Preserving the Fabric of Our Society as They Roll Out the Shock Doctrine

[seafan]

emptywheel, reporting in from her new digs, sees the whole debt ceiling debate right now as an out-of-body experience.

While floating above the melee, she says she is currently reading Someplace Like America: Tales from the New Great Depression
(Authors: Reporter Dale Maharidge and photographer Michael Williamson)

She describes one gripping story from it.

There’s one story (from the book) that really hit home as I watched the debt crisis and Breivik’s ideology play out. It dates to a reporting trip Maharidge and Williamson made in the early Reagan years, their first effort to chronicle the collapse of America.They spent a day at a work camp in Texas run by a “foundation” that picks up down and out men and induces them to sign up for a month at the work camp as a way to get them off the street (and also as a way to make $1,000/day of their unpaid labor). Maharidge describes the thinking of one of the guys who was about to willingly stay past his 30 day commitment.

“Okay weasels,” Foxface announced, “now fill it back up.”

We set to work regarding the reloading the truck by hand, forming teams that passed debris.

“I hate this shit,” Jay said.

It was a contradiction I couldn’t understand. Jay felt enmity, but he was terrified of what he called “the outside.”

“But don’t you (feel) they are ripping you off?” I asked.

Jay scratched at the hard ground with a foot, scraping at the dust. When he looked back up, he said, “No-o-o.” He paused.” “No.”

I shut up.

I realized what I was seeing: this was a man who had given up, utterly.

(snip)

He had arrived here a destroyed man, beaten by life and the vagaries of the economy. Now he seemed brainwashed, like the cult members I’d written about for the newspaper. Like a cult, the foundation was exploiting his weakened state of mind in order to manipulate him. The work camp practiced classic sleep deprivation: it worked men hard and then roused them after just a few hours’ sleep to do it all over again, seven days a week. Jay said this was how it had been for the previous thirty days.

One must be defeated to be controlled.

emptywheel continues:

That was 30 years ago. But if anything, our society has embraced such approaches to social control in more and more areas of life. It’s certainly the kind of thing we can expect to see more of, as this Depression gets worse. Particularly given the way Republicans and many Democrats have refused to offer an alternative.

.....

And while in the medium term, I think Progressives can shift the way our society thinks about taxes–and specifically, taxing the really rich, and while I think if the corporatists don’t succeed in entirely shutting down elections, we might vote a lot of them out next year, there’s not much we can do politically at the moment.

Meanwhile, those aiming to take advantage of crisis have gotten their wish and they’ve been preparing–whether far right or “just” neoliberal–a range of policies to capitalize. Yet, if this front page article in the hometown of one of the guys most active in pushing this crisis is any indication, folks aren’t necessarily going to fall for it. Even in West Michigan, people know when they’re being looted.

But to get there–to make it through this crisis without the Breiviks of the world getting their way–we’re going to have to limit the number of people who end up like Jay, quite literally embracing his slavery. Americans are pissed off and are beginning to fight back–but we have to make sure they fight, and fight in constructive ways, rather than give up.

And a stellar way to fight in a constructive way is to expose these purveyors of the Shock Doctrine in the United States of America.


In the state of Florida people are doing just that, starting to focus on the real villains. And in Florida, there is a bounty of them.



'One must be defeated to be controlled.'


We will never surrender in this fight, for our numbers will change the course of history.

[snagglepuss]

1. .

[seafan]

2. Kick