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OpEdNews Op Eds    H1'ed 8/12/11

The Tipping Point: When Do Americans Hit the Streets?

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I see many alarming parallels between the US and the USSR of the 1980s. The most prominent is the virtual collapse of civil society. In Russia, this resulted in more than a decade of starvation, illness and early death because there was no community infrastructure in place (to take over food production and provision of other basic services) when the Soviet infrastructure collapsed. For decades, the KGB systematically infiltrated and smashed all community groups, irrespective of their size or purpose, because the Communist Party elite saw them as a threat to state power. The reasons for the disintegration of American civil society are more complex. They include low wages, long work hours and a highly sophisticated public relations industry that continuously bombards Americans with individualistic anti-community and anti-organizing messages (see Thinking Like Egyptions).

Addressing Psychological Oppression

The lesson I derive from the food theory of revolution is not that progressives shouldn't organize -- but that they need to focus less on political oppression (low wages, attacks on unions and civil liberties, cuts in Social Security, Medicare, Wall Street criminality, etc) and more on psychological oppression. Wilhelm Reich makes the same argument in The Mass Psychology of Fascism. It's pointless trying to organize the working class around political and economic injustice without addressing the psychological rigidity that imprisons all of us as products of a profoundly authoritarian social and family structure.

To a large extent, this involves counteracting the steady diet of psychological messages from the mainstream media that shape Americans' identity and values, as well as pressuring them to consume .

Increasing Social Interaction

In my experience, the first step in reducing our susceptibility to this pro-corporate messaging is making a conscious decision to increase our level of civic engagement -- even in activities that aren't overtly political, such as Girl Scouts, Rotary and Lions Club. In getting to know our neighbors and joining community groups, we model (the most powerful teaching tool) and inspire family members, friends, neighbors and co-workers to do likewise. The idea is to disrupt Americans' individualized relationship with their TVs, Computers, Ipods and Androids and get them to interact with each other instead.

The moment they do, they begin to express doubts about the fairness and legitimacy of government authority. These thoughts are surprisingly close to the surface. However they only become conscious once people have the opportunity to express them.

This, for me, explains the phenomenal early success of the Tea Party movement. People immediately identified with the message that the two party system failed to address their needs. They flocked in droves to Tea Party events when they believed it was a genuine movement -- and quickly abandoned it on realizing the Republican leadership and corporate media were subverting the Tea Party agenda for partisan purposes.

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I am a 63 year old American child and adolescent psychiatrist and political refugee in New Zealand. I have just published a young adult novel THE BATTLE FOR TOMORROW (which won a NABE Pinnacle Achievement Award) about a 16 year old girl who (more...)
 
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