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In reply to the discussion: Does this atmosphere, this feeling in the air, remind you any of the late Sixties...? [View all]The Time is Now
(86 posts)68. Echoing other boomer postings...
No.
It strikes me as odd, however, that there isn't more outrage, more demonstrations, Occupy 2.0, whatever. More and more, I'm convinced that we are living in Wolin's inverted totalitarianism. The term sounds extreme, but the description strikes me as very, very accurate.
According to Wolin, whereas the production of propaganda was crudely centralized in Nazi Germany, in the United States it is left to highly concentrated media corporations, thus maintaining the illusion of a "free press".*
Furthermore:
Inverted totalitarianism reverses things. It is all politics all of the time but a politics largely untempered by the political. Party squabbles are occasionally on public display, and there is a frantic and continuous politics among factions of the party, interest groups, competing corporate powers, and rival media concerns. And there is, of course, the culminating moment of national elections when the attention of the nation is required to make a choice of personalities rather than a choice between alternatives. What is absent is the political, the commitment to finding where the common good lies amidst the welter of well-financed, highly organized, single-minded interests rabidly seeking governmental favors and overwhelming the practices of representative government and public administration by a sea of cash.*
*Wolin, Sheldon S. (2008). Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-13566-5.
As he says, the central lack is what he calls "the political," which might seem ridiculous, but he defines that as "the commitment to finding where the common good lies." That commitment is exactly what is often meant when the politics of the '60s is invoked. It was the (evil) genius of Fox News to eradicate the notion of common good with a remix of Nixon's "Southern Strategy." As you recall, this was an appeal to poor white people (and yes, that means those belonging to the 99%). Under the hypnotic allure of culture wars, fed by racial, religious, and gender indoctrination, they were convinced to vote against their own economic interests. Yes, in principle, there is common ground between rank-and-file tea partyites and the left, but that ground is buried under a toxic mountain of propaganda. We'll need a new generation of muckrakers to clear that up.
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Does this atmosphere, this feeling in the air, remind you any of the late Sixties...? [View all]
kentuck
Jul 2013
OP
Feels more like the twilight years of the USSR, slowly the conditions getting harsher
Katashi_itto
Jul 2013
#33
To say nothing about the secret off-budget programs. How many billions there? We'll never know.
AAO
Jul 2013
#94
Can we have a Great Society without war and surveillance? Seems like the Dem leadership want both.
Erose999
Jul 2013
#21
In a perfect world, yes.But I'll take imperfect Dems over Repubs any day. n/t
displacedtexan
Jul 2013
#24
It's interesting that in the first Presidential election that 18-20-year-olds
Art_from_Ark
Jul 2013
#116
Well, if we complain too loudly about our Constitutional rights being stripped away...
Maedhros
Jul 2013
#81
We can count our "friends" in the house and senate lately on one hand. And still have fingers left.
Erose999
Jul 2013
#20
My friend...some of the things I have been hearing in the back country
nadinbrzezinski
Jul 2013
#111
No, not at all. Then there were two things we do not have now, Unity and Unifiers.
1-Old-Man
Jul 2013
#35
in the 60's a couple of kids with minimum wage jobs could have shared a flat in the village
Douglas Carpenter
Jul 2013
#41
I agree. Plus the viscious clampdown on dissent from the prig Woodrow Wilson. Seems
byeya
Jul 2013
#65
Not at all. If people march for voting rights it will. LGBTs stood strong and changed America.
DevonRex
Jul 2013
#95
I was there. I agree, more mid than late. Just warming up the engines still.
bemildred
Jul 2013
#125
Nope, in fact just the opposite. Back then they actually talked to each other face to face
1-Old-Man
Jul 2013
#127