Most of the books I've read about the awfulness of the Bush presidency remind me of the old story about the blind men trying to figure out what an elephant looks like. Each one feels the part in front of him and describes the elephant within that singular context. The blind men's descriptions are correct but they don't really capture "elephant-ness," the totality of what such an animal might be.
"The Shock Doctrine" by The Nation/Guardian writer Naomi Klein gets the pieces of the elephant right, but, more importantly, the book displays the author's deep understanding of the dangerous political/economic philosophies that undergird U.S. domestic and foreign policy.
In this, "The Shock Doctrine" is the most compelling, intelligent, meticulously researched and wholistic book I've yet read about how the U.S., over the past fifty years, got itself into the unholy mess it's in today.
A large part of Klein's book, as you might guess, involves the catastrophe that is Iraq and the "war on terror" in general. But those military misadventures, she says, are but symptoms of the more all-encompassing ideological mindset that breeds the reckless policies being pursued today both domestically and internationally.
PROFITEERING ON HUMAN TRAGEDY
In the main, that ideology rests on a narrow, greed-oriented economic and political philosopy that barely recognizes the concept of a "public good." Instead, the goal is what can be gained by private corporations and individuals if the "public good" is removed from the equation so that "free market" forces are permitted to act unconstrained.
The idea is to return to some imagined "clean slate" where those free-market forces can be allowed to do their stuff absent governmental interference and oversight. The economic "shock therapy" visited upon developing Latin American countries and the Iraq War/Occupation provide just two examples of such human intervention.
Often, however, Mother Nature through earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, etc. wipes the slate clean so that the greed paradigm can be allowed to flourish by removing (usually poorer) residents who get in the way of corporate desires. Klein incisively and movingly relates the tale of what happened in Sri Lanka in the wake of the tsunami disaster, where the local fishing villages were turned into luxurious tourist sites by money-hungry government officials in cahoots with Western developers. (Page 385)
Klein uses the term "disaster capitalism" to refer to these "orchestrated raids on the public sphere in the wake of catastrophic events," where the forces of greed view such tragedies "as exciting market opportunities." (p.6) She quotes a Republican leader in Louisiana: "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did." Katrina, Klein says, is a clear example of the new "preferred method of advancing corporate goals: using moments of collective trauma to engage in radical social and economic engineering." (p.8)
In short, in "disaster capitalism" there are huge profits to be made from other peoples' misery, and since the welfare of the public is of no import in this economic/political theory, all that is needed for full control and enhanced profits are ways to optimally manage that misery.
MAN-MADE TRAUMA AND CHAOS
If nature doesn't provide that trauma, humans can. According to Klein, that's what "Shock & Awe" was all about in Iraq and which will be used in other attacks as well. The idea is to traumatize an entire culture through death, destruction, deprivation, fright, and often torture. One U.S. entrepreneur in Iraq stated it baldly: "fear and disorder offer real promise" in the marketplace. (p.9) This is reminiscent of Condoleezza Rice's famous comment after 9/11 that the terrorist tragedy offerred conservatives a good "opportunity" to move quickly on their business and political agendas.
Much of the rationale for this type of thinking was born from Milton Friedman's economic model developed at the University of Chicago in the 1950s and beyond. Klein, oddly enough, doesn't even mention the complementary teaching by political philosopher Leo Strauss, the Machavellian godfather of neo-conservative extremism, who also was on the Chicago faculty; many of Strauss' students became key players in the CheneyBush Administration. Strauss in a nutshell: grab what you can get by whatever means necessary.
While Friedman's tough, corporate model can be, and has been, imposed on democratic cultures, Klein notes, "authoritarian conditions are required for the implementation of its true vision." (p.11) And thus aggressive, tough strictures are often employed, often by dictators or invading armies or world financial institutions.
In non-dictatorships, government (which takes its cues from public clamor for services) must be effectively neutered or "hollowed-out" over time. The aim is to privatize as many of those public-need functions as possible, so that huge amounts of money can be made and, as it happens, healthy chunks of that cash can then be funnelled back into party coffers to aid proponents of free-markets to stay in office and expand their power base. (Conservative activist Grover Norquist aims for the day when government will be shrunken to the point that it can be "drowned in a bathtub.")
Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government & international relations, has taught at universities in California and Washington, worked for two decades as a writer-editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, and currently serves as co-editor of The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org).
Much of our problem today is the poor accounting for risk. The emphasis on performance devoid of measuring the risks taken to acheive it rewards gamblers at the expense of good risk management.
The true costs are not measured. Risk management incorporates process. Should we reward somebody who ran unaceptable risks such as sprinting across a busy road without looking just because he/she got to the finish first?
Also risk management is about future profits, our current accounting techniques generates dangerous short-termism as it treats good risk management as an expense thereby reducing profits which presents as bad performance.
The economic costs of increased risk of social disruption and climate change are irrelevant if your only interested in this years profits.
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kwalsh (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 137 comments)
on Wednesday, April 16, 2008 at 3:07:09 AM
I cannot say how many articles I have written here and letters to editors elsewhere in major news Media wherein I have spelled out THE EVILS OF PROFITEERING ON HUMAN TRAGEDY. Prime among them are profiting by Medical and drug compamnies or any necessity of life.
I blame the current horrors, though I am a deist on Organized Religion. The segment of the New Testament Matt. 4:1-11 The Temptation in The Wilderness, maps out the way in which men of honor and common sense should live and isolates selfish, Blind Ambition and self-serving behavior. The church choose to ignore it because without it they could pander for the donations of those with great wealth which they knew was, except in great rarity, gained through selfish and criminal enterprises. Instead they focused on the one thing by which they could effectively grasp all humans, especially women, who could control their men with it, as soon as they wiped away polygamy-sexual behavior. The day they did that, they separated themselves from honesty and God.
As a result Avaristic men feel justified in damaging others, even eliminating them to serve their own purposes. They will never turn away from that now. Behold the pope of my born into religion, who twice wrote to bishops, once as Cardinal Ratzinger, more than once as pope, certifying a threat of virtual de facto excommuication of those who voted for anyone who advocated abortion. I am as much against abortion as he is, but I would not vote for Bush because I knew what followed closely behind him-Hell, in the form of the New World Order "Crazies." I was among the first back in 2001 to call them fascists, and later followers of Mein Kampf, of which the new world order papers are a thinly disguised version. If I were given to know not to vote for the beast, why if the pope is of God, was he not so enlightened? because he heads one of the largest corporations on the planet. True some good is done by the dedicated priests which take the vow of poverty, but much harm is also done by alliances with corporate and political evils. he could have condemned in strong measures, as did his predecessor this war, but he offered too little and too late, only now speaking against it.
Constantine, refused baptism until he was on his death bed so he go one with his evils and could confess and wipe away his sins at the very last moment-hypocrisy! And now we see it renewed as the Barn door is closed after the horses have left to plunder the world.
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Professor Emeritus Peter Bagnolo (144 articles, 1 quicklinks, 95 diaries, 1216 comments)
on Wednesday, April 16, 2008 at 7:04:00 AM
Naomi's book is one of four recommend in: see below:
Hats off to Colleage Weiner - fine article. Disaster Capitalism is one in the four book course suggested in:
Sunday, December 2, 2007 HOPING TO REFORM CAPITALISM MAKES YOU COMPLICIT IN ITS INIQUITIES/4 Books (4 comments) Whatever one wants to call whatever takes its place, it is the inhumanity, murderous criminal insanity, of totally materialist, mindless capitalism that we are living through right now. Those of us who merely try to make it a bit less monstrous, are more acquiescent to its continuance, than to its being replaced with something more intelligently human. Extricate mind from complicity in Capitalist Crime with a four book course!
Might like to check out our OpEdNews Discussion Group and the article below
Wednesday, January 30, 2008 "Capitalism - a threat to life on Earth" OpEdNews Discussion Group 1 of 3 Lead Articles" (15 comments) Capitalism Presents Itself as Unreformable, by Definition Marginalizing Ethics and Social Well-being. This article completes the four lead-in articles for the OpEdNews Disscussion Group, "Capitalism – a threat to life on Earth", following Richard Mynich's, "Capitalism as the Engine of Global Crisis", Cameron James' Why I Say Capitalism is the Problem, & JJ's HOPING TO REFORM CAPITALISM MAKES YOU COMPLICIT IN ITS INIQUITIES
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Jay Janson (66 articles, 0 quicklinks, 6 diaries, 81 comments)
on Monday, April 21, 2008 at 12:12:53 AM
Prof. Weiner's in depth synopsis recommended for posting in
OEN Discussion Group "Capitalism - a threat to life on Earth"
as basic research book review of Naomi Kein's "Shock Doctrine" Corporatism in Extremis
Thanking Prof. Weiner, There are now so many excellent expose and explanatory works, a fine concise synopsis one can file and refer to for those in a personal time bind is so helpful.
servidor, jay janson
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Jay Janson (66 articles, 0 quicklinks, 6 diaries, 81 comments)
on Monday, April 21, 2008 at 2:44:47 PM
