Democracy for Vancouver

I have been reading Naomi Klien’s The Shock Doctrine, but I haven’t finished it yet.

Why?

It is the only book I’ve ever read where the facts are so horrendous that I have to put the book down to keep from becoming physically ill.

I think this is because when I read most books about geopolitical atrocities, they are about a certain moment in time; even if the actions described are inhuman and corrupt beyond measure, there is some hope that by understanding these facts we can avoid repeating them.

But The Shock Doctrine is not history: it is our past, present, and future as first envisioned by Milton Friedman, and since championed by the GOP and its handmaidens at the Heritage Foundation, the CATO Institute, PNAC, and their funders across the corporate spectrum.

I am not surprised that the international corporate oligarchs would swoop in to take advantage of Russia after the collapse of the USSR, New Orleans after Katrina, and Indonesia after the tsunami. But what did surprise me is how much pre-planning is already on-deck when these disasters happen, and how dependent these plans are on supressing the local population and depriving it of even the means to feed itself as a tactic of control.

It may be the most horrific expression of the banality of evil, and the evil that is greed, I have ever read. The racism alone was enough to make me have to put the book down and spend time reading to my son.

This corporate-government buy-in and its onboard theories and tactics of shock, torture, destruction and avarice, has sunk its tentacles so deeply into the U.S. that it will be hard even for a very pro-active, progressive Democratic president and Congress to dismantle even over two presidential terms.

And I do not think that Clinton, Obama or Richardson would have any intention of dismantling it. Sure, they would kick Blackwater out of Iraq, but would they reduce the number of contractors in-country? Would they undertake a program of infrastructure rebuilding using Iraqi workers and U.S. funds, in order to undo some of the damage we have wrought? I doubt it.

The only one of the Democratic candidates that I believe understands this corporate hegemony and would work to dismantle it is John Edwards.

The Shock Doctrine made this atheist wish for a retributive God.