Anarcho What???

Below is my response to an organic farmer friend who responded to the last blog post here with the statement that our country is a Republic, not a Democracy.  [I did some minor editing...nothing important.]
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Precisely.  Too bad 99.99% of politicians keep saying it's a democracy, trying to deceive people...here & abroad.  Telling people that in America every vote counts.  It's plain that's not true. 

I don't know why folks in CA even vote:  Trump was declared the winner long before all the CA votes were counted... fully one-third of those votes had not been counted when the Don was announced as winner... and there were uncounted votes in many other States as well.  Every vote counts, my ass.  Politics & politicians are despicable.  Now ask me what I really think.    [It's a rhetorical statement:]

Despite the propaganda to the contrary regarding Anarchism, what would be better is Anarcho-Syndicalism---an organizational form of direct democracy... and have it go all the way up to the national gov't level.  Then every vote would count.  Of course, we'll never see that in our lifetime.  [Oligarchs would be the big losers, even though property rights still could be protected.]  The majority of Main Street Americans probably don't even know what Anarchism really is; I'm not criticizing them, just stating a fact.  All they know is the propaganda saying it's chaos & destruction.  Not true at all.

Apparently, we'd rather stick with the "Meritocracy" concept.  When that term first was coined, it was in a negative, disparaging way... as it should be.  It bespeaks elitism loud and clear.  At that time, it meant not only selection of rulers based on merit, but also based on membership in the aristocratic class.

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Not only my opinion.  Be Well

USA Democracy, State-Corporate Complex, & Bernays Propaganda [and a Note on Chris Hayes]

First, a note on my previous post and Chris Hayes.  After viewing about an hour's worth of MSNBC Chris Hayes clips on YouTube, I've concluded that Mr. Hayes appears to have two different personas.  When he's a guest on Democracy Now and other non-corporate venues, talking about Twilight of the Elites, his message hits the mark & he definitely has credibility.  On his own show on the prostitute corporate medium MSNBC, he's mostly an apologist for Obama...and fails to recognize (or perhaps conceals the recognition) that Obama is part of the Meritocracy that he deplores so in his book.  That's my take on it, anyway.
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Let's begin by recognizing the unfortunate fact that the USA is no longer a Constitutional Republic.  About half of everything that the Fed Gov't (at the highest levels) does is unquestionably unconstitutional.  In large part, both Democrats and Republicans ignore the Constitution and instead pass laws or issue Executive Orders that they believe trump the Supreme Law of the Land.  Once in a blue moon, to their credit, they do get things right.  For example, just recently a Congressional Panel determined that the NSA's bulk collection of data is illegal.  That's rare.  Of course, don't look for anything significant to be done about that finding.

Despite the propaganda from the Gov't and Corporate Media, and despite the belief of most of our population, let's also recognize that neither is our form of gov't a Democracy...at least, not a genuine Democracy.

Not long after WW I, Walter Lippmann, writing about politics in America, described the general public as "ignorant, meddlesome outsiders" who should only be "spectators" in the political process and leave such matters to the ones who know what they're doing...in other words, the smart, informed people...the Meritocracy.  Lippmann was part of the intelligentsia at the time; he was known as the "Dean of American Journalism"...and was a so-called "Progressive".  So much for American style Democracy, at least, from his point of view (which was quite influential).

In 1928, Edward Bernays found a publisher for his book, Propaganda: Molding the Public Mind.  In it, he made the case that propaganda is essential to the successful functioning of any Democracy.  He said that the true rulers of the country are the ones who control the propaganda; the elites bought the proposition lock, stock, & barrel.  Bernays later was recognized as the Founder of the Public Relations industry.  His type of propaganda played a major role in our Govt's overthrow (in the '50s) of the democratically elected President of Guatemala.

The State-Corporate Complex flourished in the '50s and '60s...and beyond.  Ike warned us about it, but We the People pretty much ignored his warning.  The molding of the public mind was in full swing by then, with one of the promotions being that we lived in a "Democracy".  The elites' version of democracy is this:  every two years or so, the "ignorant, meddlesome outsiders", aka, the "spectators" truck on over to a designated site and pull one of two levers...and then go home.  Each lever represents a candidate chosen, groomed, and financed by the Meritocracy...and sold to the public via Edward Bernays style propaganda.  The public doesn't really know where either candidate stands politically...because all info given to the public is based on polls, studies, & focus groups that determine just what it is that the public wants to hear.  Adjustments are made for the phony differences between the two candidates.

By the '80s, voters weren't even really "spectators" anymore...because the Reagan and Thatcher administrations became private and secretive.  How many of you know about the Reagan-Thatcher concoction known as the "Washington Consensus"...it had a major impact on the world.  It promoted Neoliberalism around the globe, much to the dismay of most third world countries.  Not too many folks "spectated" that one.

By the '90s, transnational corporations (via institutions such as the GATT, WTO, IMF, and World Bank---that are completely secretive & absolutist--- as well as so-called "Free Trade Agreements") were creating a completely non-democratic, worldwide economic structure whose rules trumped U.S. laws.  That's continuing on steroids today.  So much for American style Democracy.

During all of this time, right through to the present, the American public (and the world public) is fed a steady diet of propaganda which basically and simply says, this is all good for you...and it will "create jobs".  What a deceit and a scam.

So, what's to be done about it?  Well, the first step is to stop drinking the Propaganda Kool Aid.  I'll say it 'til I'm blue in the face.  :)

Just my opinion.

The Failure of the Meritocracy: Twilight of the Elites

Chris Hayes has it exactly right.  He's an Editor-at-Large for The Nation, (at least he was in 2012) and has a book out titled, Twilight of the Elites: America after the Meritocracy.  What I refer to as the Corporatocracy (from John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man) or the Oligarchy, Mr. Hayes calls the Meritocracy.  It's the same kettle of rotting fish.

The word "meritocracy" was coined by a British social critic in the 1950s.  It was used in a satirical way to describe how the elites rig the game and make rules in their favor.  Basically, the whole thing boils down to this:
1. in the ethereal atmosphere of the elitist world, the most valuable characteristic of Humankind is high intelligence;
2. the most valuable use of that intelligence is deemed to be the making of vast sums of money;
3. other considerations, such as a social conscience, egalitarianism, democracy, compassion, and the like are deemed to be unimportant...or even hindrances.

Though the Brit who coined the term meant it in the vein of 1984, or Animal Farm, or Brave New World (in other words, dystopian societies), elites have (supposedly by mistake) adopted the concept as a model for society.  As a result, they have come to view themselves---because most of them are super-intelligent---as a class apart, superior to the Average Jane or Joe in every way.  They also have developed a strong sense of solidarity within their Class because they are, in their minds, vastly superior to the "little people".  [I was stunned when the International Head of BP, in a national TV news interview, referred to the Gulf residents as the "small people".  The man reeked of condescension...and I think, knew it.]

This all has resulted in a situation in which the elites, who are great Institutionalists, wind up protecting the people in the institution (public or private) rather than the people whom the institution serves...the overwhelming majority of any population.  Those of us in the lower socio-economic classes are viewed as Insurrectionists, and there is little or no concern for our well-being.  Example:  the cover-up (or ignoring) of the Sandusky affair at Penn State by the hierarchy of that institution.  Example:  the opposition to Cesar Chavez when he protested the lack of protection for farmworkers from pesticides, back when pesticides were barely regulated.

Those at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder have experienced the negative effects of the Meritocracy for decades and decades.  What's different now is that the Upper Middle Class, since about the late 1990s or 2000, also has been experiencing those negative effects...especially economically, but also socially.  Wages/salaries have largely stagnated, people have to work longer in order to survive retirement in anything resembling a comfortable fashion, economic "bubbles" often have negatively impacted retirement funds, the National Security State is becoming more and more demanding and intrusive, wealth is being transferred from the Middle Class to the upper one percent at a truly astounding rate, and on & on.

The Sea Change in all this, the thing that has the elites very concerned, is the fact that the Upper Middle Class (and even many of those at the bottom of the ladder) is demonstrating that it will not put up with business-as-usual.  Sometimes actively, sometimes passively, they are expressing their extreme displeasure.  Faith in institutions of all kinds is in a free-fall decline...and most of those institutions are controlled by elites. 

The Meritocracy/Oligarchy knows that something bad for them definitely is in the wind.  Because they're mostly short-term-gain thinkers, I predict that in the not-so-distant future we'll have more economic bubbles and more "too big to fail" bailouts, or something even weirder, enabling the upper crust to scam even more billions.  Financial "derivatives" may be instrumental in that scenario...again.  I hope I'm wrong.

Partly just my opinion.