The following is an excerpt from Dennis Marker's new book
15 Steps to Corporate Feudalism,
published this year. In the text below, Marker shares one of the steps
he sees as central to the destruction of the middle class since Ronald
Reagan took over.
Your goal for this step is to figure out
how to teach the middle class to hate their own government using a
strategy that takes into consideration the political climate of the
United States of thirty years ago.
Teaching the middle class to
hate their government was an essential part of the plan to implement
Corporate Feudalism. A middle class cannot exist without a strong
government. This is because only a government has the power to stand up
to the giant corporations of today’s world, or the powerful individuals
and private armies of earlier times. It is the government that enforces
the laws to protect the middle class from those who would like to become
their economic rulers. That is why prior to the Industrial Revolution
and the creation of the middle class all economies were run according to
some version of the feudal system. If you want to put an end to the
middle class and replace it with a feudal republic, you would need to
change people’s perception of their government.
Obviously a
government does not have to be on the side of its people, as can be seen
by the existence of countless dictatorships and oligarchies throughout
the world. Even the corporatocracy that currently exists in the United
States falls far short of being on the side of its middle class. But US
history shows that a government committed to serving its citizens can,
in fact, help create and maintain a healthy middle class even in the
face of powerful corporations whose only interest is maximizing their
own power and profits.
It is like the story in old westerns of a
big bad landowner who takes what he wants when he wants it, ruthlessly
terrorizing a town without a strong sheriff. Any individual who tries to
stop the landowner is beaten into submission or killed. The situation
continues until the town finds a strong enough sheriff to regain control
over the landowner and his gang. This is the Old West version of the
feudal system. In westerns, the feudal lord comes first and the sheriff
comes later. But in the United States of thirty years ago, the
government was the strong sheriff keeping the late-twentieth-century
feudal lords from taking what they wanted. As long as the government was
supported by its citizens—particularly its middle class—no one could
ride into town and steal what belonged to the people. But if the
government were weakened or destroyed, a different situation would
arise. The intent of the plan for Corporate Feudalism was to convince
the middle class to fire their sheriff. And that’s just what happened.
Thirty
years ago at the onset of the Reagan Revolution, the middle class
basically appreciated and respected their government and believed that
living in the United States was good for the middle class. They took
their status for granted. The connection between what was good about the
United States and its government was clear to the American public. For
the most part, people believed the government was on their side and
largely responsible for the high standard of living they enjoyed. Their
government built the roads that made transportation easy. Their
government made the laws and regulations that kept US workers safe at
their jobs. Their government ensured that their food was safe. The labor
strife that had empowered the middle class was now decades old, and the
Vietnam War had ended, although not well. In many ways the United
States of thirty years ago was a happy place, and most people understood
their government’s role in keeping it that way. While there were
problems, including the energy crisis, they seemed manageable. Not
everyone was happy with everything the government did, of course, but
there was general agreement that the US government was the best
government anywhere.
Then the US government found itself in the
crosshairs of the brand-new Reagan Revolution with no way to understand
why it was under attack and no way to defend itself. For thirty years,
it took blow after blow. Now, while still standing, that government is
very different from what it was when Reagan took office. It is much
weaker, no longer able to offer the protections or provide the services
the middle class took for granted thirty years ago—the same kinds of
services that many European democracies have continued to provide for
their citizens during the period of US economic and social decline. And
in its weakened state the US government has lost the support of the very
citizens who depended on it the most, the middle class.
How did
this happen? When Ronald Reagan got to Washington, he set out to
convince the middle class that their government was their enemy, using
his considerable powers of persuasion. The basic message of Reagan and
the conservatives was that everyone would be better off if the federal
government just disappeared. They were smart enough not to say this
directly, however. Instead, they just landed one body blow after another
without openly expressing their desire to destroy the government.
For
example, Reagan attacked government workers, contending they were lazy,
they wasted taxpayer money, and they involved themselves in issues they
knew nothing about, like regulating large businesses and corporations.
Within the first few years of Reagan’s election, the morale of the
federal workforce plummeted as these employees saw their image shift
from being considered public servants trying to make life in the United
States better for everyone to being seen as lazy, despised bureaucrats
wasting taxpayer money. Far from being a place where committed public
servants worked to help the public, Washington, DC, became known as the
place where crooks, thieves, and lazy workers stole taxpayer money for
foolish purposes or their own personal benefit.
While federal
workers had unions to protect their jobs, they did not have high-priced
lobbyists and media consultants to safeguard their image. The unions
representing federal workers came under the same harsh attack as the
workers themselves, but the attacks went largely unanswered. The
nation’s first movie star president had intentionally created this
negative image of government workers, and he was convincing.
Following
Reagan, other conservatives continued to lead the charge against the
government, often using the same language the Reagan administration had
employed. Few found language more effective than the Reagan one-liner,
“I’m from the government and I’m here to help,” but they didn’t need to.
The leap from John F. Kennedy’s “Ask not what your country can do for
you, but what you can do for your country” to Reagan’s cynical and
supposedly frightening “I’m from the government and I’m here to help,”
had been successfully made.
In addition to waging a full-scale
campaign against the government and its employees, the Reagan
administration also implemented another practice that was equally
destructive to the image of government—filling government positions with
people who hated government, a practice that continues to this day. For
those seeking to change the United States from a middle-class democracy
to a corporate feudal republic, there are three major advantages to
this practice. First, you give government jobs to your conservative
friends and cronies. Second, you keep dedicated public servants who want
to see government succeed out of government. Third, and most
importantly, you have a cadre of conservative ideologues working inside
the government to sabotage and destroy the government at every turn.
The
advantages for conservatives of sabotaging and destroying the
government are almost limitless. Looking at a few examples from George
W. Bush’s administration shows why. Thirty years ago the Consumer
Product Safety Commission (CPSC), a government agency committed to
protecting the public by monitoring the safety of toys and other
products, made a positive difference in people’s lives. However, during
George W. Bush’s administration conservatives who filled many of the
civil service positions and all of the politically appointed slots did
not believe the government should be in the business of helping to
protect the public, and they did everything in their power to avoid
carrying out their responsibilities. When Congress tried to give the
CPSC more money to do a better job of regulating products imported from
China, for example, the Bush-appointed agency head refused. She said
they had plenty of money to do their job, although in reality they
weren’t doing their job at all. Then reports started coming in about
unsafe toys originating in China. People were outraged, as they should
have been, and blamed the government. By failing to do their jobs, the
conservatives were encouraging people to give up on their own
government, which was exactly what conservatives wanted.
Thirty
years ago, in an effort to make their point, conservatives often
exaggerated the examples of government corruption and waste, but during
George W. Bush’s administration scandals involving everything from toys
to military contracting became the norm. And who were the perpetrators
of most of these crimes against the United States and its taxpayers?
They were government-hating conservatives working inside the government,
placed there for this very reason. Each time one of these conservatives
was caught in another scandal, the American public’s view of government
deteriorated a little more. If you believe in a government that helps
its citizens, this seems bad. But if you believe that the best
government is no government this seems great, so the people who wanted
to establish Corporate Feudalism couldn’t have been happier.
That
was the plan used by Corporate Feudalists to convince millions of
middle-class people to hate their own government. Did you think of a
more effective way to accomplish this goal? Or do you believe the plan
that was used was the most effective one available?
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