Klein Alleges U.S. Used ‘Shock’ Tactics to Privatize Public Sector
“The connections are daring in journalist Naomi Klein’s new book, The Shock Doctrine, but the result is convincing,” according to William S. Kowinski of the San Francisco Chronicle. “With a bold and brilliantly conceived thesis, skillfully and cogently threaded through more than 500 pages of trenchant writing, Klein may well have revealed the master narrative of our time. And because the pattern she exposes could govern our future as well, The Shock Doctrine could turn out to be among the most important books of the decade.”
While this book got a lot of attention during the final two years of the Bush administration, helping to get Barack Obama elected president, the film version is now out on cable TV for those who don’t buy and read books. In the aftermath of the BP oil disaster in the Gulf, perhaps the people of the South should finally embrace this thesis. Maybe the tea partiers should watch it. It would inform their anger and lead to more productive political action.
The central contradiction are two competing economic theories. No, not capitalism and communism. Milton Friedman’s free market capitalism versus British economist John Maynard Keynes model of a mixed economy with a necessary role for government and a public sector.
If enough people got the point of this, including trial lawyers, unions, environmentalists, journalists and intellectuals, hell bar tenders and musicians, we might be able to raise an army of people to fight the corporate takeover of American democracy. If we don’t fight it, we will end up like the people of Chile, the Soviet Union, Iraq, New Orleans and now the Gulf Coast.
If you don’t think the BP oil gusher was part of a shock and awe campaign to destabilize the Gulf region and open it up for even more private development by a few billionaires and corporations, then you are just naive.
Isn’t it interesting how that disaster was also used to weaken a Democratic president, and one not exactly against the free market economy? All the Fox News and talk radio banter about him being a “socialist” was just to keep him in check and prevent any federal government attempt to limit the obliteration of the public sector in American life. Are you beginning to get it yet?
© 2010, Glynn Wilson. All rights reserved.
