The Shock Doctrine
You might have read the piece in Salon the other day where John Dean laments the passing of the Republican Party as a positive, or, even, a non-damaging force in American life. The party he has known for forty years, and the party he says that his friends now know, is a hateful, entirely corrupt, and self-interested body composed of those who take revenge and those who fear having revenge taken upon them. Every current candidate for the presidency is "authoritarian" in an extreme and unAmerican way that Dean thinks would have in earlier decades been "corrected" by the political system, but the Republicans, according to Dean, have broken the political system precisely so that it won't correct them. Sounds like the financial markets, doesn't it?
Personally, I would have put things slightly differently. The Republican Party now seems to work like a gang, in which the most valued qualities in members are loyalty to the gang and the leader, obedience to authority, and violence toward outsiders. The gang is constantly having to prove its dominance, and so candidates for leadership vie with one another for the most tyrannical or violent rhetoric, rhetoric which simultaneously demonizes those who don't accept the authority of the gang and the leader and removes all rules and laws for the gang and the leader. No one is exempt from the wrath of the gang. In this case, the Republican party has now separated itself fairly clearly from the general American population, and as Americans support it less, they come to seem to the Republicans to be more and more the enemy. The far away enemy is one thing, in terms of threat (think Al Qaeda, Shiites, Sunnis) but the enemy close at hand is more threatening because their enmity is seen as a "betrayal."
I don't doubt Dean. I always thought that for a Republican, he had something of a conscience. What amazes me is that Republicans who are now exclaiming at what has happened to the Republican Party (and yes, I talked to my mother this morning) didn't see this coming. Everything, every value, that the Republicans have held up for my lifetime as desirable has been pointing us in this direction. As I've said before on the HuffPost, all of this is the necessary consequence of traditional Republican values, not an accidental byproduct. Or maybe I'll put it this way -- when you reject common humanity, value profits above people, practice sectarian religion, feel contempt for the choices of others, exalt wealth, conflate consumersim with citizenship, join exclusive clubs, daily practice unkindness rather than kindness, and develop theories, such as those of free market capitalism, that allow you to congratulate yourself morally for selfishness and short-sightedness, then being a gang member is in your future.
Speaking of Free Market Capitalism, John Dean should start reading Naomi Klein's new book, The Shock Doctrine, which is being published next week, simultaneously in the US and in Britain. As Karl Marx pointed out, history and politics are not only psychological, they are also material. This week, the Guardian is running not only four excerpts from Klein's book, but also several commentaries both disagreeing and agreeing with her thesis. Her thesis is this (and if I am slightly inaccurate, blame me, not Naomi): In the fifties and sixties in the US, at least two lines of thought converged. One was about how to change people's minds without leaving marks and the other was about what was the best way of organizing a given economy. The first grew out of experiments in psychological torture (whoops, I mean electrocshock therapy) run by Ewen Cameron in the late 1940s. The theory was that patients could be rid of mental illnesses by "regressing" them to an infantile state, attaining a "clean slate" upon which new patterns of behavior and thought would be etched. Cameron used both electroshock and powerful drugs to attain his clean slate, having no actual knowledge of the chemistry of the brain or how it works -- in other words, he was operating in accordance with a metaphor. The result of Cameron's experiments, for the patients, was often considerable loss of short term and even long term memory and a subsequent lifelong feeling of "blankness" on the part of the patients (apparently, later refinements of electroshock techniques have mitigated these effects). In the 1950s, the CIA redirected these techniques toward torture of political opponents, allegedly to find out information, but really to test the techniques themselves (hello, Jose Padilla!).
At the same time, Milton Friedman was coming up with the idea that if only an economy could be purified of any kind of restraints on the free market (for example labor unions or socialized medicine or history), then the free market would be able to perfectly gauge the value of any type of good or service, and therefore an economy would balance itself, and, most importantly, inflation would be controlled (also, as you can see, a metaphor, or, perhaps, an extended analogy).
According to Klein, it soon became apparent that all powerful shocks to a system had a similar effect, whether the system was a human body or a national body, and this was to temporarily disable the system's defenses. The US government, the CIA, and the free market economists began to act on this insight, to collude in larger experiments. The first of these was the right wing coup, in Chile, led by Augusto Pinochet, in 1973. At the time, Chile had a functioning leftish government and economy, and the voters had already rejected Friedman's pure free market troika: privatization of government functions, an end to social spending, and deregulation.The new economy was dependent upon outside investors and highly profitable to them -- let's call that the allure of globalization. Pinochet set about instilling terror in the population (that's the shock therapy) using death squads, exemplary killings, and torture. Taking advantage of this, the economists installed the new free market way of doing things within days of the coup. But Friedman's ideas did not work -- inflation rose. In the eighties, the Chilean government tried again, this time by inducing a profound economic crash -- essentially impoverishing the populace in order to bring them to heel. Ultimately, the Chilean "miracle" (Friedman's term) did nothing for the population, but it did enrich the top ten per cent and put 45% below the poverty line. It turns out that as far as the economists were concerned, this was a good thing.
The Shock Doctrine traces what the US, the CIA, the economists, the Neocons, and the multinational corporations learned from the Chilean experiment and subsequent ones (Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Poland, Russia, China, England) and finally makes its way to Iraq (this is a 590 page book, and the print is small). Essentially, they learned that a small economy is easier to "regress" than a large one, that the shock has to be brutal, and that the free market doesn't work as Friedman said it would (automatically assigning appropriate value), but that it sure does make a few people rich beyond their wildest dreams, and that these people were Friedman's (and his students') benefactors and paymasters. They also learned to lie lie lie in order to sell what amounts to a program of inhuman greed to voters who have other needs, wishes, and ideas.
For our purposes, the more interesting section of Klein's book is about Iraq, where she traveled in the first year after the invasion, and this section forms part of her series of posts at the Guardian. She believes that the Iraq War was intended to not only steal Iraqi oil, but also to impose a radical free market on an unwilling populace, and that that was what was behind the installation of Bremer as the capo of Iraqi reconstruction. She believes that, thanks to the resistance of the Iraqis and their deep resentment at being used and exploited by the Americans, this effort has failed. However, a parallel effort, to shock the US economy into absolute deregulation, privatization, and an end to social spending, has been and is succeeding. What this amounts to is the fleecing of the American taxpayer in order to enrich the war making industries. The byproduct, as in Chile, is the gutting of the rule of law and the American political system as we have known it. Why did Bush and Cheney go to war? Well, where do they get their fortunes? The Shock Doctrine works perfectly for them. As for that 45% below the poverty line, well, once the globalizing manufacturers exported the well-paying US jobs, then the globalizing financiers moved in and sold the newly impoverished working class a few sub-prime mortgages guaranteed to take whatever else they had. Then the financiers screamed for a bailout, and Bernanke gave it to them. The free market, you might say, is working perfectly now, at least according to its shock principles.
So, John Dean, stop wondering what happened to your fellow Republicans. They embarked, knowingly in many cases, unknowingly in some cases, with utter indifference in still other cases, upon the destruction of the common good. They began doing this in the Cold War and kept up with it when it turned out to benefit them economically. Some of them did this because they were fearful and aggressive by nature, and hurting those outside their own families and clubs felt good, or reassuring. Some did it for money. Some did it for "patriotism." Some did it for religion and some did it out of pure cussedness, but they did it, and they did it over time.
Klein ends her book on a hopeful note -- in many places such as Chile and Lebanon, the people have learned from their experiences -- they are cannier and more resistant to the shocks administered to them by Bushco and their own ruling classes. Having endured "Disaster Capitalism" for several decades, they understand their own self-interests better and aren't as easy to fool. I would like to be as hopeful. The question, as always, with Bush and Cheney, is how far are they willing to go? And, is anyone willing to stop them? From John Dean's article, it doesn't sound as though it is going to be the Republicans.
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There's really only one final step for BushCo to take, which is declaring martial law in the US. From BuzzFlash.net today: "Bush Extends His 'National Emergency' Powers Another Year!"
"Because the terrorist threat continues, the national emergency declared on September 14, 2001, last extended on September 5, 2006, the powers and authorities adopted to deal with [the 2001 emergency] must continue in effect beyond September 14, 2007. Therefore, I am continuing in effect for an additional year the national emergency." http://www.buzzflash.net/story.php?id=24833
So, about this time next year, we can all sit down, gather 'round, and listen to and watch Our Gearless Leader's (s') martial law declaration to the American people. If we don't remove these mutants from office, this is what we have to look forward to.
I only read the first half, sorry. But I loved the way you framed Republican behavior into gang-like activity, along with their motivations. Definitely operating on base levels.
"The question, as always, with Bush and Cheney, is how far are they willing to go? And, is anyone willing to stop them? "
This should be the theme of every candidate's campaign. We need to stop them.
As always, great post.
Jane Smiley is back... Halleluyah!!!!
==
I here that! Hooray! Go Jane! :)
We haven't had Free Market capitalism for a long time. This short film, which uses the same shock propaganda techniques as Fox News, is not only very poorly researched but is outright false.
The goal of making Free Market Capitalism out to be the devil is foolish as we have far more Socialist policies under the reign of the NeoCons than we ever had under Democrats. This is just an attempt to further confuse and distracted the People from the real villains, those people who got us into this mess.
All in all I say this Shock Doctrine is a poorly conceived work of trash or a hasty and piss poor attempt at COINTELPRO/CIA propaganda. Yet you sheep buy it up because you haven't the wit to see past the veneer to the rotten core.
Hey Lucid. And what Libertarian think tank pays you to surf Liberal/Progressive blogs to post your Laissez-Faire Supremacist rants? Did that darling of the Bush Administration & CATO Institute, Otto Reich give you your marching orders? Whenever Naomi Klein is in the media promoting her new book, Otto Reich just happens to be the “opposing viewpoint” -- it’s no propaganda that he’s exactly the kind of ULTRA right-wing free-market economic hit-man that Naomi Klein is talking about—he is one of the “Chicago Boys” and was directly involved in Reagan’s IranContra scandal and covert activities in Latin American Free-Market Dictatorships
I urge all freedom loving Americans to learn more about Otto Reich at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB40/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Reich
rmc: whew, I can't believe what I read! With this guy who needs enemies?!
Very good article. Bush is ignorant, arrogant, and an "not smarter than a 5th grader," and Bill Maher has stated. It wouldn't matter if W managed the fruits and vegatables department at the local Safeway, or was the manager of a Pay For Less shoe store, but when he's been installed as the President???? Say goodbye to America as a great and strong country.
well, I don't spell better than a 5th grader, but even if I were dyslexic and spent my whole life searching for Dog instead of God, I'd still be a better President than Bush - who wouldn't?
Jane welcome back your voice is truly needed. I too, always brighten up when I see your name on the top of the blog. I just know in my heart that what ever point you'll make will nail to the floor its subject matter.
Hey "CornellRedneck"...
No, YOU miss the point. As a leader, it doesn't matter if you decide by committee, or decide something that is unpopular unilaterally, or use a Ouija board. As long as the decision turns out to be CORRECT.
As a married man AND a business owner, I know this all too well. I have a knack for making a quick decision with too little information, and that's why my business has lasted 16 years. I've decided things my wife initially hated, which was painful, but all was forgiven when it turned out I was right.
RIGHT. That's all that matters.
And when you're wrong, you should accept it, apologize, and change course. That's the second-best plan, after being right all along.
No man stays in business or a marriage long if he makes a lot of wrong decisions, and sticks to them. Waffling and spinning won't cut it; your business will close, your wife will leave.
That's exactly what your boy, the idiot-in-chief, has done... make bad choices, and then defend them to the last. No wonder he was an abject failure as a business leader.
I'd give my left nut to live in the America we had under Clinton. Bush & Co. have destroyed much of what made America great.
I can only live in hope that future leaders, whoever they are, will bring the country I love & would die for, back to her former glory.
Capitalism is an economic system and has all the failings of Soviet style communism if there is no Independent democratic government to reingn it in.
Friedman and Marx both forgot that power corrupts and those with it will do ANYTHING to keep it and their wealth.
My mom just sent me a news pamphlet (Washington Spectator) that really drives your point home. It talks about how Bush bullied Argentina into giving Enron business, how the Bush brothers cut business deals in Kuwait while their dad was getting a medal.
Republicans don't realize it but their party has been taken over by people interested not in public service, but in self aggrandizement.
It's what worries me about Senator Clinton. All those who champion free trade and globalization are investing their money where, overseas in countries like China and India. And what motivated them to come up with trade policies totally unfair to the American worker, donations and access to companies they are affiliated with.
What American company has benefited the most from globalization? Walmart. And who was associated with Walmart? Senator Clinton.
Who benefits from high oil prices and defense spending? Bush, Cheney, and their friends.
We need to totally change the way we do business in running government. My hope is Edwards will be that individual who can take business out of government and return it to public service.
Sending manufacturing to China was brilliant. It weens the American worker from factory jobs. The next stage is fully robotic factories. Those won't be in China, since a robot costs the same in any market. They will be close to markets, to save transportation cost. All those Chinese workers will lose their factory jobs, while the American workers will have already transitioned to better professions. China is going to be severely hurt by this whole thing. America will come out supreme.
Except of course the gutted the education system at the same time as they sent the jobs overseas, so all of our robot jobs will be filled by well educated foreigners brought in for the jobs most Americans are too stupid to do.
First we are too lazy to pick fruit then too stupid to maintain robotic factories. Yeah, the RNC/DLC plan was brilliant!
Say it in one word: Impeach.
I think the Disabilities Act prevents it.
You can't im peach the im peared.
A thoughtful and insightful post as always, Jane.
The current evolution of free markets treats human beings as nothing than gene making machines - that is that we will always behave rationally and selfishly, always looking to get one over each other to further our own interests.
Curiously, research has shown that only two types of people act in this way.
Economists and psychopaths.
Is it any wonder that scum like the Straussian NeoCons rise to the top in a system like this.
This current socio-political paradigm is devoid of humanity and is unsustainable.
Ms Smiley,
You are one of the top five bloggers on the Huff Po. As soon as I saw your newest post, I knew I would gain some wonderful insight. Please, post more often. Molly Ivins has passed the torch to you.
Welcome back, Ms. Smiley. We get a little lost without your astonishingly comprehensive take on current events and the depredations of the BushCo gang. Where I would part company with Naomi Klein is in all the analogies to Chile and other Third World countries. The United States was an advanced, industrialized country with an educated populace and the right to vote firmly established long before the "shock" approach was used domestically. The powerless peasants in Chile, living in a country without a firmly established history of democracy, are one case; the United States is quite another. The "power elite" or "Overworld" analysis here verges a little on the paranoid. The fact of the matter is that Americans LET this happen to them because of an indifferent attitude toward citizenship and the rigorous demands it makes. We allowed ourselves to be consumed by consumerism, and to take the easy way out. If we've got equity in our houses, let's not save it, like the Chinese, let's siphon it out and spend it on plasma TVs and Lincoln Navigators. No Overworld made the US citizenry do that. No one forced them to stop paying attention. The Republican Gang moved into a complete power vacuum created by American indifference to the political process, and by a kind of cultural immaturity about the necessities of paying your own way with honest work. This chaos and anarchy around us are the result.
You got it right. Every time I pull up to a stop light next to a Navigator or Escalade (usually black) with a set of $2000 chrome wheels, I shake my head. I bet the driver doesn't have a dime in his/her savings account and is maxed out on credit cards but hey they're looking good. Stupid me. My bills are paid, I have savings, health insurance, but I can't afford or won't spend $50,000 to drive around like that. I don't see these ostentatious displays as a sign of a healthy economy but rather a splurge before the fall. Is this what the Roman Empire looked like at the end except for the SUVs.
Paraclete, I don't know first-hand but I'd say you betcha about the Roman Empire!
And the reason the rest of the average-joe sheeple go along with them (against their best interests, every time) is because of the team mentality.
Like the college sports team whose players got busted for getting free shoes. (I know, this is my alma mater)...many at the school not only defended the players, they got really mad at anyone who thought they should be punished.
It's the "winning at all costs" thing. Their team has to win, rah rah sis boom bah!
Nothing matters as long as they are the winners, and they get to shove it back into the faces of the losers.
Just like "my country do or die". Or "my country right or wrong". This is a very dangerous mentality because it blinds people to the fact that many atrocities have been committed in the name of this country.
I wish it didn't have to be like that. I love my country, and I wish we really were all right all the time, the shining beacon of truth and light in the darkness. But unlike those team-freaks, I am able to accept that what I wish to be true and what I know to be true are often very, very different.
You do speak the truth.
If the mainstream media and Congress had balls they wouldn't allow Team Bush to bully them by questioning their love of country.
The real reason we're in Iraq is because too many in Congress and the press were afraid of the Bush gang. The minute you opposed the war they wanted you're labeled weak on defense, someone who hates his country, blah blah blah.
And our country has a long history of interventionism driven not out of concern for that country's citizens but to safeguard U.S. business interests.
Look at Venezuela. Bush hates Chavez because he's democratically elected? No! Because he is intent on reclaiming sovereignty, nationalizing American oil companies. Suddenly he's no longer a democratically elected leader, but a dictator intent on robbing his people of their rights.
The only right Bush cares about is the right of American oil companies to take Venezuela's oil. And now it's Iraq's oil we want.
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