Ace re-posts sections of an essay describing the Obama-initiated Totalitarian State in which we now live.http://ace.mu.nu/archives/410872.php
...The term ["Whole of Society"] was popularized roughly a decade ago by the Obama administration, which liked that its bland, technocratic appearance could be used as cover to erect a mechanism for the government to control public life that can, at best, be called "Soviet-style." Here's the simplest definition: "Individuals, civil society and companies shape interactions in society, and their actions can harm or foster integrity in their communities. A whole-of-society approach asserts that as these actors interact with public officials and play a critical role in setting the public agenda and influencing public decisions, they also have a responsibility to promote public integrity."
In other words, the government enacts policies and then "enlists" corporations, NGOs and even individual citizens to enforce them--creating a 360-degree police force made up of the companies you do business with, the civic organizations that you think make up your communal safety net, even your neighbors. ......whole of society dates to the Obama administration's attempt to pivot in the "war on terror" to what it called CVE--countering violent extremism....
Of course, "violent extremists" only come in one flavor and it ain't Muslims.
... A decade after 9/11, as Americans wearied of the war on terror, it became passé and politically suspicious to talk about jihadism or Islamic terrorism. Instead, the Obama national security establishment insisted that extremist violence was not the result of particular ideologies and therefore more prevalent in certain cultures than in others, but rather its own free-floating ideological contagion....
Did we say "Totalitarian"?
Yes. Yes, we did.
... Indeed, whole of society is a totalizing form of politics. As the name implies, it discards the traditional separation of powers and demands political participation from corporations, civic groups, and other nonstate actors. Mass surveillance is the backbone of the approach, but it also consolidates a new class of functionaries who all directly or indirectly work for the party's interests. This is exactly how the party carried out its mass censorship during COVID and the 2020 election: by embedding government officials and party-aligned "experts" from the for-hire world of nonprofit activism, inside the social media platforms. The result, as I chronicled in an investigative essay last year, was the largest campaign of domestic mass surveillance and censorship in American history--often censoring true and time-sensitive information....
He could have capitalized "Party" and made it even more clear, but you get the drift.
Can Trump eradicate this Totalizing from the country?
Frankly, it's not likely. There are too many parts and players. It's do-able, of course, but the number of people who will have to be .....umnnnhh... neutralized.......is very large, indeed. I doubt if Trump or Vance has the requisite cojones, or even enough knowledge of where the bodies are buried.
Plenty more at the link, including clips of Kamala pushing the concept.
This was a nice country once, eh?
3 comments:
The same complexity is also why it doesn't work that well.
The military used to talk about "Combined" operations, when you needed to bring in another allied country's forces and work with them. Even though they're both military, NATO, with lots of standardized equipment and training, it doesn't work very well. It also has what it calls "Joint" operations, where different branches of the US military work together (Navy and Army, say). That doesn't work very well either.
Then there's the Interagency, where you're trying to get the FBI to work with the military or the CIA or Homeland Security. That works even less well.
This expansion to 'the whole of society' -- meaning corporations and universities and whatnot -- is trying to tie together things that don't have the same goals, structures, assumptions, and so forth. The more time and attention they spend herding cats in this way, the less time and attention they have for more effective strategies to control the public.
From your lips to God's ear.
But I see more and more that their goals and processes are aligning because the government now funds so many activities through grants, that no organization survives without them. And they are all given with the prerequisite that you push the party lines.
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