This is no secret to KBO, but I have a bit of an intellectual crush on Naomi Klein. I love everything she writes. Seriously. There were times reading The Shock Doctrine when I got so worked up, my hands started to shake. I found myself screaming obscenities at the bathroom walls and ripping pages as I furiously underlined the shit that blew my mind. MK-Ultra? What? Fuck no! I finally had to take a break from the book for my family's sake.Anyway, Klein was on Democracy Now! yesterday talking to Amy Goodman. If I got to choose any two political minds to have dinner with, it would Amy Goodman and Naomi Klein. Hands down, two
of the smartest progressive voices in politics today. Klein does not like Larry Summers or Timothy Geithner...but mainly Summers. People forget that Clinton drank the free market/deregulation kool aid all through the 90s. Klein wants me to remind you that free market ideology has been guiding the economic policy of this country for well over 25 years. Yes, that's THROUGH the WJ Clinton administration. Like global warming to Republicans, this is a dirty and inconvenient truth a Democrat can never admit. Klein contends that right now, we are paying for "the intellectual dishonesty of the progressive liberals during the Bush years." Part of the reason these appointments have been widely seen as acceptable is that we "have not been honest about the legacy of the Clinton years."
Ouch. Nothing like Democracy Now! to kick you in the nuts with a little perspective. (If you ever
want a sobering and honest take on any item in the news, go straight to DN!, but please, mentally prepare yourself). Klein goes on to conclude that Summers (former Treasury Secretary under Clinton) is not only a follower, but "a propagator of the very ideology that Obama ran his campaign against...He's been preaching the doctrine...he's a dyed-in-the-wool privatizer, free trader. And he along with Tim Geithner, his deputy, play[ed] key roles during the economic crises." This gives me heartburn.It's important to understand that, in the past, when someone on the left like Obama had a "centrist economic policy," it meant that they accepted Milton Friedman's economic philosophy as "simple economics." You've probably had friends with an MBA chastise you about not understanding these simple principles. They can't comprehend anything outside of the free market realm. It's insanely frustrating. Ever since Friedman got hold of the Chicago School of economics and the hijacked the entire of the field of economics, we've been on a crash course towards this very moment. Well, the shit finally hit the fan. It turns out they were all wrong. When Alan Greenspan, the perennial god of the market admits that he had a "flaw in his ideology," you know it's over. The system collapsed and so should the theory.
This is why there is no need to panic. First, Barack Obama is our president now. He is in charge, and I don't see him just going along with an idea without getting several dissenting opinions. He is not an ideologue. He has repeatedly insisted that he wants the best solutions, no matter where they come from. One of the many reasons I voted for Obama was his his ability to view a problem in a comprehensive and reasonable way. I trust that he can analyze this crisis, sift through the many alternatives, and choose the plan that makes the most sense for the country. We can't ask for much more.
Second, in September, EVERYTHING changed. All assumptions now have to be reexamined. As DN's second guest Robert Kuttner reminds us, it is not politically viable to follow any of the ideas of Milton Friedman or the 90s version of Larry Summer. Obama ran his campaign on the promise of deregulation. If he wants any shot at being reelected, he'll follow through.
In the end, Obama chose to go with people who know and understand the steps that got us into this mess. Yes, they know and understand what got us into this mess because they helped create it, but you're not going to find a whole lot of qualified candidates out there who can claim otherwise. What matters most right now is that we have faith in the leadership skills and intellect of our newly elected government. It's never wrong to dissent, but in that dissension (especially if you voted for Obama), we have to avoid being bogged down by pessimism.
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Keith Olbermann does a great job summarizing the Shock Doctrine theory as proposed by Naomi Klein. In the interview that follows, Klein gives several specific examples when this strategy has been used by free marketeers to plunder cities and countries. Watch it for your own good!
