Empire & Inequality

Posted by Paul Street at May 9, 2004 10:59 AM

Here is the second and last (fairly big entry) paste-in of selected interesting global, national, and local correspondendence I got on the "Thought Control" article. For background and context see the last posting ("Thinking About Thought Control"). If you have time, you can also look at the original article that sparked the response..the link is in the previous blog post.

CROATIAN FREETHINKER AND SCHOOL FUNDING ADVVOCATE: Hi, I read your Thought control article, but since I am not an American I can’t provide you with any insights on your internal politics and economy. What I can say is something about education, and the lack of money for it. It is a general practice in thought control regimes to cripple the educational system. This is because the uneducated are much easier to control than the intellectual elite. That is why American educational system is so lame.

I had a friend who finished the first three grades in US. When he came here in Croatia (hope you know where that is), it was very difficult for him to adjust to our educational system, even though he had quite nice grades in America. Since the first few grades are the most important ones for "learning how to learn", he never quite had much success in school. I also met an American college student who came here as a part of foreign exchange program. She was astonished by the amount of knowledge that was being presented to our children, and their ability to understand it. She said that many of them knew things that she didn't.

In the past few years our educational system experienced many budget cuts. The people in power say that this is because there simply isn't enough money. That is, of course, a lie. There is money, it is just being used for not very necessary programs, such as "modernization of the government". This program consists of free laptops (with unlimited access to the Internet) and cell-phones (and unlimited accounts for them) for our people in power, and of electronic voting and filing systems for every city hall and the parliament. The cell-phones are mostly used for personal conversations, and the laptops are mostly inactive, because our "highly educated" rulers do not know how to work on them, and sadly, they don't think they should know. The electronic voting systems are a good idea, but they are hardly a necessity. Also, most of the money goes out, because a large percentage of our economy is under foreign (in part even American) possession, but that's another story. I'm afraid our leaders want us to be undereducated, so that we don't question their methods. For what I saw so far, they're successful.

What I want to say is that a weak educational system is good grounds for strong thought control. That's why G. W. Bush (and his predecessors) didn't "waste" money on it.

That's all for now. Glory to the proletariat ;-)

STREET: Thanks for your comments. Your message really hits home. In my regular day job (I am research director at a civil rights and social policy agency on Chicago's predominantly African-American South Side) I just now happen to be bringing off (on Monday) a big education conference that includes a couple of sessions on the very issue you mention: inadequately funded public schools. This is a big problem in the U.S. and especially in my home state (Illinois). We fund schools largely on the basis of local property taxes and the results are pretty predictable. Kids growing up in property-rich districts in Illinois go to well-funded, nicely equipped de facto college-prep public schools and kids from property-poor districts get inferior quality schools that tend to prepare many of them for prison instead of university.

We can't fund schools properly but we've got more than 20 big prisons in Illinois, housing more than 43,000 inmates. It costs $25,000 a year to house a prisoner and $5000 (roughly) to educate a kid in Illinois, though some of the rich schools spend as much as $15,000 and more on their students per year. As I said, many of the poor kids, especially black kids, end up in the prisons. And I might add, the prisons are loaded with televisions, which prison wardens and guards see as a wonderful and cheap way to keep prisoners docile and inert (thought- and behavior-controlled). Thanks in part to all the money Illinois spends on television-rich prisons, more than half of the state's local school districts are in a state of fiscal emergency right now.

There are a lot of good and decent people working for school funding improvements and equity in Illinois but its funny and amazing to me that nobody working on this issue seems to want to make the connection that you make between schools and DEMOCRACY. I have to fight to get people to even include the need for an intelligent citizenry -- a populace that can resist thought control, basically -- among the reasons for funding public schools.

This is ironic since democratic citizenship was one of the explicit core purposes behind the formation of public common schools in the United States. Nobody seems to remember or care about that, but then the evisceration of historical memory is one of the hallmarks of totalitarianism so that makes perfect sense.

It’s interesting but not surprising (and consistent with other things I've heard) to learn that people with the misfortune of attending the early grades of school in the supposed exalted pinnacle of "civilization" the United States (which one our Senators calls "the beacon to the world of the way life should be") can't keep up with the work in your supposedly less "developed" country!

I personally became so disgusted with the poor quality of my American high school that I simply stopped attending. I graduated only by getting enrolled (quite fortunately) in an excellent non-traditional high school and then fell into a university department with an unusually high number of Marxists and other radicals and I haven't stopped studying ever since (that was a long time ago).

We have issues I don't have time to go into with electronic voting, which appears to be something likely to work for G.W. Bush. Yes, three cheers for the noble proletariat.

RACE QUALIFIER: I'm not in a distant corner of the earth, but my heart is, which dreams of a sweeter reality. They won't shoot you? Well it depends on your race. If you are the race 'they' want, someone who actually thinks, they will try to 'set you up' to serve political interests.

STREET: Yes, there's something more and going on with regard to race, you bet and the cases of MLK and Fred Hampton speak volumes about their willingness to use state terror when they think it is necessary. I stand by the general thrust of the overall analysis, which is about why the remarkable investment in thought control in the US. You should find the piece I did on "US Racist Atrocity Denial, 1776 to the present" for Black Commentator.

LOWER CLASE QUESTIONER: You think chomsky democracy is “a system in which the key decisions are basically monopolized by the leading sectors of the business community and related elites." i didn't understand why you thought this was propaganda could you please explain so that i might understand thanks.

STREET: No that’s not how I see democracy at all…I was stating Chomsk's rendition of what he calls "the doctrinal definition" in the US. That's how it is (nonsensically) defined by US doctrine, in essence. When a society breaks from that model (i.e. Chile in early 1970s, Nicaragua in 1980s, etc.) than (as Chomsky points out) that's called a "crisis of democracy" and totalitarianism and Hitler and whatever awful name they see fit to use. Doctrinal thinking ala George Orwell says that black is white and 2 + 2 = 5. In reality, of course, democracy is one-person, one-vote and equal policymaking influence for all people regardless of things like class and wealth. And as I argue in my blog piece (see my "Empire and Inequality" bog off of the ZNet site) titled "England, America, Empire, and Inequality," you can't have real democracy and massive US-style economic inequality side-by-side.

MECHANIC: Great article on ZNet. Once again you and I are on the same page. Your idea that the media IS the establishment or the capitalist-imperialist establishment is right on. Perhaps you could follow this article with a mechanical breakdown of the media, the government (both elected and appointed), and the regulatory revolving door. People need to know that we are not the customer of the media, we are the commodity being sold. The customers of the media are large corporations. They are the market being served and are the customers that the media is beholden to. People need to know that the same customers of the media also are the monetary gatekeepers of our elected officials. You cannot run for office without their blessing or against their will. Then there is the regulatory revolving door which serves those same corporate interests. The army of corporate lobbyists are now the authority figures that regulate their former employers. It stinks man! I am not sure how and where your writing is distributed, so it might be preaching to the choir, but I would like to see you take on these issues that you briefly touched upon in ‘Thought Control’. Thanks for all the hard work.

STREET: I think you are dead-on. The interconnections are rich and many sided. Have you read Robert McChesney's Rich Media, Poor Democracy or anything else by McChesney? He's the best researcher and writer to date on all this. One connection I would add: the high cost of campaigns is driven by the need to make huge media buys, which in turn makes it impossible for candidates to run serious campaigns without Big Money contributors which factors out left candidates and in turn reflects the unwillingness of the corporate media corporations (who buy off the politicians) to offer free public time to candidates...It’s a big viscous head-spinning Orwellian merry go round and I want to get off.

FRUSTRATED BY FOX-WATCHERS: Hi Paul, I read your recent article called Thought Control on ZNet. I try to get information from various sources (usually different sites on the internet since I live in thailand). I regularly read books and articles by people like chomsky, zinn, hightower, etc. so I feel like I know a little bit more about what's really going on and can see the corporate media spin as it oozes out of the tube.

The frustrating thing and my question to you is... how do I explain this to the non-believers... the people who think that Fox is actually balanced, the people who think they're actually more enlightened than the rest of the world. The response I have heard from so-called reporters or "talking heads" from various corporate media outlets is that they are not censored and report on what needs reporting. Of course that's a big joke but nobody ever calls them on it. Like nobody ever says... well Democracy Now did a story about something newsworthy but the corporate media either mentioned in 2 seconds or not at all. Are these so-called reporters lying or are they so clouded in their thinking that they really believe what they're saying??

I always hear about corporations and media... but it comes down to regular everyday people who are the ones covering news right? If they feel that they're not being censored, why don't they ever ask in-depth questions or go any deeper into any story?
It makes me sick to watch CNN. I just saw them interview another rich white guy and the caption underneath him read "what do the iraqi people think?" so did it ever occur to the news people to ask the iraqi people... no... They're asking this old white guy about what the iraqi people think. Sorry about the short rant. I'd appreciate if you could answer about the role of the news people in carrying out the wishes of their masters or write an article about it... and i'll look forward to it.

STREET: I don't know if people who are into FOX News are susceptible to rational argumentation, to be honest. I mean that's a basically fascist news station as far as I can tell. You should tell them the details about ownership (see Robert McChesney and various media reform sites) and the advertising and detail the double standards in coverage (like for example all kinds of concern for US victims and none for Arab victims) and ask them how they explain those inconsistencies in the "free press" and "mainstream" media.

Not sure it will make all that much difference with them. TV has this way of simultaneously dumbing you down and making you think you know a lot...its a very powerful agent of mind control and mind closure.

I'd say the reporters and talking heads are less typical and ordinary people than you might think. They're fairly well pedigreed, went to the right schools, possess the right "education" [indoctrination] and the right elitist attitudes and beliefs and are fairly economically comfortable at the elite levels. They know the score and which side their bread is buttered on and they have to be censored less than you might think.

Most of the official "intellectuals" in the media --- and in academia --- are pretty loyal to the system and its top owners and managers. They know very well how to censor themselves and they do so quite painlessly.

SANE READER: I read "Thought Control" on ZNet and found it to be one of the clearest, cogent articulations of the current state of this country that I've read in some time. I am distributing it to as many people as I can. Writers like you help keep me sane in an increasingly insane world.

STREET: Thanks for your comment. It's hard to keep one's head above water when we are being bombarded by so much madness and sheer nonsense (2+2=5) from one minute to the next. Sometimes I just have to shut it all off and forget about it.

LOWER CASE CYNIC: Hello, very good article! just as you are mentioning people comments from abroad. i had exchanges with chomsky and others from znet about
some of these questions. thus i would like to add another view.. concerning danger of speaking out freely in the US or the freedom of speech etc.. which as many radical us citizens are after all always pointing out to as great success etc etc..and that you and others are not in prison or threatened for life.. first of all.. i think that you are currently not threatened is mainly because you are no danger currently. actually people like you and me (it is not so different after all in europe) are to some extend and alibi showing to people "look these guys can say all kind of things and nobody harms them"
however I think the history of killing or imprisoning of activist people in the US is very high once they get influential sometimes performed by mafia type people sometimes by the FBI and so on. take the american indian movement and leonard peltier
once the aim got influential the punishment happened very quickly i believe similar for the black movements trade unions and others.. so it is perhaps only a question of strength.. personally i lived in the chicago area for about a year 2001/2 and had never seen so many people being afraid of saying their opinion (even mildly critical) in public like there .. in fact people seemed to be so disciplined that they accept almost everything. it was however interesting to note that once people (especially of minorities or poor) understood from our accent that we were from europe (france or germany) they started speaking more openly! actually the ``communist dictatorship" in east germany never managed to silence the people like i had seen in the USA! so in summary i think your "freedom to speak" as seen from abroad exists, but only as long as you are a small minority.

STREET: Yes, Martin Luther King was assassinated for becoming too influential...when is Oliver Stone going to do THAT movie? And here in Chicago we had the state police assassination of Black Panther Fred Hampton in 1970. These are critical qualifications to my talk and I knew about them and was waiting for a message like yours. Yes, you and I prove that substantive free speech exists. And yet does that mean we should be quiet? A conundrum. On Chicago, you are SO RIGHT… people here are so scared of the Mayor in this city it’s pathetic. I see it everyday and it makes me sick. Gee, I had the same experience in Cold War/Soviet-era Prague that you had in Chicago: people more willing to talk to you when they figure out you are from another country.

PESSIMIST: I regularly read the articles on the ZNet web site and I've recently seen 3 or 4 recent ones of your own. I just finished reading "Thought Control" dated April 27, 2004. I think you are really an outstanding writer and I've greatly enjoyed reading your work. Thank-you, and please keep it up. I was motivated to write this email because I have a couple of comments. I have heard you, Chomsky, and other writers refer repeatedly to the notion that the USA is the world champion of free speech. (For example, in your article you use the phrase "the world's strongest free speech and related civil-libertarian traditions and protections".) In my opinion, this is actually a popular myth. Either that or I'm missing the point. Not because the I think the USA does not value free speech, but because everywhere else that I'm familiar
with values it, protects it, and cultivates it at least equally as much. I grew up in Canada, lived in Boston for almost 7 years, and now I've lived in Switzerland for almost 8 years. I've met a lot of people from a lot of different countries. I just don't get it when American
writers continually refer to the US as the world champion of free speech. It's fair to say that it has "very strong traditions" which are "admired throughout the world", for example, but I'm always a bit mystified about how and when the world championship was won. Lots of countries have very strong traditions of free speech and civil liberties which are admired throughout the world. Does this refer to legislation which has been passed or some specific events that occurred which have no parallels anywhere else on earth or throughout history or what? I don't get it, and I must admit I find it distracting when I see it referred to continuously by American authors, because I find it
smacks of a certain elitism which is totally unnecessary, easily avoided, and even a bit dangerous. (I assume you are American.)

My second point is: I've been reading a lot of left-leaning articles lately which (rightly) condemn the US-led destruction, invasion, humiliation, and occupation of Iraq. Writers often make excellent critical points about why it's wrong, but the discussion always ends
there. Anyone who's read Chomsky understands very well that the US did not get out of Vietnam until its major foreign policy objective (prevention of economic and political independence) was achieved. This was despite the massive social movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s which would be difficult to exceed or even match today. The obvious parallels to the modern situation are such that any thinking
person has to see these most obvious of obvious points: (1) that the major objective of the US invasion of Iraq is control of its oil reserves and their influence on the world power structure over the next 40 years, and (2) that the US is not going to be leaving Iraq alone
until this booty is somehow consumed. Quite frankly, I think it is loony to discuss, for example, a US pullout of Iraq without addressing the fact that THAT WILL NEVER HAPPEN until the USA as we know it ceases to exist. I imagine you would say that this is precisely your point, and that you are arguing for change from within. I would suggest that this is unrealistic, however, and that just as Soviet communism could
only be allowed to collapse under its own weight, American capitalism can only be allowed to consume itself to death. It's my opinion, or perhaps my intuition. The question then becomes, how to we help the US consume itself to death most quickly and least destructively? You probably think this is nuts, but I'm curious what you think nonetheless. To me, it seems an obvious question.

STREET: I don't quite say US is the champion of free speech...there's a big distinction in US policy between what we impose/export/support abroad and what we permit and expect at home. At home the free speech tradition is pretty remarkable, with more legal guarantees enshrined in the constitution and massive common law record and such. But yes I think you are right that free speech is an essential accomplishment of western bourgeois revolutions and the like and evident in Europe and Canada, etc. You've spent more time overseas so I will defer.

On American capitalism needing to consume itself to death, perhaps that is happening fairly soon (interesting stuff out on that), but then we had better develop some very strong vision and ideas about what we want the next local, national and world system to look like and how we want to pick up the pieces of our economies and societies. As Marxist writer I. Meszaros puts it, it's "socialism or barbarism if we're lucky."

Your comments are a bit too disengaged (morally and politically) for my taste...we have to operate on some basic positive assumptions regarding the possibility for meaningful left activism. Such activism was a factor - not the only a factor but a factor nonetheless - in the suspension of the worst acts of barbarism in SE Asia and history is full of surprises and inspiring lessons as well as reasons for despair.

On your idea of the US ceasing to exist, I recall once owning a button that said "US Out of North America." This is not a full response, I suppose, but it’s all I've got this morning.

NOT A MARXIST: It was a pleasure to read your "Thought Control" from 4/27/2004. I have never read your stuff, but I look forward to reading more from you.
You have much to contribute in this paradise of self-deception and wasteland of political thought. I am not a Marxist, but I will now use a Marxist theory to illustrate a point. In the "Permanent Revolution", Leon Trotsky talked about how the capitalist class exported revolution by exporting capital. By doing so, they created a proletarian class in other countries that were unencumbered by a bourgeois police force of equal size, because the bourgeoisie was back in the country that exported the capital. The consequent revolutions which happened around the world in the 20th century were a testament to his insight, as far as it goes (much to Stalin's chagrin). But what Trotsky overlooked was the logical concomitant to his thought, that the capitalists who exported that capital were made far stronger by their international exploitation. We live in the home country of those international capitalists. Their wealth created by this international exploitation has given them unprecedented political power in the "Land of the Free". They control the electronic media among other things, creating a populace utterly unaware of the world around them and utterly self-conscious of the "products" they do not have. Cable TV has only made it more so. Your insight into the control of the FCC is not taken lightly. Is it a coincidence that Michael Powell, Colin Powell's son, is the Chairman of the FCC? Is it a coincidence that Rehnquidst's daughter runs the FDA? This administration is running Washington DC like a back county courthouse in West Texas, but one with nuclear weapons and control of the United Nations. We need a new definition of tyranny. In any case, keep writing.

STREET: Thanks for your comments. There’s nothing wrong with being a Marxist in my opinion. Your remarks on cable are interesting because cable and the Internet are often cited by defenders of corporate media monopoly as evidence that the system is wide open and democratic, full of choice. I think Lenin and Trotsky would have loved to get a hold of this sort of media themselves.

GRAMSCIAN FROM CHICAGO: I've enjoyed your writing for quite sometime, and I was really glad to see this essay on Z since I was unable to make the WLUW fair last weekend. In any case, I'm curious about your ideas of the privileged American few, who dominate mainstream politics and the media. Aren't they bound by the same rules of thought control as the rest of us? Admittedly I'm thinking particularly of Gramsci's Prison Notebooks when he talks about organic intellectuals. If we are living in another age of American imperialism, aren't Strauss, Perle, Safire, Pipes, [insert crackpot conservative official or academic here], etc. the technocrats or intellectuals of this age? As ridiculous as their reasons for going to war are, I think they believe them. I think they see America as a beacon on a hill as much as they sincerely believe in a version of free market capitalism, which would allow them to sell off Iraq to the companies in which they own stock. I am often at a loss to understand why the Bush administration does what it does. When I imagine what Bush and co. are thinking, their justifications make sense when I imagine the world through their blinders.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that ideology is the air we breathe. I happen to breathe an air that makes an intimate connection between house patrols and searches in Iraq to routine traffic stops-cum-bogus drug busts in Humboldt Park. I happen to breathe an air that sees urban renewal as being guided by a set of rules where certain people have the ultimate freedom of movement (affluent, mostly white people) while others are free to move only when they're forced to move (people forced out of CHA high-rises who are given housing "choice" vouchers).

I happen to breathe an air that makes me see injustice everywhere. They happen to breathe air that justifies their sense of entitlement. I happen not to be particularly in the mainstream, and certainly one without power, and they, well, seem hell-bent on destroying the world and have the power to do so.

I want to suggest, humbly if possible, that propaganda is cynical manipulation, but thought control is connected to ideology, which binds us all.

STREET: Gramsci's reflections on hegemony are very relevant today and yes strongly connected (understatement) to the propaganda I talk about and not having have that connection in my talk is a weakness. Part of that is the venue...I'm supposed to relate it all to the FCC and that seems more about Chomsky than Gramsci. That line between propaganda, thought control, and ideology needs to fleshed-out a bit more concretely for sure. On the privileged few versus the rest of us, Carey wrote about the interesting difference between “treetops” (intra-"elite") propaganda and “grassroots” (top down) propaganda. I don't know how much of their own ideology neo-cons believe...with people like Wolfowitz…its undoubtedly very real to them. But there's a key difference between the relative candor and intelligence of the “treetops” discourse (see especially the Wall Street Journal- you can find very good reportage there) and the utter inanity of the fairy tale world they try to create for us in the watered down news and entertainment media for the "proles" (most of us, say beneath the upper 15 percent or whatever). The reason I think is just that the people running and supervising the system (down to mid-level managers, professors, and lawyers and the like) just can't believe all the same nonsense we are supposed to believe without damaging the system. The managerial and professional class can't live in total Alice in Wonderland...they have to be clued in to reality at a certain level and to a certain degree. At the same time, they are so privileged (bought-in or sold-out or co-opted) that they can be trusted with something closer to the truth. The rest of us cannot be trusted. We are the dangerous rabble, the many-headed mob that reared its ugly head during the great bourgeois revolutions and then was supposed to just go home after helping the bourgeoisie displace the pre-capitalist elites. I am personally a defector from within the class that is supposed to be trustworthy...This treetops/grassroots distinction is how a defector like Chomsky can annotate his radical critiques with almost nothing but establishment sources. So I think the rules are similar and different at the same time. I would also add that the air we breathe is significantly filtered and processed by these incredible Orwellian/Huxlean/Marcusean/Reichian media institutions and technologies that Marx and Gramsci could never really have been expected to imagine.

CHALMERS JOHNSON READER I: Paul, you're so conservative. Chalmers Johnson (Sorrows of Empire) reports that the defense department admitted in 2001 to at least than 725 military bases outside of the US.

I also perceive that a number of folks have been killed for what they thought, believed and/or said. I am 60 (black male) so I remember Malcom X,Martin L King, Emmett Till, Medger Evers. I might even include the Kennedy's when you consider that murder is allowed and encouraged in some situation. And then there is racism practiced in the historical south and all over by "officers of the law"...

STREET: Yes, I'm a real conservative. You left out Fred Hampton, a better example of what you are talking about than Malcom (killed by the Farrakhan wing of NOI, which is not to say he would not ultimately have been taken out by the J. Edgar Hoover/ LBJ/Richard Nixon police state) or Emmett (killed because of the insane white sexual fears of some deep south crackers). When a free speaker becomes a real "threat" - a spokesperson for justice with a mass following - I think the equations can change. And we have insane racist mass imprisonment and ubiquitous felony-marking (lifelong defacto socioeconomic imprisonment) for black males.

Overall, I'll stand by the general thrust of what I said, however. We don't have the broad state terror that is common in Third World states -- all greatly subsidized and equipped by USA. And this in turn is a big part of why we have the big investment in "homeland" thought control - my basic point, taken from white men Alex Carey and Noam Chomsky.

On Johnson, that's a matter of facts/numbers, not ideology or values. He’s right and I’m wrong on that fact.

Malcom got it right on JFK: chickens came home to roost.

CHALMERS JOHNSON READER II: We could speculate forever on what Hoover allowed/encouraged/planned/should be held responsible for. My real point was that "free speech (or free anything)"is typically not all-or-nothing, but a matter of degrees and clearly we (US-Quasi-citizens) suffer more from mis/disinformation than from official state terrorism aimed at silencing dissenters.

STREET: We agree I believe on the essentials. I've done a lot of work in my day job on the racist prison and felon-marking issue (see "The Vicious Circle," at www.cul-chicago.org - click on "Research Reports Available Online") and its just insane the kind of Orwellian fascist racist crackdown they are putting on the black population and black males in particular. I think we calculated 40 percent plus of black males in Chicago now carrying a felony record (worst barrier you can find in the job market) --- thanks mainly to the big business called the War on Drugs. This marking has got to have an impact on the free speech rights of inner-city populations...who wants to mess more with the criminal justice system at an anti-war demonstration with a bunch of anarchist white kids who are looking forward to getting arrested when you are already carrying two strikes? Not to mention the people in state prison, who are census count and voting power and budgetary dollars and jobs (40K per year with just a High School degree for being a prison guard) for "downstate" Illinois and "upstate" New York. It's a wild, wild world they've made and yes they will kill somebody who breaks through the soft mechanisms of control and gets a domestic following.

CHALMERS JOHNSON READER III: I agree...We agree. I was attracted to your writing about the racist- war-on-drugs-prison-industrial-complex issue. I grew up with the prison system in [ ] and saw the prison population nearly sextuple (is that a word?) from the early 70's to the turn of the millennium? My father was head of [ ] ‘s system during the late 60's early 70's. My business includes treatment of people who abuse drugs so I have paid some attention to drug laws and how/who they impact. I have come to the conclusion that nobody should be incarcerated for use of drugs or possession of small quantities for use. That is not a position that I espouse publicly because that would cause considerable political problems for me (known in the early 70's as a cop out).

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