As the Cookie Crumbles: Coincidence? I Think NOT!

Ultra-lib commentator Jim Hightower the other day ALSO delivered himself of a rant based on the Preamble to the Constitution. Musta been a good day for it.

Hightower's conceit (if it is that), like that of so many of his peers in the commentariat, is that he pretends (okay, mebbe he's sincere; whatever) that the direction that the the bankstas, financiers, and Capitalists, and the WHOLE political establishment they have bought and paid for are taking us, is some kind of aberration, that it's just an accident that current policies radically disempower the People and COINCIDENTALLY undercut the possibility of continuing democratic self-government, and that once "the people" are once again in charge, things will get "better." We're "BIGGER than this," he proclaims.

You know: THEY--Hightower, Reich, Hartmann, Cenk, Olbermann, Krugman, even, all of 'em-- HAVE TO SAY THAT.

It's what they're paid to say. What their paid to do is: to ignore the undeniable--and probably irreversible--structural ASSAULT on the popular sovereignty of the US citizenry by the Elites as if it were just an accident, or just some nasty, unforeseen consequence of their general dickishness.

Whereas it is nothing less than the WHOLE agenda of the Oligarchs, corpoRats and their minions in gummint for no LESS than 60 years... In effect, the commentariat BLAME US for losing power, rather than name the real malefactors who've stolen it and who also write their paychecks. (I am amazed how often I am reminded of Upton Sinclair's clairvoyance in the 20s when he remarked how DIFFICULT it is to get a man to see what his paycheck depends on him ignoring.)

Some folks have complained that this view amounts to a claim of a "conscious conspiracy."

Mebbe; not exactly, but it's close enough for gummint work:

Let's call it (in honor of Foucault, the guy whose analytic I'm viewing this through, might call) a "discursive" conspiracy, or a conspiracy of "epistemic affinities."

One would have to be blind to not have noticed that the ultra-wealthy, their satraps, toadies, courtesans, and gunsels (e.g., the John Birch Society (it STARTED with Koch money, ya know, right?) have been dedicated since the mid 50s--even before, according to General Smedley Butler-- to the overthrow of self-sovereignty of the American People and have been single-mindedly been dedicated to overthrowing it, from the inside. See, e.g., the teabagger contingent in Congress.

They have done and continue to do everything they possible to make Government seem as irrelevant, yet dirty, as possible, to trivialize it, to drive the People AWAY from their Constitution and poison its institutions--which happen to be ALL that stand between the Owners and whatever that's left worth having...

The movement is so pervasive, and so universal among the institutions of wealth--which are our "landmark institutions, of finance, business, and culture-- that one can no longer name ANY single author of those practices which regulate social behaviors. Yet the effects are inextricably embedded in the 'historical' memory of the institutions themselves.

Though if yu wanted to blame someone, we might remember the (blessedly late) Gipper's noxious quip: "The eight most feared words in the English language: "I'm from the Government and I'm here to help."

I wanna crap on Raygun's grave. That's the very tippy-TOP of my bucket list, hippies. What's on yours? We'll compare notes when I see you at the beach.