A History of Getting to Now

[RainDog]

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1087742888040457650&ei=MU6zS5fAApLmqgKQruXOCw&q=adam+curtis+the+trap&hl=en#

This is Part 2 of Adam Curtis' wonderful documentary series, The Trap. Part 2 is "The Lonely Robot."

Part 2 talks about the economic problems that Clinton inherited from the Republicans - and by the Democrats' acceptance of Republican ideology that cutting spending (rather than making taxes more equitable after decades of tax cuts for the wealthy at the expense of the middle class and poor) was the only way to solve this problem.

1996 = Clinton's speech betraying the legacy of FDR and adopting the political propaganda of conservatives.

The markets then were the source of "democracy." A medium of consent. CEOs suddenly the representatives of the people, rather than their shareholders.

This was a perversion of Adam Smith's view of the world by leaving out the importance of a social contract as citizens, as a community. A market view of humans based upon the game theory put forth by a paranoid schizophrenic with a "beautiful" tho nasty mind - whose theories were disproved in the office of those who developed them - but this failure of the model in the real world was disregarded b/c those who disproved the theory of total selfishness were mere women.

In a "market democracy" teachers are expected to overcome poverty or illness or abuse in a home by teaching students to pass a test based upon upper middle class experience of the world.

In a "market democracy" corporations are equal to humans.

In a market democracy, health care is a commodity, not a right -not an acknowledgment of that community of citizens in a wealthy nation - with provisions to create health care that acknowledge the debt that the wealthy owe to the nation that made their success possible (or their forebearers' success in the case of trust fund babies of the richest among us.)

Market democracy found "a checklist" of behavior was useful to quantify human life - outside the bounds of human experience - or rather, only within a restricted, simplified and rigid view with all fault residing within the individual, not the way in which society is structured.

Success then became a matter of fudging numbers to meet arbitrary targets - numbers to present as success.

Complex societies create complex problems.

Instead of solving the problems, the goal now is to make the numbers look better, no matter how worthless those stats may be to indicate whether or not problems are addressed.

"what had become a system for liberation had become a system of control."

What the by-numbers system has created is an educational system that creates more inequality, rather than less.

"Society has become more rigid while inequality has become more extreme."

I cannot recommend Curtis' series highly enough at this time when teachers are under attack.

[RainDog]

1. 1 bump

[RainDog]

7. 2 bumps

[Winterblues]

2. Clinton's first budget which only passed with Al Gores vote

cut taxes for the middle class and raised them for those making over $240,000 a year, so I don't know what this guy is even talking about..There was a reason every single Republican voted against Clinton's economic policies and it sure was not because he accepted all Republican ideas..

[RainDog]

4. Reagan also raised taxes on the wealthy

in his second term. No republicans voted against him, tho. so all raising of taxes is not equal - it's an election sound bite.

Reagan also tore apart unions.

He put the homeless and the mentally ill in the streets.

Clinton's declaration was "the end of big government is over."

Did he not? Are neo-liberal policies geared toward the private sector, or are they not?

Did workfare actually help to move people off the welfare rolls or just reclassify them?

[SpiralHawk]

3. Thought-provoking series

I watched it in segments on youtube -- though it was scrambled there, and hard to follow one segment after another. Still, worth a watch...maybe the vids on The Google are better set up. Hope so.

[RainDog]

5. google video has all of Adam Curtis' docs.

Power of Nightmares

The Trap

The Century of the Self

What's interesting about Curtis, it seems to me, is that he is not "prescriptive." He points out the ways in which good intentions (and bad intentions that thought they were good) fail because our societies are too complex to have simple "true/false" solutions or ways to quantify what is working or not and how.

I think The Power of Nightmares was one of the most stunning rebukes to the neo-cons that was out there during the Bush years. the BBC was afraid to air the series - afraid of an attack in the middle of it. But Curtis' pov, it seems to me, has been the most incisive of anyone addressing this issue in our time and making these issues understandable to a general public.

[SpiralHawk]

6. Gigadittos

if you'll excuse the expression...