Survival__ Structuring Prosperity for Yourself and the Nation - Charles George Smith [14]
The intellectual framework which supports the Elite's dominance and makes it apparently "natural" or "beneficial" is the Plutocracy's key defense; and the limits of human language and thought make it relatively easy to undermine reasoned skepticism.
Thus a defense of "capitalism" turns out not to be an appeal for open markets but the exact opposite, an enabling of crony capitalism. The defense of globalization is not a promotion of the exchange-of-surplus-production that characterized trade for millennia but of a targeted grab-and-run exploitation of vulnerable resources and peoples. A defense of "financial stability" is actually a defense of the illusion of stability.
Regulations to curb the Plutocracy's over-reach are undermined by the Plutocracy persuading the State that "these are the regulations we want," that is, a simulacrum of regulation that imposes virtually no limits on Elites but effectively strangles the middle class and keeps it "in its place."
Given the enormous benefits to be gained by this relentless obfuscation, mystification and superficially appealing framing of contexts and problems, we must prepare ourselves for a difficult analysis.
Our first step is to ask cui bono, to whose benefit? Our second step is to tease apart the intellectual defenses of over-reach and income redistribution, and consider how the status quo dismisses our actual "problems" as mere bumps in the technocratically maintained road to consumerist Nirvana, i.e. "prosperity."
One often effective technique deployed to quell questions about Elites' dominance or self-interest is reduction: that is, reduce the situation to an "all or nothing" conflict, or frame it as an extension of a current situation which can be addressed by modest policy tweaks.
Thus Peak Oil is not a problem as we have 400 years of coal, etc. Those in charge of the machinery have a huge stake in technocratic "solutions" which leave power, profit and consumption structures firmly in place.
Identity itself can be reduced; thus a once-active citizenry is reduced to "consumers." As long as "consumers" benefit in any way, then what might be lost to workers, voters, citizens, etc. can be cast aside as meaningless.
Since profits are made by selling something to consumers, it's extremely handy for all other roles and identities to be extinguished, diminished or marginalized.
The key point here is that dominance flows directly from an intellectual framework which constructs and justifies that dominance as natural and beneficial to all believers.
In this sense consumerism is in effect the de facto state religion of the U.S.A., and it directly benefits the Elites who own or control the vast majority of the nation's financial wealth, income, law-making machinery and productive assets.
The second point is that it is impossible to make a clear-eyed assessment of the actual challenges we face when our understanding of those realities is constantly being massaged, manipulated and "framed" out of existence by an elite-dominated media. (A few global companies control most of the world's broadcast, Web and print media.)
It is important to understand that the low-level conflict and anxiety created by the media (entertainment such as Rush Limbaugh being passed off as political commentary, for instance) are directly in the interests of the Plutocracy.
Anything that undermines a coherent understanding of the Plutocracy's over-reach and the inherent brittleness of the status quo's illusory "stability" works to the advantage of the Elites.
The third point is that many people who consider themselves smart realists nonetheless end up defending an oppressive and manipulative status quo because they have been persuaded by their salary and