My good friend Werther has been beavering away again in the US manure pile and this time has resurrected Engels' theory of False Consciousness to help explain the mismatch between ideology and reality that has become enshrined in contemporary American political psychology.
False Consciousness
By Werther*
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers.”
— Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow
EXTRACTS:
Or so the conventional wisdom.
Barry Lynn of the New America Foundation has written an interesting refutation of that widely held notion. [1] He asserts that the last 30 years' of so-called free market doctrine have not aided, but rather retarded the cause of small business. Intriguingly, he cites, but does not expand upon, the following finding: “One recent study, based on data compiled by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, placed the United States second to last out of 22 rich nations in the percentage of workers who run their own businesses. Only Luxembourg ranked lower.” . . .
Lynn argues that a key inflection point in government policy towards small business came in 1981, when the Reagan administration essentially stopped enforcing anti-monopoly and small business-protection statutes.
Phi Beta Iota: Reagan, whom we generally admired, also busted labor with his unconstitutional use of the military to break the air-traffic controller strike. We ureg one an all to read the entire Op Ed and the three linked references. American anti-intellectualism and American delusion are cresting at precisely the time we need ground-truth, truth at any cost.
