To a significant degree, the difference between mainstream and technocratic communications and publications on one hand and revisionist and non-mainstream communications and publications on the other hand is a difference in credibility, legitimacy, and veracity. Mainstream and technocratic concealment and manipulation of crucial information, as well as insubordination towards an established “Chain of Command” which is led by a popularly elected person with a popular mandate, in addition to lies and stereotyping which seem trivial on the surface actually have broad-based consequences and implications for everyone when all of it is brought together.
In turn, using taxpayer money to harm and hurt the taxpayer in various ways and means instead of providing social benefits and services to the taxpayer is the textbook definition of abuse and exploitation of one class of people by another class, and this is exactly what has occurred in America since the advent of what is known as the “professional managerial class” in recent decades. Whether “Schedule F” is an emotional outcry to class discrepancies and disparities or a full-fledged strategy to overcome the class discrepancies and disparities fostered by this “professional managerial class” is something we will all find out in due time.
Michael Lind summed up the background and characteristics of the technocratic and “professional managerial elite” which has now fostered both a “class war” and the negation of a truly democratic system in the United States in the following manner:
“By the turn of the twenty-first century…democratic pluralism in the Atlantic democracies had been overthrown and replaced by the current regime of technocratic neoliberalism – the new orthodoxy of the credentialed managerial overclass whose members simultaneously dominate the governments, corporate suites, universities, foundations, and media of the Western world. Neoliberalism is a synthesis of the free market economic liberalism of the libertarian right and the cultural liberalism of the bohemian/academic left. Its economic model, based on global tax, regulatory, and labor arbitrage, weakens both democratic nation-states and national working-class majorities. Its preferred model of government is apolitical, anti-majoritarian, elitist, and technocratic.”
Moreover, according to Lind, the conflict between the “professional managerial elite” and the overwhelming majority of people in Western societies is something which has been going on for decades, but has gained momentum and spark in recent years as a result of political and social phenomena such as Donald Trump and ‘Brexit’:
“As a political phenomenon…populism in the West is nothing new. It is an ongoing counterrevolution from below against the half-century-long technocratic neoliberal revolution from above imposed by Western managerial elites. At every stage, populist movements of some sort have resisted technocratic neoliberalism. Again and again, because of their lack of wealth, power, and cultural influence, the populists have lost, becoming more alienated and resentful. And so the dry wood accumulates to fuel the next conflagration.”
Although neoliberals only make up about 3 or 4 percent of the population, they are able to hijack the system and essentially disenfranchise the 75 or 80 percent of Americans who are either populist or progressive through hefty donations to political parties with the dual aim of cutting social services in order to avoid taxes and increasing immigration so that there are more employees to choose from in order to pay lower wages, as Lind noted. In addition to the aforementioned points regarding the issue of class conflict in America, I will develop a “Part Two” for this blog post in the coming days and weeks once I receive the reading materials which I am patiently waiting to receive.
Adam A. Azim 