by Egberto Willies
This may sound like a hyper-partisan article. It is not. It is based
on actions by Republicans of all stripes that are verifiable and
quantifiable. All Americans are being played irrespective of party
affiliation. Republican leadership and political sidekicks are the
masters of the game, the citizenry the pawns.
Republicans have never been known as a party fighting for the poor or
the middle class. They have never been known as a party that believed
in a social safety net. The problem for Republicans is that 90+% of
Americans fall into that category.
The level of intolerance by the GOP is incomprehensible until the
strategy is understood. It is easy to dismiss comments by a few. However
when it becomes a chorus line that is perfectly synchronized, it
becomes a strategy.
Republicans balk when one speaks about the Republican war on women,
war on the poor, war on the environment, war on gays, war on minorities,
and many other select micro wars. They don’t want these wars called
out. And the reality is these should not be called wars at all. It is
much too simplistic.
It is a war on democracy. How do you win a war on democracy when
there are many more subjects than you? You fight many battles. So the
battle against the poor, the battle against women, the battle against
gays, the battle against minorities, the battle against education, and
any other micro battle to keep the subjects occupied is the modus
operandi. It does not matter if in the process a few of the battles are
lost. After all their eyes are on the ball, the destruction of a
functional democracy.
It was all in the Powell Memo
This week I
interviewed Jeff Clements, co-founder of
Free Speech for People, and author of
Corporations Are Not People about corporate personhood and the Citizens United ruling. In that interview he brought up the
Powell Memo. Read the memo in its entirety. It gives the necessary perspective.
The Powell Memo illustrates the fear that Lewis Powell, a corporate
lawyer and member of the boards of varies corporations had for the
masses. Powell was subsequently confirmed as a Supreme Court justice.
Powell lays out the game plan. The Powell Memo is a plan that was
forward looking. It is a plan that so far has been well implemented. How
did they do it?
The success of the Powell Memo is in the ubiquity of its implementation.
They created think tanks responsible for dispersing misleading
information with a false cloak of authenticity. The Heritage Foundation
is a classic example of this. They took control of the airwaves to
disperse misleading information (e.g., talk radio, Fox News, CNBC,
etc.). A relenting Chamber of Commerce uses corporate monies to bully
policy and politicians that squeeze the masses (e.g., support for free
trade agreements, outsourcing etc.).
They infiltrated college campuses with directed research for planned
outcomes. They infiltrated the elementary and secondary schools’
textbook evaluation process to attempt Right Wing indoctrination. They
used graduate business schools to indoctrinate students on an
irresponsible form of capitalism. They flooded the country with books
and paid advertising promoting their message. They continue to destroy
unions.
The implementation has been successful thus far. The problem is that
in Powell’s days there was no Internet. There was no way to form
disjointed communities in mass that could rise up when knowledge was not
controlled in a top down manner. A new tactic had to be added. This new
tactic is not new. It is the war to divide and conquer.
The current strategy is simply a modification of the Powell Memo to achieve the same result.
If one keeps a community, a city, a country in a constant state of
disarray or chaos, it is easy for the subjects to take their eyes off
real problems. That is the same tactics use in countries where a
functioning Plutocracy reigns like Panama and many ‘third world’
countries around the world. Underlying human behavior is the same
throughout the world. The world then becomes the testing ground for
successful suppressive tactics. The successful ones are effectively
being used against Americans now.
All the little battles described above occurring at the same time are
nothing more than death by a thousand cuts. Americans are so busy
trying to survive, fighting these culture battles and sub-class battles
that they are unable to fight what really ails. What ails is the
Plutocracy Powell’s memo aimed to preserve. The Republican assault on
the fabric of America is but that implementation.
