Daniel Ellsberg: “They are reversing freedoms we’ve had since the Magna Carta.”

[truebluegreen]

4. Well, I have some theories...

For me the root cause is economic.

The 60s were a time of a powerful middle class, a rarity in history.* So it was also a time of great unrest, when all kinds of people were feeling empowered, and tried to claim their rights. Blacks, women, students, environmentalists, everybody. This disturbed the powers that be, the money elites, business people, conservatives primarily.

They set out on a decades' long campaign to re-take control of society and that meant control of the media, attacking unions, regaining economic power, all kinds of stuff. A convenient starting point would be a memo/speech given by (later Justice) Lewis Powell to the Chamber of Commerce in 1973.

http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/news-and-blogs/campaign-blog/the-lewis-powell-memo-corporate-blueprint-to-/blog/36466/

And they've done it. They've systematically destroyed the middle class, and with the control of media dumbed down the conversation so much that people don't see the problem (answers don't matter if the questions are wrong), or don't have the spare energy to focus on the big issues, or the ability to do anything about it, or all three.

*Two other times when there was a strong middle class: Renaissance Europe, after the Black Death killed many people and drove the cost of labor up; and Revolutionary America, when "free" land enabled many to rise out of poverty--and look how that turned out. Today's conservatives are just the Tories of the era, but this time they are winning.