Through the Looking Glass,
Stealing Our Birthright,
A Guide to Concepts and Isms
excerpted from the book
Contrary Notions
The Michael Parenti Reader
by Michael Parenti
City Lights Books, 2007, paperback
pix
Our opinions shelter and support us; it is an excruciating effort
to submit them to reappraisal. Yet if we are to maintain some
pretense at being rational creatures we must risk the discomfiture
( that comes with questioning the unquestionable, and try to transcend
our tendencies toward mental confinement.
px
One can write in an accessible and pleasant style while dealing
with complex concepts and constructs. To write clearly and understandably
does not mean one is being simple or superficial. The converse
is also true: to write in a dense, dull, or convoluted manner
(as one is trained to do in academia) does not mean that one is
being profound and insightful.
Through the Looking Glass
p7
Newscasters who want to keep their careers afloat learn the fine
art of evasion. We should not accuse them of doing a poor or sloppy
job of reporting. If anything, with great skill they skirt around
the most important points of a story. With much finesse they say
a lot about very little, serving up heaps of junk news filled
with so many empty calories and so few nutrients. Thus do they
avoid offending those who wield politico-economic power while
giving every appearance of judicious moderation and balance.
p9
Fox News supports U.S. military interventions around the globe,
the untrammeled glories of the "free market," and just
about every other reactionary cause, with a lockstep precision
and persistence that is unmatched by the rest of the political
spectrum.
p9
Rightist Christian media comprise a multi-billion-dollar industry,
controlling about 11 percent of all radio outlets and 14 percent
of the nation's television stations.
p10
As of 2007, only six giant conglomerates-Time Warner, General
Electric, Viacom, Bertelsmann, Walt Disney, and News Corporation
(down from twenty-three in 1989)-owned most of the newspapers,
magazines, book publishing houses, movie studios, cable channels,
record labels, broadcast networks and channels, and radio and
television programming in the United States, with additional holdings
abroad. About 85 percent of the daily newspaper circulation in
this country belongs to a few giant chains, and the trend in owner
concentration continues unabated. All but a handful of the is
o movies produced each year are from six major studios. Big banks
and corporations are among the top stockholders of mainstream
media. Their representatives sit on the boards of all major publications
and broadcast networks.
Corporate advertisers exercise an additional
conservative influence. They cancel accounts not only when stories
reflect poorly on their product but, as is more often the case,
when they perceive liberal tendencies creeping into news reports
and commentary.
Not surprisingly, this pattern of ownership
affects how news and commentary are produced. Media owners do
not hesitate to kill stories they dislike and in other ways inject
their own preferences into the news. As one group of investigators
concluded years ago: "The owners and managers of the press
determine which person, which facts, which version of the facts,
and which ideas shall reach the public."
p12
... more than 70 percent of PBS's prime-time shows are funded
wholly or in major part by four giant oil companies, earning it
the sobriquet of "Petroleum Broadcasting System." PBS's
public affairs programs are underwritten by General Electric,
General Motors, Metropolitan Life, Pepsico, Mobil, Paine Webber,
and the like. A study of these shows by one media-watchdog group
found that corporate representatives constitute 44 percent of
the sources about the economy; liberal activists account for only
percent, while labor representatives are virtually shut out. Guests
on NPR and PBS generally are as ideologically conservative or
mainstream as any found on commercial networks.
Politically progressive documentaries
rarely see the light of day on PBS. In recent years, "Faces
of War" (revealing the brutality of the U.S.-backed counterinsurgency
in El Salvador), "Deadly Deception" (an Academy-Award-winning
critique of General Electric and the nuclear arms industry), "Panama
Deception" (an Academy-Award-winning exposé of the
U.S. invasion of Panama) and numerous other revealing documentaries
were, with a few local exceptions, denied broadcast rights on
both commercial and public television.
The spectrum of opinion on political talk
shows and on the pages of most newspapers ranges from far right
to moderate center. In a display of false balancing, right-wing
ideologues are pitted against moderate centrists. On foreign affairs
the press's role as a cheerleader of the national security state
and free-market capitalism is almost without restraint. Virtually
no positive exposure has been given to Third World revolutionary
or reformist struggles or to protests at home and abroad against
U.S. overseas interventions.
Be it the Vietnam War, the invasions of
Grenada and Panama, the intervention against Nicaragua, the Gulf
War massacre, and the subsequent invasions of Afghanistan and
Iraq, U.S. military undertakings are portrayed as arising from
noble if sometimes misplaced intentions. The media's view of the
world is much the same as the view from the State Department and
the Pentagon. The horrendous devastation wreaked upon the presumed
beneficiaries of U.S. power generally is downplayed-as are the
massive human rights violations perpetrated by U.S.-supported
forces in scores of free-market client states.
p14
In order to perform their class-control function, the media must
maintain some degree of credibility. To do that, they must give
some attention to the realities people experience. They must deal
with questions like: Why are my taxes so high? Why are people
losing their jobs? Why is the river so polluted? Why is there
so much corruption in business and government? Why are we spending
so much on the military? Why are we always at war? The media's
need to deal with such things-however haphazardly and insufficiently-is
what leads conservatives to the conclusion that the media are
infected with "liberal" biases.
This is the conservative problem: reality
itself is radical, so we must not get too close to it. The Third
World really is poor and oppressed; the U.S. often does side with
Third-World plutocrats; our tax system really is regressive and
favors the very richest; million of Americans do live in poverty;
the corporations do plunder and pollute the environment; real
wages for blue-collar workers definitely have flattened and even
declined; the superrich really are increasing their share of the
pie; and global warming really is happening.
Despite its best efforts, there are limits
to how much the press can finesse these kinds of realities. Although
it sees the world through much the same ideological lens as do
corporate and government elites, the press must occasionally report
some of the unpleasantness of life, if only to maintain its credibility
with a public that is not always willing to buy the far-right
line.
p15
Conservatives who rail against the liberal media" have not
a word to say about the rightist and ultra-rightist proclivities
of media owners, publishers, corporate \ advertisers, network
bosses, senior editors, syndicated columnists, ( commentators,
and shock-jock talk-show hosts-those who really determine what
comes across as news and opinion.
p16
Reporters often operate in a state of self-censorship and anticipatory
response. They frequently wonder aloud how their boss is taking
things. They recall how superiors have warned them not to antagonize
big advertisers and other powerful interests. They can name journalists
who were banished for turning in the wrong kind of copy too often.
Still, most newspeople treat these incidents as aberrant departures
from a basically professional news system, and insist they owe
their souls to no one. They claim they are free to say what they
like, not realizing it is because their superiors like what they
say. Since they seldom cross any forbidden lines, they are not
reined in and they remain unaware that they are on an ideological
leash.
p16
The fascists well understood their job was to suppress class consciousness
wherever it might appear. Today most of our journalists and social
commentators exercise a similar caution. However ... they don't
need a fascist censor breathing down their necks because they
have a mainstream one implanted in their heads.
p17
Many of our newspeople and pundits think they are free as birds-and
they are, as long as they fly around in the right circles.
p17
Giving generous exposure to conservative and far-right preachments,
the press limits public debate to a contest between right and
center, while everything substantially left of center is shut
out.
p21
A favorite label used regularly by policymakers and faithfully
repeated by media journalists and commentators is "reforms,"
whose meaning is inverted, being applied to any policy dedicated
to undoing popular reforms that have been achieved after decades
of struggle. So the elimination of family assistance programs
is labeled "welfare reform." "Reforms" in
Eastern Europe-in Yugoslavia, for example-have meant the dismantling
of the public economy, its privatization at bargain prices, with
a dramatic increase in unemployment and human suffering. "IMF
reforms" is a euphemism for the same kind of bruising cutbacks
throughout the Third World...
"Free market" and "free
trade" are other pet labels left largely unexamined by those
who promote them. Critics argue that freemarket and free-trade
policies undermine local producers, rely heavily on state subsidies
to multinational corporations, destroy public sector services,
and create greater gaps between rich and poor nations and between
the wealthy few and the underprivileged many in every nation.
Such arguments are seldom if ever considered by the major media.
p22
Whenever the White House proposes an increase in military spending,
press treatment is limited j to discussing whether we are doing
enough to maintain U.S. global military superiority. Little if
any attention is given to those who hotly contest the gargantuan
arms budget. Most pundits and journalists take it as a given that
U.S. forces must be deployed around the world, must maintain military
supremacy at all costs, and must expend hundreds of billions of
dollars each year in the doing.
p24
Uniformity of bias [in the mainstream media] is perceived as "objectivity."
p24
President Bush jr. 2005
You see, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over
and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult
the propaganda."
p28
Television commentators and newspaper editorialists and columnists
affect a knowing tone designed to foster credibility and an aura
of certitude, or what might be called "authoritative ignorance"
...
p29
If we are to believe the media, stuff just happens. Many things
are reported but few are explained. Little is said about how the
social order is organized and for what purposes. Instead we are
left to see the world as do mainstream pundits, as a scatter of
events and personalities propelled by happenstance, circumstance,
passing expediencies, confused intentions, bungled operations,
and individual ambition - rarely a world influenced by powerful
class interest.
p31
Upton Sinclair
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his
salary depends upon his not understanding it.
p32
Most of our seemingly personal perceptions are shaped by a variety
of things outside ourselves, such as the prevailing culture, the
dominant ideology, ethical beliefs, social values and biases,
available information, one's position in the social structure,
and one's material interests.
Back in 1921 Walter Lippmann pointed out
that much of human perception is culturally prefigured: "For
the most part we do not first see and then define, we define first
and then see. In the great blooming, buzzing confusion of the
outer world we pick out what our culture has already defined for
us and we tend to perceive that which we have picked out in the
form stereotyped for us by our culture." The notions that
fit the prevailing climate of opinion are more likely to be accepted
as objective, while those f that clash with it are usually seen
as lacking in credibility. More often than we realize, we accept
or decline an idea, depending on its acceptability within the
dominant culture.
p33
In popular parlance, the dominant paradigm refers to the ongoing
ideological orthodoxy that predetermines which concepts and labels
have credibility and which do not. It is the educated person's
orthodoxy.
p34
People generally are receptive to a standard and familiar view,
made all the more familiar through a process of repetition. They
unthinkingly internalize the mainstream pronouncement and then
repeat it as their own opinion, as indeed it has become.
In contrast, they approach the heterodox
viewpoint and disruptive information with skepticism, assuming
they ever get a chance to hear it. Having been conditioned to
the conventional opinion, they are less inclined to automatically
internalize unfamiliar data and analysis. Contrary notions that
do not fit what they think they already know are usually not welcomed.
They will sometimes even self-censor by tuning out, not listening
to what is being presented once they detect an alien viewpoint.
If given the choice to consider a new perspective or mobilize
old arguments against it, it is remarkable how quickly they start
reaching for the old arguments. All this makes dissent that much
more difficult but that much more urgent.
People who never complain of the orthodoxy
of their mainstream political education are the first to complain
about the dogmatic "political correctness" of any challenge
to it. Far from seeking a diversity of views, they defend themselves
from exposure to such diversity, preferring to leave their unexamined
background assumptions and conventional political opinions unruffled.
p35
Devoid of the supportive background assumptions of the dominant
belief system, the deviant view sounds just too improbable and
too controversial to be treated as reliable information. Conventional
opinions fit so comfortably into the dominant paradigm as to be
seen not as opinions but as statements of fact, as "the nature
of things. The very efficacy of opinion manipulation rests on
the fact that we do not know we are being manipulated. The most
insidious forms of oppression are those
that so insinuate themselves into our communication universe and
the recesses of our minds that we do not even realize they are
acting upon us. The most powerful ideologies are not those that
prevail against all challengers but those that are never challenged
because in their ubiquity they appear as nothing more than the
unadorned truth.
A heterodox view provides occasion to
test the prevailing orthodoxy. It opens us to arguments and information
that the keepers of the dominant paradigm have misrepresented
or ignored outright. The dissident view is not just another opinion
among many. Its task is to contest the ruling ideology and broaden
the boundaries of debate. The function of established opinion
is just the opposite, to keep the parameters of debate as narrow
as possible.
p39
Those at the top understand that the corporate political culture
is not a mystically g self-sustaining system. They know they must
work tirelessly to propagate the ruling orthodoxy, to use democratic
appearances to cloak plutocratic policies.
p41
The average university or college is a corporation, controlled
by self-selected, self-perpetuating boards of trustees, drawn
mostly from the corporate business world.
p52
How neutral in their writings and teachings were such scholars
as Zbigniew Brzezinski, Henry Kissinger Daniel Patrick Moynihan,
and Jeane Kirkpatrick? Despite being proponents of American industrial-military
policies at home and abroad - or because of it - they enjoyed
meteoric academic careers and subsequently were selected to occupy
prominent policymaking positions within conservative administrations
in Washington. Outspoken political advocacy, then, is not a hindrance
to one's career as long as one advocates the right things.
p56
Steven Lubet
Beyond the ivy walls there are many professions
that are dominated by Republicans. You will find very few Democrats
(and still fewer outright liberals) among the ranks of high-level
corporate executives, military officers or football coaches. Yet
no one complains about these imbalances, and conservatives will
no doubt explain that the seeming disparities are merely the result
of market forces.
They are probably right. It is entirely
rational for conservatives to flock to jobs that reward competition,
aggression and victory at the expense of others. So it should
not be surprising that liberals gravitate to professions-such
as academics, journalism, social work and the arts-that emphasize
inquiry, objectivity and the free exchange of ideas. After all,
teachers at all levels-from nursery school to graduate school-tend
to be Democrats. Surely there cannot be a conspiracy to deny conservatives
employment on kindergarten playgrounds.
Stealing Our Birthright
p74
The free market played a crucial role in the 2005 destruction
of New Orleans and the death of thousands of its residents. Forewarned
that a momentous category-5 hurricane might hit that city and
surrounding areas, what did officials do? They played the free
market. They announced that everyone should evacuate. All were
expected to devise their own way out of the disaster area by private
means, just like people do when disaster hits free-market Third
World countries.
It is a beautiful thing, this free market
in which every individual pursues his or her own private interests
and thereby effects an optimal outcome for the entire society.
Thus does Adam Smith's "invisible hand" work its wonders
in mysterious ways.
In New Orleans there would be none of
the regimented collectivist evacuation as occurred in Cuba. When
a powerful category-5 hurricane hit that island in 2004, the Castro
government, abetted by neighborhood citizen committees and local
Communist Party cadres, evacuated some 1.5 million people, more
than 10 percent of the country's population. The Cubans lost 20,000
homes to that hurricane-but not a single person was killed, a
heartening feat that went largely unmentioned in the U.S. press.
On day one of Hurricane Katrina, 29 August
2005, it was already clear that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of
Americans had perished in New Orleans. Many people had "refused"
to evacuate, media reporters explained, because they were just
plain "stubborn."
It was not until day three that highly
paid telecasters began to realize that tens of thousands of people
had failed to flee because they had nowhere to go and no means
of getting there. With hardly any cash at hand, and over 100,000
people without cars of their own, many had to sit tight and hope
for the best. In the end, the free market did not work so well
for them.
Many of these people were low-income African
Americans, along with fewer numbers of poor whites. It should
be remembered that most of them had jobs before the flood hit
them. That's what most poor people do in this country: they work,
usually quite hard at dismally paying jobs, sometimes more than
one job at a time. They are poor not because they're lazy but
because they are paid poverty wages while burdened by high prices,
high rents, and regressive taxes.
The free market played a role in other
ways. President G.W. Bush's agenda has been to cut government
services to the bone and make people rely on the private sector
for the things they might need. He cut $30 million in flood control
appropriations. He sliced an additional $71.2 million from the
budget of the New Orleans Corps of Engineers, a 44 percent reduction.
Plans to fortify New Orleans levees and upgrade the system of
pumping out water had to be shelved.
Personnel with the Army Corps of Engineers
had started building new levees several years before Hurricane
Katrina, but many of them were taken off such projects and sent
to Iraq, where they were needed to assist the empire in its wars.
It was not actually the hurricane that
destroyed New Orleans. Katrina swerved and hit parts of Mississippi
much harder. For New Orleans most of the destruction was caused
by the flood that came when the levees broke, a flood that had
long been feared by many.
p80
Government does not work when it is in the hands of reactionaries
who have no desire to see it work.
p174
We hear the reactionaries dilate about all the fine values for
which they stand. Endlessly they go on about personal values,
family values, religious values, patriotic values, old-fashioned
values of honesty and clean living. Yet their ranks are plagued
with illicit sexual scandals, unlawful scams, untrammeled mendacity,
massive corruption, and corporate grand thefts. They plunder the
public treasure while posing as holier-than-thou patriots.
... The truth is, if you are a progressive
person, rather than devoting yourself to plunder and privilege,
you have values for peace and justice, for fair play, and environmental
sustainability, for communal caring and power sharing.
A Guide to Concepts and Isms
p186
The "left ... encompasses those individuals, organizations,
and governments that advocate equitable redistributive policies
benefiting the many and infringing upon the privileged interests
of the wealthy few.
... In almost every country, including
our own, rightist groups, parties or governments pursue policies
that primarily benefit those who receive the bulk of their income
from investments and property, at the expense of those who live
off wages, salaries, fees, and pensions. That is what defines
and distinguishes the right from the left.
... What is called the political right
consists of conservatives, many of whom are dedicated to free-market
capitalism, the unregulated laissez-faire variety that places
private investment ahead of all other social considerations. Conservative
ideology maintains that rich and poor get pretty much what they
deserve; people are poor not because of inadequate wages and lack
of economic opportunity but because they are lazy, profligate,
or incapable. The conservative keystone to individual rights is
the enjoyment of property (moneyed) rights, especially the right
to make a profit off other people's labor and enjoy the privileged
conditions of a favored class.
... Most conservative ideologues today
might better be classified as reactionaries, having an agenda
not designed merely to protect their present privileges but to
expand them, rolling back all the progressive gains made over
the last century. They want to do away with most government regulation
and taxation of business, along with environmental and consumer
protections, minimum-wage laws, unemployment compensation, job-safety
regulations, and injury-compensation laws. They assure us that
private charity can take care of needy and hungry people, and
that there is no need for government handouts.
p192
It wasn't fascist extremists who pursued a massively destructive
war in Indochina. It was the "best and the brightest"
of the political center ... These same moderates supported the
overthrow of popular governments in Guatemala, Indonesia, Iran,
and Chile, and helped install fascist military regimes in their
stead.
It wasn't the leftists or rightists who
waged a war against Yugoslavia, with its repeated bombings of
civilian populations and its military assistance to ex-Nazi Croatian
and Muslim Bosnian separatists. It was that paragon of centrism
Bill Clinton and call the centrists and moderate liberals who
stood shoulder to shoulder with him and with NATO and the CIA
...
p194
FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, 1970
"Justice is merely incidental to
law and order."
p194
... the difference between government and state is the difference
between the city council and the police, between Congress and
the armed forces. The government mediates public policy. The state
orchestrates coercion and control, both overtly and covertly.
However, this is a conceptual distinction between what are really
empirically overlapping phenomena. The overlap is especially evident
in regard to the executive, which is both the center of government
policy and the purveyor of state power.
The conceptual distinction between state
and government allows us to understand why taking office in government
seldom guarantees full access to the instruments of state power.
When Salvador Allende, a Popular Unity candidate dedicated to
democratic egalitarian reforms, was elected president of Chile
in 1971, he took over the reins of government and was able to
initiate some popular policies. But he could never gain control
of the state apparatus, that is, the military, the police, the
intelligence services, the courts, and the fundamental organic
law that rigged the whole system in favor of wealth and corporate
property. When Allende began to develop a reform program for the
benefit of the common populace and against class privilege, the
Chilean military, abetted by the White House and the CIA, seized
power and murdered thousands of his supporters, destroying not
only Allende's government but the democracy that produced it.
In Nicaragua, after the Sandinistas lost
the 1990 election to a right-centrist coalition, the army and
police remained in their hands. However, in contrast to the Chilean
military, which was backed by the immense power of the United
States, the Nicaraguan military was the target of that same power
and was unable to keep the government on its revolutionary course.
Sandinista police and military were seriously defunded by a U.S.-backed
government.
Capitalist countries with ostensibly democratic
governments often manifest a markedly undemocratic state power.
In the United States, not just conservatives but Cold War liberals
have used the FBI to suppress anticapitalists and other dissidents
in the interest of state security and often in violation of the
U.S. Constitution. In 1947, President Harry Truman created the
Central Intelligence Agency to gather and coordinate foreign intelligence.
As ex-Senator George McGovern noted "Almost from the beginning,
the CIA engaged not only in the collection of intelligence information,
but also in covert operations which involved rigging elections
and manipulating labor unions abroad, carrying on paramilitary
operations, overturning governments, assassinating foreign officials,
protecting former Nazis and lying to Congress. "
With its secrecy, laundering of funds,
drug trafficking, and often unlawful use of violence, the national
security state stands close to organized crime. State agencies
sometimes find it convenient to collude with underworld elements.
Anthony Summers found that the FBI retained close links with organized
crime. Former CIA-operative Robert Morrow, along with others,
discovered that the CIA too was cozy with the mob. And over the
years, several congressional investigative committees uncovered
links between the CIA and the narcotics trade.
In other Western democracies, secret paramilitary
forces of neofascist persuasion (the most widely publicized being
Operation Gladio in Italy) were created by NATO, to act as resistance
forces should anticapitalist revolutionaries take over their countries.
Meantime, these secret units were involved in terrorist attacks
against the legal left. They helped prop up a fascist regime in
Portugal, participated in the Turkish military coups of 1971 and
1980, and the 1967 coup in Greece. They drew up plans to assassinate
social democratic leaders in Germany and stage "preemptive"
attacks against socialist and communist organizations in Greece
and Italy. They formed secret communication networks and drew
up detention lists of political opponents to be rounded up in
various countries.
These crypto-fascist operations "flowed
from NATO's unwillingness to distinguish between a Soviet invasion
and a victory at the polls by local communist parties." As
far as NATO was concerned there was not much distinction between
losing Europe to Soviet tanks or to peaceful ballots. Indeed,
the latter prospect seemed more likely. The Soviet tanks could
not roll without risking a nuclear conflagration, but through
the ballot box the anticapitalists might take over whole countries
without firing a shot. One is reminded of Secretary of State Henry
Kissinger's comment, supporting the overthrow of Chilean democracy:
"I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country
go communist [that is, voting for Allende's coalition government]
because of the irresponsibility of its own people."
p197
While conservative elites want less government control, they usually
want more state power to contain the egalitarian effects of democracy.
They want strong, intrusive, statist action to maintain the prerogatives
and privileges of corporate America. They ) prefer a state that
restricts access to information about its own < activities,
takes repressive measures against dissidents, and in other ways
acts punitively not toward the abusers of state power but toward
their challengers.
Conservative propaganda that is intended
for mass consumption implicitly distinguishes between government
and state. It ion invites people to see government as their biggest
problem, while at the same time, encouraging an idolatrous admiration
for the state, its flag and other patriotic symbols and rituals,
and the visible instruments of its power, such as the armed forces.
p198
In Italy, from 1969 to 1980, high-ranking elements in military
and civilian intelligence agencies, along with secret and highly
placed neofascist groups, embarked upon a campaign of terror and
sabotage known as the "strategy of tension," involving
a series of kidnappings, assassinations, and bombing massacres
... This terrorism was directed against the growing popularity
of the democratic parliamentary left, and was designed to "combat
by any means necessary the electoral gains of the Italian Communist
Party."
p199
The Communist Manifesto (Marx and Engels)
"... the executive of the modern
in State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of
the whole bourgeoisie."
p199
Nesting within the executive is that most virulent purveyor of
state power: the national security state, an informal configuration
) that usually includes the Executive Office of the White House,
\ special White House planning committees, the sixteen intelligence
agencies, the Pentagon, Joint Chiefs of Staff, director of national
intelligence, National Security Council, and other such units
engaged in surveillance, suppression, covert action, and forceful
1 interventions abroad and at home. The president operates effectively
as head of the national security state as long as he stays within
the parameters of its primary dedication-which is to advance the
interests of corporate investors and protect the overall global
capital accumulation process.
p201
[The CIA is] an instrument that serves the enduring interests
of the plutocracy. ("Plutocracy" refers to rule by the
wealthy or to rulers who favor wealthy interests.)
p201
... President Reagan violated international law by engaging in
an unprovoked war of aggression against Grenada. He violated the
U.S. Constitution when he refused to spend monies allocated by
Congress for various human services. He and other members of
his administration refused to hand over information when specific
actions of theirs were investigated by Congress. By presidential
order, he overruled statutory restrictions on the CIA's surveillance
of domestic organizations and activities-even though a presidential
order does not supersede an act of Congress. His intervention
against Nicaragua was ruled by the World Court, in a 13-to-I '
decision, to be a violation of international law, but Congress
did nothing to call him to account. He was up to his ears in the
IranContra conspiracy but was never called before any investigative
committee while in office. One could build a similar record with
just about every other president in recent decades. In its unpunished,
illegal acts, the executive demonstrates the autocratic nature
of the state.
p203
Congressional intelligence committees are usually occupied by
members of both parties who identify closely with the needs of
the national security state.
p204
Critics of the national security state are a minority within Congress.
Generally, congressional leaders are complicit with the state
and with their own disempowerment. Members serving on intelligence
committees rarely fulfill their oversight function. They do not
ask too many questions about secret operations and dirty tricks.
During the Iran-Contra hearings, Rep.
Jack Brooks asked Colonel Oliver North about a secret government
plan to suspend the Constitution and impose martial law in the
U.S.
Senator Daniel lnouye stopped Rep. Brooks
"I believe the question touches upon
a highly sensitive and classified area. So may I request that
you not touch upon that, sir."
p204
The national security state has largely succeeded in removing
much of its activities from democratic oversight.
p204
There are no published statements of expenditures for the intelligence
community, guessed to be between $35 billion and $50 billion a
year. Its appropriations are hidden in other parts of the budget
and are unknown even to most members of Congress who vote on the
funds.
p205
During the 1990-1991 Gulf crisis, Secretary of State James Baker
publicly stated
"We feel no obligation to go to Congress
for a declaration of war."
p205
In collaboration with the national security state, the AFL-CIO
leadership has sponsored organizations like the American Institute
for Free Labor Development (AIFLD) in Latin America, along with
similar ones in Africa and Asia, dedicated to building collaborationist,
anticommunist unions that undermine the more militant leftist
ones.
p205
The CIA owns numerous news organizations, publishing houses, and
wire services abroad, which produce disinformation that makes
its way back to the states.
p207
When capitalism is in crisis, the capitalist state escalates its
repression, from attacking the people's standard of living to
attacking the democratic rights that might allow them to defend
that standard of living. Democracy uneasily rides the tiger of
capitalism. People with immense wealth and overweening power will
resort to every conceivable means to secure their interests, the
state being the most important weapon in their furious undertaking.
p207
Business exerts an overall influence as a system of social power,
a way of organizing capital, employment, and large-scale production.
Because big business controls much of the nation's economy, government
perforce enters into a uniquely intimate relationship with it.
The health of the economy is treated by policymakers as a necessary
condition for the health of the nation, and since it happens that
the economy is mostly in the hands of large corporate interests,
then presumably government's service to the public is best accomplished
by service to those interests. The goals of business (high profits,
cheap labor, expanding markets, and easy access to natural resources)
become the goals of government. The "national interest"
becomes identified with the systemic needs of corporate capitalism
at home and abroad. In order to keep the peace, business may occasionally
accept reforms and regulations it does not like, but ultimately
government cannot ignore business's own raison d'être, which
is the limitless accumulation of wealth.
p208
Government involvement in the U.S. economy represents not socialism
... but state-supported capitalism, not the communization of private
wealth but the privatization of the commonwealth.
p208
In capitalist countries, government generally (a) nationalizes
sick and unprofitable industries ("lemon socialism")
and (b) privatizes profitable public ones-in both cases for the
benefit of big corporate investors.
p211
What democratic will decreed that we destroy the Cambodian and
Laotian countrysides between 1969 and 1971 in bombing campaigns
conducted without the consent or even the knowledge g of Congress
and the public? When did public opinion demand f that we wage
a mercenary war of attrition against Nicaragua, or attack Grenada,
Panama, Somalia, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Haiti, slaughtering
tens of thousands in the doing; or support wars against popular
forces in El Salvador, Guatemala, Angola, Mozambique, the Western
Sahara, and East Timor? Far from giving our consent, we ordinary
people have had to struggle to find out what is going on.
p212
To be worthy of its name, democracy should produce outcomes that
advance the well-being of the people.
p215
Democracy becomes a problem for the plutocracy not when it fails
to work but when it works too well helping the populace to move
toward a more equitable and favorable social order, narrowing
the gap however modestly between the superrich and the rest of
us. So democracy must be diluted and subverted, smothered with
disinformation and media puffery, with rigged electoral contests
and with large sectors of the public disfranchised ...
p218
Why doesn't the capitalist class in the United States resort to
fascist rule? It would make things easier: no organized dissent,
no environmental or occupational protections to worry about, no
elections or labor unions. In a country like the United States,
the success of a dictatorial solution would depend on whether
the ruling class could stuff the democratic genie back into the
bottle. Ruling elites are restrained in their autocratic impulses
by the fear that they might not get away with it, that the people
and the enlisted ranks of the armed forces would not go along.
Given secure and growing profit margins, elites generally prefer
a "democracy for the few" to an outright dictatorship.
Rather than relying exclusively on the club and the gun, bourgeois
democracy employs a co-optive, legitimating power-which is ruling-class
power at its most hypocritical and most effective.
p219
... the law, the bureaucracy, the political parties, the legislators,
the universities, the professions, and the media, in order to
best fulfill their class-control functions yet keep their credibility,
these players must maintain the appearance of neutrality and autonomy.
To foster that appearance, they must occasionally exercise some
critical independence and autonomy from the state and from corporate
America. They sometimes save a few decisions for the people, and
take minimally corrective measures to counter some of the many
egregious transgressions against democratic interests.
p220
Private industries such as railroads, satellite communication,
aeronautics, the Internet, and nuclear power exist today only
because the government funded the research and technological development,
and provided most of the risk capital. The great scientific achievements
of numerous universities and government laboratories during and
after World War II were the fruits of federal planning and not-for-profit
public funding... Our roads and some utilities are publicly owned
and sustained, as are our bridges, ports, and airports. In a few
states so are liquor stores, which yearly generate hundreds of
millions of dollars in state revenues.
p221
The state and municipal universities and community colleges in
the United States are public and therefore "socialist"
(shocking news to some of the students who attend them). Of these
some) are among the very best institutions of higher learning
in the country.
p223
Whatever [the] mistakes and political crimes [of former communist
states], they achieved-in countries that were never as rich as
ours-what U.S. free-market capitalism cannot and has no intention
of accomplishing: adequate food, housing, and clothing for all;
economic security in old age; free medical care; free education
at all levels; and a guaranteed income.
p224
There is nothing sacred about the existing [economic] system.
All economic and political institutions are contrivances that
should serve the interests of the people. When they fail to do
so, they should be replaced by something more responsive, more
just, and more democratic.
Contrary
Notions
Home Page