Michael Parenti on the ruling class' concern with our thinking/perceptions
"But they don’t care about what we think. They turn a deaf ear to us," some people complain. That is not true. They care very much about what you think. In fact, that is the only thing about you that holds their attention and concern. They don’t care if you go hungry, unemployed, sick, or homeless. But they do care when you are beginning to entertain resistant democratic #thoughts. They get nervous when you discard your #liberal complaints and adopt a #radical analysis. They do care that you are catching on as to what the motives and functions of the national security state and the US global empire are all about at home and in so many corners of the world. They get furiously concerned when you and millions like you are rejecting the pap that is served up by corporate #media and establishment leaders.
By controlling our #perceptions, they control our society; they control public #opinion and public #discourse. And they limit the range and impact of our political #consciousness. The plutocrats know that their power comes from their ability to control our empowering responses. They know they can live at the apex of the social pyramid only as long as they can keep us in line at the pyramid’s base. Who pays for all their wars? We do. Who fights these #wars? We do or our low-income loved ones do. If we refuse to be led around on a super-patriotic, fear-ridden leash and if we come to our own decisions and act upon them more and more as our ranks grow, then the ruling profiteers’ power shrinks and can even unwind and crash—as has happened with dynasties and monarchies of previous #epochs.
We need to strive in every way possible for the revolutionary unraveling, a #revolution of organized #consciousness striking at the #empire’s heart with full force when #democracy is in the streets and mobilized for the kind of irresistible upsurge that seems to come from nowhere yet is sometimes able to carry everything before it.
There is nothing sacred about the existing system. All economic and political #institutions are contrivances that should serve the interests of the #people. When they fail to do so, they should be replaced by something more responsive, more just, and more democratic.
--- Michael Parenti, in his book Profit Pathology and Other Indecencies (highlights added by me)
