America's moral values began to erode
due to market values' deification.
Nazi propaganda minister Goebbels was so impressed
he used Bernays' work for inspiration.
More than 50% of America's assets
were concentrated in the hands of the wealthy
and most of The People couldn't afford to buy
the excess of industry's inventories.
Thus artificial demand was marketed
as a way to get people to buy up the excess
so supply wouldn't outpace demand
and Americans got hooked on credit.
They began "buying" things they couldn't afford,
digging themselves deeper and deeper into debt.
In the 20s ministers were thumping their pulpits
and, in no uncertain terms, condemning it.
So Trade Associations, Chambers of Commerce
and the purveyors of Public Relations
rechristened debt as "credit"
to erase any sinful associations.
Now rather than wallowing in shame
at the bottom of a self-created money pit,
the credit buyer attained an admirable status -
proud possessor of a line of credit.
When this House of Cards collapsed
in the tsunami of the Great Depression,
the discontent of the American People
seemed dangerous in its expression.
But the Upper Crust saw the New Deal
as a way to buy people's loyalty to the system,
making real equality of opportunity seem unnecessary
and thus short-circuiting radicalism.
And by relinquishing some of their profit,
but never one iota of their political power,
they entered a marriage of convenience
with the Welfare State and Labor.
World War Two's economic stimulation
settled The People into an acquisitive mood,
content to imitate their "betters"
while living a life of indentured servitude.
But the Civil Rights and Women's Movements,
and War Resisters claiming Viet Nam was in vain,
gave birth to a Cultural Revolution
and gave America growing pains.
In 1971, Lewis Powell,
soon to be a Supreme Court Justice,
sent a memo to the businessmen
of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce
and said we've got to take back
the power the Depression lost us
and re-claim academia, the courts,
America's media and its politics.
Since Nixon had disgraced them,
conservatives created a convenient hysteria,
and because the U.S. was out of Viet Nam,
found the enemy lurking here in America -
part of the American People
and most of our news media.
Even the Analytical Division of the CIA
came under intensive scrutiny.
The A.D. was created to provide
information that was unflinchingly clear,
telling presidents and Congress
what they often didn't want to hear.
They shot down Ike's "Bomber Gap"
and JFK's Missile Scam,
not to mention LBJ's faith
in the air war against North Viet Nam.
The A.D. wasn't perfect,
but objective analysis was its mission
'til it came under attack
from neoconservatives who insisted
on a growing Soviet menace
hell bent on worldwide conquest.
But the A.D. was convinced that Moscow
was struggling just to keep up with us.
It was a declining superpower
whose empire was quickly disintegrating,
which had led Nixon/Kissinger to use
detente strategy in negotiating
an arms control agreement
which neocons derided as misled.
This made President Gerald Ford
doubt his conservative street cred.
He got nervous about Reagan's
primary showings in 1976,
so he dropped detente strategy
like a red hot ton of bricks.
To further toughen his image
he let CIA Director Bush Number One
make an unprecedented opening up
of the CIA's Analytical Division
to a group of rightwing intellectuals
who were then known as TEAM B,
composed solely of those who made careers
of beefing up Soviet Threat Theory
and claimed the CIA's A.D.
underestimated the Soviet threat,
so Bush One took up the most alarmist view
of Moscow's military power yet.
Meantime William Simon,
Nixon's Energy Czar from '73,
who was now President Gerald Ford's
Secretary of the Treasury,
picked up where Justice Powell's
Chamber of Commerce memo ended
and took the lead in raising
tens of millions of dollars intended
for the marriage of corporate money
to inherited American wealth
in the form of a rightwing media structure
that began its operation in stealth.
The goal was to overthrow
the existing "Liberal Establishment"
and replace it with their own
"counter-intelligentsia" detachment.
Joseph Coors, Richard Mellon Scaife,
John M. Olin, Lynde and Harry Bradley,
along with Randolph Richardson
comprised the conservative "Five Families"
that established the basic core
of rightwing think tanks and foundations
and dedicated millions to start
their own advocacy organizations
which have multiplied to more
than three hundred fifty today,
still supported in a very large part
by this same rightwing M.A.F.I.A.
Add to that hundreds of millions
from S. Korean theocrat Rev. Sung Myung Moon
and then you'll have some idea
of this conservative monsoon.
William Simon himself co-founded
the Institute for Educational Affairs
which churned out eager young activists
from foundation-financed endowment chairs
at Yale and Harvard Universities
to move public opinion more to the right
via institutes, think tanks and journals,
infiltrating media while monitoring its sites.
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