Dave Pollard's environmental philosophy, creative works, business papers and essays.
In search of a better way to live and make a living, and a better understanding of how the world really works.

	June 9, 2008

How to Prevent a Revolution Ten easy steps to forestall an uprising from outraged citizens: Lie about what's going on. Tell the people the war is being won, or is at least winnable. Tell them inflation is almost non-existent, and be consistent about it in the face of all the evidence that it's really out of control. You need to do this in order to crush the unions and suppress strikes and demands for cost-of-living wage increases. Tell them that unemployment is low, by excluding all the people working multiple part-time jobs and all the people who have given up even looking for work. Don't even think about computing how many are seriously underemployed. Pay junk scientists to deny global warming and how industry is ruining people's health. Tell them that the staggering, unrepayable levels of debt are too hard for the average person to understand, and nothing to worry about. And make sure you have control of the media, so they echo all the lies without so much as a whimper. Print lots more money. Don't worry about the fact it will soon make your currency worthless in international markets. Let your banker friends loan it to the average citizen, way beyond what they can repay, so they can buy shoddy imported junk and feel as if they're getting wealthier. Bail out your banker friends with taxpayer money when the debts go bad. When that runs out, print even more. Dumb down the education system. Under no circumstances allow anyone to teach economics in secondary schools. Starve the system of funds, and force teachers to pass illiterate students anyway. Under no circumstances allow anyone to teach students what's happening elsewhere in the world, or what happened in history (especially the history lessons of wars and the Great Depression). Make the economic victims feel guilty and responsible. Perpetuate the myth than anyone can be rich and powerful if they work hard. When the poor get ill on the only food they can afford, blame them for gluttony, smoking, drinking and not exercising. Portray the homeless as lazy, and the unemployed as incompetent and shiftless. Let religions that preach dependence on the state as shameful, irresponsible and unworthy of admission to heaven run the schools and charities. Crank up the propaganda machine. Follow the three rules of tyrants everywhere: Oversimplify, Distort, and Smear. Oversimplify complex issues, and reduce them to absurd black vs. white dichotomies ("you're with us or you're with the terrorists"). Distort the truth through Orwellian names ("clean skies act") for your most grievous outrages, and by repeatedly misrepresenting the facts ("Saddam had WMD and supported Al Qaida") and mis-quoting opponents out of context. Smear opponents and critics by repeating barefaced lies about them until they're accepted as truths. If that doesn't work, blame 'illegal' immigrants for all the problems you face. Steal: Steal from future generations to keep today's citizens at bay. Incur debts that future generations will never be able to repay -- you'll be long gone by then. Exploit struggling nations by using global banking and trade consortia to strongarm them to give up their resources and labour for next to nothing, and accept your garbage, overpriced munitions, and worthless money in return. Make your economic partners co-dependent. If they sell you so much that they can't afford to lose you as a customer, you can dictate price, and everything else. Make it abundantly clear that if you go down, so do they. Punish whistle-blowers and intimidate opponents. What's a little torture or 'disappearing' of dissidents to foreign prisons in defence of the homeland? It provides an example for what might happen when citizens misbehave. Promise to do something within ten or twenty years. Say you'll wipe out the debt in twenty years, or reduce carbon emissions in fifty. No one will remember then what you promised today, and you won't be around anyway, so the failure will be blamed on the next guy. Meanwhile you sound like you care about the problem when you don't. Lower expectations and crush hope. When you get into power, paint a dismal picture of what you've inherited from the previous administration. Warn of the need for hard work and austerity ahead. Say that wars will take many years to win, but by spending much more on them they might be modestly shortened. Reassert that there is no alternative. Steal an election or two, so people give up voting for president. Gerrymander the boundaries of electoral districts so people give up voting for representatives. If that isn't enough, give all the police tasers. Category: The Political Process 8:38:42 PM  trackback []  comment []

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