Reply #49: "Taking the Risk Out of Democracy"

[bread_and_roses]

The twentieth century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy. Alex Carey

http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.cgi?path=104241082357595

In Carey’s view, U.S. corporate propaganda emerged because of the growth of democracy (specifically, increased popular franchise and the union movement) and the growth of corporate power, which clashed to create a climate where business leaders perceived a need to protect
corporate power against democracy. Thus they developed both internal and external programs that
identified free enterprise with cherished values, and government and unions with tyranny and
oppression--a Manichean juxtaposition he refers to as the Sacred and the Satanic

Corporate propaganda has succeeded to the point that it is now the only frame of reference in which the MSM and most of our fellow citizens operate. To the point that even in this thread - as in virtually any thread in DU that brings a critical eye to the dominant cultural/economic matrix - we must have a defense of the "free-market."

And we will now see it at work as Obama's choice of the "Chicago Boys" will be defended, as HRC's cluster bombs and Iraq slaughter were defended, because: http://www.lewrockwell.com/pilger/pilger27.html

In the middle of the election campaign, Dr. Les Roberts gave a special lecture at the School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in London. It was all but ignored. Yet this is the extraordinary man who led an American-Iraqi research team in the first comprehensive investigation of civilian deaths in Iraq. Published in the Lancet, the most highly regarded medical journal in the world with the tightest peer-review procedures, the study found that "at least" 100,000 civilians had died violently, the great majority of them at the hands of the "coalition": women, children, the elderly. He also described how American military doctors had found that 14 per cent of soldiers and 28 per cent of marines had killed a civilian: a huge, unreported massacre.

This great crime, together with the destruction of the city of Fallujah and the 40 known victims of torture and unlawful killings at the hands of the British army, and the biggest demonstration by Iraqis demanding the invaders get out, was not allowed to intrude on a campaign that "never really caught fire." The airbrushing requires no conspiracy. "The thought," wrote Arthur Miller, "that the state has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people is intolerable, and so the evidence has to be internally denied."

Except, of course, the State has not "lost its mind" but is acting quite consciously in the service of our Corporate Masters. Yet, as you point out, much of DU, in its ever-more dominant mainstream incarnation, spends its time participating lock-step in the apotheosis of another corporate shill.

A K&R here for the OP - I couldn't believe it when, after starting to read it last night and being interupted, I came back this AM and had to search off the front page for it.

edited for a misplaced quote box