Kirkengaard: Life is lived forward but only understood looking back.
This was my busiest time of life; multiple jobs, school, new marriage and new family. I think I am participating to some degree. I am reading six newspapers a day. And I do not really have a clue to the big picture.
One because the media is already lying and I really don't think that is possible on the things that matter; particularly the facts and figures of economics.
Two because all interaction with other people is based on their self interests and the same information we share by the media.
Recently I watched Ben Wattenbery on a PBS special called Heaven on Earth the Rise and Fall of Socialism. This was done in 2005. This is why so many people vote against their interests. Much of this is history but it is distorted presentation. We need to see it, understand it, and be prepared to counter it. Remember it is the smartest and most concerned who try to understand this way. Worse this is what is shown in schools.
Thatcher's win was a blue print for Reagan. It is my thesis that the international financial cabals are still manipulated and instigated by England. The US wears Britain's face for empire which has always been about soaking up the money not bringing civilization to the world.
After seeing this I read Ben Wattenberg's book written in 2008 and titled: Fighting Words: A tale of How Liberals Created Neo Conservatism. These are the people who are really dangerous. He was a speech writer for LBJ, personal friend of Bill Moyers, advisor to Humphrey and Scoop Jackson from 72 to 76. He is now a big fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who buy and supported PBS ThinkTank.
These people are complete sell outs. Think Edward G. Robinson as the slave overseer of his own people in the Ten Commandments. They are zealots. They never quit and they have extreme status anxiety which is recognized by those who buy them. Instead of cussing and fussing, you turn a big light on them and show what they do and how they do it.
First, the sellers of propaganda that works are true believers like Reagan and Wattenberg who worked with and for unions until they got a better deal. They believe in the rightness of their own ideas or what they have been persuaded to believe are their own ideas. They have an inherent need to be in opposition to proclaim their purity which is why they can't govern. They have combative temperaments, sweeping assertions, and grandiose ideas not based on any reality testing. They specifically work on splitting into factions and use friend against friend until there is total distrust everywhere.
In 1977, Britain was the leader as a socialist democracy. Transportation, hospitals, utilities, and security were essentially owned by the state. In 1977, there were 180,000 coal workers who represented generations of workers. One year after Thatcher there were 3,000 remaining. Britain was stagnating everywhere but the arts which were blooming. There is no mention of that. The whole problem as presented was the constant agitation of unions for higher and higher wages which they were getting. Keeping the rich from really getting richer. However, the real problem was that Britain lost the last of her empire in 1972 and could no longer soak up so much free and easy tax money. The only people to rob were the middle class.
The real rich who have their annual meetings all over the world have years and years of talking about their social experiments and how they have played out. They know when to play rope a dope too. So Britain passed a law capping wage and price control at 5%. Almost immediately, the Ford Motor Company of Great Britain agreed to a 16% wage increase. And all hell broke loose. Everyone, unions included, will go for broke if there is no leadership to put the breaks on. Immediately, the coal miners went on strike, transportation became sporadic, and one of the worse---grave diggers let the bodies pill up. Three months before the elections labor led by 2%. Three months later Thatcher won by 20%.
Remember the often quoted: Mussolini came to power because he made the trains run on time.
Gray Davis lost an election because he could not reign in the utility companies that were deregulated under Wilson with no provision for competing companies or evidence there would be competing companies.
Seeing how the common people of Britain cut their own throats and then made up their mind to live with it, the plan is in front of our face. Just like the British did not want to hear about the costs and problems of no longer having an exploited empire, the US people did not want to be talked to about sustainability and paying the actual price of foreign oil consumption. They wanted to hear and got morning in America. Never again would politicians attempt to have a national discussion about the real issues.
Reagan broke PATCO with the American peoples consent. Hell, he had mine. Looking at this site, if the one things embedded in liberals as a whole is respect for the law and due process. PATCO broke the law by striking. It was known and explicit about the due process PATCO had access to.
It is hard for me to tell if PATCO just wanted more money or better working conditions. Now there is no question that it was understood that this was a highly responsible and stressful job. But these people were being paid in 1980 about 40,000 to start which was damn good money then. To get more they would have had to make their case to the American people which would have been a damn tough sell. I think they could have sold less time, more frequent breaks, and a lot of things that I can see that job needing. But they did not do that.
PATCO bet that there would be major catastrophes and the government would capitulate. Reagan bet that they would be able to slide by. Neither knew the truth of their position. It was like Los Alamos there was a 50/50 split on igniting the atmosphere and they did it anyway. The people have to get in touch with who leads in this country---huge egos.
Once PATCO went down in a bad way looking like exploiters every single union in the country was weakened. PATCO had leadership with no brakes.
America worked for as long as it did because we were a system of checks and balances. A long slow slog of deliberated identifying our strengths and unity has undermined all the psychological foundations of this country. You have to go back and examine all we know and don't know about how we got here in order to focus on identifying the problems to find solutions.
The unions were not innocent little lambs. They got out of control which is how they lost the support of most of the American people and that is a fact.
This is a beginning of a series on socialism actual history. Its strengths and failures. Wattenberg states that socialism has been tried across the world and put into practice the way it was imagined--democratically and democratically rejected. Thus, it is a done deal and no need for further discussion. He is wrong on all these points.