Saturday, September 26, 2009
Routine Mundane Function
The merger of state and market, in the era of consolidated mass communication, allows for institutional control with minimal need to resort to force. Low level harassment of dissenters, made possible by fusion data centers, makes civil rights violations by police a routine, mundane law enforcement function. Already disinclined (by state-approved education and the carpet-bombing of advertising) to question authority, American consumers are unlikely to look for alternative interpretations of reality, especially if they are nearly invisible.
As fundamental forms of social organization, institutions (church and state) and markets wield considerably more control of most societies than tribes and networks. While not monolithic, the state and market do have near monopolies over finance and communications through control of key centers of power. Perspectives that contest their agendas of privatization and globalization are thus relatively easy to exclude or smother. One of the reasons the world indigenous peoples' movement (and other anti-globalization players) have had to deploy spectacular initiatives.
We won't, of course, hear anything from Secretary Clinton or President Obama about globalization, the main engine driving poverty and displacement in the developing world. Free Trade is neocolonial theft, globalization is mass murder, and the Obama/Clinton team are leading both.
As fundamental forms of social organization, institutions (church and state) and markets wield considerably more control of most societies than tribes and networks. While not monolithic, the state and market do have near monopolies over finance and communications through control of key centers of power. Perspectives that contest their agendas of privatization and globalization are thus relatively easy to exclude or smother. One of the reasons the world indigenous peoples' movement (and other anti-globalization players) have had to deploy spectacular initiatives.
We won't, of course, hear anything from Secretary Clinton or President Obama about globalization, the main engine driving poverty and displacement in the developing world. Free Trade is neocolonial theft, globalization is mass murder, and the Obama/Clinton team are leading both.
