I agree that universities have an obligation to allow, even encourage, all
kinds of speech, even if it makes some students uncomfortable.
By the way, in the university setting, it is not the uber-rich that is
attempting to curtail freedom of speech, but left wing students. The Milo
Yiannopoulos incident at Berkley last year is just one of the most famous
examples. There are plenty of others.
I didn't see the Max Blumenthal article you speak of here. I looked through
all the emails I've gotten from you through this list, and there is one
message where you mention an article by him, but no article itself. I did
some Googling and didn't see it either, but perhaps it's too soon for it to
have been indexed yet.
Yes, advertising is manipulative, and yes, many people are easily
manipulated. So what do you suggest? Should we add more regulation? Set up a
government agency to approve all advertisements before they are released?
Ban them outright? Something else? What do you advocate?
Concerning profit, it compensates the person who starts the business for the
risk he (or she) takes in starting it in the first place. Most businesses
fail, so it is a very risky enterprise. It can take a lot of money. Unless
the person is independently wealthy, (which I get the feeling that most
people on this list would consider that a bad thing, him or her probably
having gotten it by shady means), unless he is independently wealthy, or has
wealthy relatives, (also probably considered a bad thing by most here for
the same reason), that money has to come from somewhere else. He will have
to borrow it or persuade one or more people to invest in the business so he
can afford to buy the stuff he needs to buy to get started. That will almost
certainly include office space, supplies, i.e. computers, other equipment,
and hire employees, and pay them before he ever sees a penny of revenue.
Maybe he'll have to buy land, if he wants to build a factory. So, he uses
his credit cards, or goes to a bank and tries to persuade the loan officer
there that his business is worth taking the risk of lending him the money,
or he can go to a venture capitalist, (another bad person I imagine), or he
can issue shares in the company. All of this with no guarantee that he will
see a dime of revenue. If he starts out small, he almost certainly must,
then he doesn't have to risk a huge amount of money, but he still has to
take the chance that he will never see any revenue to repay him for the
risk, or to repay the bank or the venture capitalist, or to ensure that the
shareholders don't lose their investment. So, let's suppose he's successful
and he sells a product or service that people want to buy, (or are
manipulated into buying, as you would probably assume). If he makes a
profit, he can use that money to expand his business, which means, among
other things, hiring more workers, buying more office space, more equipment,
and so on, which is good for the economy because it encourages the
businesses he buys from to build more equipment, hire more workers, and
create things that people need, or just would like to have, which improves
their quality of life and standard of living. He can also use that profit to
repay his loans, or give a stock dividend. So yes, profit is a good thing.
But like just about everything else, too much profit is a bad thing because
it indicates a lack of competetiveness in the economy, which means that
consumers are getting ripped off. That is called profiteering. That is
occuring in some sectors of our economy right now. But just because too much
of something is a bad thing, it doesn't follow that none of it is a good
thing. Try living without salt for a while and see.
Evan
-----Original Message-----
From: Miriam Vieni
Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2018 7:14 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: The Rule of the Uber-Rich Means Either
Tyranny or Revolution
Let's see if I can go into your email and answer some of it, not debate
because I'm not good at debating and I don't like it much. People right
things and those things cause me to think of stuff which, as you seem to
have noticed, isn't always precisely responsive. But here goes.
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Evan Reese
Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2018 4:50 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: The Rule of the Uber-Rich Means Either
Tyranny or Revolution
Okay, well I faulted Chris Hedges for not giving examples, so I definitely
should not follow in those footsteps. I was in a hurry though when I wrote
my last response, which is something I should know to avoid doing.
So Alex Jones. I think Twitter should have kept him on. Let him rant. But
that is Twitter's decision, and I would not take that right away from them.
As I said before, although not as precisely as perhaps I should have,
freedom of speech is the freedom to say what one wishes, it is not the
freedom to force others to provide a platform for that speech. He could go
to Breitbart, if they'll have him, or start his own website or podcast.
Same for Chris Hedges. He could certainly take the New York Times to court
if he wished. But it is overwhelmingly likely that the court would tell him
what I would tell him. That is, he has the freedom to say what he wishes,
the NY Times has the freedom to publish what they wish, which also includes
the right to not publish what they do not wish to publish. Freedom of speech
is not a license to force others to provide a venue for one's own speech.
I guess that I think that any public venue, even if it is privately owned,
has a responsibility to allow dissident voices to be heard. That means that
Universities, private or public, should allow people from both the far left
and the far right to speak. And certainly, any company that facilitates
communication among people, should do the same.
There's growing talk about regulating the tech giants more. They got a pass
early on because the government wanted to encourage that sector of the
economy. But they're big boys now and they need to be regulated more
strictly than they are now. Europe is ahead of us in that area.
Government and tech companies collaborating to spy on Americans is something
I care very much about, and something I am very much opposed to. But that
was not part of Hedges' article, which is what I was responding to.
No big corporation is controling what I say. Are they controling what you
say? If so, how?
No big company is controlling what I say because I'm not a journalist or a
person with a following. However, if you googled my name, I doubt that you
could find all of the things that I've written electronically since I got my
first computer in the early 90's. And at one point, I did find some things
that I'd written for an adoption magazine way before there was an internet
as we know it. Someone put my articles there without my knowing it or my
permission.
Who has Facebook deleted on the advice of the government? Are they Russian
disinformation bots? I know about those, but those don't count, and they
should be deleted anyhow.
Facebook has deleted dissident voices with the excuse that they were Russian
bots when they were not, along with whatever real Russian bots may have
existed. I forwarded a piece from The Real News Network about this, perhaps
yesterday. If you listen, Max Blumenthal describes his latest experience
with Facebook and he's no Russian bot. He's the son of Sydney Blumenthal who
was affiliated with Hillary Clinton at some point. Max is a different
kettle of fish than his father, but no one would mistake him for a Russian
anything.
As I recall, Google initially resisted cooperating with the Chinese
government on Internet censorship, but then they caved. They made the wrong
choice. They should have left. Not that it would have made any difference to
the citizens of China, who will be censored no matter what. But Google
should not be participating in it. If you want to count Xi Jinping, and the
leadership of the Chinese Comunist Party, as uber-rich, then I guess I'll
have to give you that one.
Yes, we have an advertising industry. What's wrong with that? People know
what advertising is. Why shouldn't businesses be able to advertise their
products or services? Yes, it is often manipulative. Most people know that
too, since we've grown up with it. Are you saying that people have no
control over their ability to respond to advertising, that they have no
wills of their own?
I'm saying that people are highly manipulatable. That's why the advertising
industry is so lucrative. That's why Citizens United was such a terrible
decision. If it weren't so easy to manipulate people, we wouldn't have so
many young men volunteering to go to war in order to fight battles which
benefit only the people with power in their countries. We wouldn't have
people fighting over religion because they wouldn't believe in all the
various fantasies that have been sold to them by their various priests over
the centuries.
We have a marketplace. Not everything that it sells is needed by everyone.
True, a lot of stuff is made and advertised that people don't really need.
Yes, corporations sell stuff to make a profit. Again, what's wrong with
that? We can argue about how much profit is reasonable, how much indicates a
lack of competition, (we have a fair number of less than fully competetive
markets in the U.S. right now), but making a profit in and of itself is
something I have no problem with.
I'd be interested if you could tell us what positives there are in making a
profit. As far as I can tell, people don't benefit at all. What they benefit
from is having families and homes and food and leisure and art and exercise
and friendships and music and security and peace.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: Miriam Vieni
Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2018 3:08 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: The Rule of the Uber-Rich Means Either
Tyranny or Revolution
Evan,
The private companies that you're talking about are huge and powerful and
they are controlling, not only how we communicate, but what we communicate,
and they are working together with government agencies, sometimes to spy on
us and sometimes to control what we say. We're not talking about some nice
little company that employs you to answer the phone or sell shoes or
something. Those tech giants were built on technology that resulted from
government funded research. And they are rather ruthless. Google has agreed
to all of the limits on freedom that the Chinese government demands of it in
order to work in China. Facebook is agreeing to delete people because of the
advice of our government and private think tanks. I mentioned the Atlanta
Council previously. My memory is getting so bad these days but I think that
along with NATO, Saudi Arabia may be involved with it.
As for cars being safer, I don't know enough about the subject to agree with
that statement or disagree. I'm sure the advertising says that they are, but
I'd have to see statistics from an objective source before I believed that
it's true. But I think my point was that we have a financial system which
benefits the power elites or ruling class or whatever you want to call them,
when people are convinced that they need new things, different things,
better things, etc. because that's how corporations earn profits and that's
how CEO's and share holders make more money. Sometimes, our lives really
improve. But sometimes, they just become more costly and complicated and
their quality isn't actually better. The purpose of inventing all the new
things is so that some people can make a huge amount of money, not to make
our lives better. The purpose of advertising is to convince us that the new
things are making our lives better. I was born in 1937. When I look back
through all those years, it's true that some things are better now. But a
whole lot of thins are not. There are many things that were better fifty
years ago and those things have to do with the quality of the food we ate
and the way in which people related to each other, particularly the
impersonal interactions between customers and owners of, or workers in
businesses. Computers may be more efficient for corporations, but they've
changed customer relations for the worse. They may make medical institutions
more efficient, but they've also made them cold and impersonal.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Evan Reese
Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2018 1:42 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: The Rule of the Uber-Rich Means Either
Tyranny or Revolution
Okay, so why did you have to come up with the examples when Hedges was
either too lazy or didn't respect his readers enough to provide any?
But more importantly, freedom of speech does not give you the right to tell
private corporations what speech they can or should allow, any more than it
gives me the right to force you to say things you don't want to say. I can
be fired by my employer for numerous reasons. That's the system we work
under, and despite its flaws, nobody has come up with a better one yet. Once
again, nobody has the right to force their views on others.
Cars are much more computerized than ever before, but they are also much
safer. Wouldn't you agree with Ralph Nader that that is a worthy goal? How
many lives is being able to repair one's car worth?
You can get a cheap flip phone that doesn't cost hundreds of dollars, and
pay as you go. I doubt that many people mourn the loss of pay phones.
Evan
-----Original Message-----
From: Miriam Vieni
Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2018 12:49 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: The Rule of the Uber-Rich Means Either
Tyranny or Revolution
Actually, I suppose that "freedom of speech" is a relative term. We can say
anything that we want to say on the Blind Democracy list and Hedges can say
what he wishes to say on Truthdig. However, neither he nor I can say what we
wish to say on any corporate media source, a source where we might be heard
by millions of people. You can talk to your family about your latest
birthday party on Facebook, but the pages of voices known to have dissident
views are being closed down with the counsel of organizations like the
Atlanta Council (a voice for many interests including NATO), at the behest
of Congress. Groups can physucakky protest only in approved locations,
usually far away from the sites they wish to protest. And remember, Hedges
was fired from the NY Times for making a speech of which the Times
disapproved. Michael Moore was speaking at an Oscar ceremony and when,
during the speech, he made a statement opposing the Iraq War, the mike was
turned off and he was ushered off the stage. So yes, I have the freedom to
write these words on an email list in October 2018 which will reach, perhaps
20 or so people, if there are that many on this list and you may choose to
call that freedom of speech. But Alex Jones was removed from Twitter because
his speech is considered to be extreme and he reaches a lot more people than
20 blind folks.
As for those technological inventions used for public benefit, well, yes we
benefit from them, but the greatest benefit is reaped by the very wealthy
and although we benefit, we are also greatly harmed. There's so much to
this subject that we, or I, just can't deal with it, certainly not in an
email. But what comes to mind is automobiles. Once upon a time, guys used to
really love repairing their cars. They liked doing it and doing it saved
them money. Now cars are manufactured with technology which is so
complicated that no one can repair their own car anymore. Actually, people
often don't even own their cars because in order to have a car in good
condition, you need a new one every two or three years. Financially, what is
most feasible is to lease a car. That means that you just keep making
payments forever and ever. In that way, you can afford to have a car that
runs well which is a necessity in a country which has made convenient public
transportation unavailable. A long time ago, if you were away from home and
had an emergency or needed information from someone, there was a pay phone
nearby. It cost a dime, than a quarter. But now we are so lucky because we
have been conditioned to require a small computer wherever we go in order to
make contact with the rest of the world and it costs more than a dime or a
quarter. There's no exception if you're poor, if you earn $7.50 an hour or
are unemployed, no pay phones for you. You are still required to have a mini
computer, called a smart phone, costing hundreds of dollars with a
complicated pay plan. But yes, technology is wonderful.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Evan Reese
Sent: Monday, October 22, 2018 10:09 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: The Rule of the Uber-Rich Means Either
Tyranny or Revolution
First of all, let me say I generally agree with Hedges' description of the
character traits of the uber-rich. While I was reading it, I was thinking
how it reminded me of many monarchs, wealthy merchants, and inheritors of
wealth throughout history. But I do have a few issues with the piece.
Aristotle warned of the perils of rule by the uber-rich. So they've been
around for thousands of years, and somehow humanity has managed to survive.
Not only survive, but thrive. How is that possible?
Just a few quotes here:
"... the uber-rich make war on the “freedom of conscience, freedom of
speech, ..."
Hmmm, war on freedom of speech? But here we are reading an article on how
pernicious they are. So they certainly haven't won, and after thousands of
years of effort! Imagine!
Another quote:
"The uber-rich, as Karl Polanyi wrote, celebrate the worst kind of
freedom—the freedom “to exploit one’s fellows, or the freedom to make
inordinate gains without commensurable service to the community, the freedom
to keep technological inventions from being used for public benefit, ..."
What technological inventions might those be? Are any specifics forthcoming?
Would it be too much work for Hedges to provide an example or two?
Apparently so.
Here we are, our residences full of technological marvels our ancestors more
than a couple of generations back wouldn't even understand, but somehow the
uber-rich are keeping unspecified technological inventions from us.
But here's the one that bugs me most:
"The dark pathologies of the uber-rich, lionized by mass culture and mass
media, have become our own. We have ingested their poison...."
Okay, so who is this "we" he refers to? Now, I've been a native speaker of
English for over 50 years, and "we" generally refers to the speaker, or the
author in this case, and one or more other people. So is he refering to
himself and an unspecified number of fellow ingesters of the poison of the
pathologies of the uber-rich? If not, then why is he using the word "we"? He
certainly doesn't speak for me, or most of the people I know. In fact, as I
already said, I generally agree with his characterization of the uber-rich
Of course, once again, we get a sweeping pronouncement, devoid of specifics,
or any kind of evidence.
Just Hedges letting his hyperbole carry him away again.
Evan
-----Original Message-----
From: Miriam Vieni
Sent: Monday, October 22, 2018 3:19 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] The Rule of the Uber-Rich Means Either Tyranny or
Revolution
The Rule of the Uber-Rich Means Either Tyranny or Revolution
Mr. Fish / Truthdig
At the age of 10 I was sent as a scholarship student to a boarding school
for the uber-rich in Massachusetts. I lived among the wealthiest Americans
for the next eight years. I listened to their prejudices and saw their
cloying sense of entitlement. They insisted they were privileged and wealthy
because they were smarter and more talented. They had a sneering disdain for
those ranked below them in material and social status, even the merely rich.
Most of the uber-rich lacked the capacity for empathy and compassion. They
formed elite cliques that hazed, bullied and taunted any nonconformist who
defied or did not fit into their self-adulatory universe.
It was impossible to build a friendship with most of the sons of the
uber-rich. Friendship for them was defined by “what’s in it for me?” They
were surrounded from the moment they came out of the womb by people catering
to their desires and needs. They were incapable of reaching out to others in
distress—whatever petty whim or problem they had at the moment dominated
their universe and took precedence over the suffering of others, even those
within their own families. They knew only how to take. They could not give.
They were deformed and deeply unhappy people in the grip of an unquenchable
narcissism.
It is essential to understand the pathologies of the uber-rich. They have
seized total political power. These pathologies inform Donald Trump, his
children, the Brett Kavanaughs, and the billionaires who run his
administration. The uber-rich cannot see the world from anyone’s perspective
but their own. People around them, including the women whom entitled men
prey upon, are objects designed to gratify momentary lusts or be
manipulated. The uber-rich are almost always amoral. Right. Wrong. Truth.
Lies. Justice. Injustice. These concepts are beyond them. Whatever benefits
or pleases them is good. What does not must be destroyed.
The pathology of the uber-rich is what permits Trump and his callow
son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to conspire with de facto Saudi ruler Mohammed
bin Salman, another product of unrestrained entitlement and nepotism, to
cover up the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, whom I worked with in
the Middle East. The uber-rich spend their lives protected by their
inherited wealth, the power it wields and an army of enablers, including
other members of the fraternity of the uber-rich, along with their lawyers
and publicists. There are almost never any consequences for their failures,
abuses, mistreatment of others and crimes. This is why the Saudi crown
prince and Kushner have bonded. They are the homunculi the uber-rich
routinely spawn.
The rule of the uber-rich, for this reason, is terrifying. They know no
limits. They have never abided by the norms of society and never will. We
pay taxes—they don’t. We work hard to get into an elite university or get a
job—they don’t. We have to pay for our failures—they don’t. We are
prosecuted for our crimes—they are not.
The uber-rich live in an artificial bubble, a land called Richistan, a place
of Frankenmansions and private jets, cut off from our reality. Wealth, I
saw, not only perpetuates itself but is used to monopolize the new
opportunities for wealth creation. Social mobility for the poor and the
working class is largely a myth. The uber-rich practice the ultimate form of
affirmative action, catapulting white, male mediocrities like Trump, Kushner
and George W. Bush into elite schools that groom the plutocracy for
positions of power. The uber-rich are never forced to grow up. They are
often infantilized for life, squalling for what they want and almost always
getting it. And this makes them very, very dangerous.
Political theorists, from Aristotle and Karl Marx to Sheldon Wolin, have
warned against the rule of the uber-rich. Once the uber-rich take over,
Aristotle writes, the only options are tyranny and revolution. They do not
know how to nurture or build. They know only how to feed their bottomless
greed. It’s a funny thing about the uber-rich: No matter how many billions
they possess, they never have enough. They are the Hungry Ghosts of
Buddhism. They seek, through the accumulation of power, money and objects,
an unachievable happiness. This life of endless desire often ends badly,
with the uber-rich estranged from their spouses and children, bereft of
genuine friends. And when they are gone, as Charles Dickens wrote in “A
Christmas Carol,” most people are glad to be rid of them.
C. Wright Mills in “The Power Elite,” one of the finest studies of the
pathologies of the uber-rich, wrote:
“
They exploited national resources, waged economic wars among themselves,
entered into combinations, made private capital out of the public domain,
and used any and every method to achieve their ends. They made agreements
with railroads for rebates; they purchased newspapers and bought editors;
they killed off competing and independent businesses and employed lawyers of
skill and statesmen of repute to sustain their rights and secure their
privileges. There is something demonic about these lords of creation; it is
not merely rhetoric to call them robber barons.
Corporate capitalism, which has destroyed our democracy, has given unchecked
power to the uber-rich. And once we understand the pathologies of these
oligarchic elites, it is easy to chart our future. The state apparatus the
uber-rich controls now exclusively serves their interests. They are deaf to
the cries of the dispossessed. They empower those institutions that keep us
oppressed—the security and surveillance systems of domestic control,
militarized police, Homeland Security and the military—and gut or degrade
those institutions or programs that blunt social, economic and political
inequality, among them public education, health care, welfare, Social
Security, an equitable tax system, food stamps, public transportation and
infrastructure, and the courts. The uber-rich extract greater and greater
sums of money from those they steadily impoverish. And when citizens object
or resist, they crush or kill them.
The uber-rich care inordinately about their image. They are obsessed with
looking at themselves. They are the center of their own universe. They go to
great lengths and expense to create fictional personas replete with
nonexistent virtues and attributes. This is why the uber-rich carry out acts
of well-publicized philanthropy. Philanthropy allows the uber-rich to engage
in moral fragmentation. They ignore the moral squalor of their lives, often
defined by the kind of degeneracy and debauchery the uber-rich insist is the
curse of the poor, to present themselves through small acts of charity as
caring and beneficent. Those who puncture this image, as Khashoggi did with
Salman, are especially despised. And this is why Trump, like all the
uber-rich, sees a critical press as the enemy. It is why Trump’s and Kushner’s
eagerness to conspire to help cover up Khashoggi’s murder is ominous. Trump’s
incitements to his supporters, who see in him the omnipotence they lack and
yearn to achieve, to carry out acts of violence against his critics are only
a few steps removed from the crown prince’s thugs dismembering Khashoggi
with a bone saw. And if you think Trump is joking when he suggests the press
should be dealt with violently you understand nothing about the uber-rich.
He will do what he can get away with, even murder. He, like most of the
uber-rich, is devoid of a conscience.
The more enlightened uber-rich, the East Hamptons and Upper East Side
uber-rich, a realm in which Ivanka and Jared once cavorted, look at the
president as gauche and vulgar. But this distinction is one of style, not
substance. Donald Trump may be an embarrassment to the well-heeled Harvard
and Princeton graduates at Goldman Sachs, but he serves the uber-rich as
assiduously as Barack Obama and the Democratic Party do. This is why the
Obamas, like the Clintons, have been inducted into the pantheon of the
uber-rich. It is why Chelsea Clinton and Ivanka Trump were close friends.
They come from the same caste.
There is no force within ruling institutions that will halt the pillage by
the uber-rich of the nation and the ecosystem. The uber-rich have nothing to
fear from the corporate-controlled media, the elected officials they
bankroll or the judicial system they have seized. The universities are
pathetic corporation appendages. They silence or banish intellectual critics
who upset major donors by challenging the reigning ideology of
neoliberalism, which was formulated by the uber-rich to restore class power.
The uber-rich have destroyed popular movements, including labor unions,
along with democratic mechanisms for reform that once allowed working people
to pit power against power. The world is now their playground.
In “The Postmodern Condition” the philosopher Jean-François Lyotard painted
a picture of the future neoliberal order as one in which “the temporary
contract” supplants “permanent institutions in the professional, emotional,
sexual, cultural, family and international domains, as well as in political
affairs.” This temporal relationship to people, things, institutions and the
natural world ensures collective self-annihilation. Nothing for the
uber-rich has an intrinsic value. Human beings, social institutions and the
natural world are commodities to exploit for personal gain until exhaustion
or collapse. The common good, like the consent of the governed, is a dead
concept. This temporal relationship embodies the fundamental pathology of
the uber-rich.
The uber-rich, as Karl Polanyi wrote, celebrate the worst kind of
freedom—the freedom “to exploit one’s fellows, or the freedom to make
inordinate gains without commensurable service to the community, the freedom
to keep technological inventions from being used for public benefit, or the
freedom to profit from public calamities secretly engineered for private
advantage.” At the same time, as Polanyi noted, the uber-rich make war on
the “freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, freedom of meeting, freedom
of association, freedom to choose one’s own job.”
The dark pathologies of the uber-rich, lionized by mass culture and mass
media, have become our own. We have ingested their poison. We have been
taught by the uber-rich to celebrate the bad freedoms and denigrate the good
ones. Look at any Trump rally. Watch any reality television show. Examine
the state of our planet. We will repudiate these pathologies and organize to
force the uber-rich from power or they will transform us into what they
already consider us to be—the help.
Chris Hedges
