M
Michigan Farmer
Guest
Americans are constantly lying to themselves about the degree to which they have
allowed themselves to become ideologically compromised at work. Even more disturbing
than the collapse of the New Deal is the inherently reactionary nature of so many jobs
in the twenty first century United States. It is almost absurd to talk about unions if
you work for the military and are assisting in the manufacturing of new weapons. Jobs
in the mass media and mainstream press are often equally as dubious. The education
system, viewed by liberals from the 1960's in such an innocent light, bears at least
as much responsibility as the media in the lobotomizing of the American mind.
Instead of desperately trying to ward off a looming martial law, Americans are busy
trying to get ahead at work. Fascism hasn't come to America with rallies and bonfires
but in the fight for the corner office.
Cowardice, Complicity and the Withering of the Soul of America
Zombie Nation
http://www.counterpunch.org/penner11022007.html
By DAVID PENNER
As The Office of the Vice President continues to scheme and plot for war with Iran,
which would also likely correspond with martial law at home, the American worker
continues to sink deeper and deeper into a horrifying abyss of economic, moral, and
spiritual slavery. Even during the worst days of the Depression, never was the
American worker more crushed, more beaten, more defeated. Never was he more atomized,
more alienated, more alone.
Listen to what people are talking about on TV, on the streets, and in restaurants, and
it is clear the American people are pathologically disconnected from reality. This
disconnection from reality is particularly pronounced in both the media and academia,
where the most critical issues of our time are either completely ignored, or drowned
in a barrage of hyperbole and euphemistic blather. It is as if, due to so many decades
of brainwashing, Americans are no longer capable of reason, no longer capable of
independent thought.
It is also becoming harder and harder to obtain a good paying job without compromising
oneself ideologically due to the destruction of the public sphere. The role that the
military and prison industrial complexes play in providing employment, and the role
played by the media and the education system in indoctrination, pose grave questions
about whether constitutional democracy and American capitalism can continue to
coexist, or whether the elite will sever the marriage entirely ushering in a military
form of government. The unprecedented domination of work in American society, and the
cult of placing one's career above and beyond all other considerations, has
dehumanized the American people and turned them into collaborators.
In the education system, where universities are increasingly owned lock, stock and
barrel by corporations (many universities are corporations), free market dogma reigns
unchallenged. The education system, together with the unprecedented power of the mass
media, have ushered in a brave new world where Newspeak reigns over the enlightenment,
madness over empiricism, and barbarism over reason.
As Americans, we are so fond of saying how we have freedom of speech, but all too
often, this simply is not so. How many students at expensive private colleges are
permitted to speak out against any number of the vast myriad of unspeakable issues:
the destruction of families and communities in American society, the likelihood of war
on Iran, the prison-industrial complex, the use of outsourcing and offshoring to
destroy unions, the current genocide being waged against black Americans, the
censorship in American society? If a student wants to get good grades so as to be able
to secure a good paying job later on, the rules are clear: say what you are supposed
to say, write what you're supposed to write: shut up and do as you're told. The almost
total absence of meaningful intellectual discussion in many colleges and universities,
along with the unprecedented corporate consolidation of the media, has put American
society in a totalitarian ideological vice. Tenured liberal professors, or even
professors that secretly harbor genuinely radical views, often think things privately
that they would never dream of saying in class.
The American worker is more enslaved to his employer than ever before, but instead of
rebelling against this enslavement, he feels resistance to be impossible or too
dangerous to risk, or he embraces it as proof of his toughness and loyalty to his country.
Public school teachers that teach poor and disadvantaged students are under enormous
pressures by authoritarian administrators to keep the level as low as possible and to
not intellectually challenge their students. Those who resist are marginalized,
harassed, and eventually forced out. This tyranny is blindly embraced in the name of
multiculturalism, and enforced by morally bankrupt liberals who view students in
troubled inner city schools as incapable of serious academic work.
The liberal adage "You have to work within the system" embodies the total moral
spiritual, and intellectual collapse of the American people. The Democrats "work
within the system," and consequently we have a one party system. Tenured liberal
professors have worked within the system, and have gotten so good at it that they have
become the system, feeding Amy Tan and The House on Mango Street to poor students so
as to keep them illiterate in the name of protecting diversity.
Expensive private colleges are dominated by almost total unanimity of thought in the
liberal arts and social sciences, particularly in politics and economics. What are
one's chances of getting hired for a tenure-track economics position at a four-year
university when you have written polemics attacking the impoverishment of third world
countries by the World Bank and IMF? Almost zero. Is this our great freedom, our great
liberty of thought? This overwhelming pressure to conform ideologically in the legal
system, the media, and academia, and the relentless pressures to be as obsequious and
sycophantic as possible at work, is a cancer that is slowly tearing at the heart of
American civilization.
Blind obedience and brainwashing through Newspeak begin in school. The media, and
other social pressures complete the process. The destruction of family and community
life has made resistance at work extraordinarily difficult, because the loss of a
decent job that can so easily come from speaking out against unconscionable abuses of
power, puts the now atomized American in a void, a zone of nothingness, a banishment
into purgatory.
Americans are constantly lying to themselves about the degree to which they have
allowed themselves to become ideologically compromised at work. Even more disturbing
than the collapse of the New Deal is the inherently reactionary nature of so many jobs
in the twenty first century United States. It is almost absurd to talk about unions if
you work for the military and are assisting in the manufacturing of new weapons. Jobs
in the mass media and mainstream press are often equally as dubious. The education
system, viewed by liberals from the 1960's in such an innocent light, bears at least
as much responsibility as the media in the lobotomizing of the American mind.
Instead of desperately trying to ward off a looming martial law, Americans are busy
trying to get ahead at work. Fascism hasn't come to America with rallies and bonfires
but in the fight for the corner office.
Take a good look at what Americans will put up with at ten dollars an hour, and it is
clear that unionization and solidarity have reached their nadir in American history.
The idea of not making much money, yet waking up in the morning and feeling good about
oneself is a myth if you are a public school teacher whose hands are tied by
anti-literacy administrators, or a defense attorney forced to betray clients and plea
bargain innocent people into jail.
There is still time for the American worker to awake and take back his country. There
is still time to resist, to stand up for freedom of expression and worker's rights.
For the elite are rapidly taking us to a place where it may soon no longer be possible
to resist. Once that Rubicon is crossed, there will be naught but demons all around
us, the bough will be broken, and constitutional democracy will drown in a sea of
death and darkness.
David Penner has taught English and ESL at Kingsborough Community College, CUNY
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There's a new page describing the social aspects of American Fascism at
http://politicsusaweb.com/RootsOfFascism.html
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Still the most concise explanation of how we are who we are:
"Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress
of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her August claims, have been
born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing,
and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it
does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor
freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the
ground, they want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the
awful roar of its many waters."
"This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be
both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a
demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly
submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will
be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words
or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those
whom they oppress."
---Frederick Douglass
Source: Douglass, Frederick. [1857] (1985). "The Significance of
Emancipation in the West Indies." Speech, Canandaigua, New York, August 3,
1857; collected in pamphlet by author.
http://www.buildingequality.us/Quotes/Frederick_Douglass.htm
__________________________________________________________________
This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been
specifically authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material available in
my efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights,
economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. I believe this
constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section
107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the
material in this post is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a
prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational
purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml.
If you wish to use copyrighted material from this post for purposes of your own that
go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
allowed themselves to become ideologically compromised at work. Even more disturbing
than the collapse of the New Deal is the inherently reactionary nature of so many jobs
in the twenty first century United States. It is almost absurd to talk about unions if
you work for the military and are assisting in the manufacturing of new weapons. Jobs
in the mass media and mainstream press are often equally as dubious. The education
system, viewed by liberals from the 1960's in such an innocent light, bears at least
as much responsibility as the media in the lobotomizing of the American mind.
Instead of desperately trying to ward off a looming martial law, Americans are busy
trying to get ahead at work. Fascism hasn't come to America with rallies and bonfires
but in the fight for the corner office.
Cowardice, Complicity and the Withering of the Soul of America
Zombie Nation
http://www.counterpunch.org/penner11022007.html
By DAVID PENNER
As The Office of the Vice President continues to scheme and plot for war with Iran,
which would also likely correspond with martial law at home, the American worker
continues to sink deeper and deeper into a horrifying abyss of economic, moral, and
spiritual slavery. Even during the worst days of the Depression, never was the
American worker more crushed, more beaten, more defeated. Never was he more atomized,
more alienated, more alone.
Listen to what people are talking about on TV, on the streets, and in restaurants, and
it is clear the American people are pathologically disconnected from reality. This
disconnection from reality is particularly pronounced in both the media and academia,
where the most critical issues of our time are either completely ignored, or drowned
in a barrage of hyperbole and euphemistic blather. It is as if, due to so many decades
of brainwashing, Americans are no longer capable of reason, no longer capable of
independent thought.
It is also becoming harder and harder to obtain a good paying job without compromising
oneself ideologically due to the destruction of the public sphere. The role that the
military and prison industrial complexes play in providing employment, and the role
played by the media and the education system in indoctrination, pose grave questions
about whether constitutional democracy and American capitalism can continue to
coexist, or whether the elite will sever the marriage entirely ushering in a military
form of government. The unprecedented domination of work in American society, and the
cult of placing one's career above and beyond all other considerations, has
dehumanized the American people and turned them into collaborators.
In the education system, where universities are increasingly owned lock, stock and
barrel by corporations (many universities are corporations), free market dogma reigns
unchallenged. The education system, together with the unprecedented power of the mass
media, have ushered in a brave new world where Newspeak reigns over the enlightenment,
madness over empiricism, and barbarism over reason.
As Americans, we are so fond of saying how we have freedom of speech, but all too
often, this simply is not so. How many students at expensive private colleges are
permitted to speak out against any number of the vast myriad of unspeakable issues:
the destruction of families and communities in American society, the likelihood of war
on Iran, the prison-industrial complex, the use of outsourcing and offshoring to
destroy unions, the current genocide being waged against black Americans, the
censorship in American society? If a student wants to get good grades so as to be able
to secure a good paying job later on, the rules are clear: say what you are supposed
to say, write what you're supposed to write: shut up and do as you're told. The almost
total absence of meaningful intellectual discussion in many colleges and universities,
along with the unprecedented corporate consolidation of the media, has put American
society in a totalitarian ideological vice. Tenured liberal professors, or even
professors that secretly harbor genuinely radical views, often think things privately
that they would never dream of saying in class.
The American worker is more enslaved to his employer than ever before, but instead of
rebelling against this enslavement, he feels resistance to be impossible or too
dangerous to risk, or he embraces it as proof of his toughness and loyalty to his country.
Public school teachers that teach poor and disadvantaged students are under enormous
pressures by authoritarian administrators to keep the level as low as possible and to
not intellectually challenge their students. Those who resist are marginalized,
harassed, and eventually forced out. This tyranny is blindly embraced in the name of
multiculturalism, and enforced by morally bankrupt liberals who view students in
troubled inner city schools as incapable of serious academic work.
The liberal adage "You have to work within the system" embodies the total moral
spiritual, and intellectual collapse of the American people. The Democrats "work
within the system," and consequently we have a one party system. Tenured liberal
professors have worked within the system, and have gotten so good at it that they have
become the system, feeding Amy Tan and The House on Mango Street to poor students so
as to keep them illiterate in the name of protecting diversity.
Expensive private colleges are dominated by almost total unanimity of thought in the
liberal arts and social sciences, particularly in politics and economics. What are
one's chances of getting hired for a tenure-track economics position at a four-year
university when you have written polemics attacking the impoverishment of third world
countries by the World Bank and IMF? Almost zero. Is this our great freedom, our great
liberty of thought? This overwhelming pressure to conform ideologically in the legal
system, the media, and academia, and the relentless pressures to be as obsequious and
sycophantic as possible at work, is a cancer that is slowly tearing at the heart of
American civilization.
Blind obedience and brainwashing through Newspeak begin in school. The media, and
other social pressures complete the process. The destruction of family and community
life has made resistance at work extraordinarily difficult, because the loss of a
decent job that can so easily come from speaking out against unconscionable abuses of
power, puts the now atomized American in a void, a zone of nothingness, a banishment
into purgatory.
Americans are constantly lying to themselves about the degree to which they have
allowed themselves to become ideologically compromised at work. Even more disturbing
than the collapse of the New Deal is the inherently reactionary nature of so many jobs
in the twenty first century United States. It is almost absurd to talk about unions if
you work for the military and are assisting in the manufacturing of new weapons. Jobs
in the mass media and mainstream press are often equally as dubious. The education
system, viewed by liberals from the 1960's in such an innocent light, bears at least
as much responsibility as the media in the lobotomizing of the American mind.
Instead of desperately trying to ward off a looming martial law, Americans are busy
trying to get ahead at work. Fascism hasn't come to America with rallies and bonfires
but in the fight for the corner office.
Take a good look at what Americans will put up with at ten dollars an hour, and it is
clear that unionization and solidarity have reached their nadir in American history.
The idea of not making much money, yet waking up in the morning and feeling good about
oneself is a myth if you are a public school teacher whose hands are tied by
anti-literacy administrators, or a defense attorney forced to betray clients and plea
bargain innocent people into jail.
There is still time for the American worker to awake and take back his country. There
is still time to resist, to stand up for freedom of expression and worker's rights.
For the elite are rapidly taking us to a place where it may soon no longer be possible
to resist. Once that Rubicon is crossed, there will be naught but demons all around
us, the bough will be broken, and constitutional democracy will drown in a sea of
death and darkness.
David Penner has taught English and ESL at Kingsborough Community College, CUNY
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There's a new page describing the social aspects of American Fascism at
http://politicsusaweb.com/RootsOfFascism.html
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Still the most concise explanation of how we are who we are:
"Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress
of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her August claims, have been
born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing,
and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it
does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor
freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the
ground, they want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the
awful roar of its many waters."
"This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be
both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a
demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly
submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will
be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words
or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those
whom they oppress."
---Frederick Douglass
Source: Douglass, Frederick. [1857] (1985). "The Significance of
Emancipation in the West Indies." Speech, Canandaigua, New York, August 3,
1857; collected in pamphlet by author.
http://www.buildingequality.us/Quotes/Frederick_Douglass.htm
__________________________________________________________________
This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been
specifically authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material available in
my efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights,
economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. I believe this
constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section
107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the
material in this post is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a
prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational
purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml.
If you wish to use copyrighted material from this post for purposes of your own that
go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.