The Shock Doctrine is simultaneously the most prescient political book in recent memory and a complete anathema to the corporate media. But, while this book details the old history (Chile, Russia, etc.), it was written before the naked assault on a first world country - our country.
The game is played slightly differently in the first world. The reason for that is that the U.S. military-intelligence-FIRE-prison-entertainment complex is a valuable brand only so long as the elites can pretend that it represents a democracy. So, they have to step carefully. And, they do that by manufacturing "emergencies" and "crises" that "momentarily" require extraordinary measures. What they don't mention is that those extraordinary measures are the destruction of our rights and the theft our our assets.
You would have to be comatose to miss diary after diary about the naked class warfare in this country, and in the other first world victims of the Great Heist of 2008 - the PIIGS countries of Europe. So, nothing I say here is news. But, what I hope to do is to create more language, like "Shock Doctrine", to quickly summarize our situation.
The meme of corporate colonialism is out there. We have movies like Avatar and science fiction books by major authors, like Fallen Dragon and Moon Flower. Anyone who is not zombified by corporate media or theocratic lobotomy knows what is going on. They are coming for the middle class because we are all that stands in the way of corporate neofeudalism - with CEOs playing the aristos and the rest of us playing serfs. Frederick Hayek had it completely wrong about who was going to return us to serfdom. But, that also isn't news.
You might ask, how is this possible in a "democracy" when poll after poll shows these assaults on our rights are landslide-level unpopular? Well, as I said, its all about extraordinarily rendering the victims (and/or their rights) to some shithole that doesn't recognize their rights. For example, the Patriot Act sent a lot of our civil rights to be butt-fucked in Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan in the name of a terrorist "emergency" that has resulted, over ten years, in precisely one deranged shoe bomber, one pathetic underwear bomber, and several sets of entrapped, patsies to pad the DoJ's resume. We have had more casualties from heavily-armed, Beck-inspired, right wing whackos, like Jared Loughner.
The rendition of our rights is nothing new. It happened all the times in the colonies of imperial powers, when the Viceroy overruled the local legislature for the good of the empire. (And it's still ongoing - remember the Queen dismissing the Canadian Parliament a few years ago?) The corporate assault on the middle class is nothing more than internal colonialism - the paternalistic notion that the elites have more rights than the natives. In this recycled, rancid narrative, the unions and all the other "others" of our society play the role of the native, the dark-skinned threat to Christian Civilization (as Gandhi said, such a thing would be nice to see).
As in the British Empire, our elites are besotted with Christian-ist (i.e., fundamentalist) zeal. Case in point, Scott Walker - son of a minister, totally convinced of his right to rule. He doesn't care that this is a democracy. Neither does Gov. Mark Sanford, a C-street member. Neither do any of the fundamentalist assholes turning the military into a Christianist cult. In their fever dreams, scientists, secularists, anyone who doesn't hold their medieval and misogynist worldview is a target for rendition. The weekly perp walk of Christianist adulterers, closeted homosexuals, drug addicts, child molesters, and embezzlers has no impact on their zeal, because faith means never having to admit you are dumb as a box of rocks. But, scarily, the takeover of our military by Christian-ist lunatics continues unabated. Now, in a secular country, the military embraces "spiritual fitness" - which factually seems to equate to Christianism and theocratic zampolits to enforce it.
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Here is how rendition of rights is accomplished. The basic method is "strategic barbarism", where barbarism is the absence of civilization, of the rule of law, precedent, and tradition. It is the political equivalent of strategic bombing - a campaign to "surgically" destroy the means of the middle class to fight back. It is just one arm of the "drown it in a bathtub strategy". All of this violent speech and action follows from the GOP embrace of total war as a legitimate political tactic, which is in itself barbarism.
When the elites want to take something from the serfs, they simply declare the legal equivalent of a free fire zone around the object they covet or the group they want to smash. For example, ACORN was stripped of its funding in what amounted to a kangaroo court. The fact that the charges were baseless (i.e., illegal) made no difference, because the GOP created a legal free-fire zone targeting ACORN. There were no "rules of engagement" (i.e., no due process); it was simply "kill them all". Barbarbism.
Strategic barbarism is a sword with two edges. The other edge is the refusal to enforce the law against obviously criminal behavior. Hence, we refuse to prosecute anyone involved in the Great Heist of 2008. When even the hard-right SCOTUS says to give Gitmo inmates a real trial, it just somehow never happens. Laws? We don't need no steenkin' laws.
In Wisconsin, the barbarism is scarier than the union-busting. Walker has ignored court orders, signaled he will give away state property to the Koch Brothers, provoked the crisis by massive giveaways (i.e., theft) of taxpayer dollars to the rich, and appointed well-heeled cronies to high positions. The GOP leader of the Wisconsin Senate has treated his fellow Democratic Senators as if they were errant children, not co-equals. What is on display is barbarism. It is meant to frighten, to cow, to confuse honest citizens. It is, as another DKos diarist said, ruling instead of governing.
In Michigan, they are passing "emergency" legislation that will dismiss elected officials, disincorporate towns, and hand the wreckage over to corporate rulers:
Right now, Gov. Snyder is pushing a bill that would give himself, Gov. Snyder and his administration, the power to declare any town or school district to be in a financial emergency. If a town was declared by the governor and his administration to be in a financial emergency they would get to put somebody in charge of that town, and they want to give that emergency manager that they just put in charge of the town the power to, “reject, modify, or terminate any contracts that the town may have entered in to, including any collective bargaining agreements.”
The bill also has the power to suspend or dismiss elected officials, “This emergency person also gets the power under the bill to suspend or dismiss elected officials. Think about that for a second. Doesn’t matter who you voted for in Michigan. Doesn’t matter who you elected. Your elected local government can be dismissed at will. The emergency person sent in by the Rick Snyder administration could recommend that a school district be absorbed into another school district. That emergency person is also granted power specifically to disincorporate or dissolve entire city governments.”
Maddow said Michigan Republicans want to abolish entire towns, “What year was your town founded? Does it say so like on the town border as you drive into your town? Does it say what year your town was founded? What did your town’s founding fathers and founding mothers have to go through to incorporate your town? Republicans in Michigan want to be able to unilaterally abolish your town and disincorporate it. Regardless of what you as resident of that town think about it. You don’t even have the right to express an opinion about it through your locally elected officials who represent you, because the Republicans in Michigan say they reserve the right to dismiss your measly elected officials and to do what they want instead because they know best.”
Rachel Maddow on Michigan
As in Russia, they intend to privatize the governments (all levels) of the United States - right into their own bank accounts. Remember how insiders became oligarchs by grabbing cast-off Soviet property for nothing? Can you say "Koch Brothers Wisconsin Power Plant Ripoff" or "Michigan Emergency Manager Bonanza"? The Shock Doctrine applies; but only in the free fire zone of the moment. Our government is sort of like one of those pillar-of-the-community sociopaths with the secret room in his basement. The dirty work gets done extra-legally (in the room), while John Gacy goes on pretending that nothing is happening.
The best face that can be put on Obama's constant selling out to the GOP is that, like a weak Roman emperor, is attempting to bribe the barbarians into not sacking the city - yet. He is melting down the candlesticks of our secular civilization for the bribe money - because barbarians only want the gold, education is a worthless thing to them. But, when he runs out of bribe money...
The worst face is that, like Boris Yeltsin, he got into office by giving a speech, and once there he cashed out for all he could get.
The end goal here is the establishment of Corporate Feudalism. Historically, feudalism was the natural result of the complete collapse of Roman Civilization under the barbarian assault. It was a genuine, if awful outcome of an un-manipulated historical process. In the fall of the Roman Empire, the elites went down with the masses. Their country estates were as pillaged as the city of Rome. Historically, it took centuries for codified feudalism to emerge from the wreckage of empire
Our elites want to engineer the fall of our democratic civilization so that they get to keep their power. (Laws like Michigan's emergency decree are explicit in their tying of the destruction of representative government to the handover to corporate control.) They want to go from democracy to feudalism without missing a stock dividend. So, as I said earlier, all along the way, the pretense of civilized and legal behavior must be maintained. Hence, the various excuses for "strategic barbarism" in service of Corporate Neo-feudalism.
All of this agitprop doublespeak started with the lies that "its your money" and "government is the problem". I have no trouble decoding these canards. Just take the point of view of the rich elites. They don't want to pay any taxes at all. Taxes are for the little people. And, for them, government is what prevents them from being lords. But, we all know that, as Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. said, "taxes are the price of civilization".
So, I offer you these sound bites: "internal colonialism", "strategic barbarism", "legal free fire zone", "engineered feudalism", "taxes are the price of civilization". Its poor ammunition against what we are fighting, but its all I've got.