If you asked me, "What would a contemporary police state look like?" I'd reply that it would look an awful lot like what America looks like right now. I would tell you that subsidized consumer affluence has proven a far more effective method of social control than centrally planned, faux-egalitarianism. I would tell you that someone finally figured out that breadlines breed rebellion but lines at the multiplex for the midnight opening of the next blockbuster do not. I would tell you that keeping up with the Joneses has proven a more effective enforcer of conformity than any book of Dear Leader's wisdom ever did. I would tell you that hope for Vegas vacations beats fear of the work camps for quashing dissent. I would tell you that subtle is better than overt, seemingly random better than routine, carnivalesque better than somber, colorful better than drab. Look at the billions of dollars and man-hours thrown into deciding between a guy from Massachusetts and a gal from New York who evince no convincingly held differences of belief. Has ever a nation been farther from revolution than the United States in the year 2007?
I feel a great many people waiting, breathing shallowly, as if one day at last the whole edifice will tip over and reveal its infested foundation. It won't. I feel as if a great many people are waiting for a president to suspend the government, or for black-hood squads to start snatching people in broad daylight, or for the police to establish checkpoint entrances to our cities and loyalty oaths in our schools. (That last, of course, already . . . ) They are waiting, in other words, for incontrovertible and public evidence that Denmark is rotten, some moment of national epiphany when Candidate-for-Life Benito Giuliani descends through the clouds in his own airline trailing some athletic blond with a camera on his way to a firelit vigil in Yankee Stadium.
There is an office tower in Pittsburgh with a good view of the county jail, and cells at the county jail with views of downtown offices. I imagine the populations of one or the other spend a great deal of time thinking, "Poor bastards, stuck in that place . . ."
Thursday, August 16, 2007
That's it
If IOZ wasn't already my favorite blogger, this seals it:
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5 comments:
And if you asked me what the best contemporary example of paranoid delusion is, I would direct you to IOZ's post.
Ironically that supports his point, not that it matters to you personally. What you and most people might call delusion is in this case a insightful and completely appropriate assessment of reality, says I.
Note that IOZ (and now Arthur Silber) make frequent reference to The Big Lebowski. How wrong could they be?
The "because everyone says I'm crazy means I'm not actually crazy" defense doesn't really hold water, in my opinion.
And it does matter to me personally, particularly since according to IOZ I'm apparently not among the enlightened Five Percenters and therefore must be naively swallowing all the subliminally pacifying garbage dumped onto me.
And leave The Dude out of this! That's foul play.
It isn't a defense, it is simply the case. You thinking he is delusional supports (but obviously doesn't prove) his point. When articulating a clear and accurate version of reality is seen as crazy, shit is bad.
"naively swallowing all the subliminally pacifying garbage dumped onto me."
This applies to much of the population, to varying degrees. It isn't as black and white as you're making it out to be in the last comment (which you probably realize but opted for brevity, as would The Dude). I imagine you're on the lower end of the scale, what with your atheism and scientism and proclivity for facial hair, but as long as you're still calling IOZ paranoid and delusional, you're on the wrong side of the line, I think. I could of course be wrong.
Well, he seems to be arguing that consumerism is a vast oligarchic conspiracy to keep the people haplessly content in their pointless little lives, and thus not rise up in insurrection. He says this is indicative of a contemporary police state.
I'd argue that consumerism is manifested by the consumers themselves and thus bottom-up, not top-down, as IOZ proffers. I'd also turn his argument on its head and say that the supposed complacency of the populace is indicative of vast personal freedoms rather than the lack of insurrective dialogue being indicative of a puppeteering police state, as he states.
I'd also argue that there are far more obvious examples of contemporary police states than the ephemeral domestic one we apparently live within.
The implication of his (let's go with "he" for simplicity) post is insulting if I don't believe his ideas.
Lastly, feeling confined by consumerism, which I believe has led IOZ to this conclusion, is not mandatory though I'd agree it's inculcated to some extent. Lastly Pt. 2, if we are hemmed in by consumerism to the extent which IOZ believes, I would argue that the people would indeed revolt, one way or another, and not blindly drag themselves through life while lining the coffers of the oppressors.
Interesting fact btw, at the time of the American Revolution against the Brits, the colonies were subject to a total of ~2% tax on all their income. And that drove them to revolution. At least that's what I read somewhere.
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