Binge-Reading Ms. Klein

I haven't slept well the last couple of nights, and have devoted the otherwise wasted time to an attempt to finish Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine before I turn 67 years old tomorrow. In sheer number of pages, I have not that far to go, but the entire book is truly depressing reading, and it is so packed full of information and examples that one gets the most out of it by reading every word. And of course Ms. Klein, of necessity, takes the reader back to the George W. Bush presidency, which was IMNSHO even worse than the Obama era. Ah, well; I have plenty of good, cheap wine on hand, and an undeniably good book, to see me through the evening...

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AFTERTHOUGHT: let me clarify. Obama has been disappointing to me, while GeeDubya and crew were utterly disgusting. Got it?

Right-Wing Ideology A ‘Shape-Shifter’ — Naomi Klein

In my ongoing (and probably never-ending) effort to ingest the complete works of Naomi Klein, more or less in reverse order (I finished reading This Changes Everything last month), I have begun the formidable task of absorbing The Shock Doctrine, Klein's work on how some governments, many corporations and some leaders both corporate and governmental leverage the public's response to major disasters... acts of terror, natural disasters such as storms or earthquakes, unconventional changes of government, etc. ... to exercise, even in a democracy, a far greater degree of executive and corporate control than previously possible. Klein's term for it is "disaster capitalism," and even a couple dozen pages into the book she makes a compelling case not only for the existence of such a phenomenon but also that the US (among many other nations) is experiencing it, from no later than 2001 forward, possibly from as early as the mid-20^th century.

What captured my attention at the moment was her observation about how the terminology changes to obscure what is really being done to us, and to the citizens of other nations (p. 14-15, first [hardcover] edition, 2007):

Naomi Klein

In the attempt to relate the history of the ideological crusade that has culminated in the radical privatization of war and disaster, one problem recurs: the ideology is a shape-shifter, forever changing its name and switching identities. [Milton] Friedman called himself a "liberal," but his U.S. followers, who associated liberals with high taxes and hippies, tended to identify as "conservatives," "classical economists," "free marketers," and, later, as believers in "Reaganomics" or "laissez-faire." In most of the world, their orthodoxy is known as "neoliberalism," but it is often called "free trade" or simply "globalization." Only since the mid-nineties has the intellectual movement, led by the right-wing think tanks with which Friedman had long associations — Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute and the American Enterprise Institute — called itself "neoconservative," a worldview that has harnessed the full force of the U.S. military machine in the service of a corporate agenda.

The ideology I grew up with at least through childhood and part of adolescence was unmistakably "liberal," no bloody "neo-" prepended, a direct descendant of the political and economic philosophies of FDR, JFK and (in some matters) LBJ. No shape-shifter I! May I add a cross-lingual pun to the terms listed in the previous paragraph: "laissez‑unfaire"?

Klein's book looks likely to prove a satisfying if massive read. Take a look, at least; it should be in your public library, now that it is no longer her most recently published book. Or do an excellent activist-writer a favor and buy it; we need to encourage such people to dedicate themselves to the serious issues of our day.