Dr Sheldon Wolin on Totalitarian America, in Willits CA, 2003.

this is a very happy moment for me because one of my most admired teachers has visited us with his wife it's a beneficence really he's actually returned to small-town America we call it Willits it was the subject of de Tocqueville and by reference of dr. woollen as the archaic basis for democracy and it's my wish and hope that a renewed insight through these small towns will bring wholesome health to America now to our speaker Sheldon Wolin is incomparably qualified to speak on his subject tonight he is a scholar and a thinker and in him that is not an oxymoron he is master of his vocation first among equals in his guild having contributed language imagination and insight into political philosophy across two generations influencing the most political thinkers the most profoundly and I am one of those he has educated and exhorted students by thousands to use their education to be full citizens to apply their understanding as whole human beings and like Hobbes he has lived a long life and his contributions to knowledge cannot be ignored any longer all of which begs the question who and what is a political theorist I reply the political theorist differs in no way from the shaman the pathfinder the wise man the Elder and the seer they are all concerned with mankind and how to best live from the beginning of the race we have had the same need for universal understanding of the almost inexpressibly powerful aspirations for justice for community and for harmony so as to survive and to thrive and to be one with the natural balance and order the political is simply the manifested aspect of that that great mountain of human wisdom by the same token universal understanding is necessary to detect folly and corruption and despotism and avoid their destructive effects we have a case in point today the current political model the utilitarian concept of man which conditions for obedience subordination direct and indirect control mindless repetition and especially mindless self-sacrifice all primarily conducive to a given elite selfish purposes the expansive concept of who and what the human is which I understand as implicit in dr. woman's work leads inevitably to a concept of the political wherein lasting societies and governments Harbor and protect the individual soul as a microcosm of creation a glory of nature a special gift embedded in its mystery and this brings us to the devotion of the political theorists why is he so devoted to his own society and increasingly to humanity with the sense that we are all one seed in one flower that blossoms and withers as one to use the greek root for a theory a aria it means to behold from a distance many have become enthralled with their own visions and constructions after viewing society from a distance few return with the wisdom but our guest is a constant citizen as well as a universal mind the work will go into posterity but the citizen is with us Sheldon Wolin [Applause] thank you very much bill the title of my talk is based in part on the article which some of you have read in the Nation magazine called inverted totalitarianism and bill says suggested to me in our correspondence that I try to sort of show how I got to that kind of notion and also to some of its implications for right now let me first talk about the notion itself by suggesting what I'm sure some of you are at least familiar with and that is general features of totalitarianism that is what are we looking for when we talk about totalitarianism and let me schematize some of those some of those features first of all and thinking basically about the example of Nazi Germany but it applies to other totalitarian regimes as well there's a dichotomy at the outset between elite and mass the elite are regarded is in some respects specially endowed such that their talents and skills make them natural leaders the mass in turn indistinguishable from each other largely the same responsive to leadership and willing to follow and mostly put on this earth to follow secondly totalitarianism also is characterized by a one-party system in which one party dominates the political process and in the course of it eliminates or reduces technology the other parties thirdly there's a strong ideology to totalitarian systems that is a belief system that is coherent that is palatable to large numbers and that represents sort of the worldview the sort of political substitute for a religion in such a system next regimes of this sort are characterized by control of mass communications this mean this is very closely related to the important role of propaganda within such regimes that is the attempt to in fact not only spread the party line but make the party line vapor the most preeminent of party lines now next there's the use of terror by such regimes now it's important to remember as I tried to point out in the nation peace that the Nazis didn't set about torturing and killing everybody the important point was to instill a certain amount of fear generalized fear in a population but not so deep-rooted or so deep-seated as to paralyze the population in other words it was to sort of be a vague presence punctuated now and then by the fact that people would hear about cases of in which people were tortured or which were or put in concentration camps or were generally disappeared as we say these days next totalitarian regimes of particularly of the Nazi type are expansionist they tend not to remain contained within the boundaries of their system but rather are there's a certain dynamism that takes them outwards but that's accompanied by treaty violations and the general of a general tendency particularly marked in the case of Germany to launch Wars on the flimsiest a pretext to invade a Poland claiming Poland's going to attack Germany invading Czechoslovakia because you claimed that a German population in Czechoslovakia is being badly treated and on and on the Dutch are threat the Danes are a threat the Scandinavians are a threat so that the pretext on which foreign wars are fought are ones in which the regime takes the initiative in which by most rational accounts there's very little basis for their claims about it now this is closely related to another matter and that is totalitarian regimes are characterized by the subordination of domestic policy to foreign policy foreign policy and its demands financially its demands in terms of manpower its demands in terms of resources have the first precedence and domestic policy tends to be put on the back burner tends to be relegated to the point where it mostly takes the form of trying to prevent widespread discontent and why are rebellious or mutinous feelings among the populace finally it is a they are societies in which military virtues are exalted in which heroism manliness willingness to die willingness to sacrifice are not just virtues their preeminent virtues exalted virtues now turning from then this sort of general sketch let me now try briefly to say what I mean by inversion by the end totalitarianism what I mean by that is this that a political system can approach or even imitate a totalitarian system without not only seeming not to be a totalitarian regime but even professing to be the opposite of a totalitarian regime now that's not an easy point to make but it's going to be it's going to be crucial because if we take for example the question of elections under the Nazis elections were mostly staged that is managed controlled and in which the choices were very few in fact non-existent so that elections really became clever sites that as they became yes or nose with the nose not even counted in other words elections could be manipulated were manipulated and consequently the regime nonetheless could claim that they had popular support now the question that makes this inverted if we put the question this way can we say that we might get the same result in a political system that is where you get elections which are controlled or staged and not necessarily as in the Nazi plebiscites 96 or 98% voting in favor of the regime but a substantial portion of them so that the so that the outcome is one in which the system seems to be very difficult to alter very difficult to change even though there are apparently free elections now we can take that one step further we can say that while under the Nazis propaganda was strictly under the state control there were no independent newspapers or radio stations at the time but then as we know it's possible for the me to become increasingly more consolidated increasingly more homogeneous increasingly more uniformed and that the net result is that it becomes very difficult to enter counter opinions or to encourage dissident points of view now to take another example it brings us I think even a little bit closer its most scholars agree that the Nazi war machine really had no other purpose except to wage war that is the regime itself became increasingly empty in terms of any kind of goals or purposes or values other than war making now this introduces a really significant point I think in terms if we think about the war on terrorism immediately after the September 11th disaster the president said we could expect to have twenty or thirty years or more of a war on terrorism in other words it seemed to be endless it seemed to be a kind of war at which unlike other wars where you enter into it thinking only of the point where you can have peace and return to normalcy and where the end of the war is something that everybody is in favor of but with the idea of terror of a war against terrorism and the nature of terrorism a kind of form of power which has no state which has none of the ordinary accoutrements of government which is shadowy and which appears to be never in the same place twice yet appears to be all over you have a course in a certain sense a recipe for unending war for war which has which goes on and on and becomes by the fact a conditioning factor of your society it becomes as much a part of your environment so that when for example you take what used to be a simple thing like a ride on a plane becomes now tinged and edged by military paraphernalia around by US by soldiers by by guards by all kinds of equipment all the other things we know but what I'm trying to get at is simply the way in which war becomes an an accordion a lasting ingredient of a culture and in the process changes the cultures now another interesting aspect of this is that while the Nazis for their part mobilized the entire economy put it on a wartime footing as we were saying and put the population on a wartime footing and thereby reduced unemployment inverted totalitarianism more or less lets the economy go into freefall and despite rising unemployment refuses to take any really significant measures in other words there's a certain element which a economy that produces in many ways an element of fear continuously the kind of fear that comes for example not only from depression but also from loss of jobs downsizing a rapidly changing market which makes old skills and former skills updated and anachronistic so that the society again becomes become something in which you don't want to cure unemployment you don't want really to have full prosperity because that takes away an edge from the society that that's produced by the prevalence of fear even if it's often unexpressed even if it's often sublimated and and repress now if we ask as I think bill was trying to ask me when did I start thinking in this what might seem to some as an extreme way well I think my starting point was that I don't believe the things I am talking about is inverted totalitarianism began with a bush administration it didn't begin yesterday or the day before now that's by way of preface to something that occurred to me when we if you can take your memory back a bit when when our society in the rest of the world entered the new millennium you recall the larger number of celebrations about the new millennium and how we're entering a new world and everything's going to be rather different it struck me at the time that what was involved there was not simply looking forward but forgetting that was forgetting what had happened in the previous century that the 20th century now the 20th century in many ways was a terrible century it's the century not only of two world wars a spate of dictatorships in Italy in Germany and a quasi dictatorship in Spain and of course the Stalinist regime in the Soviet Union but it was also the time of Holocaust sand gulags it was the time of the of Korea and the Korean War is a time of Vietnam and the killing fields of Cambodia so that's it's a it's a century in which there is a lot of slaughter a lot of destruction and especially wreaked on civilian populations not just a soldiers dying in battle the the the main thing about modern Wars is that civilian casualties far far outweigh casualties now in fighting these wars the United States became I think began to become immobilized society because it had to defeat highly mobilized dictatorships as in World War two so the system I think began to change for example during World War two there was Universal conscription there was wage and price controls there was rationing of food and fuel there was direction of the labor force and of course a great surge of patriotism of nationalism all in the name of national unity which of course led at one point to the relocation of the japanese-americans men as soon as World War Two was over in 1945 without scarcely missing a beat the United States proclaimed a cold war against the Soviet Union now at the same time that something was happening though that was different that was proven in the Cold War and proven again in Korea and proven again in Vietnam and that was that you could fight Wars of a certain kind without really bothering the population neither the Korean War nor those nor the Vietnam War nor the Gulf War nor any of those Wars really imposed sacrifices on the population unlike the German example where the population suffered severely where they were often short of food short of fuel short of housing and so on so forth now in this period were these things where this new development was taking place there was also as we know some changing views beginning in the Cold War era views about civil liberties views about loyalty views about patriotism which found their way into loyalty tests and found their way into black lists and in general produce something in American society which except for the brief so-called Red Scare and following World War one really had very little precedent now while this was going on that is again contributing to the atmosphere of fear even though it was often in the background rather than direct was something that political and social scientists began to discover they began to discover something about what they call the American voter and the Linda the American voter was really at best a very anemic citizen that they were uninterested in anywhere he or she was uninterested in politics that they were ignorant of politics that they're unmotivated to vote and sure enough in the period following World War two the actual percentage of voters who took part active part in elections began to slowly go down now at the same time that this mass of uninterested apolitical voters began to take shape political and social scientists discovered something else they discovered public opinion polls now the juncture between those two things that is between an apathetic citizenry and the discovery or invention of polling meant of course that polls were being directed at an apathetic citizenry and of course the polls boy was quickly learned could be constructed and along with that issue could devise the questions you wanted that you could get in a certain sense the answers you wanted that you in other words were creating through the polls a method of manipulation those were important to remember that voting research and polling began as market research it began at the University of Michigan where the Survey Research Center basically got into business by business that is conducting marketing survey so that the voter and the consumer became again almost interchangeable interchangeable items the result was I think beginning of the development of what you could call a pseudo democracy that a democracy whose opinion was solicited whose opinion was it looked as though as their opinions were really wanted by the politicians and the leadership but it was a democracy that of course existed within the confines of the polls and the polls were usually of such a nature as to for one reason or another to edge out discontents except when they were so widespread that they couldn't be ignored but to also be very indifferent to minority opinions and be very indifferent to emerging protest movement now the Vietnam War is interesting because it seemed to bring these proceedings to a halt not only was there widespread opposition to the war but there was also as we know a stinging defeat for American power but they ought with the war also at the same time reinforced this lesson that I mentioned a few moments ago that you could have a very big war lots of casualties without really seeming to disturb people in their ordinary pursuits the war was distant it was remote it was only brought to you by television but your life wasn't really disrupted unless you had the misfortune to have a member of your family in the draft now this meant this war you could fight that war without really resorting very much to truly Universal conscription as we know getting out of the draft was a major preoccupation of young people young men in in this period and we also know that in the at the end result was that was a military composed to into a significant degree out of proportion to their place in the population of minorities of racial minorities and cultural minorities and also that it was a class Army in an important degree that is the the number of college graduates the number of college students the number of representatives of the upper-middle class and so on worse were negligible this was a war fought by the society by the poor to a large degree and the minorities now what's all of this meant I think is that warfare as we know it was beginning to dissociate democracy from its place in the system that the system became geared in such a way that democracy was reduced to a relatively insignificant part now this began to pick up pace as we move into our own century there was an interesting comment which the New York Times carried when a New York Times reporter asked asking people about their opinion of the bush foreign policy bush the second and she's the plane she explained her support for that policy by saying after all I'm quoting from her after all we are an empire now the fact that Empire and superpower are becoming part of the common political vocabulary signifies I think that important changes are really taking place and have been taking place we can see we can see how something is amiss if we simply try to combine the word superpower with democracy who ever heard of a superpower democracy who ever heard of an imperial democracy the word the combination sounds as they say in in philosophy oxymoronic that is though they don't fit together they're they're opposed and they shouldn't be in the same in the same tandem as I've said before those words indicate I think again is an important systemic change and changes have been taking place let me outline some of those changes with an eye towards trying to suggest how they fit into a a more or less a lie of a inverted totalitarianism first the presidency Wars and even these kind of wars that I've been talking about expand presidential power we know that from as recently as Vietnam where Congress did what it did with the with the a war against Saddam Hussein that is they virtually gave the president a blank check now it's well to recall the words of Abraham Lincoln Lincoln said at one point that no man I'm quoting from him no man should take off should have the power should hold the power of taking the nation into war no one man should hold the power of taking the nation into war and that's virtually of course what we have done now this has been accompanied of course by the weakening of the legislative branch the branch which traditionally was supposed to be closest to the people and what has happened here is that the representative institutions have been short-circuited they've been short-circuited by the new array of lobbyists by the new array of pressure groups by the infusion of vast amounts of money the result is that representative senators and members of the House are more beholden to those people than they are to their constituents so that in that contest between president and legislature it's it's sort of no contest that the weakening of one is accompanied by the strengthening of the other now equally important if not more important is something else that I think has been less pub/sub publicized and that is the transformation of the party system we're supposed to have according to the textbooks a two-party system an inner two-party system the function of one party is to govern the function of the other party is to serve as an opposition party and serving as an opposition party means offering an alternative an alternative that's more or less clear that stands in significant opposition to to the other party now what I'm about to say I don't need to discourage any of Republicans among you but I do want to say that the Republican Party in a lot really since the Reagan administration have transformed has transformed American politics they've transformed it systematically systematically by organizing a strong and significant ideology by system systematically developing not only party organization but also developing support groups of various kinds there are numerous young Republican groups there are numerous groups named after the Federalists are named after James Madison and so on it's in other words it's a it's it's a new phenomenon in America because the Republicans unlike the Democrats not only can govern on the basis of a fairly coherent ideology that systematic but they also unlike the the Democrats they are a good in quotation marks opposition party when they when they're in opposition they oppose now whatever you might think of that opposition it at least preserves the idea of an alternative but on the other hand what has also happened as we know the Democrats have gravitated towards the center and the so-called left of the Democratic Party is accept that election time inconsequential now that means that in effect the Democrats have conceded that they're the one major important development in the last 40 years or so and that is the Republican Party has won over the country to a basic basically conservative ideology and I I'm not trying to say that critically I'm trying to state it as a fact it is a more conservative society we owe it almost entirely to the efforts of the Republican Party and like-minded conservative groups religious groups of one of sort of a similar kind now the result is that as a result of the Republicans being a gung-ho Party and the Democrats being feckless is that you virtually have a one-party system even when the Democrats are in office I mean Bill Clinton was a centrist and the centrist said we are going to be fiscally responsible and conservative and financial matters to separate the Democrats from the Republicans as a result there is no significant opposition party which is that we pointed out before is related to the character of of the totalitarian system and then there is that equally important phenomenon the politicization of the court system Republicans as we know have systematically prepared judicial nominations they have summer seminars for judges including Supreme Court justices where the virtues of the free market and conservative ideology are taught and expounded they carefully groom and prepare candidates for not only for positions and courts but also in the district attorney system now that development is of course important because our system theoretically depends on checks and balances but that what but but but the notion I think of an independent court ideologically independent is clearly something of a mythology but it's an important change now I could continue this but let me just reel off very quickly because I realize I'm beginning to run short of time and your your patience but media concentration is also another building block of this thing and we I don't have to belabor that at that point we all know what it means but it means once more the diminishing of alternatives they this the suppression of alternatives without taking people to concentration camps or beating them up or even forcing them to do things they wouldn't want to do the homogeneous a ssin of opinion that follows from this I think begins to look more and more like what it means to live in a system where a dominant ideology is really dominant it means among other things other developments which contribute to that not the least of them is the changes in universities this is a very important development which probably hasn't received the attention that it should have but universities now are very very deeply penetrated by corporations in MIT for example corporate types sit on the faculty as regular faculty members without really being faculty appointments they're similarly are cooperative research undertakings between corporations and universities now that what's important about that is it's one more tendency to undermine intellectual independence this is seen most clearly are not probably what's happening with the universities but think about think tanks think about the fact that most of the think tanks in the country are bankrolled by corporations the vast majority of them are conservative the vast majority of them are Republican and that means again that public discourse in this country is dominated very often by think tanks you those of you who listen to NPR will hear the name Heritage Foundation or our Center for Strategic Studies these are all conservative third tanks yet it's their voice that gets represented because of this crucial role they play as the spokesman of a Republican ideology and as a method or a place where policy proposals are first generated then passed on to the administration so that they're integrated into the system and the think tanks are no more independent than than other branches of the party now I haven't talked about the erosion of civil liberties but again I think that that what's happening is is sort of familiar with you and I won't go over that ground perhaps one can talk about it again in question period I do want to stress that the inversion of totalitarianism as I've called it is perhaps nowhere more strikingly displayed then in the fact on the one hand totalitarian regimes mobilize populations Regt them generally control them in some kind of unanimous goose-step but what was interesting you recall that in the immediate aftermath of the September 11th incident the president told the country and I'm quoting from him fly consume spend and unite now if you're at a war in a war is the war on terrorism terrorism was supposed to be what you want is sacrifice and clothe together let's let's all pitch him but the president didn't ask anything of us he told us to consume the only thing he asked of us chillingly was of course to inform if we saw suspicious-looking people but again what I'm trying to get at to put it very simply totalitarianism seeks to mobilize populations inverted totalitarianism seeks to demobilize them sex to keep them in a demobilized condition which is exemplified not only by by this example that I have given but also by the the kind of apathy which afflicts the the public and which there's no real effort on the part of political parties to generally attempt m22 effect now this situation let me close now by saying is it's not easy to say what is to be done because it's it's it's a system that's in that's in position now not simply something one incident or one development or one tendency that that's occurring it's it's a combination of elements and I don't think it's exaggerating exaggeration to call it critical totalitarian but then what do we do well I think we have to begin by recognizing something which is sobering but which I have come to believe more and more firmly and that is that I think we make a mistake if we think about our political system as a democratic system and that's not because the people in power are hypocrites that's not it at all it's rather that I don't think it's possible for democracy to be a political system under present conditions that is to be to really overlay the whole thing society economy government now the reason for that is democracy I don't think can govern a huge complex society such as ours and I think the day has passed when it can now there's also one other thing that contributes to that and that is it's a remark like a quote a remark of Aristotle Aristotle said that democracy is the form of government run by those who work now that's an important insight because it means that you don't have time you don't have time to participate all the time and you don't have what the rich have the ability to buy proxies proxy representatives proxy people in charge of pressure groups all the rest of it fundraising etc etc etc so democracy begins from a disadvantage it begins from the fact that ordinary people work and that means that their political possibilities are from the outset severely constricted now what that what that means I think are two things one I think you have to think of democracy I think first of all as basically an opposition movement that it's that getting into power is going really into power is going to be a rare occurrence the higher up you go in the hierarchy higher up from local to County to state to federal the higher up you go the less the possibility of genuine democracy you may get representative government or touches of it but you won't really get democracy because you're in a certain sense undercutting the whole point the whole point being that if democracy is based on those who work those who work should also be in power now it follows from that I think that the Democratic citizen has to be viewed as someone who does work but who can find nonetheless opportunities to take part and that means I think we get back even though it may seem trite to say so we get back to localism the only thing at which we can really comprehend both in our energies and even in our intellects are things that like closer to us that we know something about and that which are not of sufficiently large scale to overcome all our other disabilities of democracy that's not a cheery prospect and I I'm not cheerleading because I think it's a relatively grim prospect we face but I do think we can take heart because there is democracy in the way I've defined it all over the country it's isolated it's weak it tends to be occasional it tends to be episodic but I think that doesn't mean that it's in either impossible but what is impossible is to take over a system because I don't think when push comes to shove that democracy wants to govern and I don't think it ought to govern in the simple sense of the people running the system I think instead we have to think in different terms thank you I'll be glad to answer questions or a bill can screen them feel them I don't know if it gets too rough yes all right let's start right here there's a lot of good scholarship on the nature of the Nazi regime and there's a widespread consensus among scholars that the Nazi regime really had no point that they were that beyond expansion war mobilization for there was really nothing they really want to get that the dynamism of war was that was their way of of trying to push outward the energies that they were mobilizing internally mobilizing them internally met regimented controlling and that's what they wanted but then the question became what he would do with it once you mobilized and the answer was war now in the case of the Nazis this this mobilization was one that proved ultimately destructive now the because of all the obvious reasons they not only lost the war the Society was devastated but the but but the the point was trying to get out here is to raise the question I thought perhaps I didn't spell us out enough is to raise the question what's the dynamism that drives inverted totalitarianism in the Nazis that was called Lebensraum as we need living space now when we think about it the answer I come up with is that the dynamism that is what really drives that system is a combination that's a first of all never reach the point it has reached now in American political history the the interpenetration of corporations into the state machinery that's a crucial crucial development but the second thing that the planned corporations as we know capitalism is expansive it moves around it wants markets here their globalization about how that that goes at the same time what is also there is the nature of contemporary capitalism which depends so importantly on technology and the application of science to technology to to production now as we know the nature of modern science like modern technology is to be continuously changing to have a dynamic that forces it to do away with things that once believed in the past with inventions as once believed the past and bring in something new the computers are of course a beautiful example of it but but but that kind of dynamism which which with the integration of Science and Technology into corporations so that corporations now to more basic research than universities kids to the America the American system I think the kind of push that that the Germans got from other things I'm so many over there you go ahead the accepted history of what happened with the Nazis with the war in Europe that I see a different truth that happened there and and the connection with of that truth with what's going on right here in America is very profound that means that the the same forces that brought Hitler to power that gravich Europe are the same forces that are bringing America to this totalitarian state that are ravaging America and the rest of the world for their own gains and I'm incredulous that you have something to say like these forces are well like these forces are going to rule the world and there's there's nothing that we can do about that and it's preferable to to democracy is preferable to knees to what our input is going to be for a worldview or are we going to go with the input of the totalitarians obviously they have the power they have been imposing their will on the people of the planet for thousands of years already and I think our our first and most important task is to understand that to understand what really happened historically and what's happening right now without that understanding we have no hope of trying to rectify the situation that we can see the direction is going I think it's fairly well known that President President Bush two grandfathers were actively involved in the in Nazi Germany and even then realized that the national state was not was something to manipulate and I would ask you to comment on whether the national state now is any other organization the short answer is yes that's the point I was trying to make is that you're getting this integration of corporation and state now which is although the corporate the favoritism to corporations is an old story in American history we know that but what again one is talking about is the systemic relationship between the two it's seen in little things I mean it's seen in things where you get corporate executives as the head of the departments of Defense at the same time you get retired generals who go into corporations and now into the media but the but but but I don't disagree with that I think that that that's certainly the case the the dirt but that I think one has to be one has to say that there are important differences of degree that set off this inverted system from classic totalitarianism for example under the Nazis the capitalists were not in the driver's seat they were a significant element in the regime and they supported the regime but they did not call the tunes now you just have to look at the occupation in Iraq now to know that that it's a different story going on right now so that the third that the relationship the relationship between corporation between big business between capitalism whatever you want to call it and the system has now taken a sort of quantum jump because they're becoming indistinguishable and I think that's the crucial point every coming indistinguishable something that simply was not the case with Nazism as I've said so yes sir at the end of your speech you said I think I remember correctly you said that democracy didn't want to rule and wasn't capable of ruling those are pretty radical statements not what I expected here thank you given the possibility that you're telling the truth and that you're right what do you think we can hope for well but I think it's important I mean you're right what I said but I think it's very important to remember that what I really meant to take seriously the notion of ruling of governing and that's what I said democracy can't do let's just begin with a basic point to govern a contemporary society you have to have a bureaucracy and administration administrations are hierarchical they're anti egalitarian there's nothing democratic about government bureaucracies no to say democracy is going to rule and use bureaucracies as every governing government must in the contemporary stage is to see it's just me just sort of try to combine water and oil it's just not going to work and that doesn't mean you don't vote for better candidates hopeful for office that doesn't mean that at all it just means what are your expectations from supporting let's say dianne feinstein i over against some some republican and you say maybe in the hundreds diane but but but however that maybe it's not going to mean democracy's gonna live or die by that decision it does mean however if you've got a school board if you've got schools if you've got local hospitals if you've got a hundred other things that are possibly within your control and that your participation in it can make a difference it seems to me that's where you go because remember the Diane Feinstein's of this world I don't mean that really invidiously but they're going to demand less and less of you they're going to say pay your taxes and vote and you don't even have to vote pay your taxes but that's all they're really asking because they'll keep you in law and order you don't have to do that they'll take care of the thing that you told the mark but it's it's not a democratic demand that they're laying on you're just not oh yes miss how do I see it well not being honest I I don't think I'm qualified to talk I do think I guess I do think that the original enthusiasm that saw the internet as a great democratic invention or contribution I think is partially right there's a lot you can certainly learn anything I have learned some things from the internet but I think that we're always faced with that problem which is the more your communication system gets Internet the easier it is to control it and we also know that every that's what's going on right now is a continuous fight like the Patriot Act which again gave the the authorities the right to inspect libraries acquisitions to look at what books particular individuals read what books they bought at the bookstore [Music] [Music] it's not easy to give an answer except to say that I think the the European political cultures have have been much more much more a vibrant and alive for the for no other reason I would point out that you have two things going and I'm sure there many many more but you do have parties with a difference that's one thing that is it so that and that contributes to interest in politics because it isn't all monochrome or monotone the second thing is you have I think particular I'm thinking of countries like France and Germany and Britain you and Italy - so lesser degree but you have countries in which there really are and really are cherished independent intellectual positions there is a there's a much more I don't mean to be Tooting a horn simply because I was a university person but an intellect an independent and intellectual establishment if I can use that work is really very crucial as long as they're independent because it introduces a critical medium and and something for people to think about and rally around or take and carry further and I guess I would signal out those things as a basic and wait you've been taught let's get this gentleman back there please [Music] broad range of individuals that might work in the opposite sure there are I mean there are all kinds of proportional representation proportional representation systems and other systems in which you can choose not simply one candidate but several candidates of your candidate doesn't win you your vote gets moved down the column they all exist but I think you know I think well that there are just so many problems with trying to introduce a new development into a system which is so so systematize now and so dominated by money and big money really big money and also by the collaboration between money and the media that is it's it's really very difficult to to conceive of an electoral gimmick that will really change things because again the danger you can run and this is something that the Lima Republic that preceded Hitler ran into and that is that they had systems of proportional representation but the result was you splintered parties you had a multi-party system with no party ever getting a majority and this made for relatively weak governments at a time this is during the Depression the Great Depression and what strong effective state action was needed so that there what the reaction one of the reasons the Nazis began to get greater and greater numbers of votes at the polls was that that was that the people were becoming more and more disenchanted with a democratic system that seemed to connote weakness and bring weakness in the end division rather than developing a coherent party with a majority system in which a party could really govern yes yes this question is kind of a two-part and mom is is this imperialism that it's developing is it kind of a natural progression of politics and is it sustainable seems like it's gonna go down eventually you can't what might what might be what do you sort of foresee I think one thing one has to begin for this would take a long time to develop but I think the present administration's notion of an empire is different from the British Empire or the Roman Empire I think it's a conception in which they did not think of having colonies or settling into a into an area and claiming it and running it in some kind of direct administrative way as in colonialism I think that what they fought was that you could in effect make a society another society susceptible amenable a malleable to to to our influence and that we would not have to make a great commitment of a kind where we had standing armies and standing bureaucracies over there now I think I may be wrong about this and it's probably too early to say but I think the Iraq thing is simply not turned out the way they thought it would and that they thought it was going to be as the president and Rumsfeld said on more than one occasion it's in and out and clearly in and out isn't going to work because you've raised a mares nest in and in in Iraq and it's no foreseeable future is are you going to get get out without weakening your position now where it's going to go I'd honestly don't know I think that it depends a lot on what the economy does here at home it depends a lot on whether the Democratic Party is capable of pulling itself into some kind of coherent opposition which is chancy and doubtful so that they it's simply hard to say I mean I certainly if the economy recovers Bush will get an extraordinary mandate as he's already got one and that's going to create a greater impetus for for what's going on now again one could talk about without out I think getting terribly far except to mention it that there apparently are some kinds of elements in the Bush administration that are thinking about remaking the world especially beginning with the middle east and that that that would be the form it would take if they're capable of running it which i think very much remains to be seen yes miss do you think that there's any way the democratic party of reminding them what they want stood for or just one simply you vote for the Green Party because it's something new I mean I'd like to do something that will make a difference you see again we get back to the point for the Democratic Party to compete to compete against the Republican Party it's got to compete in all the ways in all the ways that the Republican Party has been successful in fundraising in media campaigns and on and on so that even if the Democratic Party has a certain will to move back to the left a bit it's going to be very difficult because the conditions under which parties compete now are not conducive to that kind of thing plus the other fact which I pointed out which I think the success of the Republicans in creating a generally conservative electorate but I think you could certainly do far better than the Democrats have done you know there are pockets of of Democratic strongholds in this country not only California but also Massachusetts Vermont and and some some of the other Eastern states and some of the western states not the mountain states but some of the western states so that it's possible and I mean we should always remember I mean don't get too disheartened we should always remember that the Democrats won the last election and that and that's no small point because it indicates you know that's a terribly evenly divided electorate but you know to make my point again at a certain level it doesn't mean much because the more they're alike it doesn't make much difference if they're even or not it only makes a difference if there's if there's a dissimilarity that's that substantive nope I'm not great for audiences these days yellow it does I mean the ones I've talked to and I don't think that Northern California and the part we all live in is different from a lot of other places I mean there is more activism here more participation than then virtually any place except parts of Vermont and Massachusetts that if it simply is the case so that in one sense you're all unrepresentative of the country as a whole but one shouldn't overstate that one shouldn't overstate that because things do happen in other parts of the country which from which one can can take heart but I think it's very hard particularly in a period in which the economy's in recession to get people to think about putting their shoulders to the wheel and trying to move the country in a different direction politically when they're worried clearly and rightly about other things and I think that still probably here as well as it is as well as it is anywhere need to be about the fact that corporations now it seems to me there have already been examples that the so-called winner and and when the vote is asked to see the action tally on the software we were told by judges this was a private corporation from so if I'm going to cast my vote corporation know it's hard it's it's it's very hard the it's I guess I can't overemphasize that I'm really not talking about the Republican Party as such or the corporation as such I mean I don't hate Republicans what I'm really talking about is a systemic organization of politics in a way that it has never been organized before and the Republicans are just very good at it partly because I suppose they come from more business backgrounds of management backgrounds and then Democrats do but it's a if you know again one gets driven back to the to the point that this system would be perfectly delighted if you sort of shrugged her shoulders and said you know screw voting that it says it's all a shock anyway and I think you know once you get to that point it just it's you know it's no longer a contest are to some degree you are to some degree because it's very difficult to figure out how you're going to crack it you know the there have been people who've tried to mount the third parties and last 10-15 years and not only Nader but but other people as well and they haven't you know they haven't gone very far because they simply can't compete on the terms that that the political game is being played now they don't have the money they don't have the media access they don't have the core of a pundits and and think-tank people to to chant for them it's it's it's very very difficult to and the history of third parties has just indicates how difficult how difficult it will really be to to challenge the system on its own ground [Music] [Music] the media corporations monopolize me your way I mean there are some things that that are clearly obvious things that we need to do in order to have a representative government but I don't it's not an intellectual exercise to just say well it's too hard we can't do it because the existence of the planet at stake and a lot of us feel that way whether you think it's possibility of nuclear war or or just the piecemeal dismantling of our environment so it may be difficult but I think we you can construe that any way you choose I think it's always the better part of valor to realize what you're up against and that it that there's no because one of the troubles of course with reform politics is that it soon loses momentum people become discouraged because it's easy to to defeat them so that they but I'm hoping that if we that if we can realize are really serious the present situation is which is why I used scare words like totalitarianism is is that if we do realize that then we're perhaps prepared to make more of a commitment than when we're making into it who have to go to try to devise ways of coordinating cooperating extending our alliances and creating bigger movements I think that that that's the only thing that's going to save us that but you see when you talk about for example campaign finance reform the only way you can really do that the way this is things set up now is through the system and we've seen what the mccain-feingold thing amounted to which was a really terrific effort to get very little the thing is really cuts very deeply I mean I think we need to think differently let me just mention one other thing one of the most remarkable achievements of the Republicans is to teach the country that the government of a so-called democracy should be gotten off your back and I was as though there's something inherently incompatible between democracy and using the government for your purposes but they have managed to really create a suspicion of government a distrust of government and sooner or later of course it reaches the point where you've done well better distrust them for all the for all the obvious reasons but it's taken away a tremendous thing that was that we had in this country as late as the Great Society of Lyndon Johnson that is the notion that government could be used to make people's lives better ordinary people and people who are struggling people of different colors and that was a great victory from the from the New Deal through the fair deal to the Great Society but that that's been that's been punctured now it's give back the taxes and I mean it's all sort of summed up in that wonderful strategy that the Republic's have devised which is you give away a huge government surplus in ordered that should you not maintain power the incoming government will have nothing to do nothing no money to spend on social programs I mean it's it's that's what actually has happened and and the whole thing is involved as I'm been trying to say a complete reversal and how we had understood government we had understood it as an extension of the people it's our government and now as I say get it off our backs it's a stranger it's common knowledge that no more than 50% of the people in this country vote and the beneficiaries of whatever social structures safety nets are out there people to have that life those people don't vote why don't they go why don't they get off their ass and do something in their own interest why are the poor in this country so disenfranchised that they don't do something in their own effort why are we doing it for why do I have the liberal progressive people in this country why is that responsibility falling on their shoulders when the people for their efforts are directed don't make an effort of there are dates so incapacitated that they give rise and speak for themselves and if they don't sweep as a as a whole have no chance of promoting their interest is really what things have come down to so what will promote the poor of this country to rise in their own interests will that ever have where they so disenfranchised and so hopeless that voting is not part of their different category for I am visible and I am a party and what if you may not realize is the systemic Republican and Democratic turn away from state level complete disenfranchisement of minorities the african-american men once they are convicted of any criminal action and believe you they are criminalized at ten times the number of any other base are not allowed to vote Dulli are not allowed to publish ability many of their convictions are families because they are convicted of a felony rate much higher than other race [Music] language barriers in non-us speaking but legitimate students and areas create a very difficult ability for people to language of English is not their first language whether or not you have feelings about that it is above the area there were instances not only Marta [Music] [Music] do not assume that when people by the time Election Day comes there's nothing in it for most people the process leading up to who gets later ISIL leaves out ninety-nine percent of Americans I grew up in the city of Chicago and by the time you determine who's on the ballot the deal is over anyway and election day is meaningless to most people it's part of the system because there's the the money primary where you have to raise money before you can be seriously backed by enough people to win a party nomination to be allowed to run against somebody else it it's not a hope in the political system politics by the time you're figuring out who to back your supervisor there have been people talking about it for months before anybody's writing about it the newspaper you read that and you'll see why the they're struggling to survive these are people some things living out of their being within minimum wage jobs and trying to get their kids I mean you can't imagine these people you jump-start us well I tried to in a couple of ways I'm I started I'm trying to jumpstart you to to think differently about where we are and that's really and where we're going I also try to think that we've that at the end of the talk excuse me at the end of the talk I tried to suggest that you know we start from where we are you and where we are is were local and that we've got to not only cultivate that but we've also got to start thinking about some way to develop larger alliances and larger movements without thinking I believe that we need to start at this point a political party because the terms and what you would have to compete are simply beyond us that you can't compete with with deep pockets and with with organizations that work 365 days a year so that I mean it's it's all around us there's things we can do and it's it's it's beginning you know to hit home where we should be able to feel it and should be able to realize what's happening and what's happening to schools under the president the president budget constraints what's happening to to infrastructures what's happening to hospitals and medical care I mean but and those are the issues that really affect us and that affect our children and affect the communities in which we live but we've got to start with those things because those are the things in which we can begin with some kind of input because those school boards are responsive up to a point and so our boards of Supervisors and and all the rest of it I mean there are pressure points we can identify and work at but it calls for calls for people willing to make more of a commitment evidently than we've been able to to generate so that and I think you know I think also you come down to this I think at bottom if there's anything important about democratic small D it's that ordinary people like there all of us really should not be given or should we look for recipes then it's up to us to devise responses solutions to what we feel is pressing and urgent in the world around us that we shouldn't look that that's what a democratic solution is it's people with ordinary abilities and and very ordinary free time at their disposal who can do that who are willing to to think about what could be done to to to improve the school thinkers to improve libraries to improve this that the other thing and I think that that that's part of what makes democracy more than a political system is it's an experience it's an experience in which you grow with the challenges you're trying trying to meet and you don't simply file to the voting voting booth on Election Day the government proceeds to make the military appropriations of larger and larger part of the budget and if you've got majorities or near majorities in both houses you can sort of do that the other way you do it in which you can see taking place in Iraq right now is you try to get these other country that you've dominated to pay for it and and that's the course of a wonderful concept we bomb them and then they pay for the reconstruction it's it's it's it's catched it's catch-22 so that [Music] they'll do it they you know they'll starve the they'll starve the the domestic economy to the point where they think it's not it's going to it can no longer tolerate it but it's I wouldn't underestimate their ingenuity but I guess you also have to face I guess they would also face the fact I'm just sort of freewheeling at this point I think they're sufficiently cynical but if the if push comes to shove and they have to scale back the military the world I think they're will if them has to say if the economy royally stays in freefall and you can no longer deal with the numbers of unemployed and the rising unemployment benefits problem and the rising healthcare problems of unemployed people then I think that political prudence would dictate that they have to go easy and I think they would I think you we shouldn't underestimate them they're really very good at what they do and they're not and they're also perfectly willing to you know to change course when they have to and so that I don't think they're I don't think they're I think I don't think one should look at them as an express train heading down a track in which they're suddenly the rails don't exist anymore I think it I think it's my they're much much cleverer than that and for that reason more dangerous so so we have one more was thinking in my mind I wish you say something about the Leo Strauss philosophy and the the sycophants involved in it that are in the administration just as a way of to my mind showing how very silly does anybody know the people people understand this controversy there's a story in the New York Times a couple of weeks ago about how the the the hell-bent for domination boys in the defense department come out of the University of Chicago so the question became where did they learn all this stuff about reordering the world and dominating the world and letting the elite govern and they there's a professor of political philosophy a guy named Leo Strauss and the whole thing is sort of a wonderous kind of fairy tale because Strauss wrote the most obscure books you can imagine I don't recommend them to anybody except somebody with the patience of joke but the the point being that Strauss taught a version of elitism which in effect suggested to those who understood him and whom he took into a circle that they were specially destined to understand politics and to rule a country at the same time it was a political philosophy that was very very cool towards democrat amok recei of any kind so that so that it the triumph of the Wolfowitz --is and the CEO for other people that they mentioned in the in the department is seen as of a sort of indication of Strauss who died quite a few number of years ago but I think it's it's sort of a blip on the screen that I don't think really matters that much I think what matters much much more is the way that certain things have come together in this administration beginning with as I've said corporate power intellectual power an ideology party organization and a lot of other things I talked about that I think is the real is where you start from where the real problem lies I could refute Leo Strauss tomorrow and it wouldn't make a bit of difference thank you [Applause] you don't speak [Applause] [Applause]

Channel: Willits Community Television

Views: 31,944

Rating: 4.9027357 out of 5

Keywords: willits tv, willits community television, peg access tv station, willits california, willits ca, mendocino county, carnegie library willits california, maslow heirarchy of needs, poor people, under represented prolatariat, why poor people don't vote, sheldo wolin, totalitarian regimes, empires, iraq war 2003, 2 party system, rigged elections, disheartened voters, go vote, vote, voting, invasion of iraq, why invade iraq, inverted totalitarianism

Id: BesbZDeZeTE

Length: 87min 20sec (5240 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 04 2018