Latest Breaking News
In reply to the discussion: Revealed: US plans to charge Assange [View all]truedelphi
(32,324 posts)We now have a politburo that allows us "free Citizens" to choose from a ledger of candidates who all will support the continuing Billionaire Corporate rule. (The notion that government and Corporations once they are tied together like Siamese twins is the essential definition of fascism.)
But if you won't believe me, then I invite you to buy a book or two by Naomi Klein, or else watch the documentary she in part inspired -- "Shock Doctrine."
And here are some thoughts on the matter by writers of the past:
No people ever recognize their dictator in advance. He never stands for election on the platform of dictatorship. He always represents himself as the instrument [of] the Incorporated National Will. ... When our dictator turns up you can depend on it that he will be one of the boys, and he will stand for everything traditionally American. And nobody will ever say Heil to him, nor will they call him Fuhrer or Duce. But they will greet him with one great big, universal, democratic, sheeplike bleat of O.K., Chief! Fix it like you wanna, Chief! Oh Kaaaay!
-- Dorothy Thompson, 1935
What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security.
-- They Thought They Were Free,
Milton Mayer, 1955