Are we heading to another sixties an error of change and progress and questioning and thinking in new ways or an error of war and strife and conformity to authoratarian leaders? The are some many paralells in the last 10 years or so to both American Society in the 1950's as well as to America in the late 20's and 1930s. ....
This is a personal theory of mine based on my interest in history and the patterns that tend to repeat -especially when people forget to learn from the lessons of the past.
Here is my theory in a very small nutshel - could go on for hours about this topic - so fascinating!
In the 1930s you had a period of both unparalleled artistic freedom and repression, you had prohibition and the flowering of Jazz - you had tremendous wealth and great "unseen" poverty, You had artists and writers in the vanguard of creativity, opening new ways of writing, making music, art, theater etc. The Bertold Brechts, Kurt Weils, Zora Neale Hurston, Frieda Kahlo and so many more to extensive to list and at the same time you have the parallel growth of fascism - which Mussoulini also thought of calling Corporatism.
Another parallet was people being encouraged to borrow funds to invest in the stock market - just like Americans today are being encouraged to live more and more on credit just as the borrow to invest harmed the "little" people the most so does our increasing depedance on credit mainly designed to help people keep up with the Jones, and the new Bankruptcy legislation which will have effectof turning many Americans to no more than indentured servents to the credit card companies. We truly need to reevaluate our priorites as it seems things have taken a place a value over human life and diginity.
In addition in the thirities you had the Hitlers, Francos and Mussoulinis begining their unholy alliances with corporate entities in their respective countries and abroad. This is seen later in the continuing cover support and profiteering by American corporations during the war. (Prescott Bush being one of the profiteers).
So in summary, you had a time of seemingly unparalled artistic freedom - yet the rights of the average person were slipping away - there was unbridled greed and avarice on the part of the wealthy and the poor were slipping further down the rung and becoming poorer while the rich did not seem to care.You had, after the stock market collapse and start of the great depression - the Hoovervilles, where the displaced people, many from natural disasters such as the drought in the midwest know as Dust Bowl, went to seek a subsistence living - this parallels greatly to what we are seeing from Katrina - however today we have more ways of getting this information out so its harder for the powers that be to get away with this.
As to the parallels to the 1950s these are to the last 10 plus years or more and especially America in a post 9/11 became a place of extreme conformity - where independent thinking became unwelcome and questioning of authority became cause to call one unpatriotic. Where we according to Brittany Spears, were supposed to accept whatever Bush said just because he was the "leader". I have been reading a fascinating book by Dr. Wayne Dyer written in 1980 that I find very prescient. He writes in his book "The Sky's The Limit" about "False Masters" or "authoritarians"
"In fact, totalitarianism is not possible without enough authoritarians in the population to form sufficient binding ties ("authoritarian-submissiveness chains") of domination from a central political ruler (or rulers) to the people to allow the ruler{s) to govem the nation. In the case of classical political totalitarianism, as represented in modem times by fascistic dictatorships and in ancient times by . absolute monarchies, the totalitarian ruler claims to be the representative .or even the incarnation of some god or "national spirit" greater than himself. Whether or not totalitarian rulers believe their own myths, the idea that the human(s) whom authoritarians take as their Great Unquestioned Authorities are themselves representative of something far greater than "mere humans" is intrinsically appealing to authoritarians. Being fully human is not enough for them; the "disorganization" of not having a central authority and a clear place for everyone in a social hierarchy is upsetting, while to believe that you are linked to being "superhuman" or "immortal" in some small way because of your relative closeness to the Central Authority is comforting. In modem times and in our culture, superpatriotism has been both a dominant trait of individuals who rate high on other scales of authoritarian characteristics and, I believe, the bridge for increasing numbers of people from individual authoritarianism to political totalitarianism. As such, superpatrotism may be the greatest threat to our freedom we will face in coming years. ." The Skys The Limit page 94-95 |
And if this does not describe Bush and his cronies and the die hard Bush supporters to the tee. Remeber all this was written in 1980!
"The would-be despot can as easily deify himself as the incarnation of democracy, of the national interest or national defense, as he can pretend that he is the offspring of the Sun God. But nowadays you find that most "arch-authoritarians" (those who rate highest on all authoritarian scales in the most areas of their lives) tend to be the strongest believers in "My country right or wrong" -the essence of superpatriotism. Even though this concept is dangerous, and has led many people to their deaths fighting unjust wars in countries around the world since the beginning of time, the authoritarian who sees no room for questioning the authority of the government (especially in times of "national crisis") will label anyone who disagrees with the government as subversive and unpatriotic, against or not caring about his country! People who challenge authority by exercising their constitutional rights to demonstrate in public-students who march on Washington to protest wars or drafts, women who want equal rights, minorities who "don't know their place" -are never credited with caring enough about their country to get invoved and perhaps take some risks to try to make it better. To authoritarians, any attempt to change the country is an attempt to destroy it, and a citizen's duty is to obey the authority figures, without ever asking whether they are lying, stealing, trampling on people's rights or otherwise abusing their positions. One simply never challenges people in "higher positions," not because they don't sometimes need to be challenged if they are to do their jobs properly, but because it is not within authoritarians' "programs" to break away from their conformism and submissive internal circuitry." The Skys The Limit page 95 |
The parallells also extend to the near paranoid fear of a external enemy used to garner control and take away rights at home - in the 1950s this fear was of the spread of Communism and today it is of terrorism, by Islamic fundamentalists, seemingly ingoring the more immediate and pressing threats to our rights from our own home grown Taliban like religous extremists.And programs like No Child Left behind are really designed to bring more conformity to our soceity note the inclustion of the Military's access to children in the program and the focus on standarized test which have never created an original thinker or a free thinker -ever!! This focus on how much the magical "THEY" hate our democracy and want to destroy it and buy focusing on this outside threat people willingly give up their rights. More from Dr. Dyer on this topic again from 1980.
The mistake most people have to make in order for a totalitarian society to overwhelm a democratic one is always to see threats of totaltarianlsm coming from outside-threats of having it imposed by some foreign power Or a coup by a "minority group." By a trick of authoritarian psychology which should be familiar by now, the arch-authoritarian will be the first to see threats he labels "totalitarian" everywhere but in himself, the first to exhibit patriotic (a type of ethnocentric) paranoia and point the finger at the Russians, the Cubans, the Chinese (before they became our allies), the Ayatollah or whoever else can conveniently be labeled "the greatest [or only] threat to our freedom at present." The way this can actually lead to the growth of totalitarianism from within should be evident. If the external threats are not real, or are exaggerated, which is a direct effect of paranoia, some people are going to start saying so. Authoritarians will then label them unpatriotic, subversive and so on. If there is enough authoritarianism in the society as a whole to discredit or suppress the criticism-which must mean the denial or erosion of the individual rights of the critics-then totalitarianism has taken a "great leap forward." ." The Skys The Limit page 97 |
He then gives the now parallel example of McCarthyism which to me is a parrellel to the witch hunt to the current paranoia of our time.
"This syndrome was clearly displayed in this country's closest brush with outright totalitarianism to date, the rise of McCarthyism in the 1950s. Senator Joe McCarthy's paranoia (which, as paranoia often does, included delusions of personal grandeur) led him to see Communist spies everywhere, and anyone who questioned his vicious attacks on innocent people of course immediately came under suspicion himself. People's constitutional rights were trampled right and left; their privacy was invaded; they were hauled before witch-hunt tribunals to be confronted by witnesses who lied or stretched the truth because they had been intimidated by the threat that they would be next if they didn't cooperate.. Innocent people, many good and great Americans, lost their jobs, were blacklisted from their professions, and McCarthy's personal power rose to frightening dimensions. Fortunately there came a day when the bubble burst. McCarthy's paranoia ran away with him. He started making charges so ludicrous against people so obviously above reproach that almost nobody could miss what was happening: someone was a Communist spy if and only if he challenged the personal power of Joe McCarthy. The brave people who had tried to challenge him all along were in principle vindicated when Congress censured him and the "reign of terror" subsided, although many of their lives had been irreparably damaged. McCarthyism would not have been possible if enough Americans had been slower to credit the threat of totalitarianism's being imposed on them from halfway around the world. and quicker to recognize signs of their blind submission to the call of superpatriotism and the domination of a man who pretended to embody it.." The Skys The Limit page 97 |
Theres more amazingly timely comments that could apply to the quagmire in Iraq
"For a nation that is highly authoritarian to begin with, it may be sufficient to run the government off, seize "the palace" -the capital-and convince enough of the previous authority-hierarchy to collaborate. But for a nation short on built-in authoritarian-submissiveness chains, a would-be conquerer must expect massive resistance: general strikes, riots, industrial sabotage, incessant attacks on the "occupation troops," and generally a conquest that is more trouble than it's worth." The Skys The Limit page 98 |
Dr Dyers answer to this is one I agree with whole heartidly -that any change we wish to see in the world we first must achieve inside ourselves and in how we approach and deal with the world. To be the change you want to see in the world.
"What other nation could possibly govern this one if we all simply refused to be governed by anyone but ourselves? The aat answer is "none," and if we keep it that way and each of us resolves to eliminate authoritarianism from his own thinking and behavior, to adopt the philosophy that the sky's the limit on the freedom we can all share, we will be doing far more to assure our nation"l security and independence than we can ever do by building bigger and better bombs. If we can set an example for the world of the heights that a democratic nation dedicated to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" can attain, if we really show other peoples how it can be done (while learning all we can from the attempts of other nations to do the same thing), we will be doing far more for world peace and prosperity than we can ever do by sending troops anywhere. But to do this we must not lapse into inertia by assuming, as the authoritarian superpatriot does, that the United States of America
." The Skys The Limit page 98-99 |
Both time had parrallels to our time and both had extremely different response and outcomes - the 30s led in to the 40s a time of great suffrering , toltalitrianism, blind hatred and human cruelty - the 1950s led to a time of strife yes but also a time of great questioning .. questioning of values and policies - a time of growth and change - a time when people stood up and questioned authority - the civil rights movement - the birth and growth of the woman's movement- gay liberation - rights for Native Americans just to name a few.
It's now up to use which directions we are going to take - whether we will continue to allow Bush and his corporate lackeys to get more and more control over us or we decide to reclaim our country as BY THE PEOPLE , FOR THE PEOPLE not by the corporations for the coroporation. We are at our crossroads - and need to decide will we sit back and accept the futures the corporations want us to have or will we take action and make change.
I always wondered when I was growing up if I had been around in the sixties which path would I have taken - stay silent - confrim and live the basest notion of the American dream which is how much stuff can I aquire while on this planet - or would I take a stand against the huriicane like forces of conformity and stand up for my values - I choose to stand up - what about you?