Why we're losing - and how to start winning |
The View from Green Island GI Central - my 'net home' for the last few years, and the foreseeable future, this seems where it's going to be - lots of venting, lots of good writing, lots of 'out-of-the-box' ideas you aren't EVER going to hear on the CBC The Democratic Revolution Handbook - Home by Dave Patterson
And a book for younger readers too, Dave's an eclectic sort of person - Aquila These and Dave's other books can be found at Dave's Smashwords EPUBS page - and for the curious, if anyone cares, a few words on From Hastings to Green Island - the (very) short form story of Dave's own journey.. Knowledge is like a candle. When you light your candle from mine, my light is not diminished. It is enhanced and a larger room is enlightened as a consequence. - Thomas Jefferson |
" ... the Matrix is not some futuristic film, it's a documentary ..." - Yanis Varoufakis - they're building a huge fence all around us, and they've got the general population so dumbed down and controlled that almost everyone is thinking, 'Wow, look at the great fence our caring masters are building to protect us!!' The fence is not to keep some imaginary 'bad guys' out - it is to keep you in. These people have learned a lot over the last 150 years, and when our children find themselves back in the Dickensian mills - they'll never escape again. You have a very small window right now during which you **might** be able to stop them. But only if you actually start to realise what is happening, and stand up and fight them, rather than meekly allowing them to herd you into the big corral. Part II Chapter 8They've built a box - and we're all in it
The Box has been being built over decades. Back in the 60s, there was no Box, as it exists today. There was unequal 'power' of course as there always had been and still is, with a small class of very rich people who thought they had a right to be the dominant voice in any government as they always had, and were doing a good job of influencing governments to act in their favor as they always had, but after the 'awakenings' in the population of the first half of the 20th century, awakenings brought on by a generally getting smarter population really angry at the terrible events of the first half of the century electing politicians who had the courage and honesty to balance the demands of the people with the demands of the wealthy rather than simply acting as puppets for the wealthy, and a media also acting very largely as a 'national democratic media' led by the CBC, and the democratic institutions we had in Canada - the education and legal systems notably - functioning as were the government and media with mostly honest and capable people managing these things for the 'greater good of Canada' as it were - during those very heady days of the 50s and 60s and 70s, there was a great freedom in the country, a great open dialogue of what we could do to make our country and world better, with almost nothing standing in our way - the complete opposite of what we have today, with the politicians and media working together against us, telling us we must build walls of fear and austerity around us to huddle behind, and hide quietly from a dangerous world.
And the difference between those days and now is the Box that has been created since those times with the implementation of the CRR. In the Box that they have built around us today, mostly intellectually but with the major walls well enforced by violence as required, there is no balance, there is no truly open and intelligent discussion of 'issues' when some things are simply forbidden to be talked about. Since Mulroney, very openly, the government does not 'balance' differences between the wealthy elite and the working-middle classes, the governments have been entirely on the side of the elite, and the media the elite also control has also been entirely on the side of the elite, a corporate propaganda media speaking with many voices for the different major 'demographics' in the country but one message, pushing laws and policies to justify ever more wealth and power for that elite, and thus of course ever less wealth and power to share among the lower orders.
This has been the construction of what I call "the Box" over the last 40 years, creating the narrative that attempts to make these things, these changes we have been going through since the 70s, seem a kind of 'natural inevitable evolution' of our society, when they have been anything but - the changes have all been carefully planned and orchestrated by the elite, for just this purpose - creating a dumbed down new peasant class which accepts the devolution of the democracy their ancestors had fought so long for with minimal protest, and accepts their new 'lords and ladies' class as their natural rulers, having regressed themselves to a childlike state looking only to have distracting 'funfunfun' in whatever ways the rulers provide.
In this short book I have been trying to turn on some lights on the things that have been done to create this 'box' around us all, to give people some places to start looking and thinking about these things, at the changes of our society from a becoming free and open and joyful and enthusiastic democracy back in the 1960s and 70s to the current very enclosed fearful pretend democracy - it will be the work of trained researchers with much more time and ability to trace the creation of the box, the slow dumbing down, the slow transfer of power and wealth, in more detail.
First however, we must get out of it, and turn the sun back on so the orcs flee back under the rocks they came from.
The short, easy test to quickly decide if you, or someone you love, is in the box - you believe what they tell you on the CBC ... and if they don't tell you something on the CBC, you have no interest in hearing or thinking about it, or just dismiss it out of hand as 'tinpot conspiracy theory'
Tangential observations --- It's a bit odd, but worth noting as part of this discussion about how entrapped people are by 'the box' - how so many people go to see, or watch on youtube or something, popular 'social critic' comedians like George Carlin was, or Russell Brand, or Jon Stewart - and laugh uproariously and applaud wildly at cutting social commentary pointing out the 'truths' of our society, notably the way politicians lie and steal, the way money controls thing, the way we do not really live in a democracy, etc etc, as if they know about such things and agree with these criticisms, under-the-rock, outside-the-box, beyond-the-pale truths never talked about on the CBC - and then the next day, it seems, everybody, or at least most of them, go back to their jobs supporting and doing the necessary work that maintains the very system they were joined in mocking the night before, as if the real message of people like Carlin is just humor, nothing serious - worth a bit of analysis somewhere, whether here or elsewhere ... same idea as noted earlier, about how the same people fill the halls where Chomsky or Hedges speak in more serious ways about the same things, but again appear oblivious to the central messages such as how they are indoctrinated, do not live in a democracy, etc....
Look around what we all think of as our great modern democracy in Canada - full of apparently free people, well educated people by and large, honest and hard working people by and large, working at many necessary and important jobs that both provide them with a decent income, and keep our society functioning well, doing what they want in their non-work time, reading what they want, thinking what they want, associating with who they want, voting for who they want, a great cornucopia of entertainment to fulfill almost every taste in leisure time, a great variety of people, all enjoying their lives in one of the world's great countries, from which they are more or less free to leave and return at will. And especially look at the many people thinking of themselves as 'progressives' of one kind or another, small-l libs or 'pink tories' or 'greens' included, recognizing that it is a great country, indeed still one of the greatest in the world (although that particular conceit doesn't mean quite as much as it once might have, as that bar has been trending pretty seriously downwards everywhere since the CRR and its 'new capitalist market-rules utopia/dystopia, depending on which side of the rich/poor divide you fall on', got seriously underway during the late 70s-early 80s as talked about earlier. One might also recognize that 'better than' does not equate with 'good').
And even though we think Canada is the greatest country in the world, many people still see that there are serious problems in our country and world, problems that have been getting considerably worse the last few years and continue to do so, and genuinely try to do something useful about these problems - and while doing so of course are also free to meet, and talk, and demonstrate, and complain about what the governments are doing, and take any lawful actions to protest or fight the things they don't like, including working diligently for what they all see as the 'progressive' political party, the NDP. Pretty good people all, no argument, as well as being pretty smart and aware, well meaning in what they want to do.
And look at people's lives - as full as we could imagine lives to be, with times of great joy, times of great enjoyment, times of great pain or fear or sorrow or uncertainty, people growing and living and learning and loving and fighting and finally dying, periods of great tragedy and periods of great success, we all work and strive for things and fail and succeed and give up crying or try again with determination, with help from real friends or hindrance from real people who wish us harm for whatever reason - it's a great big full world and country, nothing illusional or delusional about these very real things going on in everyone's lives -
- so seriously, what sort of 'box' are you imagining here, Dave? Seems a bit delusionary, at best ... how could I claim these apparently free, engaged, intelligent prosperous citizens, living very full and fulfilling and interesting lives in this great modern free democracy of Canada, are not "free" in every important way, as your 'we're all enclosed in a box' idea tries to tell us? We have money, our average standard of living is one of the best in the world, even poor people in Canada are better off than in most countries; those of us who have decent jobs - most of us - get to travel anywhere in the world we want, we have lots of good things in our lives, no restrictions on what we read or think or who we talk go - but you claim we are all living in a great illusion, and are more akin to slaves or peasants than to free people? Seriously, bro, it seems like you are living in the great delusion - what kind of 'box' would you suggest these obviously free and well-to-do people are constrained by? Surely we could hardly be more free than we are, barring some utopia in the future? Surely...??
Well, all these things, and many others one could mention along the same lines, are not some kind of 'bug' in my 'theory' - they're a central, or the central, feature of it.
(And before you get too far down the 'what a wonderful country it is!!!!' road, if you truly believe that, maybe you could have a read of the next chapter before going on - 'I'm ok we're all ok really!!' - and a bit of a think - we're a great deal less 'ok' than the CBC et al would have you believe - keeping most people, at least those in the 'Chomskian 20%', complacent is a central feature of the CRR, the new feudal society being built around you, which, if you understood better, you would probably be quite strongly opposing. Litmus test - a central question nobody who tells you, or leads you to believe, we're a really great country, is asking or asking you to think about - are we good and getting better as we should be, compared to where we were a few decades ago - or still kind of good but still going backwards as we have been for 30+ years, and the cliff we're going off the edge of is getting closer and closer?' - and if it is the last, as it clearly is - why is this happening, and what are we doing about it, and how does that relate to 'we're fine dave!!'?)
That is exactly the box, simple but very powerful, and exactly the purpose of the box, which has very obviously been very successfully achieved - keeping people believing they are perfectly free and fully informed and living full lives unrestricted by anything other than the laws of the country (which of course good citizens accept and agree with, or at least accept the legitimacy of if they do not agree with everything, as they are democratically passed laws), and, for those so inclined, doing the very best they can possibly do to fight what they see as problems in the country - whilst ensuring these people do *not ever* talk (in any serious or useful way) about the very small handful of things that they most need to talk about and understand, and then change, to save their country from those who are very obviously taking it over, or really have already taken it over, right in front of their eyes - the things I have talked about in earlier chapters, primarily the pretend democracy, the money-credit scam, the pretend 'free and democracy-supporting' media, their trust in the high quality and integrity of the related control systems such as the legal and educational systems. (An important layer of the box is all of the lawyers and teachers and journalists and small time politicians who protest they are really doing important work, who really believe what they are doing is an important part of democracy, etc - they are all (or at least most of them) telling the truth, we all know lawyers and teachers etc who are very good people, and trying to work within the system to make it better - so when someone like me comes along and starts talking about how essentially evil the legal system is, or the media, or how the 'education system' is being used to indoctrinate our children, 'average' people are thinking, but no, I know Joe and Judy, really good people, certainly part of no terrible evil conspiracy! - and so they are not, but the upper levels of these professions, of every important institution running our country, are indeed part of the evil conspiracy, and are well aware of the value of a large 'buffer' group between them and the people they control who appear innocent ... and the mid level people, those you know who are unquestioningly good folk, are, by their conscientiously trying to do a good job, supporting the system..)
In earlier chapters, I have explained the key ways these box walls have been built, to enclose the allowable debate and ensure that everyone believes they are completely free in what they talk about whilst staying away from these few key areas - not by any kind of overt censorship that would be easily discernible by anyone trying a bit of questioning, but by placing mental constraints around the 'collective' mind, in the very same way young children are taught to believe in Santa Claus or god, and taught that saying 'bad words' is something 'serious adults' do not do - they are 'free' to say such words, but do not, because the 'adults' they believe they are simply do not do such things, any more than they would walk down the street naked. And every day, the corporate media, including the CBC for the progressives, reinforces these unwritten rules, the invisible walls, by an endless parade of other interesting, and important things, letting everyone clearly know the things they should be talking about and, by omission, the things they don't need to even think about - and when there are hundreds of things going on around us every day, some of which certainly seem very important, the absence of these very few things is very, very easy to not think about, and not wonder why we aren't talking about them. Donald Rumsfeld was, and is, a very evil human being, but many of these evil people are more intelligent than we give them credit for, and when he once remarked 'We don't know what we don't know' - he was right on the money. Deep, deep indoctrination, and very effective indoctrination, as it allows the illusion of complete freedom, whilst simply creating a society in which the things the rulers do not want talked about, need to have not talked about, are not talked about, and the fact these few things are not talked about is not even wondered about, in the busy, full life everyone leads, following the CBC for things they 'need to know' about our country and world.
And for those who would shake their heads in puzzlement, wondering 'Why? though - why the box at all? What's the point?' - again, a question with an obvious answer when your head is outside the box, but one that is lost in the illusions of 'freedom' and 'democracy' that dominate inside the box, not to mention the spectacle to make sure most people have no free time for thinking about anything they're not getting from Facebook or Twitter. You don't think about what you're not told to think about. You don't see what is hidden right in front of you - at least, until someone points it out.
We always need to remember - we are, and always have been, ruled by people who do not wish to subject themselves to any kind democratic rule, who believe they are superior to their fellow humans, who wish to control their society themselves, who desire Power over others - great power - and are willing to use absolutely any means to achieve such power. Such people have always existed among us, and while in earlier days the 'means to power' was primarily simple violence, as we grew as (English-speaking) peoples and societies over the last 1000 years, and 'we the people' desired to eliminate or at least reduce this undemocratic omnipotent power of the self-declared godking-emperor types, and control at least some bits of our own lives, those who would be our omnipotent kings have slowly, in our more advanced societies, changed their mode of rule from simple violence to rule by money and propaganda and indoctrination, as again talked about in different places earlier.
And such people play in different levels of the power game - some people want to rule the world, they are fighting for control of the US these last few decades, while others are content to be kind of 'regional managers', which would be the general run of the mill elite we find in Canada, content to control this country, and do as Big Bro down south tells them.
It is very true in our world today, that 'he who has the (*real*) money has the power' - and the way to get power in our modern societies is to accumulate massive amounts of money. And in the modern world, one aspect of the way this is done, aside of course from controlling the power to create money as noted earlier, is by controlling countries such as Canada, which is a very wealthy country, and skimming as much as possible from the wealth a large, modern country such as Canada creates (it is necessary to control the country - anyone trying to do the lying and cheating and associated things anyone needs to do to accumulate large amounts of wealth would very quickly be stopped by any truly informed, democratically-controlled government). And of course, in a large modern country such as Canada, with people who believe they control the country through their democratically elected 'representatives' and government, this skimming-aka-theft cannot be done openly (as the feudal kings did, for example, with 'titheing' and such things), as it would be seen to be very undemocratic and the people would resist, so it must be done surreptitiously, through such means as the 'taxes' we have all been well trained to believe are good and necessary things (they are actually the modern version of the feudal titheing system, but that's covered elsewhere), the 'national debt', interest on the national 'money' supply created out of thin air, establishing a 'work' system wherein the elite control the major industries and thus get away with paying minimal wages while claiming 'profits' for themselves, top-dollar 'consultants' also paid for through said taxes, and any number of other means. Thus the box - keep people working hard and producing the maximum wealth for skimming, whilst keeping the people ignorant of this ongoing theft - I quite strongly suspect even in the current passive Canadian population, were they aware of the massive theft of their wealth they have been conned into accepting over the last few decades, there'd be some serious anger and the ruling regime facing some very serious problems. There's nothing complicated about this idea, that some people want power and will do what they need to do to acquire it, nor about the process really of 'fooling' a lot of people into believing lies that allow them to acquire that power, as I have explained earlier - to anyone who has managed to get outside the box, and see what is happening.
And thus, then, the necessary control of both the media and the government, either of which could quickly blow the massive ongoing transfer of wealth from the working people to the elite rulers very easily, and see a lot of then heading for the cement houses where they should be, were they truly independent and working from and for 'the people' rather than 'from and for' the elite rulers.
And the necessity of devising an effective strategy for keeping the people from figuring all of this out - the CRR I talk of earlier, and the creation which resulted which I think of as 'the box' for ease of reference.
It's a BIG box - of course, in our busy modern society, as noted earlier and often, there is almost literally an endless amount of information available with modern communication technologies, and an almost endless number of things to buy and do and talk about and activities to be involved with and things to be done just to 'keep up' with a busy modern life, and a central job of the media, which most people trust at least enough to let them set the issues that get debated as talked about earlier, and those that do not (including those most important ones that get mocked by 'serious people' as 'conspiracy theory' or something), is to keep everyone who wants to be involved with their society focusing on some number of these endless 'important' issues, some ongoing for years or decades (terrible debt crisis must pay it down!!!) or more transient (get your measles vaccination now you anti-science nutcase!!) and away from the *really* important things such as asking what the hell is going on with the money system, or asking why the media and political parties are all pretending to be so different when in all important things they're actually the same, and certainly appear to be working for the rulers of the country rather than 'we the people', or questioning the actual 'danger' we are all in from 'terrorists' and thus whether we should so passively be accepting the lockdown-ready state being placed around us in front of our very eyes and unresisting brains.
These very clever rulers have provided an almost endless number of deck chairs to be shuffled around *in the box* - you can talk about or do anything you want in the box, as long as you do *not* start questioning the very legitimacy of the major walls of the system itself - the 'democracy', the integrity and independence of the media from which you get your 'news' every day, and the workings of the all important money system, which controls pretty much everything we do, one way or another, why we've been so supportive of all the bombing in the eastern Mediterranean the last few years when it has been leading to such terrible problems and deaths.
Certainly 'free' involved-in-their-country citizens want to talk about politics, and the media, and the problems with their democracy - and there are a large number, almost limitless in variety, of deck chairs related to these things to argue about that they talk about pretty much every day on the media - but, as Hedges noted, you can *not* question the legitimacy of the systems these things operate within themselves. You can talk and argue about lots of ways to 'improve' our (pretend) democracy - but you can *not* wonder out loud if it's really a democracy at all - and every day the CBC has regular 'experts' of various kinds talking about all of these allowable things, and the people listening to and being guided by the CBC just follow along, forming their opinions on these things - and never, for most of them, realising that the one central question that needs our attention - is this actually a democracy??? - never getting asked or talked about. Likewise the media - you can complain about the right wing coverage of the NP, or (for the NP people) the waste of money given to the 'leftie' CBC, or whatever you like (and we're encouraged to do so, in various ways) - with one exception - in 'serious' circles, **nobody** is *ever* going to get their face or voice on any of these media if they start pointing out and talking about not the differences between these various media outlets, which are actually very, very much less than they are presented as, but how they actually all seem to be promoting the same things, when it comes to the really important things here - most notably, and importantly, the 'maintain and strengthen the oligarchy' policies of 'austerity', 'free' trade agreements, and supporting the strengthening and ongoing consolidation of the US-banking hegemony by supporting the 'war on terror'.
And of course 'money' and 'debt' and 'the economy' get, again, regular coverage every day, in various ways, all reinforcing the idea that we citizens can do nothing whatsoever about 'the economy', it is in the hands of the gods and our 'finance minister' and the 'central bankers' and 'great free capitalist market' - but you will never, never NEVER hear them talked about through any kind of filter that questions the very basis of our monetary system - as noted often in earlier chapters, although we talk about student debt, and 'paying down the government debt', and any number of other money-related problems, we are *never* going to get into the legitimacy of the current money system itself, the complete stupidity, the cowlike passivity as it is lead to the slaughter house, for 'we the people', of allowing private banks to control our money supply for their profit as they do, nor the obvious purposes of the 'trade' agreements to simply take power away from what theoretical democratic control governments have and turn it over to private corporate hands, nor again the way the 'war on terror' is completely created and maintained by the US and their puppets, very sadly the last few years with Canada near the head of the puppet brigade.
And that is what the box is all about - you have a more or less endless number of things to do and talk about and occupy your time, including, for many, trying to understand and fix what is wrong with our society, and the rulers encourage you to be very involved in such deck chair shuffling, fighting fiercely for YOUR deck chair to get better attention from all the others who don't seem to understand how important your personal deck chair is, which gives the very solid illusion that you are as free as could be - but in the box, you are never going to talk about the crucial things that would allow you to actually understand our society, and devise effective ways to tackle the problems.
And that is the very clever and effective strategy of the elite who rule us, and claim the first part of the wealth we all create for their own, to maintain and increase their power - to give us a big playground to play in, and tell us all every day how wonderful and free we are because of the playground - but they keep the keys to the playground in their own control, and now as we see the playground falling apart around us, and want to do something about it - we can't.
Until we figure this stuff out, and reverse our positions - we the people need to be in *true* control of our lives and countries, and put the current rulers inside a few rather more constrained boxes of their own to think about things for a few years.
And how we're going to do that will be the last part of this look at why we're losing, and what we can do about it.
But first, just a quick sort of aside -
I came to the West Wing late, for reasons we don't need to get into, but was very taken with it from the start after I got the torrent download and started watching (AIEEEE THAT'S ILLEGAL QUIET QUIET!!!!)) - this is the kind of integrity and intelligence I really want those we elect, or select, to manage our country to have. But I've always read and enjoyed fantasy, and of course West Wing is just that - a complete fantasy, bearing absolutely no connection to the reality of the 21st century. We haven't had leaders with even remotely the kind of integrity and intelligence these people have since back in the 60s - people like Kennedy or Diefenbaker and Trudeau may not have been perfect, nobody is, but they had a sense that their job as leader was to balance the demands of the wealthy elite with the desires of the average people, while the people the elite put into power today are devoted to one thing only - looking after their masters, and fuck the peasants. The problem, the big problem, I think, today, is that there seem to be a lot of people out there who believe that the West Wing people represent the kind of leadership we actually do have in our modern 'democracies' - it's certainly the mythology presented by the media, that our leaders are men or women of (generally, some exceptions to 'prove the point' of course) great integrity and intelligence (like our 'journalists' on the CBC (cue long loud laughtrack at utterly ridiculous statement)), truly doing the best they can for our country - sure, libs or cons may have different ideas about what is best for our country, but after a full airing of these serious and competing ideas on our media (fuck I'm going to fall off the chair laughing soon) 'we the people' decide democratically which side of this political divide gets to run the country for the next few years, and those elected act, again, with the greatest of integrity and honesty.
Anyway, back to realityland - the entire underlying premise of the show is thus 'deep propaganda', re-enforcing quite blatantly stupid ideas in the populace at large, esp as far as the American presidents since Reagan and his gang go, basically the complete opposite in terms of integrity and intelligence of the West Wing gang. But - one episode was a very heavy, in-your-face presentation of absolute and utter lies about what the 'real' people have been like, and I just wanted to note it here, as a prime exemplar of what I am talking about with the media creating and reinforcing the 'box' we live in, with so many underlying false assumptions keeping us from escaping.
I speak of West Wing year 3, episode 23, I guess, from reading about it, the 100th show or something, and featured as a sort of 'documentary' of 'real life' in the White House, and they had interviews with a bunch of old White House staffers from previous governments, and even a couple of Presidents, absolutely brazenly lying in everyone's faces about the incredible wonderful integrity of their old governments. I didn't know any of these people with the exception of - wait for it - Henry fucking Kissinger!!!!! - who participated in this amazing bit of lying propaganda. Kissinger, Richard Nixon's chief advisor, who planned the illegal bombings of Cambodia and Laos, and has been a central 'behind the throne' oligarch of the US government ever since, planning and plotting evil things for the world. In West Wing, we see people sitting around trying to figure out the best way to deal with some nasty thing going on, with full intelligence and integrity - but we **know**, in the Holmesian way of working backwards from 'what happened' to 'what must have happened to lead here', that since Nixon, and certainly largely with Johnson before him, the plotting in the White House has been about how to do whatever power-seeking things they want to do while creating lies to sell that evil stuff to their own citizens and the world, with the full participating, since the Reagan years, of the American media. Canada has, as always, been a bit behind - it is obvious that at least for the first few years, Trudeau actually believed his general philosophy of 'the state has no business in the private places of the citizens', but certainly since Mulroney, Canada has been run exactly like a junior-gman version of the US, creating very undemocratic plans in secret, more than 'undemocratic' but actually plans to shut down the democracy, as described in earlier chapters of this book, then selling them to the citizenry with the full and willing participation of the CBC and other corporate state media.
Well, this isn't a lengthy essay about either praise for the West Wing or the incredibly effective US and Hollywood propaganda machine, probably the best in the world, like so many American things are, just a tribute of sorts, and a note on how the media is selling us things we' shouldn't be eating.
an excellent talk by Rocco Galati, the lawyer trying to force the government to use the Bank of Canada for its funding rather than 'borrowing' the money from the international banking cartel - in which he tells his audience how very thoroughly they have been conned by the government and media ... an excellent presentation everyone should listen to before they try to get involved in **any** talk about the economy
Old Chomsky lecture - explains 'How political power uses propaganda to distract the public' - if you believe Canada is a 'great and free Democracy with a great and free media telling us all we need to know' - watch this and tell me you're not one of the people he's talking about
Scott Ritter just notes the fact - Americans (and by extension, we're not that different in these things, a lot of Cdns) are ignorant - not an insult, just a fact -
In his book, 'Propaganda', published in 1928, Edward Bernays wrote: "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country." Quoted in John Pilger, on INI, Understanding the leaks is understanding the rise of a new fascism
Chomsky (Manufacturing Consent - Noam Chomsky and the Media, 25:20): 'It's not the case .... that indoctrination is inconsistent with democracy, ... it's the very essence of democracy ..marginalising the general public, or reducing them to apathy in some fashion ..'
Andrew Gavin Marshall, The Purpose of Education, Social Uplift or Social Control?
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