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It is easy to look at the political and cultural environment of America and despair. Right now the Bush administration is on the ropes, but at a much deeper level, I don't think the incipient failure of Shrubco will automatically bring about significant change in the political landscape. For all practical purposes, I think that the world is being run by and for an elite international set of very wealthy people who own or control the corporations, the courts, and the media, and who buy and sell politicians at will.
Some people think I'm counseling gloom and spreading hopelessness when I present this world-view. I disagree. If I thought that was what I'm doing, then I wouldn't do it. What I'm really counseling is that we get a grip on reality. To act on the basis of a naive or false view of the world is to condemn your efforts to failure.
I believe we need to see the world as it is, in all its corrupt and decadent mix of splendor for the few and squalor for the many, and take this reality into account as we frame our moves. If the corporate press is a tool of their parent corporations, for example, then we need to develop other means of transmitting our messages. They are as much victims of their own assumptions as anyone else, and the only way we can win is by violating their assumptions.
I think of the American revolution when the British had us outnumbered and out-equipped. In any stand-up fight, they could kick our asses into Boston harbor. But the revolutionaries didn't play fair. They hid behind trees and shot at the British with squirrel rifles, a totally deplorable sort of behavior that the British, deeply inculcated with European military traditions, never anticipated. Everybody knew the only way to fight was for two armies to stand up, march at each other in formation, and blast away at each other with inaccurate smoothbore muskets. Likewise, in Vietnam, a ragtag bunch of guerillas played hell with a modern army equipped with bombers, tanks, helicopters, and armored cavalry. They did it by digging tunnels, setting little pitfalls lined with shit-dipped bamboo splinters, etc. We just have to be equally creative when we confront the Big Guys now.
I believe that, even with all their machinery of power and social control, the ruling elite is very vulnerable. This vulnerability is a product of their arrogance. Like all gigantic systems--like dinosaurs, for example--the sensory capacities of the rulers are dull. Because of their power, they feel they have no great need to scan the environment for small changes. Likewise, the machinery of control is not designed for rapid changes. They believe they can proceed down their chosen path at their ponderous pace and absorb, co-opt or kill any small challenges to their hegemony that may arise.
To make an analogy with Piaget's model of intellectual development in children, they proceed along by assimilating any new things that surface, hardly ever finding a need to accomodate themselves to these challenges. Thus they do not grow or change much, for growth and change are the results of having to accomodate one's cognitive structures to new information.
The relationship between the true holders of power and the politicians is like that between strategy and tactics in the military arena. The strategic goals remain the same, but it is occasionally necessary to modify one's tactics to attain these goals. A switch of politicians, even a switch of parties, results in a change of tactics, but does not signify a major change in strategic goals.
Take, for example, Bill Clinton. He was hailed and decried as a "liberal." But what actually happened during his era? Well, the tax situation got a little better. The economy got a lot better. But NAFTA became law. An attempt at health care reform was botched and failed. (Yes, the Clinton plan was to a great degree done in by a frenzied ad campaign from the health care industry, but in my opinion that specific plan deserved to fail. Ross Perot was right when he criticized it for its complexity.)
So now we're due for another cosmetic change in politicians. Things will probably get better for gays. There will no doubt be some amelioration in the health care situation. We will probably abandon the war effort in Iraq, and will find some other way to keep the Middle East stewing. None of these specific issues is a core strategic concern. They are tactical tools for maintaining control, and are subject to changfe when they have outlived their usefulness.
The one thing they really don't intend to permit is an effective progressive sea change in America. And it is that change that I am most interested in seeing come to pass. I think we can do it. The first step is for us to see reality rather than accepting their false images. Once we have done that, we will be able to hide in the woods, signal each other with lanterns in the church steeples, and pick them off with our squirrel rifles.
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