It is interesting that while Republicans rage on about Obama's "class warfare", Americans (to their detriment) remain one of the least class conscious people on the planet. While perpetual mollifiers and PR soothe sayers may regard this as a good thing, preserving "domestic tranquility" and all, in reality it allows lower class Americans to be perpetually exploited in a veritable real class war. (Indeed, by mistake or otherwise, a memorable term appeared in The Washington Post and other Neo-liberal, pro free-market news papers some 12 years ago, which few may have caught at the time: "Overclass". )
These were reputed to be the information domain's movers and shakers, whose first task was to ensure the herd keeps quiet, keeps its nose to the work grindstone (preferably working 2 jobs to make ends meet), and doesn't make any trouble based on pretensions that they deserve better lives, or ...god forbid....a LIVING wage and less income inequality! Most of their domain is well know: information software, social networks, net searches, and in the larger informational sphere: government, corporate public relations, marketing and advertising as well as refining PR to direct the herd...errr...masses. Thus, did we later discover the massive ways in which PR was used from January -March, 2003, to drumbeat the herd into accepting Bush's Iraq invasion. By the date, March 15th, the most mind gutted people on the planet were prepared to swear on a stack of bibles that Saddam was the next thing to Adolf Hitler.
And so it goes, and so it went.
In terms of class issues, Americans have typically been bamboozled mentally by the same suspects, the PR mavens of the marketing-information empires to try to stamp out any meager consciousness of class or class difference. Instead, we're perpetually fed the "Horatio Alger" bollocks (as even former Dem CA Rep Jane Harmon did on Bill Maher's Real Time last Friday night) to try to sow specious optimism that anyone can make it into the elite class of billionaries if they really tried. Right, and anyone can be the first American on Mars, if they really tried. They could construct a superior ion-engine device to anything NASA might have on the drawing boards...and take off!
Fortunately Bill, proper cynic and realist that he is, put her codswallop in its place. But the truth is that these classless society- promoting brainwashers have done their jobs well.
As a first test, ask ten Americans off the street what class they belong to. Nine of ten, or more likely all ten, will say "middle class" - even if unemployed for a year, on food stamps, and about to have home foreclosed.
A more concrete study of class in relation to income level was a (2003) survey conducted by The Economic Policy Institute. It asked generally where people thought they were in the economic spectrum: upper 1% (earning $320,000 year or more); upper 5% (> $80,000) or where?
A full 19% in this random survey claimed they were in the privileged class of the top 1%. A virtual statistical impossibility in any random study.
In fact, internal survey cross-check questions on income category showed many of these working at a little above minimum wage, and even the highest were at barely $44,000/yr. Nowhere near the 1% threshold! Other commentators on this study (e.g. Froma Harrop, Ellen Goodman) pointed to this ignorance as a basis for supporting such crap as the Bush tax cuts, which overwhelmingly favored the rich elites. Thus:
A) They didn't know where they themselves fit, and indeed inflated their wealth and positions and
B) they actually believed they'd be millionaires one fine day and be able to partake of the tax cuts. (Or 'death tax' benefits).
In fact, they were deliriously out of touch with reality. As author Michael Parenti has noted ('The Dirty Truth') 94% of all wealth comes by way of inheritance, not paid work. So, they are fooling themselves. Unless they have a rich elder relative hidden away with a vast fortune, they'd be better off thinking they may have to work until they're 70 or 80 and even that may not be enough to stay in place.
But sadly, the Overclass and its minions (including the GOP Party, a basic "sub-division") consistently get working class folk to act against their own vested interests by distracting them with moralism ploys - raising "moral" issues like abortion, porn, gays and what not - just long enough so that many working class voters keep they're eyes off the ball when election day arrives. Then these workers wonder why they never get ahead.
How do the Overclass propagandizers succeed in sowing false consciousness, which is to say a persistently class-less or false equality world view at variance with reality? First we need to know what false consciousness is.
'False consciousness' is the term given to a false information system that's been absorbed in part or whole, osmotically or via direct mental ingestion, by the majority of a population. It has specific uses in our Corporatocracy to mislead a population about how things actually work, and also on the basic economic and other data which are used to formulate policies. I touched on a number of the inherent economic lies and disinformation ploys in my earlier blog:
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/09/economic-lies-distortions-and.html
But realize these are just the tip of the iceberg.
For example, the effects of language and PR debasement of reality extend to the whole political system which can best be described as one of legalized, corporate-fuelled bribery. While citizens do get to vote every two or four years, in reality it's only to choose their next set of Overseers, errr....Overclass masters. Once the votes are in, the true powers - the corporate ones- take over and direct (via their money and lobbyists) the real choices and possiblities. Any pol can thus say "Yes, we can!" all he or she wants, but the truth is that it's more: "Yes we can, IF the corporations and the wealthy Overclass approve!"
The effect of this verbal spooge-fest is that 'democracy' is the refrain and rhetoric, but corporate dictatorship the reality. Similarly, for the economy, the 'free market' is the rhetoric, but controlled markets the reality and so on. If their understanding can be obfuscated, and attention deflected to specious distractions and titillation, then the people can be disempowered, and even cooperate in their own economic (or social, political) subjugation. For example, they can do this by demanding spending cuts when the economic environment itself calls for a massive infusion of new spending...by the government.
The tactic, therefore, is to blind the bulk of the populace, and exert propaganda (PR) pressure so they willingly (if possible) cooperate in their own destruction. That is to say, vote against their own economic self-interest even as they are prompted to attack those who would fight for it. Thus, the Overclass wins in two way: fomenting discord and polarity in the populace so they're unable to present a united front against their oppressors, and cause one faction of the populace to consistently vote for those who will degrade and debase the economic positions of the other half.
As Carl Jensen once put it in a piece for Project Censored (1998. pp. 12-13):
"More than a half century ago Hitler said the masses take a long time to understand and remember, thus it is necessary to repeat the message time and time and time again - the public must be conditioned to accept the claims that are made no matter how outrageous or false those claims may be. We as a society, appear to have been well-conditioned to accept any number of claims regardless of how detrimental they are to our environment or to our own well being."
But most Americans may be surprised to find out that the methods Hitler and Co. used were actually designed and tested by an American many years ealier. Edward Bernays, in fact, developed the first, full scale war-marketing program for Woodrow Wilson’s “Committee on Public Information”, for the sole purpose of driving American public opinion into World War I participation to ‘make the world safe for democracy’.
Primed by this first success, Bernays moved on. In 1923 he published what became the official manifesto of all future public relations ‘Crystallizing Public Opinion’. The basic goal was to drumbeat ‘the masses’ into a homogeneous and consistent consent, but do it without their awareness. The key was to frame the content in such a way the person would believe it to be ‘common sense’, or ‘patriotism’ and then accept it as the logical outcome of his own thoughts and reason.
The sheep was still a sheep, but believed s/he was an independent-thinking sheep, one of millions in the vast constellation of sheeple. Five years later appeared Bernays’ ‘Propaganda’ whose principles were adopted wholesale by Josef Goebbels and Leni Reifenstahl during Hitler's Reich. It was in this book that the master betrayed his intents if ever there was any doubt before:
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government, which is the true ruling power of our country.”
Ah yes, the Overclass!
And, of course, it continues today on multiple fronts as they wage endless class war to make sure the lower classes don't have a clue, and if they somehow get one - they'll be shouted down by their false conscious peers. What are some of the ways false consciousness is making headways right now?
1) Depicting the poor as dead weights on the "industrious" and hence the true source for the economy's plight. (Some Reeps even suggesting income taxes on the poor be raised, since the rich "pay most of them" -more horse shit)
2) Depicting the unemployed as "slackers" who are simply too picky about the jobs that are available and hence undeserving of any further extensions of benefits, even for their kids.
3) Portraying those without any health care as choosing that condition.
"After all, when you visit their homes you do see cable tvs and air conditioning! So they could buy insurance if they wanted!"
Yeah, right, assholes! Never mind the tv they're watching costs maybe $500 at Walmart and they can entertain themselves for YEARS, while they would have to pay about $2,200 a month for insurance for themselves and family...IF they can get it and have no pre-existing conditions.
4) The poor and faltering middle class lack the moral character to succeed. If they had that character they'd prosper.
Of course, when you look at the characters of the majority of the wealthy overclass, most are scum and indeed, their proportion of charitable giving is even lower than average Americans who can barely find enough food in their fridges.
5) Higher taxes will thwart the job creators!
The last one I've skewered multiple times. The fact is: a) they don't "create jobs" - they dispatch them to India or China to make more profits because labor is cheaper and benefits are nil. And b) if they've already shipped off all the work they can, they use the rest of their ill-gotten gains to buy blood diamonds, furs, yachts, new Bentleys or invest in Hedge funds.
Fortunately, there is a voice of truth and an antidote to this poisoned PR speaking out, and that is Elizabeth Warren - now running for Scott Brown's Repuke seat in MA. What she has been saying about the richest Americans is something every Democratic pol worth his salt needs to emulate as a narrative. That is, the rich only got to where they are at the behest and support of the rest of us! It was our fuckin' taxes that paid for the excellent highways so they could move their wares to any point in the nation. It's our local taxes that pay for the police and firemen to offer protection to them, so the most oppressed (as in other nations, like Congo or Zaire) don't burn down their inventories and buildings. It's our taxes that also pay for the hospitals that keep them healthy so they can make their next billion.
They might want to think of all that the next time they're inclined to go off half-cocked with the claim they're taxed too much!
These were reputed to be the information domain's movers and shakers, whose first task was to ensure the herd keeps quiet, keeps its nose to the work grindstone (preferably working 2 jobs to make ends meet), and doesn't make any trouble based on pretensions that they deserve better lives, or ...god forbid....a LIVING wage and less income inequality! Most of their domain is well know: information software, social networks, net searches, and in the larger informational sphere: government, corporate public relations, marketing and advertising as well as refining PR to direct the herd...errr...masses. Thus, did we later discover the massive ways in which PR was used from January -March, 2003, to drumbeat the herd into accepting Bush's Iraq invasion. By the date, March 15th, the most mind gutted people on the planet were prepared to swear on a stack of bibles that Saddam was the next thing to Adolf Hitler.
And so it goes, and so it went.
In terms of class issues, Americans have typically been bamboozled mentally by the same suspects, the PR mavens of the marketing-information empires to try to stamp out any meager consciousness of class or class difference. Instead, we're perpetually fed the "Horatio Alger" bollocks (as even former Dem CA Rep Jane Harmon did on Bill Maher's Real Time last Friday night) to try to sow specious optimism that anyone can make it into the elite class of billionaries if they really tried. Right, and anyone can be the first American on Mars, if they really tried. They could construct a superior ion-engine device to anything NASA might have on the drawing boards...and take off!
Fortunately Bill, proper cynic and realist that he is, put her codswallop in its place. But the truth is that these classless society- promoting brainwashers have done their jobs well.
As a first test, ask ten Americans off the street what class they belong to. Nine of ten, or more likely all ten, will say "middle class" - even if unemployed for a year, on food stamps, and about to have home foreclosed.
A more concrete study of class in relation to income level was a (2003) survey conducted by The Economic Policy Institute. It asked generally where people thought they were in the economic spectrum: upper 1% (earning $320,000 year or more); upper 5% (> $80,000) or where?
A full 19% in this random survey claimed they were in the privileged class of the top 1%. A virtual statistical impossibility in any random study.
In fact, internal survey cross-check questions on income category showed many of these working at a little above minimum wage, and even the highest were at barely $44,000/yr. Nowhere near the 1% threshold! Other commentators on this study (e.g. Froma Harrop, Ellen Goodman) pointed to this ignorance as a basis for supporting such crap as the Bush tax cuts, which overwhelmingly favored the rich elites. Thus:
A) They didn't know where they themselves fit, and indeed inflated their wealth and positions and
B) they actually believed they'd be millionaires one fine day and be able to partake of the tax cuts. (Or 'death tax' benefits).
In fact, they were deliriously out of touch with reality. As author Michael Parenti has noted ('The Dirty Truth') 94% of all wealth comes by way of inheritance, not paid work. So, they are fooling themselves. Unless they have a rich elder relative hidden away with a vast fortune, they'd be better off thinking they may have to work until they're 70 or 80 and even that may not be enough to stay in place.
But sadly, the Overclass and its minions (including the GOP Party, a basic "sub-division") consistently get working class folk to act against their own vested interests by distracting them with moralism ploys - raising "moral" issues like abortion, porn, gays and what not - just long enough so that many working class voters keep they're eyes off the ball when election day arrives. Then these workers wonder why they never get ahead.
How do the Overclass propagandizers succeed in sowing false consciousness, which is to say a persistently class-less or false equality world view at variance with reality? First we need to know what false consciousness is.
'False consciousness' is the term given to a false information system that's been absorbed in part or whole, osmotically or via direct mental ingestion, by the majority of a population. It has specific uses in our Corporatocracy to mislead a population about how things actually work, and also on the basic economic and other data which are used to formulate policies. I touched on a number of the inherent economic lies and disinformation ploys in my earlier blog:
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/09/economic-lies-distortions-and.html
But realize these are just the tip of the iceberg.
For example, the effects of language and PR debasement of reality extend to the whole political system which can best be described as one of legalized, corporate-fuelled bribery. While citizens do get to vote every two or four years, in reality it's only to choose their next set of Overseers, errr....Overclass masters. Once the votes are in, the true powers - the corporate ones- take over and direct (via their money and lobbyists) the real choices and possiblities. Any pol can thus say "Yes, we can!" all he or she wants, but the truth is that it's more: "Yes we can, IF the corporations and the wealthy Overclass approve!"
The effect of this verbal spooge-fest is that 'democracy' is the refrain and rhetoric, but corporate dictatorship the reality. Similarly, for the economy, the 'free market' is the rhetoric, but controlled markets the reality and so on. If their understanding can be obfuscated, and attention deflected to specious distractions and titillation, then the people can be disempowered, and even cooperate in their own economic (or social, political) subjugation. For example, they can do this by demanding spending cuts when the economic environment itself calls for a massive infusion of new spending...by the government.
The tactic, therefore, is to blind the bulk of the populace, and exert propaganda (PR) pressure so they willingly (if possible) cooperate in their own destruction. That is to say, vote against their own economic self-interest even as they are prompted to attack those who would fight for it. Thus, the Overclass wins in two way: fomenting discord and polarity in the populace so they're unable to present a united front against their oppressors, and cause one faction of the populace to consistently vote for those who will degrade and debase the economic positions of the other half.
As Carl Jensen once put it in a piece for Project Censored (1998. pp. 12-13):
"More than a half century ago Hitler said the masses take a long time to understand and remember, thus it is necessary to repeat the message time and time and time again - the public must be conditioned to accept the claims that are made no matter how outrageous or false those claims may be. We as a society, appear to have been well-conditioned to accept any number of claims regardless of how detrimental they are to our environment or to our own well being."
But most Americans may be surprised to find out that the methods Hitler and Co. used were actually designed and tested by an American many years ealier. Edward Bernays, in fact, developed the first, full scale war-marketing program for Woodrow Wilson’s “Committee on Public Information”, for the sole purpose of driving American public opinion into World War I participation to ‘make the world safe for democracy’.
Primed by this first success, Bernays moved on. In 1923 he published what became the official manifesto of all future public relations ‘Crystallizing Public Opinion’. The basic goal was to drumbeat ‘the masses’ into a homogeneous and consistent consent, but do it without their awareness. The key was to frame the content in such a way the person would believe it to be ‘common sense’, or ‘patriotism’ and then accept it as the logical outcome of his own thoughts and reason.
The sheep was still a sheep, but believed s/he was an independent-thinking sheep, one of millions in the vast constellation of sheeple. Five years later appeared Bernays’ ‘Propaganda’ whose principles were adopted wholesale by Josef Goebbels and Leni Reifenstahl during Hitler's Reich. It was in this book that the master betrayed his intents if ever there was any doubt before:
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government, which is the true ruling power of our country.”
Ah yes, the Overclass!
And, of course, it continues today on multiple fronts as they wage endless class war to make sure the lower classes don't have a clue, and if they somehow get one - they'll be shouted down by their false conscious peers. What are some of the ways false consciousness is making headways right now?
1) Depicting the poor as dead weights on the "industrious" and hence the true source for the economy's plight. (Some Reeps even suggesting income taxes on the poor be raised, since the rich "pay most of them" -more horse shit)
2) Depicting the unemployed as "slackers" who are simply too picky about the jobs that are available and hence undeserving of any further extensions of benefits, even for their kids.
3) Portraying those without any health care as choosing that condition.
"After all, when you visit their homes you do see cable tvs and air conditioning! So they could buy insurance if they wanted!"
Yeah, right, assholes! Never mind the tv they're watching costs maybe $500 at Walmart and they can entertain themselves for YEARS, while they would have to pay about $2,200 a month for insurance for themselves and family...IF they can get it and have no pre-existing conditions.
4) The poor and faltering middle class lack the moral character to succeed. If they had that character they'd prosper.
Of course, when you look at the characters of the majority of the wealthy overclass, most are scum and indeed, their proportion of charitable giving is even lower than average Americans who can barely find enough food in their fridges.
5) Higher taxes will thwart the job creators!
The last one I've skewered multiple times. The fact is: a) they don't "create jobs" - they dispatch them to India or China to make more profits because labor is cheaper and benefits are nil. And b) if they've already shipped off all the work they can, they use the rest of their ill-gotten gains to buy blood diamonds, furs, yachts, new Bentleys or invest in Hedge funds.
Fortunately, there is a voice of truth and an antidote to this poisoned PR speaking out, and that is Elizabeth Warren - now running for Scott Brown's Repuke seat in MA. What she has been saying about the richest Americans is something every Democratic pol worth his salt needs to emulate as a narrative. That is, the rich only got to where they are at the behest and support of the rest of us! It was our fuckin' taxes that paid for the excellent highways so they could move their wares to any point in the nation. It's our local taxes that pay for the police and firemen to offer protection to them, so the most oppressed (as in other nations, like Congo or Zaire) don't burn down their inventories and buildings. It's our taxes that also pay for the hospitals that keep them healthy so they can make their next billion.
They might want to think of all that the next time they're inclined to go off half-cocked with the claim they're taxed too much!
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