. Three chapters were written at the time: Chapter One, "Epiphany in the Oval Office"; Chapter Two, "Perpetual Elections"; and Chapter Five, "Location, Location, Location: The Case for Globalization." The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001 was the reason that the book project ended. I felt that world events had overtaken the plan to combine political satire with a critical analysis of American Society. I believe that it is now time to present the plan for the book as written in the year 2000. Additional blogs will be added for the three chapters that I wrote in the year 2000.
Our Plan: Imagine some sort of tip-off to reporters about a secret plan, a conspiracy (if you will) that is the brainchild of the president, but mostly orchestrated by the National Security Agency and the CIA. A break-in possibly, or merely loose lips at a bar on the Hill. Tapes may be found. Or memos and fax transmissions with names disguised, code words used instead. Pictures of memoranda--real names blacked out. Photos of world leaders, handshakes, corporate CEOs with eyes covered so as to hide their identities.
We propose to write the book Democracy for Dummies-- the expose of the secret plan. Part transcript, part visual elements, mostly narrative: the overall conspiracy and the country-by-country plan for the U-S-ification and domination of the entire globe. G-L-O-B-E! God Love Our Big Empire!!! Is it fiction? Is it non-fiction? This would be up to the readers to decide. Perhaps it would be stocked in both sections. Confusing? Maybe. Controversial? Yes! Noteworthy? Definitely!
This book combines political satire with critical analysis of American society. It is a blend of fact and fiction and we expect it to be read on two levels. First, as satire, when a team of left-over Cold Warriors, policy wonks, and national security state commandos, take a harmless speech by the President and turn it into a plan for reestablishing order in the global system. On a second level, it can be read as critical analysis because the key elements of the "secret plan" are exaggerations of the "normal" aspects of the U.S. political, economic, and social systems.
Chapter One: Epiphany in the Oval Office
The PLAN appears as Revelation in the form of American Eagles, the globe, and breaking CNN news. The President and one of his top aides, meeting to prepare a routine speech to the United Nations, stumble upon a plan to reestablish world order.
Chapter Two: Perpetual Elections
A team of NSA-CIA operatives is assigned to develop strategies to implement the PLAN. They are central characters in the book, and their work is a combination of Keystone Kops and serious intelligence activities. The first step in the plan is to extend democracy around the world in the form of mind-numbing elections that give the illusion of democracy, while raising the level of boredom such that civic participation is low.
Chapter Three: The Truth is Out There
When a group of pseudo-scientists threaten to blow the whistle on an Air Force cover-up of a possible alien abduction, CNN was there. Learn how the Assistant Press Secretary spins the bogus story of "the threat from above" to invoke unifying fear (a la the Green Menace) and disband the international threat from below.
Our Plan: Imagine some sort of tip-off to reporters about a secret plan, a conspiracy (if you will) that is the brainchild of the president, but mostly orchestrated by the National Security Agency and the CIA. A break-in possibly, or merely loose lips at a bar on the Hill. Tapes may be found. Or memos and fax transmissions with names disguised, code words used instead. Pictures of memoranda--real names blacked out. Photos of world leaders, handshakes, corporate CEOs with eyes covered so as to hide their identities.
We propose to write the book Democracy for Dummies-- the expose of the secret plan. Part transcript, part visual elements, mostly narrative: the overall conspiracy and the country-by-country plan for the U-S-ification and domination of the entire globe. G-L-O-B-E! God Love Our Big Empire!!! Is it fiction? Is it non-fiction? This would be up to the readers to decide. Perhaps it would be stocked in both sections. Confusing? Maybe. Controversial? Yes! Noteworthy? Definitely!
This book combines political satire with critical analysis of American society. It is a blend of fact and fiction and we expect it to be read on two levels. First, as satire, when a team of left-over Cold Warriors, policy wonks, and national security state commandos, take a harmless speech by the President and turn it into a plan for reestablishing order in the global system. On a second level, it can be read as critical analysis because the key elements of the "secret plan" are exaggerations of the "normal" aspects of the U.S. political, economic, and social systems.
Chapter One: Epiphany in the Oval Office
The PLAN appears as Revelation in the form of American Eagles, the globe, and breaking CNN news. The President and one of his top aides, meeting to prepare a routine speech to the United Nations, stumble upon a plan to reestablish world order.
Chapter Two: Perpetual Elections
A team of NSA-CIA operatives is assigned to develop strategies to implement the PLAN. They are central characters in the book, and their work is a combination of Keystone Kops and serious intelligence activities. The first step in the plan is to extend democracy around the world in the form of mind-numbing elections that give the illusion of democracy, while raising the level of boredom such that civic participation is low.
Chapter Three: The Truth is Out There
When a group of pseudo-scientists threaten to blow the whistle on an Air Force cover-up of a possible alien abduction, CNN was there. Learn how the Assistant Press Secretary spins the bogus story of "the threat from above" to invoke unifying fear (a la the Green Menace) and disband the international threat from below.
Chapter Four: Bridging the Digital Divide Worldwide
Silicon swindlers cast their nets to the Third World to increase their share of the global pie. Half-baked partnerships between industry and indigenous peoples result.
Chapter Five: Location, Location. Location: The Case for Globalization
Who needs borders, or even citizens, when you have the not-so-hidden-hand of the market, multinational corporations, and the WTO. This chapter features the worlds most watched TV show "Who Wants to Have a Job?" This show brings workers and community leaders from around the world to compete in a game-show format to get a new multinational sweatshop in their town. A second feature is the "privatization workshop" run by Harvard economists and aimed at Third World political and economic leaders. The goal is to bring everyone into the neoliberal global economy.
Chapter Six: Cultural Development: Modernization theory in Living Color
The CIA-supported Congress for Cultural Freedom is resurrected from the 1950s to produce state-ordered reports on how television tastes correspond with stages of cultural development in "Maslow Meets the Boob-Tube." The relationship between media and social control are exploited to produce mono-cultural mayhem, and a distinctively American world order.
Chapter Seven: Spiritual Technology: A Digitally Enhanced, Kinder, Gentler God
Religious difference is minimized, if not entirely ignored, in modern day Western democracy. An outrageous plan to export political correctness and tolerance along with New Age truths is revealed to the President and a team of spiritual advisers at a Camp David weekend retreat, The resulting Chicken Soup for the Global Soul becomes a best seller on Oprah Winfrey's Book of the Month club.
Chapter Eight: Counter Hegemony or Hegemony Counter
Three characters introduced earlier in the book--Charlie W. Trash, Emma Golden, and Ibafemi Offolawa--return to center stage in a comic effort to subvert The Plan. Readers are left to ponder the question of who has been marginalized and who has been absorbed into the emerging social order.
Sunday, May 1, 2016
Populism?
The campaigns of Sanders and Trump has led the mainstream media (msm) to a frequent use of the term "populism" to describe them--they are the "populist" candidates. But true to form, the msm are good at injecting a new idea into the media mix, but they do little to inform the audience as to the meaning of "populism." So we will give it a try.
The early moments of populism was experienced through the People's Party at the end of the nineteenth century and found expression in the twentieth century in different bases of discontent shared by different groups. Throughout the twentieth century, populist rhetoric and movements have embraced an array of moral and political crusades, beginning early in the century with the prohibitionists' war against alcohol and closed out the century with the religious Right's attacks on the amoral elites, who, it was claimed, were undermining the core values of the majority. The targets of populist attacks are superficially the same: entrenched irresponsible elites. But for the early leftist populists, elite targets were symbolized by "fat cat" and "plutocrat" labels, whereas for contemporary rightist populists, evil is represented by "cultural elites," as represented in Hollywood, the media, and governmental elites who administer the growing bureaucratic state.
The most recent examples of populism in presidential campaigns may be found in the efforts by Ralph Nader, Ross Perot, and Pat Buchanan who managed to attack immigration, trade agreements like NAFTA, and groups like the national Association of Manufacturers and the U. S. Chamber of Commerce. They were not treated kindly by the corporate media. Ralph Nader was dismissed as unrealistic, and Perot and Buchanan were presented as "traitors" to the interests of the privileged class that was embedded in the corporate and political worlds. Perot was given the persona of a quirky, eccentric millionaire who had nothing better to do with his time and money, while Buchanan was vilified as a crypto-racist, anti-Semite, and general all-around loose cannon. The media did little to recognize the role of economic change in these populist moments.
Populist rhetoric has been used by labor organizations, social movement leaders, and mainstream politicians to shape and mobilize public discontent. In its classic form, populist messages seek to simultaneously elevate the masses and attack the privileged for their undeserved rewards. But the rhetoric of economic grievances and the defense of small farmers, wage earners, and small business owners were usually not aimed at the overthrow of capitalism, but called for a fair share of the fruits of workers' productive labor. As a noted historian of populist movements Michael Kazin has stated: "Early populist critiques of American society attempted to build new bonds among people by returning to the core beliefs of the new American nation--rule by the people, reward for hard work and diligence, and faith in God."
As history illustrates, the American populist tradition has been both a powerful and ambivalent instrument for reform. Many real or aspiring leaders have picked up the populist instrument hoping to play a tune powerful enough to stir the sleeping masses into sweeping away corrupt elites. The power of that tradition rests in its roots in the early American experience, stressing the dignity of the common man and a rejection of the "foreign" influences of aristocracy and elitism. The ambivalence associated with the populist tradition stems from its majoritarian beliefs, reflected in its support for direct participatory democracy. The majoritarian emphasis does not sit well with members of religious or ethnic groups that are numerically small and therefore feel that their interests will be ignored by the usually white and Christian majority. The majoritarian emphasis also does not sit well with "privileged leftists" who support populist ideology but whose education and credentialed-class privileges make them wary of "marching with the people."
The early moments of populism was experienced through the People's Party at the end of the nineteenth century and found expression in the twentieth century in different bases of discontent shared by different groups. Throughout the twentieth century, populist rhetoric and movements have embraced an array of moral and political crusades, beginning early in the century with the prohibitionists' war against alcohol and closed out the century with the religious Right's attacks on the amoral elites, who, it was claimed, were undermining the core values of the majority. The targets of populist attacks are superficially the same: entrenched irresponsible elites. But for the early leftist populists, elite targets were symbolized by "fat cat" and "plutocrat" labels, whereas for contemporary rightist populists, evil is represented by "cultural elites," as represented in Hollywood, the media, and governmental elites who administer the growing bureaucratic state.
The most recent examples of populism in presidential campaigns may be found in the efforts by Ralph Nader, Ross Perot, and Pat Buchanan who managed to attack immigration, trade agreements like NAFTA, and groups like the national Association of Manufacturers and the U. S. Chamber of Commerce. They were not treated kindly by the corporate media. Ralph Nader was dismissed as unrealistic, and Perot and Buchanan were presented as "traitors" to the interests of the privileged class that was embedded in the corporate and political worlds. Perot was given the persona of a quirky, eccentric millionaire who had nothing better to do with his time and money, while Buchanan was vilified as a crypto-racist, anti-Semite, and general all-around loose cannon. The media did little to recognize the role of economic change in these populist moments.
Populist rhetoric has been used by labor organizations, social movement leaders, and mainstream politicians to shape and mobilize public discontent. In its classic form, populist messages seek to simultaneously elevate the masses and attack the privileged for their undeserved rewards. But the rhetoric of economic grievances and the defense of small farmers, wage earners, and small business owners were usually not aimed at the overthrow of capitalism, but called for a fair share of the fruits of workers' productive labor. As a noted historian of populist movements Michael Kazin has stated: "Early populist critiques of American society attempted to build new bonds among people by returning to the core beliefs of the new American nation--rule by the people, reward for hard work and diligence, and faith in God."
As history illustrates, the American populist tradition has been both a powerful and ambivalent instrument for reform. Many real or aspiring leaders have picked up the populist instrument hoping to play a tune powerful enough to stir the sleeping masses into sweeping away corrupt elites. The power of that tradition rests in its roots in the early American experience, stressing the dignity of the common man and a rejection of the "foreign" influences of aristocracy and elitism. The ambivalence associated with the populist tradition stems from its majoritarian beliefs, reflected in its support for direct participatory democracy. The majoritarian emphasis does not sit well with members of religious or ethnic groups that are numerically small and therefore feel that their interests will be ignored by the usually white and Christian majority. The majoritarian emphasis also does not sit well with "privileged leftists" who support populist ideology but whose education and credentialed-class privileges make them wary of "marching with the people."
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