While putting together this diary and poking around yesterday I came across a discussion between Chris Hedges and this man, Sheldon Wolin, The guy’s a political genius and covers so much ground, tying so many different issues together the way he does, there was no way i could form a coherent diary that would express what he has researched, written about, understands and delivers into thought so well. So I won’t.
Chris Hedges’ article called ‘Voting With Our Feet’, (which is an excellent read and pulls no punches on any of today’s candidates of either party), is where I discovered this posting; ‘Sheldon Wolin and Inverted Totalitarianism’. The core of Chris Hedges’ piece is based around the work of Sheldon Wolin.
It’s lengthy, but good because of it:
Again, there are so many fascinating topics, so well joined into a whole in the discussion going on within ‘Inverted Totalitarianism’ that it is beyond my knowledge and skill to narrow it down, out of all the choices, the most relevant issues into a coherent statement without unraveling the deeply researched and intricately well built thesis’ by Sheldon Wolin so I didn’t..
..except for this one sentence by Chris Hedges from; ‘Voting With Our Feet’:
..instead of accepting the fear they wield to fragment communities, states, and countries
And this on page 3 (but this is just one piece of the whole picture):
Wolin writes:
National defense was declared inseparable from a strong economy. The fixation upon mobilization and rearmament inspired the gradual disappearance from the national political agenda of the regulation and control of corporations.
The defender of the free world needed the power of the globalizing, expanding corporation, not an economy hampered by “trust busting.”
Moreover, since the enemy was rabidly anticapitalist, every measure that strengthened capitalism was a blow against the enemy.
Once the battle lines between communism and the “free society” were drawn, the economy became untouchable for purposes other than “strengthening” capitalism. The ultimate merger would be between capitalism and democracy.
Once the identity and security of democracy were successfully identified with the Cold War and with the methods for waging it, the stage was set for the intimidation of most politics left or right.
The result is a nation dedicated almost exclusively to waging war.
— emphasis added
Okay, one more excerpt...couldn’t resist this section by Chris Hedges which is mostly quoting Sheldon Wolin who addresses public fragmentation:
Political campaigns rarely discuss substantive issues. They center on manufactured political personalities, empty rhetoric, sophisticated public relations, slick advertising, propaganda and the constant use of focus groups and opinion polls to loop back to voters what they want to hear. Money has effectively replaced the vote. Every current presidential candidate—including Bernie Sanders—understands, to use Wolin’s words, that
“the subject of empire is taboo in electoral debates.”
The citizen is irrelevant. He or she is nothing more than a spectator, allowed to vote and then forgotten once the carnival of elections ends and corporations and their lobbyists get back to the business of ruling.
“If the main purpose of elections is to serve up pliant legislators for lobbyists to shape, such a system deserves to be called ‘misrepresentative or clientry government,’ ” Wolin writes. “It is, at one and the same time, a powerful contributing factor to the depoliticization of the citizenry, as well as reason for characterizing the system as one of antidemocracy.”
The result, he writes, is that the public is “denied the use of state power.” Wolin deplores the trivialization of political discourse, a tactic used to leave the public fragmented, antagonistic and emotionally charged while leaving corporate power and empire unchallenged.
“Cultural wars might seem an indication of strong political involvements,” he writes. “Actually they are a substitute. The notoriety they receive from the media and from politicians eager to take firm stands on nonsubstantive issues serves to distract attention and contribute to a cant politics of the inconsequential.”
“The ruling groups can now operate on the assumption that they don’t need the traditional notion of something called a public in the broad sense of a coherent whole,” he said in our meeting. “They now have the tools to deal with the very disparities and differences that they have themselves helped to create. It’s a game in which you manage to undermine the cohesiveness that the public requires if they [the public] are to be politically effective.
And at the same time, you create these different, distinct groups that inevitably find themselves in tension or at odds or in competition with other groups, so that it becomes more of a melee than it does become a way of fashioning majorities.”
— emphasis added
— indeed. How else without dividing and conquering, does a tiny minority of the most wealthy (#1%ers/establishment) control democracy and remain in power (?)
Chris Hedges writes of Sheldon Wolin:
He struggled against forces he knew he could not vanquish. He never wavered in the fight as an intellectual and, more important, in the fight as a citizen.
He was one of the first to explain to us the transformation of our capitalist democracy into a new species of totalitarianism.
He warned us of the consequences of unbridled empire or superpower. He called on us to rise up and resist. His “Democracy Incorporated” was ignored by every major newspaper and journal in the country.
This did not surprise him. He knew his power. So did his enemies. All his fears for the nation have come to pass. A corporate monstrosity rules us. If we held up a scorecard we would have to say Wolin lost, but we would also have to acknowledge the integrity, brilliance, courage and nobility of his life.
Instead of Inverted Totalitarianism..
.. this:
by Sheldon S. Wolin
I won’t pretend to be an expert on any of this but for just under 3 hours, it was a fascinating and foundational learning experience for every minute of it — imo — so if you’ve got a couple of hours in a comfortable space..it’s really well worth a listen...with some cool pictures of the past too … ♫♪♫