What are think tanks for?
http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-08192005-162045/
“The Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit public policy organizations constituted by section 501c3 of the U.S. Tax Code (“think tanks”, TTs or “tanks”) monitor and adjust governance norms and networks by using research, analysis, and advocacy to structure discourse about social problems and solutions among multiple elites and in the popular imagination.”
TTs exist for myth-making. Here again, our hubris leads us into catastrophe.
“America is center-right!” the Right began whining on November 5. And now we add, “The horrible noise you hear is not Friedman’s mythical free market crashing all around you.”
The horrors of Friedmanism trace right back to UC, and now someone wants to honor the Dr. Frankenstein of economics with a permanent myth-making lab.
No matter what evidence accrues, the social Darwinian myth remains the same: Ayn Rand is god, Friedman can do no wrong, and the way forward is to redouble our efforts along the path to disaster.
Naomi Klein nailed it on The Colbert Report
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/10/3/headlines#11
Klein: Yes. Here
Posted by knowbuddhau on Nov 17, 2008 at 7:52 AM
Ken Silverstein, here quoting James Pethokoukis of U.S. News & World Report (a double major in Soviet politics and American history…) adds another attempt at myth-making to the list:
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/11/hbc-90003866
If history is any guide at all, voters may still be terribly cranky about the economy when they cast their ballots on Nov. 6, 2012 and thus likely choose the 45th president of the United States
Posted by knowbuddhau on Nov 18, 2008 at 5:33 AM
The shelf-life of the myths with which we’re being jacked just keeps getting shorter; how long can Friedmanites keep preaching the infallibility of mythical free markets? No wonder they want their own myth-making lab.
David Sirota (via Alternet.org; I didn’t find it here on ITT when I searched just now) relays this beautiful piece of news regarding the “America is center-right” myth.
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/107397/conservative_think_tank_admits_america_is_a_center-left_nation/
“The only problem: It isn’t true. Or at least, not anymore.
“Here’s the stark reality: It is now harder for the Republican presidential candidate to get to 50.1 percent than for the Democrat. My Hoover Institution colleague David Brady and Douglas Rivers of the research firm YouGovPolimetrix have been analyzing data from online interviews with 12,000 people in both 2004 and 2008. It shows an overall shift to the Democrats of six percentage points. As they write in the forthcoming edition of Policy Review, “The decline of Republican strength occurs by having strong Republicans become weak Republicans, weak Republicans becoming independents, and independents leaning more Democratic or even becoming Democrats.” This is a portrait of an electorate moving from center-right to center-left.”
Sirota then points to the story in the Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/13/AR2008111303550.html
Friedmanism tortured Chile, and much of Latin America, for decades. Right now, the same disaster capitalists are looting the US Tresaury, and they’re using myths manufactured in think tanks, aka propaganda, to do it.
This is how we manufacture consent: by machining the human psyche with the products of right-wing think tanks, such as the MFI will be.
At this rate of busting their myths, we can make the MFI, whose purpose surely will be manufacturing consent for more disaster capitalism as Chile experienced 35 years ago and we are experiencing right now, obsolete before it’s built.
Posted by knowbuddhau on Nov 18, 2008 at 8:29 AM
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Reader Comments
What are think tanks for?
http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-08192005-162045/
“The Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit public policy organizations constituted by section 501c3 of the U.S. Tax Code (“think tanks”, TTs or “tanks”) monitor and adjust governance norms and networks by using research, analysis, and advocacy to structure discourse about social problems and solutions among multiple elites and in the popular imagination.”
TTs exist for myth-making. Here again, our hubris leads us into catastrophe.
“America is center-right!” the Right began whining on November 5. And now we add, “The horrible noise you hear is not Friedman’s mythical free market crashing all around you.”
The horrors of Friedmanism trace right back to UC, and now someone wants to honor the Dr. Frankenstein of economics with a permanent myth-making lab.
No matter what evidence accrues, the social Darwinian myth remains the same: Ayn Rand is god, Friedman can do no wrong, and the way forward is to redouble our efforts along the path to disaster.
Naomi Klein nailed it on The Colbert Report
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/10/3/headlines#11
Klein: Yes. Here
Ken Silverstein, here quoting James Pethokoukis of U.S. News & World Report (a double major in Soviet politics and American history…) adds another attempt at myth-making to the list:
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/11/hbc-90003866
If history is any guide at all, voters may still be terribly cranky about the economy when they cast their ballots on Nov. 6, 2012 and thus likely choose the 45th president of the United States
The shelf-life of the myths with which we’re being jacked just keeps getting shorter; how long can Friedmanites keep preaching the infallibility of mythical free markets? No wonder they want their own myth-making lab.
David Sirota (via Alternet.org; I didn’t find it here on ITT when I searched just now) relays this beautiful piece of news regarding the “America is center-right” myth.
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/107397/conservative_think_tank_admits_america_is_a_center-left_nation/
“The only problem: It isn’t true. Or at least, not anymore.
“Here’s the stark reality: It is now harder for the Republican presidential candidate to get to 50.1 percent than for the Democrat. My Hoover Institution colleague David Brady and Douglas Rivers of the research firm YouGovPolimetrix have been analyzing data from online interviews with 12,000 people in both 2004 and 2008. It shows an overall shift to the Democrats of six percentage points. As they write in the forthcoming edition of Policy Review, “The decline of Republican strength occurs by having strong Republicans become weak Republicans, weak Republicans becoming independents, and independents leaning more Democratic or even becoming Democrats.” This is a portrait of an electorate moving from center-right to center-left.”
Sirota then points to the story in the Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/13/AR2008111303550.html
Friedmanism tortured Chile, and much of Latin America, for decades. Right now, the same disaster capitalists are looting the US Tresaury, and they’re using myths manufactured in think tanks, aka propaganda, to do it.
This is how we manufacture consent: by machining the human psyche with the products of right-wing think tanks, such as the MFI will be.
At this rate of busting their myths, we can make the MFI, whose purpose surely will be manufacturing consent for more disaster capitalism as Chile experienced 35 years ago and we are experiencing right now, obsolete before it’s built.
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