Teaching the middle class to hate their government was an essential
part of the plan to implement Corporate Feudalism. A middle class cannot
exist without a strong government. This is because only a government has
the power to stand up to the giant corporations of today’s world, or
the powerful individuals and private armies of earlier times. It is the
government that enforces the laws to protect the middle class from those
who would like to become their economic rulers. That is why prior to the
Industrial Revolution and the creation of the middle class all economies
were run according to some version of the feudal system. If you want to
put an end to the middle class and replace it with a feudal republic,
you would need to change people’s perception of their government.
Obviously a government does not have to be on the side of its people,
as can be seen by the existence of countless dictatorships and
oligarchies throughout the world. Even the corporatocracy that currently
exists in the United States falls far short of being on the side of its
middle class. But US history shows that a government committed to
serving its citizens can, in fact, help create and maintain a healthy
middle class even in the face of powerful corporations whose only
interest is maximizing their own power and profits.
It is like the story in old westerns of a big bad landowner who takes
what he wants when he wants it, ruthlessly terrorizing a town without a
strong sheriff. Any individual who tries to stop the landowner is beaten
into submission or killed. The situation continues until the town finds
a strong enough sheriff to regain control over the landowner and his
gang. This is the Old West version of the feudal system. In westerns,
the feudal lord comes first and the sheriff comes later. But in the
United States of thirty years ago, the government was the strong sheriff
keeping the late-twentieth-century feudal lords from taking what they
wanted. As long as the government was supported by its
citizens—particularly its middle class—no one could ride into town
and steal what belonged to the people. But if the government were
weakened or destroyed, a different situation would arise. The intent of
the plan for Corporate Feudalism was to convince the middle class to
fire their sheriff. And that’s just what happened.
Thirty years ago at the onset of the Reagan Revolution, the middle
class basically appreciated and respected their government and believed
that living in the United States was good for the middle class. They
took their status for granted. The connection between what was good
about the United States and its government was clear to the American
public. For the most part, people believed the government was on their
side and largely responsible for the high standard of living they
enjoyed. Their government built the roads that made transportation easy.
Their government made the laws and regulations that kept US workers safe
at their jobs. Their government ensured that their food was safe. The
labor strife that had empowered the middle class was now decades old,
and the Vietnam War had ended, although not well. In many ways the
United States of thirty years ago was a happy place, and most people
understood their government’s role in keeping it that way. While there
were problems, including the energy crisis, they seemed manageable. Not
everyone was happy with everything the government did, of course, but
there was general agreement that the US government was the best
government anywhere.
Then the US government found itself in the crosshairs of the
brand-new Reagan Revolution with no way to understand why it was under
attack and no way to defend itself. For thirty years, it took blow after
blow. Now, while still standing, that government is very different from
what it was when Reagan took office. It is much weaker, no longer able
to offer the protections or provide the services the middle class took
for granted thirty years ago—the same kinds of services that many
European democracies have continued to provide for their citizens during
the period of US economic and social decline. And in its weakened state
the US government has lost the support of the very citizens who depended
on it the most, the middle class.
How did this happen? When Ronald Reagan got to Washington, he set out
to convince the middle class that their government was their enemy,
using his considerable powers of persuasion. The basic message of Reagan
and the conservatives was that everyone would be better off if the
federal government just disappeared. They were smart enough not to say
this directly, however. Instead, they just landed one body blow after
another without openly expressing their desire to destroy the
government.
For example, Reagan attacked government workers, contending they were
lazy, they wasted taxpayer money, and they involved themselves in issues
they knew nothing about, like regulating large businesses and
corporations. Within the first few years of Reagan’s election, the
morale of the federal workforce plummeted as these employees saw their
image shift from being considered public servants trying to make life in
the United States better for everyone to being seen as lazy, despised
bureaucrats wasting taxpayer money. Far from being a place where
committed public servants worked to help the public, Washington, DC,
became known as the place where crooks, thieves, and lazy workers stole
taxpayer money for foolish purposes or their own personal benefit.
While federal workers had unions to protect their jobs, they did not
have high-priced lobbyists and media consultants to safeguard their
image. The unions representing federal workers came under the same harsh
attack as the workers themselves, but the attacks went largely
unanswered. The nation’s first movie star president had intentionally
created this negative image of government workers, and he was
convincing.
Following Reagan, other conservatives continued to lead the charge
against the government, often using the same language the Reagan
administration had employed. Few found language more effective than the
Reagan one-liner, “I’m from the government and I’m here to
help,” but they didn’t need to. The leap from John F. Kennedy’s
“Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for
your country” to Reagan’s cynical and supposedly frightening
“I’m from the government and I’m here to help,” had been
successfully made.
In addition to waging a full-scale campaign against the government
and its employees, the Reagan administration also implemented another
practice that was equally destructive to the image of
government—filling government positions with people who hated
government, a practice that continues to this day. For those seeking to
change the United States from a middle-class democracy to a corporate
feudal republic, there are three major advantages to this practice.
First, you give government jobs to your conservative friends and
cronies. Second, you keep dedicated public servants who want to see
government succeed out of government. Third, and most importantly, you
have a cadre of conservative ideologues working inside the government to
sabotage and destroy the government at every turn.
The advantages for conservatives of sabotaging and destroying the
government are almost limitless. Looking at a few examples from George
W. Bush’s administration shows why. Thirty years ago the Consumer
Product Safety Commission (CPSC), a government agency committed to
protecting the public by monitoring the safety of toys and other
products, made a positive difference in people’s lives. However,
during George W. Bush’s administration conservatives who filled many
of the civil service positions and all of the politically appointed
slots did not believe the government should be in the business of
helping to protect the public, and they did everything in their power to
avoid carrying out their responsibilities. When Congress tried to give
the CPSC more money to do a better job of regulating products imported
from China, for example, the Bush-appointed agency head refused. She
said they had plenty of money to do their job, although in reality they
weren’t doing their job at all. Then reports started coming in about
unsafe toys originating in China. People were outraged, as they should
have been, and blamed the government. By failing to do their jobs, the
conservatives were encouraging people to give up on their own
government, which was exactly what conservatives wanted.
Thirty years ago, in an effort to make their point, conservatives
often exaggerated the examples of government corruption and waste, but
during George W. Bush’s administration scandals involving everything
from toys to military contracting became the norm. And who were the
perpetrators of most of these crimes against the United States and its
taxpayers? They were government-hating conservatives working inside the
government, placed there for this very reason. Each time one of these
conservatives was caught in another scandal, the American public’s
view of government deteriorated a little more. If you believe in a
government that helps its citizens, this seems bad. But if you believe
that the best government is no government this seems great, so the
people who wanted to establish Corporate Feudalism couldn’t have been
happier.
That was the plan used by Corporate Feudalists to convince millions
of middle-class people to hate their own government. Did you think of a
more effective way to accomplish this goal? Or do you believe the plan
that was used was the most effective one available?
Dennis Marker was twenty one when he embarked on his career in
Washington, DC. While there he worked for the US Congress, the
administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), various
political campaigns, and Jim Wallis at Sojourners magazine.
He is the author of 15
Steps to Corporate Feudalism (2012).