Carrol
-----Original Message----- From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org] On Behalf Of Albert Sonntag Sent: Monday, January 25, 2016 2:38 PM To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] [Pen-l] The Sanders campaign
So the Deep State would be the executive arm of Mills' 'Power Elite', in a more barbaric, racketeering, type of political environment?
I remember it said in the late sixties that Ehrlichman and Haldemann brought to the White House the corporate ethics and modus operandi they had learned in Business School at USC in the fifties. Looking at the photos of Obama and Clinton, etc., watching the film of Osama bin Laden's assassination, a scene that conjures up a vision of Hitler's viewing the film of the Stauffenberg execution, it seems we have moved significantly beyond USC Business School. Politics at its highest levels has been brutalized.
On 1/25/2016 11:47 AM, Shane Mage wrote:
> On Jan 25, 2016, at 1:55 PM, Albert Sonntag wrote:
>
>> I shall vote and work for Sanders, but I think that the White House no
longer has the power to direct the overall direction of foreign or domestic
policies. Isn't this what the last eight years have shown us? Perhaps
someone on this list can enlighten me on where power ultimately lies in the
USA at the moment. Ultimate, "Federal," power. I have heard a lot of
references to the "deep State". Is this the same as C. Wright Mills' 'Power
Elite'?
> The "Deep State" is not something visible to the Sociological Imagination.
It is a group of men commanding an extra-legal armed group within the
"honorable" institutions of government whose function is to impose the
discipline of a mafia (especially omerta) over those political figures who
might be tempted to believe that their official positions or popular support
give them more than the illusion of some power. It is like an iceberg,
almost all of it deep below the surface. Visible at the top are figures like
A. Mitchell Palmer, J. Edgar Hoover, Allen Dulles, George H. W. Bush,
William Casey. Its power is wielded by assassination (think Huey Long, Carlo
Tresca, Malcolm X, J.F. Kennedy, M.L. King, Robert Kennedy, George Wallace,
Hale Boggs, Paul Wellstone) blackmail (think Elliot Spitzer, John Edwards,)
and the threat of both (Ted Kennedy, Barack Obama). It is the REALITY of
capitalist democracy.
>
> Shane Mage
>
> "scientific discovery is basically recognition of obvious realities
> that self-interest or ideology have kept everybody from paying attention
to"
>
>
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>
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