Creator of Bracing Views. Contributor to TomDispatch, Truthout, HNN, Alternet, Huffington Post, Antiwar, and other sites. Retired AF lieutenant colonel and professor of history. Senior fellow, Eisenhower Media Network
A young Tom Cruise loving his machine gun in “Taps”
W.J. Astore
“[W]ar is a distressing, ghastly, harrowing, horrific, fearsome and deplorable business. How can its actual awfulness be described to anyone?” Stuart Hills, By Tank Into Normandy, p. 244
“[E]very generation is doomed to fight its war, to endure the same old experiences, suffer the loss of the same old illusions, and learn the same old lessons on its own.” Philip Caputo, A Rumor of War, p. 81
The persistence of war is a remarkable thing. Two of the better books about war and its persistence are J. Glenn Gray’s “The Warriors” and Chris Hedges “War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning.” Hedges, for example, writes about “the plague of nationalism,” our willingness to subsume our own identities in the service of an abstract “state” as well as our eagerness to serve that state by killing “them,” some “other” group that the state has vilified.
In warning us about the perils of nationalism, Hedges quotes Primo Levi’s words: “I cannot tolerate the fact that a man should be judged not for what he is but because of the group to which he belongs.” Levi’s lack of tolerance stems from the hardest of personal experiences: surviving Auschwitz as an Italian Jew during the Holocaust.
Gray takes this analysis in a different direction when he notes that those who most eagerly and bloodthirstily denounce “them,” the enemy, are typically far behind the battle lines or even safely at home. The troops who fight on the front lines more commonly feel a sort of grudging respect for the enemy, even a sense of kinship that comes with sharing danger in common.
Part of the persistence of war, in other words, stems from the ignorant passions of those who most eagerly seek it and trumpet its heroic wonders even as they stand (and strive to remain) safely on the sidelines.
Both Hedges and Gray also speak to the dangerous allure of war, its spectacle, its excitement, its awesomeness. Even the most visceral and “realistic” war films, like the first thirty minutes of “Saving Private Ryan,” represent war as a dramatic spectacle. War films tend to glamorize combat (think of “Apocalypse Now,” for example), which is why they do so little to put an end to war.
One of the best films to capture the dangerous allure of war to youth is “Taps.” I recall seeing it in 1981 at the impressionable age of eighteen. There’s a tiny gem of a scene near the end of the film when the gung ho honor guard commander, played by Tom Cruise before he was TOM CRUISE, mans a machine gun. He’s firing against American troops sent to put down a revolt at a military academy, but Cruise’s character doesn’t care who he’s firing at. He’s caught in the rapture of destruction.
He shouts, “It’s beautiful, man. Beautiful.” And then he himself is shot dead.
This small scene with Cruise going wild with the machine gun captures the adrenaline rush, that berserker capacity latent in us, which acts as an accelerant to the flames of war.
War continues to fascinate us, excite us. It taps primal roots of power and fear and ecstasy all balled together. It masters us, hence its persistence.
If and when we master ourselves, perhaps then we’ll finally put an end to war.
Life’s tough enough. Let’s give each other a fair hearing. (author’s photo)
W.J. Astore
I have a friend who speaks with great authority on life. Not only is he a topnotch historian, but he’s lived a life rooted to reality, a life in which he’s demonstrated great generosity of spirit.
He wrote recently to me about what he considers to be the acid test of a person’s worth. As he put it:
“The older I get, the less I care about someone’s beliefs, faith, convictions, and conclusions. What MATTERS is how they treat me and mine!”
Yes. As I wrote back to him, “Show me how you act, and I’ll tell you what you believe.”
When I’m conversing with someone, I couldn’t care less if they’re conservative or liberal, libertarian or green, Catholic or atheist. Those are really just labels or categories that conceal as much as they reveal. What matters is how a person acts. Do they listen? If they disagree (and I enjoy a good verbal joust), do they do so with a certain sense of civility? Just a touch of humility, a sense that, though they may be almost certain that they’re right, they’re willing to reserve a chance, however small, that they’re wrong?
Put differently, go ahead and tell me why you’re right and I’m wrong, without all the self-righteousness, and without wronging me in the process.
In a small way, I hope that’s what we’re up to here at The Contrary Perspective. Establishing a dialogue with people who may not share our specific beliefs, faith, convictions, and conclusions, and doing it in a way that treats our readers in a respectful way. A way that doesn’t wrong anyone even as we joust about what is right.
After all, the world would be a painfully boring place if we all agreed. Or if no one ever challenged us to examine (and re-examine) our beliefs.
I have conservative friends (Yes, I do!) who express disfavor with higher education. They see higher ed as being in lockstep with liberal/leftist agendas. Things like gay marriage, aggressive feminism, multiculturalism, and diversity that focuses not on wide-ranging political views but on the politics of gender and race. They further see higher ed as being unfriendly to conservatives, hostile to organized religion (especially Christianity), and intolerant of alternative views that challenge leftist shibboleths.
There’s truth to this critique. I’ve been around enough liberal faculty members to recognize a certain collectivism, often manifested by smug superiority, in their treatment of anyone who challenges their views. So-called Birkenstock Bolsheviks are hardly immune to prejudice, including the refusal of job interviews or the denial of tenure to conservatives. Such prejudice is especially galling among faculties that pride themselves on tolerance.
But while conservatives fight loud skirmishes against conformist liberals in higher ed, they ignore real battles of enormous significance. The middle class in America continues to wither, even as the cost of higher ed spirals ever upwards (Americans now carry more student loan debt than credit card debt); financial and corporate elites continue to gain more power at the expense of the little guy, even in higher ed, which is increasingly obedient to business imperatives; the American empire continues to grow, and the individual rights of Americans continue to atrophy, even as higher ed willingly genuflects before the military-industrial-homeland security complex.
Everywhere in American society, including in higher ed, we see the exercise of power without regard to communal functions. And most liberals (and conservatives) in higher ed either kowtow to power or hunker down in their own little academic fiefs.
To liberals in higher ed, the power elites basically say: We’ll give you gay marriage, we’ll give you your left-leaning courses on feminist basket making in the Punjab. But we reserve real power, the power that translates into money and influence, for ourselves. Even liberal icons like President Obama are just the multicultural happy face on a power structure that continues to screw the little guy and gal.
Think about it. Whether you’re liberal or conservative, do you believe you have any real say in America? Any real power? Any real speech? Compared to financial and corporate elites, who are now citizens and who can outshout you with billions of dollars in political campaign “donations”?
Again, those wine-drinking and cheese-eating liberals in academe, with their smug, Prius- and Volvo-driven politics, may be annoying, but they have no real power except to annoy.
Of course, in some ways this is nothing new. President Dwight Eisenhower identified part of the problem: the growing domination of militarized corporate agendas in the name of “security.” What has made it worse is our permanent war footing, which both drives and justifies fascism-lite, and which works to break down the social contract. Even Ike couldn’t foresee the extent to which Washington and the Congress have become beholden to, and virtually owned by, major corporate and financial interests.
The character Gordon Gekko’s quote of “greed is good” from the movie Wall Street caught the Zeitgeist of the 1980s. Then in the recent sequel Gekko adds: “Now it seems it’s legal,” a statement as sardonically funny as it is indicative of America’s new 21st century Zeitgeist.
To preserve their power and perks, the rich and powerful use their usual divide and conquer strategy, in which they sic the middling orders on the welfare class. Look over there! A lazy welfare mom buying king crab legs using food stamps! Even as another CEO cashes in his golden parachute for $10 million and another luxury yacht.
The media serve power, the politicians serve money/power, and when politicians leave office, they cash in as well. It’s all a circle jerk in which the little guy gets hosed.
Colleges and universities, in the meantime, are divided or distracted by identity politics and the usual grievances and petty animosities, even as administrators increasingly align themselves with corporate types, who promise to run a tighter ship while cutting benefits (including health care) to temporary/contingent faculty.
So, my message to my conservative friends is this: Don’t worry about the leftist types in higher ed who get under your skin: they’re just parlor pinks. They have the power to annoy, and within academe they have a smidgen of authority. But they have no real power, especially when compared to our corporatist state, to multinationals, to the big banks, Wall Street, and the K Street lobbyists.
If you don’t believe me, if you continue to chew the carpet at midnight, pause for a moment and ask yourself this question: When was the last time Prius-driving liberals with their “Coexist” bumper stickers got $700 billion from American taxpayers in the TARP to bail them out?
My Mom and Dad worked in the candy factory in my hometown. They knew the demands of hard work at low pay
A friend of mine knew the big wigs at a leading manufacturer of agricultural equipment back in the late 1960s. He recalls reading an article back then in the Wall Street Journal about the company being sued for the deaths of farmers. The gas tanks on some of their tractors were exploding because they were on top of the engine and could overheat. My friend recalls walking in to the office of the chairman and CEO of the company and asking him if as a result of the case they were relocating the gas tank. The CEO replied they were not because that would be more expensive than fighting and settling the lawsuits.
That’s the logic of capitalism in a nutshell. The bottom line has no ethics. If you can save more money by settling lawsuits rather than reconfiguring an unsafe design, why not do so? A few maimed or dead farmers is a small price to pay for added profit. Right?
My father told me a similar story about the lack of empathy the rich have for the little people of the world. In the 1940s my dad worked grueling shifts in a candy factory, where conditions were as demanding as the pay was low. Several of the guys got together to demand a raise from the owners. When the time came to approach the owners, some of the guys lost their nerve, but not my dad. He told the owners that he deserved a dime per hour pay raise. The owners agreed to a nickel, followed by another nickel bump in the future. My dad agreed.
A month later one of the owners told my dad that the nickel pay raise was really stressing the company.
As my dad ruefully observed to me, all of the owners died millionaires. For my dad, the moral to the story was “That the rich have no sympathy or use for the poor.” That could stand as the moral to both of these stories.
Capitalism may be a great way for a lucky or plucky few to make lots of money, but its calculus is often bitter to those on the receiving end of its flawed products and feeble wages. And if you don’t believe me, just ask all those fast food workerslooking for a fair shake in today’s economy. Or all those minimum wage workers running hell for leather in huge fulfillment warehouses to meet the needs of Amazon.com.
The rich may have no sympathy or use for the poor, but the rest of us need to hold the big wigs to account, else the legacy of uncontrolled capitalism will continue to be bitter.
The Golem, fed by our thoughtlessness (Source: Wikipedia)
W.J. Astore
Hannah Arendt, the famous philosopher and author of The Origins of Totalitarianism, wrote that “thoughtlessness“–the inability of people to think deeply and critically and reflectively–was a defining characteristic of our times.
Thoughtlessness is characterized by the repetition of certain “truths,” often defined by the state, that are not meant to be questioned. Contemporary examples might include the idea that “America is the greatest country,” with no thought given as to what greatness really means, or whether it’s even desirable to be “the greatest” in categories such as military power. Americans are not encouraged to think about such things; indeed, if you dare question such things, you risk being labeled “un-American.”
Education has a powerful role to play in either making us more thoughtful or in reinforcing our tendency toward thoughtlessness. What concerns me about higher education today is its tendency toward banality, as represented by the idea of diplomas as passports to jobs. When education is subsumed by careerism, when it becomes little more than an exercise in gaining credentials for “success,” it reinforces thoughtlessness.
Consider the big trends in higher education today. In the name of “relevance” and greater national competitiveness, colleges and universities pursue STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) in place of liberal arts and boast about the virtues of vocational training that turns students into reliable and obedient employees. Such monomania for STEM and vocational relevance is perfectly consistent with thoughtlessness, a key feature of authoritarian political systems in Arendt’s view.
Let’s not forget that totalitarian systems love education – of a kind. They love education when it exalts the state, when it’s apolitical training, whether technical/scientific or in terms of conditioned “thought,” and when it’s manifested by duck speak: the quacking of state-sanctioned pieties. Pieties like “America is the greatest country.”
Thoughtlessness goes hand-in-hand with powerlessness. The less we think as citizens, the less power we have. And the less power we have, the more power the state grabs for itself. As the state grows in power, it increasingly ignores puny citizens (that’s us). Eventually, the state can only be manipulated by other powerful entities (multinational corporations, big finance, and the like) with deep pockets, far deeper than any citizen or coalition of citizens.
In such a scenario, not only do individuals become thoughtless; the state does too. It morphs into a golem, a soulless monster of our own creation, one that we soon discover we can no longer control, as noted in this powerful article by finem respice.
To keep the shambling monster happy, both political parties end up feeding it. It doesn’t really matter if you’re a Republican or Democrat, whether you’re a rich supplicant or a poor one: everyone looks to the golem for care and feeding. The rich and powerful just have an advantage because they have bigger sticks with which they can prod the golem in a direction favorable to them.
An education that refuses to provoke thought, that refuses to challenge the status quo, is an education that feeds the golem.
And golems have a well-known tendency to bite the hands that feed them.
In the New York Times on July 20, Major General H.R. McMaster penned a revealing essay on “The Pipe Dream of Easy War.” McMaster made three points about America’s recent wars and military interventions:
1. In stressing new technology as being transformative, the American military neglected the political side of war. They forgot their Clausewitz in a celebration of their own prowess, only to be brought back to earth by messy political dynamics in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere.
2. Related to (1), the U.S. military neglected human/cultural aspects of war and therefore misunderstood Iraqi and Afghan culture. Cultural misunderstandings transformed initial battlefield victories into costly political stalemates.
3. Related to (1) and (2), war is uncertain and unpredictable. Enemies can and will adapt.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with these points, or in the general’s broad lesson that “American forces must cope with the political and human dynamics of war in complex, uncertain environments. Wars like those in Afghanistan and Iraq cannot be waged remotely.”
The last sentence is a dig at the Air Force and an argument for the continuing relevance of ground forces, which is unsurprising coming from an Army general who commands Fort Benning in Georgia.
But the sum total of McMaster’s argument is remarkably banal. Yes, war is political, human, and chaotic. Did our military professionals and civilian experts really forget this before making their flawed decisions to go to war after 9/11?
McMaster ends his critique with a few words of praise for the U.S. military’s adaptability. The usual refrain: We messed up, but we learned from our mistakes, and are ready to take on new challenges, as long as the department of defense remains fully funded, and as long as America puts its faith in men like McMaster and not in machines/technology.
If those are the primary lessons our country should have learned since 9/11, we’re in big, big trouble.
So, here are three of my own “lessons” in response to McMaster’s. They may not be popular, but that’s because they’re a little more critical of our military – and a lot more critical of America.
1. Big mistakes by our military are inevitable because the American empire is simply too big, and American forces are simply too spread out globally, often in countries where the “ordinary” people don’t want us. To decrease our mistakes, we must radically downsize our empire.
2. The constant use of deadly force to police and control our empire is already sowing the deadly seeds of blowback. Collateral damage and death of innocents via drones and other “kinetic” attacks is making America less safe rather than more.
Like the Romans before us, as Tacitus said, we create a desert with our firepower and call it “peace.” But it’s not peace to those on the receiving end of American firepower. Their vows of vengeance perpetuate the cycle of violence. Add to this our special forces raids, our drone strikes, and other meddling and what you get is a perpetual war machine that only we can stop. But we can’t stop it because like McMaster we keep repeating, “This next war, we’ll get it right.”
3. We can’t defeat the enemy when it is us. Put differently, what’s the sense in defeating the enemies of freedom overseas at the same time as our militarized government is waging a domestic crackdown on dissent (otherwise known as freedom of speech) in the “homeland”?
Articles like McMaster’s suggest that our military can always win future wars, mainly by fighting more intelligently. These articles never question the wisdom of American militarization, nor do they draw any attention to the overweening size and ambition of the department of defense and its domination of American foreign policy.
Indeed, articles like McMaster’s, in reassuring us that the military will do better in the next round of fighting, ensure that we will fight again – probably achieving nothing better than stalemate while wasting plenty of young American (and foreign) lives.
Is it possible that the best way to win future wars is to avoid them altogether? As simple as that question is, you will rarely hear it asked in the halls of power in Washington.
Memorial to the innocents killed at Sandy Hook elementary. Photo by author.
My wife and I recently visited the National Shrine of The Divine Mercy in Stockbridge, Mass. At the shrine, there’s a simple, moving, memorial to the Sandy Hook children (see photo above). Rarely has the Biblical phrase, “Jesus wept,” been sadder or more appropriate.
And the people said, See how much He loved them.
Message? I don’t know. But I think these children are martyrs to a society that’s saturated in violence. A society that claims to put its trust in God, even as it resolutely ignores His teachings.
Jesus said: Suffer the children to come unto me. Of these are the kingdom of heaven.
Somehow we have to do a better job of protecting our children from humanity’s all-too-violent tendencies. The agony of more lost innocents is too much to bear.
I remember making collages in grade school; they were always good fun. I came across this collage of bumper stickers yesterday at the Gypsy Joint Cafe in Great Barrington, Mass. (They make scrumptious sandwiches and salads, by the way.)
It’s a representative sample of sentiments that are common to progressive places. (But note the “Don’t mess with Texas,” which is representative of, well, Texans.)
It’s hard to argue with “Teach Peace” or “Peace Is Patriotic.” “Folk the War” is pretty straightforward. And I do like the idea of living the life that I love. And I hope that the more I know, the less I need.
Now I need to find a similar collage of conservative stickers. Will those stickers be as idealistic, as upbeat, as focused on sustainable food and education and music and peace?
In the preface (dated 1907) to the first German edition of The Perfect Wagnerite, George Bernard Shaw issued a warning about trends that he saw in German character and culture. What struck me upon reading them was not just their insight into the Second Reich (1871-1918) and their prescience about the Third Reich to come (1933-45), but their insight into certain aspects of American character and culture today.
The worst fault of the “typical modern German,” Shaw wrote in 1907, “is that he cannot see that it is possible to have too much of a good thing. Being convinced that duty, industry, education, loyalty, patriotism and respectability are good things (and I am magnanimous enough to admit that they are not altogether bad things when taken in strict moderation at the right time and in the right place), he indulges in them on all occasions shamelessly and excessively. He commits hideous crimes when crime is presented to him as part of his duty; his craze for work is more ruinous than the craze for drink …”
Yes, a craze for doing one’s duty in the name of a state-defined and state-glorifying patriotism can be taken too far, as events were to show. Shaw went on to say that he struggled himself with the “mania” of wanting to be seen as “loyal and patriotic, to be respectable and well-spoken of.” But the typical German abandoned himself to this mania, or so Shaw argued.
The result, Shaw warned, “may end in starvation, crushing taxation, suppression of all freedom to try new social experiments and reform obsolete institutions, in snobbery, jobbery, idolatry, and an omnipresent tyranny in which his doctor and his schoolmaster, his lawyer and his priest, coerce him worse than any official or drill sergeant: no matter: it is respectable, says the German, therefore it must be good, and cannot be carried too far; and everybody who rebels against it must be a rascal.”
That is a remarkable line: the suppression of all freedom to try new social experiments and reform obsolete institutions. It’s exactly how the Nazis couched their radical and murderous tyranny – as an experiment in greater freedom (for the Aryan elite, naturally, not for “inferiors”). And most “respectable” Germans went along with this; they saluted the Leader smartly and obeyed. Or they dared not outwardly to disobey, which had the same effect.
It’s easy to slough off Shaw’s words as a period piece, words that applied to certain Germans at a certain point in history. But there’s more here than that. Shaw is warning us that unthinking allegiance to state-defined duty, loyalty, patriotism, all in the name of “respectability” as defined and judged by supposedly sober superiors, is open to exploitation as well as perversion by authoritarian interests.
Subsequent German history proved Shaw to be right. Tragically so.
But what about the typical modern American? Are we immune from this exaltation of the self in the service of state interests? An exaltation that takes its meaning from toil and conformity? Are we as unwilling as most Germans were to challenge authority before it becomes corrupt and authoritarian?
Consider these words of Tom Engelhardt, writing at Tomdispatch.com about the current state of affairs in Washington D.C. and around the world, as our government hunts the dissident Edward Snowden:
“It’s eerie that some aspects of the totalitarian governments that went down for the count in the twentieth century are now being recreated in those shadows. There, an increasingly ‘totalistic’ if not yet totalitarian beast, its hour come round at last, is slouching toward Washington to be born, while those who cared to shine a little light on the birth process are in jail or being hounded across this planet.”
Yes, the echoes are eerie. Part of the answer is to listen to Shaw. Better to act as a “rascal” in pursuit of a more equitable and ethical society than to crave respectability as defined by the state. The rascal challenges state authority. The dutiful man? As Shaw argues, the latter may commit hideous crimes simply because some authority figure told him to do so.
In these days of increasing governmental authority and state intrusion into individual privacy, it may well be wise for us to tap our inner rascals.
Education in my sense of liberating and strengthening (making articulate and uncompromising) the intellect is of course antithetical to much of what is going on in our schools and universities, which I would rather refer to by such terms as training, molding, socialization, mystification, memorizing of facts, obfuscation of meaning–all processes designed to produce intelligent citizens who are ready to execute jobs faithfully and not ask any questions about their meaning or purpose or value to fellow human beings.
(Christian Bay, Strategies of Political Emancipation, 1981)
Corporate society takes care of everything. And all it asks of anyone, all it’s ever asked of anyone ever, is not to interfere with management decisions.
Mr. Bartholomew (played by John Houseman) in Rollerball, 1975
As a professor and lifelong learner, I see education as equal parts empowering and enlightening. Knowledge is power, as Francis Bacon said, and the lamp of learning helps to illuminate our lives.
But is education also about social control? Sadly, the answer is “yes.” Education that is simplified and standardized is often little more than indoctrination. Education that is too regimented, too centralized, too much like a factory, prepares students for a life of unquestioning obedience and unreflective conformity.
Authorities have often been keen to restrict or outlaw forms of knowledge that they see as undermining their privileges and power. Writing from Australia, Dr Teri Merlyn reminded me that:
There have been very direct, coordinated battles [against knowledge and reformers] – witness the censorship battles over Tom Paine’s ‘The Rights of Man’, when you could go to gaol for simply owning a copy, and the 19th Century ‘Church and King’ mobs sent to punish radical writers and publishers by burning down their houses … There are powerful social forces at work that have their self-interest at heart and see what they do in that context. Witness the great educator of the working class, Hannah Moore, writing to her Bishop at the turn of the 18th Century, assuring him whilst she was teaching these working class girls to read, sufficient for their service duties, they would never learn to write, for that would encourage them to aspire beyond their station.
Education today still largely teaches students to stay within their station. Today’s focus on vocational education is both salutary and one-dimensional. Students are told to get degrees as passports to a job. They’re not told to aspire to be skeptical citizens who dare to question (or even to supplant) authority.
And there’s the rub. We face difficult, seemingly intractable, problems in the world today. Global warming. Fossil fuel dependence. A widening gap between rich and poor. A military-industrial-intelligence complex that dominates our foreign policy as well as much of our domestic policy. Worrisome budget deficits. Unaffordable health care. The list goes on.
But our students are not being educated to address these challenges, at least not in any radical way, in the sense of getting to the roots of the problem.
Education, in essence, has largely become training, just another form of careerism. And the high student debt that many students incur in obtaining their “passport to success” ensures they are essentially indentured servants, forced to keep working to pay off their debt (and often to keep their health care benefits as well).
Even as students incur debt in the process of training for a career, higher education brags most loudly about its close ties to business and industry. Yet business and industry, as Teri Merlyn notes, “has effectively [outsourced] its responsibility to train its workforce, diverting that cost onto the public purse. In order to do that, it has infested educational language with its own terminology. The dominance of the Business Paradigm is now absolute.”
Just as college football is a feeder to the NFL, higher education is increasingly a feeder to business and industry. It’s a Rollerball world dominated by violent sports and corporate conglomerates.
Education, in short, has lost any sense of higher purpose. “Adapt to the world as you find it” is both the implicit and explicit message. And whatever you do, don’t rock the boat.
Part of the method is to destroy any sense of class identity among students. Today, virtually all my students self-identify as being members of the “middle class,” even though many are working class (just as I am a son of factory workers). In American society, we’ve lumped blue-collar with white-collar jobs, so that now janitors and fast-food workers (for example) think of themselves as middle class.
This is not to denigrate janitors or fast-food workers. Rather, it’s to highlight the calculated decline of class identity and solidarity in the U.S. If we’re all middle class, if we’re all bourgeois, why bother uniting in unions to fight for our rights? If we allegedly inhabit a post-class society of social mobility, education can then ignore ethical and societal questions of fairness to focus on workforce training and professional development.
As my Aussie correspondent, Dr Teri Merlyn, astutely noticed:
“That phenomenon of working class identity is a most unwilling one, so the strategy to co-opt the working class as nominal members of the owning class through the share and property markets was very successful. One might even suspect this recent ‘economic crisis’ [of 2008] as the ‘owners’ simply taking back what they see as rightfully theirs.”
Put differently, you can’t see you’re being screwed as a worker when you view yourself as an “owner” in your own right. And when you’re educated to conform, to produce the standard answer, to aspire to a respectable job (with your identity confined to that job), your consciousness will never be raised to challenge the system in any radical way.
In fact, your goal is to become the system, to reap its rewards for yourself, just as those that you now work for have done and are doing.
As we witness uprisings around the world, from Egypt to Greece to Brazil and elsewhere, we should ponder why there are not similar uprisings in the U.S. Is it because the U.S. really is, pardoning Voltaire, the best of all possible worlds? Or is it because our educational system immunizes us against any form of “socialism” (a curse word in American politics) or class consciousness?
Education, when it’s about getting the right answer that leads to the right job without ever questioning prevailing authority, becomes a status quo operation in social control.
To recognize that is not to surrender to it. Rather, it’s to begin to fight it.
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