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Yesterday, I peered back into that mysterious land before the pandemic, and watched "Requiem for the American Dream". This doc was made in 2015 with some footage from years immediately before. It is a collection of observations by Noam Chomsky on political evolution. (1)
(2) Although he does not say so explicitly, it is clear that his outlook is that a true democracy of and by the people is not the natural order of things. By extension the period from roughly the 1930s until the 1970s was an oddity when political philosophy shifted, for a time.
(3) Those of us like me who grew up in the 50s and 60s saw the upheavals of Viet Nam, but were born into an era where labour unions were strong as was the political centre left. We took it for granted.
(4) Starting in the 70s, the moneyed interests (whatever term you want) began to reassert themselves and over the decades labour's power fell and deregulation coupled with the "too big to fail" and a general distrust of government "wasting my taxes" took hold.
(5) This was not by accident. By the time we get to the 2000s and 2010s, we arrive at Chomsky's concept of "manufactured consent" where people are convinced that the way society is organized is inherently correct even if it's not in their best interest.
(6) At the same time, the gap between rich and poor and between the oligarchy and the goverened widens as a substantial chunk of the population feels disconnected from the mechanics of power. Coupled with the increase in hate-based politics, this is a recipe for big problem.
(7) That in brief is Chomsky's thesis, and I could not help noticing a few things while watching. First, the same period saw the systematic takeover of governments and the judiciary by conservative forces as documented in the film about Roger Ailes and Fox News.
(8) There's something of a blind spot in Chomsky in that I think he overestimates the degree to which people felt they were "in control" of their governments, as opposed to simply happy enough with their lot that it did not matter during a booming economic era.
(9) All the same, the makings of the environment that Trump and his ilk exploited to take power are there to see, even though the filmmakers and Chomsky could not know what was coming.
(10) The step (what might be called step 11 of his 10 part thesis) that I doubt he could imagine was the weaponizing of resentment and hate on the scope we have seen. We know what happened in Germany in the 30s, but that was an historical context many think "can't happen here".
(11) The effect and result might be seen strongest in the USA, but similar attitudes can be found elsewhere. It's an odd feeling to be looking back such a short time through not just to the pre-pandemic era but to the pre-Trump era.
(12/12) Now we have not one but two plagues to kill off: one is biological and the other is political. For one there is the hoped-for vaccine. For the other, I am not so sure. Tolerance and exploitation of extremism got us here, but that is hard to undo.
