>>> Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol at jhu.edu> 05/02/00 11:55AM >>>
At 11:37 AM 5/2/00 -0400, Charles wrote:
>CB: I sort of agree with you , Wojtek. Although I must say, somehow this
class of people convinced millions of ordinary American workers to do all
the killing for them. These mass murders in the "Third World" , the
colonies, were carried out by mass armies of ordinary Americans. You didn't
think the ruling class got itself out on the battle fronts , did you ?
But that is what elites are trained to do - manipulate ordinary people to do the dirty work, even if that means their own destruction at the end (cf. nazi victims digging their own graves).
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CB: Somehow we have to "train" the ordinary Americans not to take the bait , no ? I don't disagree with your putting most of the blame on the elite (You had said "So the proper generalization from the above should be "the biggest mass-murdering class of people are intellectuals and pundits for whom their ideas and head-games are infinitely more important than lives of other people.") . But , these elitists will never change. It is the willingness of the ordinary Americans to follow like sheep that we must work to change, no ?
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But that is based on the simple principle - divide et impera, divide and conquer. The trick is to isolate people form each other, and then put them is a situation where they have to do what the elites want them in order to save their own lives. Take the case of an ordinary soldier sent to Vietnam. If he was isolated from social support networks facilitating his draft dogging or draft resistance, he risked prison for his refusal to serve in the army. That was the real risk, here and now, whereas the danger of the battle was an abstract and a distance one, and the elites made everything to keep it that way, so that soldier saw it as less risky to be drafted than refusing and going to jail.
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CB: Agree. How do we intervene and undermine the influence of elite ? How do we counter "divide and conquer" ? Workers of the World, Unite.
CB