Managed democracy, Superpower, and inverted totalitarianism

Chalmers Johnson writes in a May 2008 review of Democracy Incorporated by Sheldon Wolin (published in paperback earlier this year):

Wolin argues that to the extent the United States on occasion came close to genuine democracy, it was because its citizens struggled against and momentarily defeated the elitism that was written into the Constitution.

"No working man or ordinary farmer or shopkeeper," Wolin points out, "helped to write the Constitution." He argues, "The American political system was not born a democracy, but born with a bias against democracy. It was constructed by those who were either skeptical about democracy or hostile to it. Democratic advance proved to be slow, uphill, forever incomplete. The republic existed for three-quarters of a century before formal slavery was ended; another hundred years before black Americans were assured of their voting rights. Only in the twentieth century were women guaranteed the vote and trade unions the right to bargain collectively. In none of these instances has victory been complete: women still lack full equality, racism persists, and the destruction of the remnants of trade unions remains a goal of corporate strategies. Far from being innate, democracy in America has gone against the grain, against the very forms by which the political and economic power of the country has been and continues to be ordered."

To reduce a complex argument to its bare bones, since the Depression, the twin forces of managed democracy and Superpower have opened the way for something new under the sun: "inverted totalitarianism," a form every bit as totalistic as the classical version but one based on internalized co-optation, the appearance of freedom, political disengagement rather than mass mobilization, and relying more on "private media" than on public agencies to disseminate propaganda that reinforces the official version of events. It is inverted because it does not require the use of coercion, police power and a messianic ideology as in the Nazi, Fascist and Stalinist versions (although note that the United States has the highest percentage of its citizens in prison -- 751 per 100,000 people -- of any nation on Earth). According to Wolin, inverted totalitarianism has "emerged imperceptibly, unpremeditatedly, and in seeming unbroken continuity with the nation's political traditions."

The genius of our inverted totalitarian system "lies in wielding total power without appearing to, without establishing concentration camps, or enforcing ideological uniformity, or forcibly suppressing dissident elements so long as they remain ineffectual." ...

"The new system, inverted totalitarianism, is one that professes the opposite of what, in fact, it is. The United States has become the showcase of how democracy can be managed without appearing to be suppressed." ...

The main social sectors promoting and reinforcing this modern Shangri-La are corporate power, which is in charge of managed democracy, and the military-industrial complex, which is in charge of Superpower. The main objectives of managed democracy are to increase the profits of large corporations, dismantle the institutions of social democracy (Social Security, unions, welfare, public health services, public housing and so forth), and roll back the social and political ideals of the New Deal. Its primary tool is privatization. Managed democracy aims at the "selective abdication of governmental responsibility for the well-being of the citizenry" under cover of improving "efficiency" and cost-cutting. ...

One other subordinate task of managed democracy is to keep the citizenry preoccupied with peripheral and/or private conditions of human life so that they fail to focus on the widespread corruption and betrayal of the public trust. ...

Another elite tactic of managed democracy is to bore the electorate to such an extent that it gradually fails to pay any attention to politics. Wolin perceives, "One method of assuring control is to make electioneering continuous, year-round, saturated with party propaganda, punctuated with the wisdom of kept pundits, bringing a result boring rather than energizing, the kind of civic lassitude on which managed democracy thrives." ...

Superpower is the sponsor, defender and manager of American imperialism and militarism, aspects of American government that have always been dominated by elites, enveloped in executive-branch secrecy, and allegedly beyond the ken of ordinary citizens to understand or oversee. Superpower is preoccupied with weapons of mass destruction, clandestine manipulation of foreign policy (sometimes domestic policy, too), military operations, and the fantastic sums of money demanded from the public by the military-industrial complex. (The U.S. military spends more than all other militaries on Earth combined. The official U.S. defense budget for fiscal year 2008 is $623 billion; the next closest national military budget is China's at $65 billion, according to the Central Intelligence Agency.)

Foreign military operations literally force democracy to change its nature: "In order to cope with the imperial contingencies of foreign war and occupation," according to Wolin, "democracy will alter its character, not only by assuming new behaviors abroad (e.g., ruthlessness, indifference to suffering, disregard of local norms, the inequalities in ruling a subject population) but also by operating on revised, power-expansive assumptions at home. It will, more often than not, try to manipulate the public rather than engage its members in deliberation. It will demand greater powers and broader discretion in their use ('state secrets'), a tighter control over society's resources, more summary methods of justice, and less patience for legalities, opposition, and clamor for socioeconomic reforms."

Imperialism and democracy are, in Wolin's terms, literally incompatible, and the ever greater resources devoted to imperialism mean that democracy will inevitably wither and die. ...

"That the patriotic citizen unswervingly supports the military and its huge budgets means that conservatives have succeeded in persuading the public that the military is distinct from the government. Thus the most substantial element of state power is removed from public debate." ...

Why I'm voting secessionist instead of socialist (or anything else)

"Imperial politics represents the conquest of domestic politics and the latter's conversion into a crucial element of inverted totalitarianism. It makes no sense to ask how the democratic citizen could 'participate' substantively in imperial politics."

—Sheldon S. Wolin, Democracy Incorporated

Vermont

Education, not Training!

Steve Nelson writes in today's Valley News (Vt. & NH):

WAITING FOR SUPERMAN, indeed! Based on the response to the new documentary film of the same name by Davis Guggenheim, it's going to be a very long wait for an educational system that genuinely serves America's children. The political and public frenzy over the troubled state of American education is driving a "reform" movement that is arguably as irrational as stockpiling nuclear weapons as a means of bringing peace to Earth.

Guggenheim's film mischaracterizes the decline in American education and misplaces blame. It offers a broad, gratuitous indictment of teachers and teachers unions. While some teachers are great and some significantly less than great, this is nothing new. Teachers are by and large as well qualified and dedicated as they were a generation ago. If education has dramatically changed for the worse, teachers are not the variable. Race, class and rapid cultural and social shifts are the more germane variables.

In addition to misidentifying the root causes of educational ills, the film goes on to celebrate the tough-love, often militaristic, data-driven practices that are supposed to make education better. These practices are guaranteed to make it worse. Watching the parade of celebrities, political leaders and sycophants lionizing media darlings such as D.C. Superintendent Michelle Rhee is depressing for those of us who love children.

I regularly ask parents what qualities they hope to see nourished in their children. The responses are always the same: creativity, confidence, integrity, a sense of humor, compassion, originality, honesty, imagination, critical thinking skills and so on.

If the purpose of education is to develop such things, the practices in most schools today, particularly in the schools held up as shining exemplars in Waiting for Superman, will do much the opposite. In these schools, as children march in uniformed lockstep to the next regimented bit of curriculum, their little hearts, minds and souls are being bleached into sad, bland conformity. The illusion of achievement, as symbolized by the minor, self-prophetic improvement in test scores, feeds the frenzy and the vicious (often literally vicious) cycle continues. There is no time for passion or compassion, a sense of humor is a liability, and imagination is an unnecessary distraction. Thinking critically is a risk no child dare take. Children in these schools are being trained, not educated.

This is no mere philosophical quibble.

Current trends in education - increasingly early academic work, test preparation and tests - are waging psychological and even biological warfare on America's children.

Children's cognitive abilities, especially reading, develop along highly varied timelines - roughly analogous to the wide range of ages that children begin to walk. There is no reason to expect that all 7-year-old children will be able to do the same things in the same way, yet our system is designed as though they should. Our treatment of many late readers, for example, is as abusive and senseless as it would be to scream at your one-year-old for not standing up and running on her first birthday.

As the eminent psychologist Jerome Bruner once told me, the most damaging aspect of contemporary educational practice is the pressure for children to do too much, too soon. As a result of these practices, some children are branded for life as substandard, simply because they aren't yet up to "expectations." Others, who may be able to manage the work, are conditioned to see learning primarily as the process of giving the powerful adults (parents or teachers) the answers they're looking for.

The "losers" in such schools are disenchanted and brokenhearted. The "winners" are, in increasing numbers, unimaginative, dully conformist in thought and behavior, and neurotic. They can chant slogans about success and declare the ambitions they hope will please adults, but they have diminished capacity to love ideas, to take risks, to recognize or make something beautiful or to question authority.

The biological damage may be more profound. Advances in neurobiology and cognitive science make clear the im portance of rich and varied sensory stimulation for brain development. Children must sing, talk, paint, run, build fabulous towers, smell flowers, bounce balls, hear beautiful music and touch everything in sight. The complex and powerful neural pathways that constitute a well-educated person have their roots in all these natural and joyful experiences.

Why then would a supposedly "rigorous" school dispose of physical education, diminish art and music classes, while telling children to sit still and endure daily drills in computation and phonics? There is mounting evidence that the rote practices that produce the temporary illusion of progress are actually inhibiting the biological and emotional development required for authentic academic achievement.

Might this be why politicians and economists who brag about improved fourth-grade scores are often mystified by stagnant (or worse) eighth-grade scores? Could it be that the very practices that raise scores in the short term are guaranteed to fail in the long run? (Sound like Wall Street?)

Neuroscientists, psychologists and thoughtful educators around America know these things, but too many of the decisions about education are being made by politicians and metrics-driven "experts" who know very little about children. I'm sure the intent behind Waiting for Superman was good, but the result seems to be renewed enthusiasm for a very misguided approach to learning.

Steve Nelson lives in Sharon and New York City, where he is the head of the Calhoun School, a private school. He can be reached through e-mail at steve.nelson@calhoun.org. His column appears in the Valley News every other Sunday.

2010 Election Endorsements

Second Vermont Republic
Socialist Party USA
Liberty Union Party

US Senator: Peter Diamondstone, Socialist
Representative to US Congress: Jane Newton, Socialist
Governor: Dennis Steele, Second Vermont Republic; Ben Mitchell, Liberty Union
Lieutenant Governor: Peter Garritano, Second Vermont Republic; Boots Wardinski, Liberty Union
State Treasurer: Virginia Murray Ngoima, Liberty Union
Auditor of Accounts: Jerry Levy, Liberty Union
Secretary of State: Leslie Marmolare, Liberty Union
Attorney General: Rosemarie Jackowski, Liberty Union
State Senate (Addison County): Robert Wagner, Second Vermont Republic
State Senate (Chittenden County): Terry Jeroloman, Stephen Laible, and Mikey Van Gulden, Second Vermont Republic
State Senate (Rutland County): William Cruikshank and Dennis Morrisseau, Second Vermont Republic
State Senate (Washington County): Gaelan Brown, Second Vermont Republic
State Senate (Windham County): Aaron Diamondstone, Socialist
State House (Washington County): James Merriam, Second Vermont Republic

War is the obscenity

Mythbuster busted: Tom Gray and the hard facts of wind energy

The unflagging Tom Gray of the American Wind Energy Association has now presented a story about Kodiak Island, Alaska, as a "mythbuster".

It's a mythbuster only if you characterize, as Gray does, the problems with wind on the grid in the most simple-minded way.

1. First, he harps on the charge that backup power units must be kept running, noting (actually, asking tauntingly like a brat in a schoolyard) that Kodiak Electric Association (KEA) burned 930,000 fewer gallons of diesel fuel in the first year of three 1.5-MW wind turbines operating, so emissions must have been reduced.

2. For the same reason, fossil fuel use was reduced.

3. Finally, taking on the charge that wind is unreliable and hard to integrate into utility systems, he notes that KEA did it.

Now let us look at the facts.

The 4.5 MW of wind went into operation in July 2009. The data provided by KEA on diesel fuel saved is estimated as proportional to the net energy produced by the wind turbines. That is not a record of actual fuel savings, which is affected by the diesel generators' efficiency, which is affected by more frequent ramping and switching on and off to balance the wind feed.

As Gray knows, the charge that other plants have to be kept running primarily applies to large coal (and nuclear). Smaller coal plants may be able to ramp their production as needed (at a cost of efficiency). Natural gas plants may be able to switch very quickly on and off (again, at a cost of efficiency, like city versus highway driving). Diesel plants, too, can switch on and off quickly. On an island, they act very much like the backup generator that an off-gridder keeps ready.

So points 1 and 2 dodge the issue of exactly how much diesel fuel is saved by using an estimate rather than actual data. In a similar example from East Falkland, Islas Malvinas, less than one-fourth of the estimated fuel savings was actually seen. And it has still to be documented how less cleanly the remaining three-fourths is being burned.

Again, emissions may have been reduced, but by very much less, if any, than hoped or claimed. And fossil fuel use was reduced, but likely by very much less than estimated.

As for point 3, an island system is a simple closed system, with fast-responding diesel generators (as well as in this case hydro) to adjust quickly to changing demand. They continue to operate in the same way with the addition of wind turbines, which are essentially "negative demand". Being a "small, isolated" utility system is precisely why it is easy to integrate wind there, not, as Gray implies, an example of particular challenge.

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism

A Sheaf of Araby

"I considered the lilies on the veldt and unto Balkis did I disclothe mine glory. And this."   —Finnegans Wake

Click here to download Eric Rosenbloom's new essay into Finnegans Wake, "A Sheaf of Araby".

Or click here to read it on line.