Didn't George Soros warn that Capitalism itself was a form of totalitarianism?
Public TV recently showed old shots of the beatnik poets. It included a clip of Mayor Daley, during the Chicago riots, angrily protesting "The police aren't here to create disorder. The police are here to preserve disorder."
John K. Taber --------
The Daily press conference was funny. I remember it only because, I couldn't believe what I was watching. Magic moments.
Carrol, off list said something to the effect, that all capitalist countries were totalitarian in the sense I was developing the thread while following Arendt's essays.
I obviously agree, but it sure seems to me, that the era under Clinton has taken us several long leaps further in that direction. It's probably the by-product of the end of the cold war and globalization and our dependence on exploited foreign labor completely outside the protection of even our weak labor laws that makes it seem to me to be even more like a totalitarian system than it had been in the past. That and the neoliberal mantra, that there is no alternative. This is really a kind of crushing big lie that smacks of what Arendt was getting at in her essays.
Criminalizing the poor is a constant and on going project. Palo Alto just passed an ordinance to make pan handling a traffic violation on Camino Real. A witty homeless guy claimed officals were upset for asethetic reasons, pointing to himself.
Chuck Grimes