>From : Butler Crittenden, Ph.D. <butlerc at pacbell.net>
Sent : Saturday, January 28, 2006 5:11 PM
To : "Richard K. Moore" <richard at cyberjournal.org>
Subject : Fw: Patriot Act......NOT
A little more grist for the mill on both fascism and FEMA. My sociologist colleague is still teaching and has first-hand knowledge of what young people today are experiencing. The implications for them and the rest of us are profound.
In the past couple of days I've viewed Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, now out on DVD and even available from NetFlix. Well worthwhile and "enjoyable" in a sick sort of way, as it's very well done, the part I found especially fascinating was some actual footage or the Milgrim experiments.
You may recall that Stanley Milgrim had subjects shock the shit out people, or at least they thought they were, per orders of the "neutral" instructor sitting beside them. The folks in the other room were screaming to beat all hell and protesting the next shock would kill them for sure. The instructor would say, "go ahead, it's OK," or "go ahead, yes I take the responsibility," and the real subject of the experiment would flip the switch -- not always, to be sure, but way too often for a society where supposedly we know better.
David's comments below.
Butler ----- Original Message ----- From: David in Austin Sent: Wednesday, January 25, 2006 6:51 AM Subject: Re: Patriot Act......NOT
Oh I'm very well aware of this. I have young cops in my courses being trained in the new FEMA procedures--and it's freaking them out. People think FEMA is a weak organization. It's been gutted as regards protecting people from natural disasters, but immeasurably strengthened as an instrument of police-state power. These cops are being run through simulations where they have to enforce quarantines for no apparent reason. Enforcement means shooting their fellow citizens, to kill, if they stick a nose out of doors. The new FEMA uniforms bare a marked resemblance to those the SS wore once upon a time.
What concerns me most right now is that many more people than you imagine are fully aware of the direction things have taken -- and their response is not to become outraged. It is to hunker down and hope it all passes over them. Revelation after revelation of our plummet into hard fascism is necessary, of course, but this of itself will probably not produce the kind of organization we need. My Oprah pieces, as you call them, were written in the spirit of addressing this problem. We are a psychologically beaten up populace, and just as Fannon (The Wretched of the Earth) cried out to Africans terrified of confronting their oppressors to acknowledge and deal with their fears, I'm saying we, men in particular, must do the same. We're socialized to think that weakness -- bullying -- is strength, and to equate being patted on the head by bosses that treat us like dogs, as success. One consequence of this is that most men are lousy analysts. Women are no better, unfortunately. They are less fearful of acknowledging what's real, but have totally bought into the idea that policy making is man's business. Women who became CEOs rarely become part of the real power structure, and only a few ever really understand how the system operates to exclude them. They yell about it when it happens, never having perceived the walls in the first place.
The ability to see how things operate is a NECESSARY condition of forming effective organization. The psychological factors that block perception are not irrelevant to formulating revolutionary strategy.
David