Why don’t we see the New America being built around us?

Larry Kummer, Editor

12 years ago

Summary: The Internet has become increasingly dominated by engines of misinformation disseminating politically filtered views of the world largely consisting of errors of omission and exaggeration, plus outright lies. These suit a nation of sheep (how do you speak to sheep and children?). The daily thousand words on the FM website attempt something different, to see the reality underneath the masks of political fabrication. The struggle carries into the comments. Today we show a clash of views, clear and analytic. Read and choose which you share. Post your comments.

Round One

The FM website has had 4.5 million views since 2007, but much of the action resides in the 30 thousand comments (it’s been that way since the start). Today we have another example, from Pluto — a long-time and insightful commenter — in reply to Delusions of the well-educated and intelligent on the Left and Right leave us nowhere to hide.

I suspect the problem you are facing is that reality is moving faster than nearly everybody’s OODA loop can handle.

Briefly summarizing part of John Boyd’s theory (and probably stating it poorly), people adapt to changing circumstances at a rate which differs among individuals. They become more confident when their adaptations to changing circumstances become more effective. Conversely they become less confident when their adaptations to changing circumstances become less effective.

Thus we have the 1% seeing their wealth rising at remarkable rates just for existing. This is dramatically increasing their self-confidence.

This is the economic version of the Tactics of Mistake by Gordon Dickson and the human race has done it many times before. This time is NOT different.

The “tactics” of Dickson’s 1981 novel were a planned program to produce mistakes in an opponent. The protagonist explains:

I need to get him involved with me so I can make use of him. Unless I can make him annoyed enough to thrust, I can’t parry. And only by successfully continuing to parry every attempt he makes can I finally get his whole attention.

… The fencing tactic is to launch a series of attacks, each inviting ripostes, so that there’s a pattern of exchanges and disengages of your blade with your opponent’s. your purpose isn’t to strike home with any of these preliminary attacks, but to carry your opponent’s bade a little more out of line with each disengage so gradually he doesn’t notice you’re doing it. Then, when his blade has been drawn completely out of line, you thrust home against an essentially unguarded man.

… {My goal is} to trap deCastries into a personal fencing match with me, so that I can gradually lead him into larger and larger conflicts — until he commits himself completely in a final encounter where I can use his cumulative errors of judgement to destroy him.

This is not what the 1% are doing. They are doing something different, with few or no precedents in history. History is short, and this is an age of wonders.

The New American, plugged-in & controlled

During the past several generations the 1% has launched well-funded long programs of disinformation and political advocacy. They built engines of misinformation, such as Heritage Foundation (1973). The Reagan and Bush Jr revolutions are the result of these generations of patient capital investments. The 1% are reaping their just reward.

This is the greatest of open source insurgencies (as defined by John Robb).

Here are three documents — in 1971, 1976, 1978 — showing the nature of these plans, whose results have shaped America.

(a) The Powell Memorandum: Sent by Lewis F. Powell, Jr. on 23 August 1971 (2 months before his nomination to Supreme Court) to Eugene B. Sydnor, Jr., Chairman of the Education Committee of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Titled Attack On American Free Enterprise System, it outlined a strategy for large corporations to rollback much of the New Deal reforms on business.

(b) The article creating the mythology of tax-cuts as the magic elixir: “Taxes and a Two-Santa Theory“, Jude Wanniski, National Observer, 6 March 1976

(c) In his 14 July 1978 testimony to Congress (9 years before becoming Fed Chairman), Alan Greenspan first described the “starve the beast” strategy: “Let us remember that the basic purpose of any tax cut program in today’s environment is to reduce the momentum of expenditure growth by restraining the amount of revenue available and trust that there is a political limit to deficit spending.”

As always, the people are more important than the actions. The 1% find, fund, and nurture the careers of people like Powell, Wanniski, and Greenspan. The Shame Project unknowingly documents this patient, well-funded construction of a counter-revolutionary movement. With them they built organizations to promulgate their ideological goals. This is patient investment, intelligently planned, of the kind that reshapes nations.

So long as we keep our heads in the sand, resigned that these things “just happen”, the 1% will continue to win. Also note Pluto’s conclusion:

… Eventually we will hit a tipping point where too many people are guided by concepts of reality that are too badly outdated and everything starts going wrong, especially for the wealthy as they will have the most to lose and too many of them will be guided by out of date concepts of reality.

Passively waiting for the great day when the walls come tumbling down is a guarantee of victory for the 1%. Dreams of the apocalypse are the opiate of the masses. Also, it’s probably false. I see little evidence that the 1% share the delusions of their pawns and sheep. In fact Our fears are unwarranted. America is in fact well-governed. But governed in their interest, not our interest.

Round Two

Pluto responds:

My problem with the ideas presented in the Tactics of Mistake is that it requires 3 things to work:

The right opponent who doesn’t see through your plans or do the unexpected at the wrong moment that wrecks your plans

The right leader who clearly sees reality even as they distort reality for their opponent

The right subordinates who are willing to follow the right leader despite the fact that the reality they see does not appear to support their leader’s plan and prediction of victory.

To the contrary, those three things describe America during the past 40 years.

(1) The 1% have planned and executed in plain sight. Yet there has been little recognition of their program (although I and many others have pointed this out). And only minimal resistance.

(2) The 1% are a leadership class. It need not be “one leader”; that’s a trope of fiction. Many large movements have no single leader. From large social movements like the American. French, and Russian revolutions — to small-scale activities (e.g., most pirate ships were co-ops) — all have a leadership cadre, no Leader.

(3) Money creates loyal and obedient subordinates. As mentioned above, the bios in the SHAME Project show how the 1% recruit, train, and employ their activists.

Two generations into this and people still don’t see the program. Q.E.D. We snooze; we lose.