Chuck, this seems to me to be from fantasy land. No ideology (and that is what it seems you mean by "the fraud" here) _ever_ takes on any "complete self-sufficiency of its own." And the claim here that it does seems to me to reside in the same ideological premise that informs neoclassical economics and other major legitimizations of capitalist rule: the premise of the rational and fully-informed abstract individual, existing prior to and independently of social relations.
Most people are simply living their lives and quite sensibly (they don't have all that much time to measure and weigh things) more or less trusting their leaders to take care of public affairs. Why should they do otherwise?
And while you are undoubtedly the most eloquent writer of all the subscribers to lbo-talk, you are less eloquent than John Milton who made this claim with far more power:
To whom thus Michael. Justly thou abhorr'st
That Son, who on the quiet state of men
Such trouble brought, affecting to subdue
Rational Libertie; yet know withall,
Since thy original lapse, true Libertie
Is lost, which alwayes with right Reason dwells
Twinn'd, and from her hath no dividual being:
Reason in man obscur'd, or not obeyd,
Immediately inordinate desires
And upstart Passions catch the Government
From Reason, and to servitude reduce
Man till then free. Therefore since hee permits
Within himself unworthie Powers to reign
Over free Reason, God in judgement just
Subjects him from without to violent Lords;
Who oft as undeservedly enthrall
His outward freedom: Tyrannie must be,
Though to the Tyrant thereby no excuse.
Yet somtimes Nations will decline so low
From vertue, which is reason, that no wrong,
But Justice, and some fatal curse annext
Deprives them of thir outward libertie,
Thir inward lost .
Paradise Lost 11, 79-101
I submit that
true Libertie
Is lost, which alwayes with right Reason dwells
Twinn'd, and from her hath no dividual being
is an almost exact paraphrase of your "fraud takes on a complete self-sufficiency of its own," and that both you and Milton are wrong. Milton assumes that the "ordinary person," from his/her isolated position, can (or should be able to) make correct abstract judgments. I know you would not take that position - but I do think your argument depends on it.
> Correct me if I am wrong here, but I think we passed that point, some
> time back. When, I couldn't actually say. It is tempting to identify
> that transition with 9/11.
Why then were there such massive demonstrations against the war? (Has any one ever made a good estimate of the ratio of demonstrators to supporters of the demos?) Why, even after the ground war had begun, did such massive numbers (in the range of 20% to 30%) continue to oppose the war?
> But choosing that date would only validate
> the fraudulent premise that the US was a benevolent empire seeking
> to help an ungrateful and nasty world---some part of which
> evidently reacted to our benevolence with terrorist attacks.
What in the daily life of most people is the direct experience which would suggest to them that they need to question (or even consciously formulate) this premise? There is no obligation that anyone subscribe to a paper or view the TV news -- or to question what they learn there? And before blaming them for believing either TV or newspaper, you need to argue that there exists in daily life experiences that would force them to begin to question those media.
> So how far back do we go? How deep is the rat hole?
It is already less deep than it was 9/10. Never before in u.s. history has so large a proportion of the population (10% or more) actually doubted the premise of u.s. good intentions. That gives us a base to work with that was simply not there in the 1960s or even the 1930s.
I think Dwayne's responses to this post give us a rather better starting point.
To be continued.
Carrol
>
> I suspect the reason that the US public seems to be so impossibly
> naive, is that if they reject the latest frauds, they threaten the
> entire system of pretend. So then what? The simulacrum begins to
> liquefy and melt away, leaving nothing but a very disturbing
> armature. And who wants to live with that?
>
> Let's go shopping and forget it.
>
> Chuck Grimes