What’s Really Going On In Wisconsin. Fascism Is Making A Grab To Atomize Dissent Using Useful Idiots Just As In Egypt And Libya

"Most of the founders of this country had day jobs for years. They were not career politicians. ... We need leaders with experience in the real world, not experience in the phony world of politics." --- Thomas Sowell

Even though the world’s tragedies are still with us, I want to get back to focusing on one of the posts I said would be up before the Japanese crisis.  This is a long post but the most important points are made near the end.  I think you might really enjoy perspectives not discussed anywhere else.  But you must have an intent to learn and not be deluded by political idiots attempting to brainwash you into their view of reality.

Let me first repeat what I have said on here in one form or another since well before the 2008 collapse.  Collective bargaining was supported by the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln.  Collective bargaining rights are as democratic as are voting. (By the way so are economic rights which should be written into a constitution.)  And as long as corrupt politicians are going to allow hegemonic corporate power to exist by not enforcing the rule of law of anti-trust legislation, then collective bargaining is necessary to apply democratic principles to economics and provide a bulwark for the people against unchecked economic power.  To disallow it is to perpetuate fraud, corruption, repression and tyranny by the political class, corporations and elites set on dismantling our democratic way of life.   Collective bargaining shouldn’t mean we replace political and corporate thugs with union thugs.  Jimmy Hoffa was no different than Lloyd Blankfein.  In other words, the process needs accountability, appropriate rules and transparency.  Unions should not become political organizations run by power-mad bureaucrats as corporations and politics are.  In fact the entire process of corporate governance, collective bargaining and how we pick our politicians needs fixed.   We need to get the power-mad sociopaths out of positions of authority.

Now that said, public unions don’t make a lot of sense under our current monetary system and tax structure where labor is bargaining with We The People or taxpayers.  In any mathematical representation of bargaining theory, public unions are not currently bargaining with capital.   With the current economic and funding structure, public unions share no strategy of profit and loss where capital eventually finds it more beneficial to close its business rather than paying higher wages and benefits.  But make no mistake, useful idiots want to lump all anger at the government into public sector unions.  That is ridiculous.  Public unions have absolutely nothing to do with any economic crisis that exists in this country.  Nothing.  The massive corruption and highest wages and selling out of our government institutions is not a result of rank and file union members making $40-50,ooo a year.  It is because of politicians, non-unioned public officials, elected officials and their fascist cronies living off the taxpayer dole who are robbing our government and its citizens.  It is the corporatocracy or primarily because of Republican and Democratic politicians selling out our country and destroying our governments. 

We have remarked for a long time that this environment of austerity unfolding in Wisconsin was coming to America.  The status quo is trying to dismantle our society so that rich elites, mega corporations,  banks and their political & lobbyist toadies in both parties can continue to run roughshod over democracy and We The People.  

Since this crisis has started, we have essentially said the same thing on this blog regarding public sector cuts.  Public sector cuts are necessary because of the fraud we see that has devastated our economy and our society.  But in no way do public unions bear the burden for this crisis.   And in no way is it constructive to create a society where we forcing everyone to the bottom of the barrel aka austerity, devaluing currencies, lowering wages, etc. (Neoliberal idiot economics run by political crooks)  Public sector pensions, the biggest dilemma is suffering from being invested in Wall Street shenanigans and have been fleeced like everyone else and as a result are in shambles.  Benefits were granted based on completely unsustainable Wall Street Ponzi schemes enabled by crooked politicians and now we must adjust to reality.  But politicians in Wisconsin and elsewhere are taking this opportunity to lie about the private sector having to fund public sector pensions in this Republican-manufactured public union busting power play.   

One must first understand the basic premise of politics and those that are drawn to politics.  Politics is about power and control.  That’s it.   Politics has nothing to do with serving society.  Every decision by a politician serves some attempt to gain more of power or more of control, be it personal or for his party or for the bureaucracy in general.  Now there are leaders in politics, although very few, who don’t define this dynamic.  But this issue is clearly not one of them.  And the governor or Wisconsin couldn’t find the word leadership if it was placed in his asshat where his head resides.

We highlighted the New Yorker article on the Koch brothers and their propagandized influence in our society and the Republican party some time ago.  Their involvement in Wisconsin should not be a surprise to anyone.  Many people often serve as unknowing useful idiots to the wishes of elite’s propaganda and Wisconsin is a perfect example.   

Examples of useful idiots are of people who believe the propaganda that government regulation is the problem.  Of people who believe the propaganda that government in general is the problem.  Of people who believe the propaganda of free markets.  Of people who believe the propaganda that we should cut corporate taxes to stimulate growth.  Of people who believe the propaganda that our health care system is just fine.  Of people who believe the propaganda that collective bargaining is the problem.  Of people who believe the propaganda that government workers or teachers making $50,000 a year are the problem.  Of people who believe the propaganda that gold money is the answer to our crisis.  Of people who believe the propaganda that  our public debt is the cause of this crisis.  Of people who believe the propaganda that our society will collapse unless we cut social services so that we can service our national debt. 

Frankly, these perspectives remind me of the classical pre-Civil War  slave plantation owner’s perspectives on society, government and economics.  (Remember this.  It comes later in this post.)  And given our society, government and economy looks a lot like a slave plantation owner’s view, why should that be a surprise?  By the way, all of the ideologies in the prior paragraph align quite nicely with the neoliberal anti-democratic fascist ideology of  elites shared with slave plantation owners.  In other words, people in the general population who support the aforementioned positions play the role of useful idiots for elites.  

Do you see a pattern with any of these ideologies?  They are all founded in fear, hate, anger or jealousy.  They all prey on the evil of the self or the ego versus the enlightened mind that understands the connectedness and shared community of true reality.  The ego is the greatest hindrance to the search for truth, respect and empathy for our fellow man.  And elitists prey upon this very dynamic in their search to deceive society and create their following of useful idiots.  

Elites can only fight economic populism, democracy and a working government by convincing, through propaganda, idiots from within the general population to fight horizontally rather than vertically.  To fight their fellow man rather than fight the elites.  In other words, to perpetuate propaganda of immigrants taking jobs, (illegal immigration is a real problem caused by elites)  of people on welfare being lazy, etc.  The list is endless.   They must recruit people from within the masses to fight their fellow man rather than focusing on the real problem – corruption driven by elites, power money and the dismantling of democracy.  This fear-based terror of the mind IS THE ONLY WAY a small minority of power-mad elites can enforce tyranny on a society whether it be crooks in the U.S. or crooks in Nazi Germany or crooks in Libya. 

Remember that post some weeks ago about the “shy intellectual”  whose work was the roadmap for democratic revolution used in the Middle East?  One of the first concepts he talked about in his writings to overcome tyranny are that power seeks to disband or atomize dissent.  In order to control society, power seeks to take away any and all facilities that allows community as a bulwark against power’s hegemony, fraud and corruption.   We could cite countless examples of this.  The most obvious is to burn books, imprison intellectuals or dissidents, bust collective bargaining, or marginalize dissenting thought which captures the imagination of a repressed people.   Speech and ideas have the effect of organizing society against elites.  But I could think of ten examples off of the top of my head of how this terrorism is achieved in the U.S.  Often through society’s useful idiots.  Many of which are, as Thoreau told us, people who enforce the rules of the state.  That is, the military, the police or secret police or Homeland Security or whatnot.  As it pertains to Wisconsin and our society at large,  I think you can imagine other examples quite easily. 

Anyone who understands tyranny of the state intuitively understand that atomizing dissent is a necessary process to achieving hegemony and control.  Busting collectively bargaining or rights to organize, a very American tradition supported by countless Presidents and politicians of both parties, and protected by the democratic rule of law,  is simply an attempt to atomize society and to assert control.  The Republican Party is going to find out that most American people don’t have a stomach for beating down their fellow man while elites continue to plunder our society and Republicans refuse laying any blame on the fraud of banksters, lobbyists or fellow politicians ripping our society off for trillions of dollars and buying their version of what the law should be.   Fixing the budget is one thing.  Malicious intent is another.   The governor in Wisconsin and similar efforts elsewhere are purely malicious intent.

So let’s look at how atomizing is often achieved in our society.   That is most often accomplished by dividing people into arguments over relatively ridiculous issues while the thieves walk off with the booty and our democracy.  Examples might be by enforcing stereotypes.  Two prime examples are Congressmen calling for drug testing to receive unemployment benefits.  Or that being gay is a sin.  Or labeling people on welfare as lazy.   Reinforcing any stereotype that Americans don’t want to work is very popular with political idiots.  These are cleaned up versions of often elitist perspectives from times gone past.  Although in times gone past they were more blunt and often overtly racist in their delivery.  The mind of the political idiot, like that of any subhuman slime,  never evolves.

Senator Jim Webb talked about this in an op-ed he did last year, although Webb’s characterization of the problems in America are very misguided.  We don’t have a massive white or black poverty problem because of the Civil Rights Act.  We have a massive poverty problem period because we have an economy choking on its own vomit that is caused by fraud and corruption.  And that, my friends, is only because of government rigging of the economy that is enforced through a fraudulent banking system that serves no purpose to human development.  You can dump all of the civil rights legislation you want and it is not going to deal with poverty one iota.  Webb’s head might be in the right place but his understanding of economics is completely wrong.   As Webb was cited in the Wall Street Journal a year or so ago:

The old South was a three-tiered society, with blacks and hard-put whites both dominated by white elites who manipulated racial tensions in order to retain power. At the height of slavery, in 1860, less than 5% of whites in the South owned slaves. The eminent black historian John Hope Franklin wrote that "fully three-fourths of the white people in the South had neither slaves nor an immediate economic interest in the maintenance of slavery."

Atomizing We The People one hundred years ago is the exact same tactic used today, pure and simple. 

The elites are able to divide society because for decades they have denied most Americans their economic rights.  A result of that dynamic is that wages have been stagnant for over thirty years and small and medium business in the U.S. has become nearly nonexistent sans the merchant shop owner, restaurateur or other service provider.   So, elites and their bought and paid for political toadies are able to create divisive anger between We The People.  The private sector has seen wages, benefits and pensions bludgeoned by corruption for decades and now the private sector is broke.  This leaves an enormous disparity in wages and benefits between the public sector and private sector we said years ago was going to eventually come to a head.  And now it has.   Elites and Republicans in concert are able to use useful idiots in society to create animosity against fellow citizens for having better wages and benefits.  So, rather than do what is necessary to restore American economic vibrancy by fixing the private sector, elites and Republicans focus useful idiots on destroying the living wages and benefits of public sector workers.  The same living wages and benefits that used to be a hallmark of a vibrant private sector economy.

The efforts in Wisconsin are in fact nothing more than a  power grab by the Republican bureaucracy.  It is meant to destroy funding for the Democratic party.  Power always has a motive of more power.  And politics is nothing more than a game of power.   If the Democratic party can be defunded, the Republicans believe they will run roughshod over the country with their fascist ideology.

And mind you, this is an attempt to deflect away from the true crimes of elites in our country.  And to turn citizens against citizens and to use propaganda and useful idiots to accomplish this.  It’s exactly what Senator Webb wrote about above.  The attempt to break collective bargaining in Wisconsin are the same techniques employed by Gaddafi and Mubarak to atomize dissent.  Both attempted to send paid off thugs (useful idiots) into the streets to loot, terrorize protestors and even murder innocent people.  To turn people against people.  To attempt to atomize community and dissent in a maneuver to deflect from the fraud of both regimes and have people wish for a return for order provided by the state, regardless of how morally bankrupt it is or whatever force it uses to restore order. 

The public and private sector citizens of this country need to join hands and fight the real problem.  Republicans and Democrats.

So, this begs a question.  How did the Republican party go from supporting collective bargaining to forty years of union busting?   Well, I am glad you asked. 

Today’s southern Republican block holds many ideologies of the southern Democratic block during Civil War times.  In other words the slave plantation owner’s view cited above.   Even today, they still support what is termed “right to work”  laws and this neoliberal free market, anti-regulation, anti-government ideology that was prevalent during pre - Civil War times. 

Many decades ago very powerful labor unions used their political power to go after these laws and the mainly southern politicians who hid behind their plantation owner’s views of society, government and economics.  (By the way, a view I personally believe is generally consistent with the Alabama-based Mises Institute that has become so popular with many useful idiots writing on the internet.)

I believe there is ample evidence the Dixiecrats (Racist democrats fighting Lincoln’s Civil War policies that has now found a home in the modern day Republican party.) are the  basis for the anti-union platform of the modern day Republican Party and elites who support much of this nonsensical, intolerant and hate-filled views we see in politics today.  In other words, these people hate democracy and they don’t like you regardless of the color of your skin, your sexual orientation or your religious views.  

In other words, this union-busting originally started as a political war between generally southern Republicans who held Civil War views of economics and government clashing with powerful northern unions attempting to break their political lock on southern states to give workers the right to collective bargaining.    I think we see who has won that battle?  The politician with endless money in his pocket by elites is able to write the rules to the game and marginalize community and collective bargaining.  Or as is the manifesto used to spark democracy in the Middle East remarks, politicians working for rich elites have atomized democratic dissent.

By the way, I believe many of the plantation owner’s views are reflected in an ideology that has become very popular with a group of useful idiots in society today.  These people are very popular with many disenfranchised and have a following on the internet. 

This attempted power grab, like all others by the political and fascist class in the U.S., will fail.   For every action there is an equal but opposite reaction.  And that reaction has been building for forty years.  It’s just a matter of timing when this will fail.   How it fails could take many forms.  But let’s use a corollary as an example of one possible failure.  The Pashtun tribesmen flip the bird at a corrupt American-backed centralized government in Kabul, Afghanistan because they see no value in any services rendered.  They simply see bureaucrats seeking to control their lives and take from them with nothing given in return.  So too will the same dynamic develop in the U.S. with the dismantling of democratic and socially-valuable government institutions in favor of maintaining the tyranny of corporate fascism and the war state.  The American people will eventually flip the bird at politicians who deliver little to no value in services rendered for our democratic society.   Whether it is a political idiot in Kabul or Washington or Madison, the behavior is consistent.  The less representative government we have, the less people are going to support it. 

Mind you, the revolts in the Middle East are a threat to the interests of American elites as well.  This whole global dynamic is very interrelated.  The lid is coming off of their schemes and lies.  Power and hegemony is falling left and right.  And as we have said countless times,  it will happen in the U.S. as well.  The bigger they are, the harder they fall.

The Republicans, more so than the Democrats, see a chance at unprecedented power by destroying our democratic institutions.  They are cutting their own throats in an attempt to gain even greater power.  The Republican party’s survival as we know it is in serious trouble.