From an article at Salon (h/t) titled: “Let’s nationalize Fox News: Imagining a very different media.”
Bye, Rush! If corporate media disappeared, and the people had their voice heard, here’s what it might look like..
Author Frank Herbert:
One of the things I noticed as a reporter — I was a journalist longer than I’ve been on this side of the table — is that in all the marching in the streets in the ’60s, the people who were shouting “Power to the People” didn’t mean power to the people. They meant “power to me and I’ll tell the people what to do.” When you questioned them it was confirmed at every turn.
Marxists of all shades always mask their true political intent with motherhood sounding phrases.
In the end a Marxist is nothing more than a self-serving greedy capitalist that wants all his competition removed.
What would it look like? It would look like East Germany in the 1990s, right after the wall came down.
It would look like Detroit.
It would look like North Korea.
These three places all kind of look the same. Depressed, oppressed and massively unsafe to be in.
The article reads like something out of the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Workers reporting an accident on a sheet metal press is national news.
100 million dead and these people are still puking up Stalin’s propaganda.
The bureaucracy cannot be defeated easily. When a politician scraps with the bureaucrats suddenly scandalous leaks to the media start. Remember the first 5 years of Harper’s reign? There was a scandal every week, none of which had traction despite the best efforts of the bureaucrats and media. Since Harper has took so much heat, I am still amazed that payback has not come. If he wins next election, maybe CBC could go. After all, he isn’t going to win one after that.
Herbert was right. In the late ’60s, early ’70s, there was an immense amount of rubbish about a union between students and organized labour. Born in the minds of students and various idiots like Herbert Marcuse, the idea was that the unions would supply the organization and muscle, and the students would be the brains and guiding light of the revolution. You can probably guess what most hard-headed union organizers thought about all this. There were still a few demented Politics proffs at Queens preaching this nonsense in the late ’70s.
human motivation so misunderstood!!!!
Humans so misunderstood. FTFY.
The high esteem socialists place on unions tells me they’ve never worked under one. Yes, historically there are benefits that unions gained for workers in blue-collar, labor intensive, dangerous occupations. For instance, old coal mines were hellholes and the owners did exploit the workers.
But now unions exploit the workers. Union dues and compulsory membership are the most obvious. Seniority over merit is another. Bankrupting companies with unsustainable wages and benefits. The other one that often slips under the radar is worker satisfaction. It is not a coincidence that workplaces with the lowest morale are also heavily unionized – public service is a good example. The tactics used by union leadership to keep members at war with management is blatantly manipulative. A society based on this model will be just as much a hellhole as the old coal mines.
actually Garth, the article does a great job at identifying the failures of “modern” democracies, but falls flat as to addressing these failures. When taking my I.E. coarse there was an excellent example of this very failure when a I.E. team did a study of work place “environment” as to effecting production. They failed to understand that workers like to be recognized as more than pay-roll numbers. Motivation is a large component of industrial success, and by extension, profit.
LC, probably the single biggest thing is unions getting involved in political or social causes not in the interests of their members. For decades, Canadian Labour Congress and Ontario Labour Congress have been sharing antinuclear leanings. And just think how much Ontario steel goes into a nuclear plant. One helluva lot more than goes into a gas-fired CTU. Do union members really imagine they’re getting the best bang for their buck shovelling money into the hands of the Dippers? When the Dippers today oppose just about every major industrial development?
Union leadership has in many ways become the enemy of blue collar workers. Energy, manufacturing and natural resource extraction are the bread and butter of such workers. I’d like to think tradesman and applied science staff “get” this. IMO, unions should have to get permission to use union dues for political purposes.
And when a political movement that claims to serve a disadvantaged class by successfully eliminating the disadvantages inflicted on its constituency will eliminate the reason for its own existence.
Herbert is describing also what Von Mises called the “Fuhrer Concept” in his essay, “Why Socialism Always Fails”. In it, he explains that socialism works only to the extent that you agree with the leader (Fuhrer) IOW, as long as it’s the other guy that’s getting screwed. Such societies evolve into a shrunken ruling class (Fuhrer and cronies) over a privileged bureaucrat class ruling an enlarged and unmotivated slave class. Stability is only as effective as the brute force and terror of such regimes. Failure to produce basic food and other essentials is masked with subsequent internal revolution, gulags, mass murder, and foreign conquest.
And this, is what the institutional left thinks and teaches in schools (you all pay for) that they can do differently “next time”.
Thank you EBD! Bringing this thread to our attention reminds one of the results of former Chinese Chairman Mao’s cultural revolution. After all was protested; the scapegoats ostracized, or exiled, or killed; the “gang of four” executed; all returned to normal in China.
The upper echelons of the Bureaucracy who still retained control of the Army quietly reemerged and the same power structure was re-established. The firmly entrenched bureaucracy whether it is the Asian or European model or wha ever label is used for a former colonizer the entrenched vested interests will continue to pass their sinecure from generation to generation.
It is only when a truly honest representative such as P.M. Harper rises to the top during a dramatic recognition by the educated populace a realignment of expectations can happen. This too requires the prerequisite of the philosophic recognition of the status of State acceptability possible when bureaucratic corruption reaches the level of the uninformed society.
The greatest example of this is the United States of America. A steady reinforcement of the education of the electorate through trial and error has sufficiently maintained effective individuals in the elected leadership of this country. This cannot be set aside as easily as one or a series of leadership figureheads assumes. The evolution of society remains intractable.
At the risk of bringing the opportunity for trolls and naysayers to grab hold; I will try to comment on the evolution of the extended community and the rule of law from my perspective.
The continuation of evolution beyond a tribal community was originally conceived by succeeding neo-lithic/bronze/iron expansionary empires in the area now described as the middle-east. Then evolving to establish with the words of the Jewish/Christian cultures both portability of individual rights and the necessary written documentation.
Then ongoing and evolving changes through the demos of Greece/Roma through the Magna Charta; the Treaty of Westphalia; the original Civil War and Long Parliament of Britain; the Massachusetts Charter and the rapid development of documents establishing the American Constitution has established a level of literacy in the world well beyond a controllable countervailing force. This will not be easily set aside.
The seeding of literacy and knowledge to as little as one percent of the population developed the original concepts for evolutionary change. The now under stress concepts which evolution has brought forward through both physical and cognitive capabilities will not be lost.
Rather, at the near end of my fortunate time of birth, I am able to observe/feel there is a reawakening in the need to reduce both the authority and number of functionaries in the present mechanical/electrical enhanced societies. Their reach for control of the individual through communications is available. BUT! the people who would so use it remain in a culture of over riding ignorance.
They are not capable grasping the concept of an evolving and feminizing primate cultures is to be comfortable in our individual tree houses. The desire for overreach will upset this. There will be both intellectual and physical reactions when the comfort level of our still evolving tribal community culture becomes breached. Cheers;
“I the People”
A most excellent allusion to the mindset of the Alinsky imperialist and state chief narcissist who now makes royal edicts from the oval office – assuming if he wants it the people want it – delusion on a grand scale – then again narcissism is a psycho-neurotic complex. Why do we make workers in charge of equipment or cops or army staff take psychological evaluation tests before we allow them on the job – If we did this with those seeking political office there would be no sitting congress or POTUS this term.
Those people who proclaim that “democracy isn’t working” usually mean “there must be something wrong with the system if my favourite party doesn’t win”.
Their definition of “democracy” is where everything goes their way — that is, a totalitarian state with themselves in control.
AJP Taylor said the same thing about the 1848 revolutions and later nineteenth century attempts. University students led by their professors failed to ignite working class sparks. The then trade unions largely opposed revolutionary (including Marxist) ideas because revolutionary rhetoric did not get pay raises.
The worst possible unions are government worker unions. They should be abolished.
…in all the marching in the streets in the ’60s, the people who were shouting “Power to the People” didn’t mean power to the people. They meant “power to me and I’ll tell the people what to do.”
In 1967, I set out with three friends for a “March on Washington” in opposition to the war in Viet-Nam. We listened on the radio to representatives of the various groups who were cooperating to stage the March and began to come to the same conclusion as Frank Herbert. It also dawned on us that almost all of the leaders of the so-called “New Left” with whom we went to school were Establishment children engaged in a temporary rebellion against their parents. After about 100 miles on US Highway 40, we turned around, had lunch at a Burger King, and left the Left forever.
Thank you for having the intelligence and common sense to realize that you were about to be used. Oh, and do consider that Stalin’s heirs were behind this anti-war effort in the US.
Just as an aside, in a strictly military sense, the US fought that war totally in the wrong way, as did the French, by using up to a million troops, coca-cola, Hershey bars, etc. The British defeated the same sort of insurgency in Malaysia with a small number of commando type troops using the same tactics as the insurgents.
It seems generals have to relearn General Braddock’s 1755 lessons every generation.