Reddit mentions of Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism

Most have no clue what's really going on in the world... the elites are afraid of political awakening.

This (mass surveillance) by the NSA and abuse by law enforcement is just more part and parcel of state suppression of dissent against corporate interests. They're worried that the more people are going to wake up and corporate centers like the US and canada may be among those who also awaken. See this vid with Zbigniew Brzezinski, former United States National Security Advisor.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ttv6n7PFniY

Science on reasoning, reason doesn't work the way we thought it did:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ

Brezinski at a press conference

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kmUS--QCYY

The real news:

http://therealnews.com/t2/

http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Incorporated-Managed-Inverted-Totalitarianism/dp/069114589X/

http://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Government-Surveillance-Security-Single-Superpower/dp/1608463656/r

http://www.amazon.com/National-Security-Government-Michael-Glennon/dp/0190206446/

Look at the following graphs:

IMGUR link - http://imgur.com/a/FShfb

http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/images/wealth/Actual_estimated_ideal_wealth_distribution.gif
http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/images/wealth/Net_worth_and_financial_wealth.gif
http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

And then...

WIKILEAKS: U.S. Fought To Lower Minimum Wage In Haiti So Hanes And Levis Would Stay Cheap

http://www.businessinsider.com/wikileaks-haiti-minimum-wage-the-nation-2011-6

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnkNKipiiiM

Free markets?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHj2GaPuEhY#t=349

http://www.amazon.com/Empire-Illusion-Literacy-Triumph-Spectacle/dp/1568586132/

"We now live in two Americas. One—now the minority—functions in a print-based, literate world that can cope with complexity and can separate illusion from truth. The other—the majority—is retreating from a reality-based world into one of false certainty and magic. To this majority—which crosses social class lines, though the poor are overwhelmingly affected—presidential debate and political rhetoric is pitched at a sixth-grade reading level. In this “other America,” serious film and theater, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins of society.

In the tradition of Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism and Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, Pulitzer Prize-winner Chris Hedges navigates this culture—attending WWF contests, the Adult Video News Awards in Las Vegas, and Ivy League graduation ceremonies—to expose an age of terrifying decline and heightened self-delusion."

Important history:

http://williamblum.org/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcA1v2n7WW4

>What the actual fuck is wrong with politicians.

You're slowly becoming aware of how corrupt and fucked up the world really is... You're not seeing what's going on behind the scenes... they fear the net and hence want to lock everything down.

The (mass surveillance) by the NSA and abuse by law enforcement is just more part and parcel of state suppression of dissent against corporate interests. They're worried that the more people are going to wake up and corporate centers like the US and canada may be among those who also awaken. See this vid with Zbigniew Brzezinski, former United States National Security Advisor.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7ZyJw_cHJY

Brezinski at a press conference

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWTIZBCQ79g

Snowden on terrorism/spying.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2015/sep/25/edward-snowden-treaty-glenn-greenwald-mass-surveillance-terrorism-video

Democracy Inc.

http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Incorporated-Managed-Inverted-Totalitarianism/dp/069114589X/

Intereference in other states when the corporations dont get their way

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mxp_wgFWQo&feature=youtu.be&list=PLKR2GeygdHomOZeVKx3P0fqH58T3VghOj&t=724

From war is a racket:

"I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil intersts in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested."[p. 10]

"War is a racket. ...It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives." [p. 23]

"The general public shoulders the bill [for war]. This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations." [p. 24]
General Butler is especially trenchant when he looks at post-war casualties. He writes with great emotion about the thousands of tramautized soldiers, many of who lose their minds and are penned like animals until they die, and he notes that in his time, returning veterans are three times more likely to die prematurely than those who stayed home.

http://www.amazon.com/War-Racket-Antiwar-Americas-Decorated/dp/0922915865/

Yes, agreed, everyone should. But most won't. And many who do read it either fail to understand it and/or refuse to believe it because they are more comfortable with the fantasy that America is some sort of great, leading Democracy. The cognitive dissonance is simply too much for many Americans. A very false sense of American exceptionalism tends to win out. If you notice, Wikipedia is even considering doing away with the individual Inverted Totalitarianism page.

Anyway, here are more links for those interested.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nelGtSOimwQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=AV_c1ElZl7Q

http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Incorporated-Managed-Inverted-Totalitarianism/dp/069114589X/ref=tmm_pap_title_0/180-0382729-1464265

http://www.alternet.org/news/85728/

>Is there any politician out there willing to fight for Canadians? Is that too much to ask?

Sorry to tell you the government doesn't work for you.

These links will take a while to digest, but if you want to understand what's going on in the world, you owe it to yourself to become informed about the true state of the world.

Our brains are much worse at reality and thinking than thought. Science on reasoning:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ

Rd wolf on economics

http://www.rdwolff.com/

"Intended as an internal document. Good reading to understand the nature of rich democracies and the fact that the common people are not allowed to play a role."

Crisis of democracy

http://trilateral.org/download/doc/crisis_of_democracy.pdf

http://www.amazon.com/Crisis-Democracy-Governability-Democracies-Trilateral/dp/0814713653/

Education as ignorance

https://chomsky.info/warfare02/

Overthrowing other peoples governments

http://williamblum.org/essays/read/overthrowing-other-peoples-governments-the-master-list

Wikileaks on TTIP/TPP/ETC

https://youtu.be/ABDiHspTJww?t=17

Energy subsidies

https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/survey/so/2015/NEW070215A.htm

Interference in other states when the rich/corporations dont get their way

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mxp_wgFWQo&feature=youtu.be&list=PLKR2GeygdHomOZeVKx3P0fqH58T3VghOj&t=724

Manufacturing consent (book)

http://www.amazon.com/Manufacturing-Consent-Political-Economy-Media/dp/0375714499/

Protectionism for the rich and big business by state intervention, radical market interference.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHj2GaPuEhY#t=349

Manufacturing consent:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwU56Rv0OXM

https://vimeo.com/39566117

Testing theories of representative government

https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf

Democracy Inc

http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Incorporated-Managed- Inverted-Totalitarianism/dp/069114589X

From war is a racket:

"I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil intersts in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested."[p. 10]

"War is a racket. ...It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives." [p. 23]

"The general public shoulders the bill [for war]. This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations." [p. 24]

General Butler is especially trenchant when he looks at post-war casualties. He writes with great emotion about the thousands of tramautized soldiers, many of who lose their minds and are penned like animals until they die, and he notes that in his time, returning veterans are three times more likely to die prematurely than those who stayed home.

http://www.amazon.com/War-Racket-Antiwar-Americas-Decorated/dp/0922915865/

Blum:

http://williamblum.org/aer/read/137

US distribution of wealth

https://imgur.com/a/FShfb

http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

The Centre for Investigative Journalism

http://www.tcij.org/

Some history on US imperialism by us corporations.

https://kurukshetra1.wordpress.com/2015/09/27/a-brief-history-of-imperialism-and-state-violence-in-colombia/

The real news

http://www.therealnews.com

Manufacturing consent:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwU56Rv0OXM

https://vimeo.com/39566117

Testing theories of representative government

https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf

Democracy Inc

http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Incorporated-Managed-Inverted-Totalitarianism/dp/069114589X

US distribution of wealth

https://imgur.com/a/FShfb

http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

Sounds like you've read Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism. The author Sheldon Wolin makes the point that the Democrats have failed as an opposition party and have become complicit in the neutering of the federal government. The book is an excellent read and eye-opening as well.

And you're exactly right (the book by Sheldon Wolin is great, incidentally). No meaningful form of political democracy can survive in a society with a capitalist economic substructure. Capitalism inevitably creates a ruling class of wealth that puts itself far above the people in both legal and social status by subverting whatever form of government might exist. If we want egalitarianism and democracy to exist in the future, we must completely transform our economic system into some form of socialism, for which the capitalist ruling class's power base of private capital ownership does not exist.

The book that the term is coined from.

A Chris Hedges lecture where he discusses the term.

I often beat the drum for Sheldon Wolin, as I found his book on our current political system illuminating. The Amazon description of the book explains it better than I can. http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Incorporated-Managed-Inverted-Totalitarianism/dp/069114589X

I recently saw the Progressive writer and commentator Thomas Frank on C-SPAN's BookTV, where he was launching his latest book Listen Liberal. This one is a history of why the Democratic Party turned its back on the US working class and how it has become a second (and maybe, no longer just the spare) tool for financial interests. He ended his formal presentation with this alarming comment about the upcoming Presidential election. Choosing Trump is voting for 'Intolerance'; Choosing Clinton is a vote for 'Inequality', presumably to be perpetually increasing.

you may find this book interesting:

http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Incorporated-Managed-Inverted-Totalitarianism/dp/069114589X

Climate denialism is inextricably linked to the discursive dynamics of varying forms of conservatism (American libertarianism, nativism, anti-globalism, so on) and more broadly, capitalism. Though the wealthiest of the world could support climate change policies and initiatives and still remain grotesquely rich, we have clear evidence that capitalism has repeatedly and systematically discouraged and failed to incentivize action. Then consider that the wealthiest individuals in Western society and elsewhere own most of the media. Though many (e.g.) Americans like to claim they are skeptical of the media, the overwhelming majority are absolutely plugged in to their reality, capitalist realism. Though not strictly on climate, check out Sheldon Wolin's Inverted Totalitarianism. A proper democracy would not tolerate the inaction on climate we see today.

Even fascists have unions. So do communists. So do socialists. So do dictatorships. They too have their orgs. For Benito it was black shirts, for Hitler, the SS. For the US, the KKK and later American Bund.

Per Wolin and his magnum opus, I know there isn't one democratic institution in the United states.
https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Incorporated-Managed-Inverted-Totalitarianism/dp/069114589X

The NRA can't be a democratic institution. The united states is hybrid to authoritarian when stripped of American execeptualism.

The corporate control of the media and de facto control of the government is corporate fascism, or what the political theorist Sheldon Wolin called “inverted totalitarianism.” Check out his book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/069114589X/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_awdb_t1_Qx9qDbZ87KK29

I suggest reading Democracy Inc [1]. Fun book!

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Incorporated-Managed-Inverted-Totalitarianism/dp/069114589X

> It's so offensive to imagine resources being squandered on luxury yachts and sports cars just so that rich people have something to continue spending more and more money on.

This is what you get when you support capitalism. You'd have to strictly limit how much any one individual could gain. Note that it's a matter of history and population size, not that these people "earned" their money. Not to mention our current societies are based on massive historical slaughters and injustices.

http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Incorporated-Managed-Inverted-Totalitarianism/dp/069114589X/

Well educated people don't see it happening. Hedges and Wolin have spoken about this topic at length.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/069114589X

If revolution is going to happen its going to happen elsewhere first, former national security advisors are worried about the non north american peoples primarily but they are going full blown into 'protect the rich' mode.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7ZyJw_cHJY

Most people in canada are politically unsophisticated and aren't educated enough to answer. Get off the subs for the illusioned and uneducated (which is what reddit is in a nutshell).

http://therealnews.com/t2/

http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Incorporated-Managed-Inverted-Totalitarianism/dp/069114589X

See also: Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism

Sheldon Wolin is a political philosopher of the first order; he has educated some of the more contemporary greats as well. His book about inverted totalitarianism and managed democracy is here.

http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Incorporated-Managed-Inverted-Totalitarianism/dp/069114589X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1371071793&sr=8-1&keywords=inverted+totalitarianism