Let me share a bit about the "shock doctrine" topic and its needed rise and acceptance in the American cultural and educational landscape. In recent months, I have heard various educators or teachers in America citing Klein's model or thesis for the need to end the increasing stratification of the American society.For example, Lois Weiner, a professor of education in New Jersey who was invited to speak on the topic of the federal government and think tank project called RACE TO THE TOP, stated on Democracy Now this past week, "I think it's important to understand that Race to the Top is not unique to the United States, and what Arne Duncan [current head of the US Department of Education, who used to head the schools of Chicago] did in Chicago is not unique to Chicago. And in fact, the contours of this program were carried out first under Pinochet in Chile. And this program was implemented by force of military dictatorships and the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in Latin America. And the results have been verified by researchers there."
Weiner continued, "They [Projects similar to Race for the Top or No-Child-Left-Behind] produced increased stratification. So I think what we're seeing right now are the results of that increased stratification, a stratification, inequality of results, because if you think about it, No Child Left Behind is almost a decade old. And what are the results? The results are a growing gap between poor minority--achievement of poor minority kids and those kids who come from prosperous families who are--who live in affluent suburbs and in those suburban schools."
Actually, the stratification started in the 1960s and 1970s as monetarist policies were in full swing in the USA.
Weiner added, "And I think it's also very important to understand that this focus on educational reform is replacing, is a substitute for, a jobs policy. We need to understand that. Education can democratize the competition for the existing jobs, but it cannot create new jobs. And when most jobs that are being created are by companies like Wal-Mart, education cannot do anything about that. So, we need to--we really need to look critically at Race to the Top and understand the way that it fits into this new economic order of a so-called jobless recovery and that what's really going on is a vocationalization of education, a watering down of curriculum for most kids, so that they're going to take jobs that require only a seventh or an eighth grade education, because those are the jobs that are being created in this economy.
And so, I think that while we--while it's important to look at the particulars of each state and each city, each school district, it's also important to see this large picture, because almost anything that you can point to me that's being done in Chicago or New York or San Francisco, we can find another place in the world that it was already done, and we can look at those results. And the results are not good."
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/9/3/educators_push_back_against_obamas_business
Many other rank-and-file Americans are now in tune with what Klein has said and written. They agree that in "THE SHOCK DOCTRINE, Naomi Klein explodes the myth that the global free market triumphed democratically. Exposing the thinking, the money trail and the puppet strings behind the world-changing crises and wars of the last four decades, The Shock Doctrine is the gripping story of how America's "free market" policies have come to dominate the world through the exploitation of disaster-shocked people and countries."
Americans have been aware that something was wrong but few had a model to describe the Leviathan that had been crusshing upward-mobility in America and stratifying the landscape for so long.
A blurb on the official home page for the Klein's book, THE SHOCK DOCTRINE, explains "the pattern she [Naomi Klein] exposes [which] could govern our future as well, The Shock Doctrine could turn out to be among the most important books of the decade." In as nutshell, the pattern has been something to be called "disaster capitalism". However, the basic analytical for model came from non-mainstream developmental models of economics and neo-Marxian theory years ago.
"Based on breakthrough historical research and four years of on-the-ground reporting in disaster zones, The Shock Doctrine . . . shows how disaster capitalism the rapid-fire corporate reengineering of societies still reeling from shock did not begin with September 11, 2001. The book traces its origins back fifty years, to the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman, which produced many of the leading neo-conservative and neo-liberal thinkers whose influence is still profound in Washington today. New, surprising connections are drawn between economic policy, "shock and awe' warfare and covert CIA-funded experiments in electroshock and sensory deprivation in the 1950s, research that helped write the torture manuals used today in Guantanamo Bay."
The book, THE SHOCK DOCTRINE, was published before the Katrina Disaster but does pretty well describe Katrina's aftermath and how the government political wonks proceeded. THE SHOCK DOCTRINE book does tell the story of "the application of these [shock doctrine] ideas through our contemporary history, showing in riveting detail how well-known events of the recent past have been deliberate, active theaters for the shock doctrine, among them: Pinochet's coup in Chile in 1973, the Falklands War in 1982, the Tienanmen Square Massacre in 1989, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Asian Financial crisis in 1997 and Hurricane Mitch in 1998."
MAINSTREAM NOVELIST: John Grisham
Now, in no way do I wish to insinuate that John Grisham possibly the most popular author of our era is enamored with the Shock Doctrine model for its ability to describe how America and its economy function, but I have been noticing a great trend in his works that shows he is attacking the systems-as-are in America: Grisham is both directly and indirectly attacking the justice system, judges, politics, the economy, corporations, the banking system, the training system for lawyers, the federal government, and local traditions. In short, he is both an interesting writer, a great story teller, and a social critique. He also takes time to promote or preach more just, fair, humane and important priorities for individual and societal renewal.
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/01252008/grishamwriting.html
In THE APPEAL, Grisham showed how conservatives, corporations and others have bought up judgeships left-and-right across America. Some things in the novel, the Appeal, are extremely similar to what we saw in the wake of the "Deep Sea Horizon" debacle of this past summer, whereby a Louisiana judge tried to turn over a temporary moratorium on new drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Grisham shows how such judgeships have been put in position to help oil companies, etc. sometimes decades ago already.
