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Date: Wed, 9 Aug 1995 11:20:47 -0400
>From: Andy Oram <•••@••.•••>
To: •••@••.••• --- [posted with permission]
Subject: Re: Democracy & NWO -- Draft 2.0
This is an excellent article. I'll bring up some fundamental
disagreements in a minute, but I think you've drawn together lots of
threads well and made a good argument. If you have space, a few more
specific details would strengthen the article (I've indicated where in
my comments).
My disagreements revolve around the conflict between the nation state
and the transnational organizations. This is a very interesting
conflict (multinational corporations are definitely getting frustrated
with national restrictions) and no one can tell for sure how it will
turn out. But I think the issue is more complicated than you express
it here.
First, I think many of the major powers (including Germany and Japan,
who are still our natural rivals) were unhappy with our handling of
the Gulf War. They know that the firepower may someday be directed
against them once more.
Bush would like to return to the American dominance of the 1950's
(just as the Falklands showed England's nostalgia for its military
past) but it's not happening. We're so near, yet so far. The main
threat to the U.S., the Soviet Union, is dead. But we just don't have
the strength (or the public backing) to fight major wars; we couldn't
take on Germany or Japan again. It may happen anyway; history has
shown that governments are willing to bring their peoples to the brink
of destruction to fight wars they can't win. But the New World Order
is a complicated thing, and is going to bring out conflicts between
various countries.
I've heard predictions that the world will start to look more
Orwellian, as the major powers build up spheres of influence and then
come into open conflict--a recipe for WW III.
Now for another side of the question. I don't think national
movements will play a progressive role. I can go along with your
suggestion that we appeal to national pride. But as the break-up of
Yugoslavia shows, national movements soon take on hideous overlays.
They bring out the worst in people. They're ultimately a question of
"which elite gets to oppress and squeeze the population."
I'm an old-style Leninist, so you have to expect this complaint from
me. Once again, I think it's useful to appeal to national pride among
oppressed and underdeveloped countries, but the emphasis has to be on
the needs of the workers, poor, and oppressed.
I put more comments below; my additions have > in the lefthand column.
Thanks for circulating this and good luck.
Andy
----------------------------------------------------------------------
~--<snip>--~
...The role of such demagogs is to sabotage government
from within -- assuring that it fails -- and them proclaiming deregulation
and privatization as the "only possible solutions" to the problems they
themselves have created or aggravated.
> You might mention here the deliberate corruption of the U.S. Housing
> and Urban Devlopment agency and the way the Reagan administration
> looted it. I may be able to dig up and mail you an article. To
> them, the poor were unworthy of any investment and the agency was
> good only for patronage.
~--<snip>--~
...These corporations decide which events are to be deemed
"news", how that "news" is to be interpreted, which story ideas will be
developed into films and TV series, which candidates are to be considered
"realistic" in elections, which legislative proposals are to be praised and
which ridiculed, and which mythologies are to be sold to global audiences.
> An example of the choice of candidates is the way the U.S. media
> promoted the pathetic Ross Perot to the point where he got to join
> the debates of the two major candidates. It's not true that the two
> major parties control all debate; but the media gets to pick the
> "outsiders." Perot opposed NAFTA, but his agenda was not a threat
> to corporations obviously.
~--<snip>--~
This article has
attempted to pull together the threads of an appropriate analysis. Beyond
that, it can only point toward a vision and a strategy, leaving it to
others to carry on.
> You could mention Russia, East Germany, and the other former
> Communist countries as examples of how dismal the free market turns
> out to be when its advocates get what they want. Unemployment,
> racism, corruption, and all sorts of social dislocations have gone
> way up.
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