Click here to access article by John R. Hall from Dissident Voice.
There are so many insights about political reality packed in this article and so many experiences that I can identify with. Hall was a dissident and activist during the Vietnam War among young people. I, who was slightly older, tried to warn this generation of the lies spread by our media corporations in support of this war and the ruling class's project of building their empire.
Long ago I discovered the secret of their success which I attributed to their incessant indoctrination and the use of psychological warfare techniques on ordinary Americans that were so similar to their efforts to sell all their fast foods, cosmetics, and other worthless junk solely to obtain profit for capitalists in place of more costly services to really benefit the health and welfare of ordinary Americans.
The ruling capitalist class convinced Americans that this was the American Way of Life and that their families would flourish if they played along. And they did. The ruling class were dedicated to their self-serving project of profit and power; but to accomplish this, they had to erase through their propaganda and indoctrination any class consciousness that ordinary Americans might have that was left over from the Great Depression of the 1930s. And they did.
Immediately after WWII they launched a comprehensive campaign to rid ordinary American of any beliefs about a class consciousness by inculcating beliefs about the "Red Menace" and the Russian threat. They used all their media, political as well as all institutions in this effort to substitute a fear of the Russians for lingering notions of social-economic justice which they labeled subversive. This period was known as McCarthyism. They also used the carrots of full employment, GI Bill, and the much vaunted "Yankee know-how" among ordinary Americans to distract them from any "subversive" thoughts about their imperialist foreign policies and contribute to the building of their empire. And American families benefited ... for a while.
Then in the 1980s they saw corporations buying out and merging with other corporations to reap ever greater concentrations of wealth and power. Later on in the 1980s these behemoth corporations saw their next opportunity to obtain profits and power from employing desperate low paid workers in other countries, and they moved their factories there. The story is far more complex than I can express, but the result has been the disappearance of any sense of class consciousness and "Yankee know-how". Instead we have seen the rise of poverty, homelessness, massive debts incurred by ordinary Americans, never-ending wars, the destabilization of our climate, etc.
Hall vividly describes where we are now to those of us who can still manage to see reality somewhat clearly.
