Use Me, Abuse Me

I remember that one of the more remarkable things about George Orwell’s “1984”, which I first read way back in high school, was that the object of most of the brainwashing and propaganda was not the lower orders – who were left pretty much alone – but the middle class, i.e. the white-collar types, who had a few resources and a bit of education, and who had more or less functional cerebral cortices. It wasn’t until much later that I understood this phenomenon. Whenever the regime – any regime – wants to exert control over a segment of the populace, it chooses, for its means of control, the technique which will most reliably appeal to that particular segment. You can also call this “finding their Achilles heel”, or “getting them where they live”. So, as E. Michael Jones (of “Culture Wars”) points out, the method of choice when it comes to the lower classes – the proletariat, if you will – is to appeal to, and manipulate, basic organic or animal or vegetative needs and desires – sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll, in other words. And we see how effectively the regime used these amusements to put the lid on things like the “black power” movement, which really did threaten – back in the late 60s and early 70s – to throw many of our cities into states of anarchy. (The “sex” part was adventitiously augmented by the advent of AIDS – not necessarily invented by the government for that purpose, as the Rev. Wright contends, but a “found blessing” in the world of social control.) Of course, on a broader scale, the same triumvirate (“ruling three”) has been used to manipulate and control young people of all races, since shortly after World War II. It might almost be said that teen-agers and “young adults” – AKA “youth” – are, at least temporarily, treated as members of the lower class regardless of their actual origins. The evidence to back up this idea is pretty much overwhelming, in my opinion. But in any case, the primary means of manipulation and control of the lower ranks of society are, by and large, crude but effective.

But now wait, you’ll say – how about the ranks of the lower classes that occasionally rise up in protest? What about the “lumpen proletariat” that hang on Al Sharpton’s every word? What about La Raza? Aren’t those genuine lower-class political and social movements that don’t fit into your “animal or vegetative needs and desires” paradigm? Well, they might be, except that behind every demagogue’s sloganeering, protest march, and riot lie a fairly conventional handful of – once again – very basic organic needs and desires. The words constitute a unifying, energizing force, no doubt about it. But once people have what they want – or think they want – all those fine theories go out the window, and the radicals, theoreticians, and organizers are faced with a bunch of people sitting on their collective ass. This also has been proven, in many cases, to be a typical and predictable development. The people marching up the street with signs and torches really aren’t “idea” people at all. We find this out the minute one of those torches goes through a store window. If there is loot to be had, you can be sure that very few of the marchers will get as far as city hall – more likely, they’ll already be home plugging in that new plasma TV. This again is… so typical. Sad but true. Nearly every “idea”, or slogan, or buzz word uttered by the demagogues of our day (or the recent past) has boiled down to the same thing – I want what I ain’t got – or, I want more of what I have got. Nothing all that subtle or theoretical here.

No, for true abject submission to the power of ideas in the long term, you need a middle class – i.e., you need people who have little or no power (economic, social, political) but who fancy that they do, and who are just educated enough to have formed a belief in “ideas” – or, even worse, “ideals”. In other words, you need people with imagination but no real creativity, and with collective courage but little or no individual courage. They also need to be firm, unbending believers in not only the “right” to vote, but in the questionable credentials of anyone who doesn’t care to exercise this right every second November (and in between, as needed). They need to be “patriots” – perhaps even “nationalists”, but that could cause problems for the internationalists – and believe in the entire propositional underpinning of “America” and “the American way” – you know, ideas like “freedom” (but not too much), “rights” (but not too many), “democracy” (as defined by the regime, of course), “the two-party system” (oh yeah – there’s an absolute principle for you), and – most importantly of all – the uniquely American right – nay, obligation – to impose our will, and our way of life, and our political system (in all its peerless perfection) on any other society that we feel needs it imposed on them. And, the corollary to this is, if they don’t know what’s good for them, we’ll show them, by gosh, and we’ll start by sending in the Marines. Now, these are all core, and absolutely essential, middle-class values – or such is my contention. The upper classes – the regime, those in charge – have no need for any of these ideas, because to them what matters is being in charge and staying in charge, through any means possible. The utility of these notions to them is confined to one thing, namely that they constitute a thicket of conceptual and emotional hooks with which to snare the middle class.

Likewise, the lower classes have no use for these ideas – and sure enough, we find them almost universally rejecting them whenever they encounter them – because they already have what they want, i.e. sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll, or the equivalents thereof. And I give credit to the lower classes of this country. They know how to “game” the system for all it’s worth, and they know better than to fall for any of the regime’s propaganda, which is not directed at them anyway; it’s directed at the middle class, AKA “chumps”. Because they’re the ones, you see, who must be made to _believe_. Simply manipulating fleshly factors isn’t enough, because, for one thing, the American middle class is still very much heir to Puritanical ideas about the flesh, and the body, and pleasure, and the world. To appeal too much to “animal drives” might constitute an occasion of sin, and we certainly can’t have that. Much better to appeal to ideas, and concepts, and things that, if only more people would believe, the world would be a better place – in fact it would be a utopia, heaven on earth! So this is, ultimately, what the middle class is looking for, though they might not be aware of it on a day-to-day basis.

So what we wind up with – the “bottom line”, if you will – is that whereas lower-class people will only die by accident, and upper-class people won’t die for any reason if they can help it, middle-class people are perfectly willing to die for “ideas” – or, preferably, to send other people out to die for ideas. Thus, we have a news item from Canada in which a man who lost a son in Afghanistan complained that a plan to withdraw Canadian troops from Afghanistan (in 2011!) was “irresponsible” because “he said his son will have died in vain if Canada pulls its troops out of Afghanistan before that country is stabilized.”

Now, can you imagine, in your wildest dreams, a lower-class person, or an upper-class person, making a statement like that? I know I can’t. This sort of totally brainwashed, delusional thinking is unique to the middle class – which is why you hear or read about statements like this every day, because the “media”, by and large, are instruments of manipulation and control of the middle class, by the upper class, i.e. the regime. As far as the media are concerned, the lower classes are fly-over country – they have their games and circuses (including, of course, some segments of the media, but not one ones that really count). The people who have to be kept in line at all costs are the middle class. Hence, we have a truly astonishing statement by a man who has lost a son – tragic enough in any case, but even more so when it was in pursuit of empire-building and cynical money-making goals of the U.S., and the Bush administration – and he wasn’t even from the U.S., he was Canadian! What on earth do the Canadians have to gain from involvement in our follies? And yet there they are, and they are getting killed, and yet the people who have lost the most from all this are the most supportive of the effort continuing.

Just take a look at the “memes” involved here. His son “will have died in vain”, i.e. without having been part of an accomplished mission, i.e. a decisive victory. But a victory for what, and for whom? American war industries, politicians, fanatical Evangelicals? Are these people and their ambitions worth a single hair off the head of a single Canadian soldier? I think not. Canada, of course, made a dreadful mistake in getting involved with this debacle to begin with. The 9-11 attacks didn’t happen to Canada, and they were not in response to anything Canada has ever done. And yet, the honor of the English-speaking world was at stake, etc. etc., so they offer up their youth as cannon fodder for the likes of Dick Cheney. Does that make their politicians even worse than ours? In a way, it does. And then, how about that “stabilization” business? Can anyone in the room tell me the last time Afghanistan was “stable”? I don’t think it ever was. And in any case, what the hell do we care? In fact, given the penchant of countries in that part of the world to get aggressive with us, I would think “stabilization” would be the last thing on our minds. Better to aid and abet their slipping into total chaos! (Oh, wait – that is what we’re doing in Iraq. Smart folks, these Bushies.)

I hope I’ve managed to eliminate any doubt as to who gets, most often, used and abused in this system, and by the regime. And I haven’t even touched on things like taxes (income, inheritance, etc.), public schooling, affirmative action, “reparations” (notional at this point, but just you wait), and the corporate/media/academic culture that requires undying loyalty (don’t ask “to what?”) and a refusal to question the premises one was spoon-fed from pre-school on. The proles can be left to their own devices – and usually are. They can think, and say, anything they like, ‘cause we’ve got their number. (Don’t think the universal availability of drugs in the “inner cities” is an accident, or a failure on the part of “law enforcement”. And don't think that our drug laws are solely the result of residual Puritanism.) The people who are connected to the MSM by a ring in their nose – and to the regime by a life-long delusion of “democracy” – are the great American middle class. I pity them. But I’m one of them! But they’re threatening to throw me out for misbehavior.