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TEOTWAWKI wrote:http://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/the-night-of-the-long-knives-feinstein-and-the-merkel-effect/
Yet ultimately all States rest on hypocrisy and myth.
From ancient Sumer to the present, all governments have been composed of elites. All states originate in conquest and exploitation, and as elite oligarchies, exercise a monopoly of crime over their subjects through war and taxation, indoctrination and propaganda, and the conscription of resources and persons. All states or regimes are characterized by the brutal struggle for power in its diverse open and concealed forms by competing elites. The most significant political division to be observed in such internecine warfare is that between the rulers and the ruled, the “ins” and the “outs,” the elite and the non-elite.
The primary object of every government ruling elite is survival — masquerading under the rubric of “national security” — the jealous maintenance of its power, prestige, opulence and privilege against all potential rivals. All governments, no matter how ruthless and despotic (or seemingly benevolent and just), rest upon the “engineering of consent” of the gullible majority, largely by propaganda beamed at the populace by the rulers and their craven apologists in the complacent and compliant news media.
The rule of the elite is based on force or fraud. This force may be hidden or threatened, and the fraud sustained by a political formula, usually expressed as a generally accepted state religion, ideology, or series of myths. But it is the physical force of the gun that lay behind it all. And it is at your mind that every government gun is aimed.
With very few exceptions it is hard to deny that governments are ruled by the elite. Just by virtue of them gaining power they are elevated to leader status and thereby rise above the masses.
I would also have to agree that at least in societies that are somewhat free that consent has to be engineered since people are not accustomed to just following orders or taking a certain position on an issue for no reason. Stories are told and reasons to justify the latest conquest are created and fed to us by the MSM.
Some people are beginning to catch on to the fact that the "national interest" and their personal interests are not the same. The national interest most recently looks like the oil industry's best interest so we send troops into Iraq on a pack of lies only to discover once again that we are not up to the job of reengineering an entire culture, surprise!
When I went to the site from which this blog was taken he says he is: anti-state, anti-war, and pro-market. To me this is not too appealing since when I think pro-market I see air pollution and rivers on fire, etc. I could go for the anti-war part since it is mostly just a money making ploy to gobble up tax money and line the pockets of the manufacturers of war.
So, to me we are caught between a rock (the state) and a hard place (the market) and somehow have to figure out how to manage this situation. Unfortunately the levers of government are more blatantly being pushed and pulled by the oligarchs with ordinary citizens falling farther and farther behind. I think things will have to get a lot worse before they get better.