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One of Reagan's geniuses was to convince people to vote against their own self-interest. In the name of lower taxes and the Cold War, he expanded investment in "defense" systems, that benefited the oligarchs who brought him to power. Matt Tyrnauer, director of “The Reagans” on Showtime, joins Paul Jay on theAnalysis.news

One of Reagan's geniuses was to convince people to vote against their own self-interest. In the name of lower taxes and the Cold War, he expanded investment in "defense" systems, that benefited the oligarchs who brought him to power. Matt Tyrnauer, director of “The Reagans” on Showtime, joins Paul Jay on theAnalysis.news

Transcript edited for clarity

Paul Jay

Hi, I'm Paul Jay. Welcome to theAnalysis. Please don't forget there's a donate button at the top of the webpage.

In the documentary series, The Reagans, Grover Norquist, one of the leaders of the we don't want to pay any taxes movement, says

Excerpt from The Reagans

So you want to abolish government? No, I don't want to abolish government. I want to make it so small you could drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub. That small. Small as a bathtub. OK, very small. 

The leadership that I envision would be to take the lead in getting government off the backs of the people of the United States and turning you loose to do what you can do...

Paul Jay

Here's a clip from near the end of part three of the Reagans.

Excerpt from The Reagans

One of Reagan's geniuses was to convince people to vote against their own self-interest. The notion that if you supported Reaganomics, you would have a better life when it wasn't true, but you convince people to do it. Reagan realized something a lot of politicians were always afraid to admit. A lot of Americans are just selfish, and the best way to destroy a program is not just to tell people that it's inefficient, it's to tell them that they have to share it with somebody, especially if that means black and brown people in America.

Paul Jay

Now, joining me to continue our discussion about his Showtime documentary series The Reagans is Matt Tyrnauer, who's also the filmmaker of Valentino: The Last Emperor, which was shortlisted for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, and Where's My Roy Cohn? another must-see if you want to understand the political forces that gave us Donald Trump. Thanks for joining us, Matt.

Matt Tyrnauer

Thank you.

Paul Jay

So Reagan campaigns for smaller government, and one of the messages of smaller government is you're going to have tax cuts, more money in your pocket and all of this, and while, yeah, there was a smaller government, when it comes to social programs, there was a big expansion of government when it comes to militarization, and this contradiction between supposed  smaller government and expansion of militarization is just one of the big complete, what can I say, mindfucks that people get their head around that creates a completely false consciousness about how the world works.

So talk a bit about that contradiction between small government and big military and how he sells this to people.

Matt Tyrnauer

Well, Reagan was sent to Washington to do the bidding of a particular constituency, and that constituency was a group of oligarchs. He specifically came from California, where there were a lot of aerospace and oil industry people with whom he had become very close with. In fact, they really invented his political career. They were nicknamed the Kitchen Cabinet, and a big portion of them were from those sectors of the economy. They were also vehemently for low taxes, but they were also for great government largesse when it came to building defense systems because that was the business that the...

Thomas Frank and Paul Jay discuss censorship by monopolies and changes in the political landscape of Kansas, on theAnalysis.news

Thomas Frank and Paul Jay discuss censorship by monopolies and changes in the political landscape of Kansas, on theAnalysis.news

Transcript

Paul Jay

Hi, I'm Paul Jay, welcome to theAnalysis.news, please don't forget the donate button at the top of the webpage.

Thomas Frank wrote in a recent essay published in Le Monde Diplomatique ,  "This essay is not a brief for free speech absolutism, or an effort to rationalize conspiracy theory or an attack on higher learning. It's about the future of the Democratic Party, the future of the left, and here is the suggestion I mean to make: the form of liberalism I have described here is inherently despicable. A democratic society is naturally going to gag when it's told again and again in countless ways, both the subtle and gross, that our great national problem is our failure to heed the authority of traditional elites."

Thomas ends the essay with this, "The mob attack on the Capitol frightened us all. But for Democrats to choose censorship (via the monopolists of Silicon Valley) as the solution to the problem is a shocking breach of faith. There are many words one might describe a party that, over the last 30 years, has shown itself contemptuous of working-class grievances while protective of the authority of the respected...but 'liberal' isn't one of them."

That was Thomas's piece in the Le Monde Diplomatique. This is interesting timing to discuss these issues, YouTube just took down an editorial I was about to publish that called for Trump to be charged with sedition and treason, and also called for an investigation of Mitch McConnell's role in the events of January 26th.

In the piece, I ran footage of Trump's speech meant to incite the crowd on January 6th. I ran this footage to show what Trump's role was that day. That seemed to be enough for YouTube's algorithm to delete the story.

Of course I appealed. But what the hell business is it of YouTube to use an algorithm to censor me? That is, assuming it is a mistaken algorithm. I got a message saying they were taking down the videos that stated the elections were won by widespread fraud, which of course, my piece didn't say at all. Perhaps YouTube didn't like my focus on the coup that Trump and Flynn tried to organize, more likely, automatic censorship.

But one day perhaps, there'll be other keywords to trigger a takedown. I have still no answer to my appeal to YouTube. Perhaps they have an algorithm that hears the appeals.

Now, joining us is Thomas Frank. He is a political analyst, historian, and journalist. He co-founded and edited The Baffler magazine, and has written several books, most notably 'What's the Matter with Kansas?' in 2004, 'Listen, Liberal' in 2016. His most recent book is 'The People, No: A Brief History of Anti-Populism', and you'll be able to find an interview I did with Thomas about his book, if you look around theAnalysis.

Thanks for joining us, Thomas.

Thomas Frank

Paul, it's my pleasure as always. I like that quote that you gave, his famous last words. It's literally the last words of the story, and in some ways, it's my epitaph as a political writer. I'm sorry, I'm in a very morbid mood these days for reason-

Paul Jay

How can one not be, but elaborate?

Thomas Frank

It's just I've been spending a lot of time thinking about and going over the transformation of liberalism in the US, since the rise of Trump, and going back and looking at the Obama days and stuff like that, and how we've lost sight of so many of the things that we used t...

Thomas Frank and Paul Jay discuss censorship by monopolies and changes in the political landscape of Kansas, on theAnalysis.news

Corporations have stepped beyond lobbying governments. They are integrating in policy making at the national and international levels. Decisions historically taken by governments are increasingly taken by secretive unaccountable bodies run by corporations says Nick Buxton describing The Great Corporate Takeover mapped by peoples movements and scholars.

Corporations have stepped beyond lobbying governments. They are integrating in policy making at the national and international levels. Decisions historically taken by governments are increasingly taken by secretive unaccountable bodies run by corporations says Nick Buxton describing The Great Corporate Takeover mapped by peoples movements and scholars. Produced by GPEnewsdocs

TRANSCRIPT

LYNN FRIES: Hello and welcome. I'm Lynn Fries, producer of Global Political Economy or GPEnewsdocs. Today I'm joined by Nick Buxton. He’s going to be giving us some big picture of context on The Great Reset, a World Economic Forum initiative to reset the world system of global governance.

A worldwide movement crossing not only borders but all walks of life from peasant farmers to techies is fighting against this initiative on the grounds that it represents a major threat to democracy. Key voices from the health, food, education, indigenous peoples and high tech movements explained why in The Great Take Over: How we fight the Davos capture of global governance, a recent webinar hosted by the Transnational Institute.

Today’s guest, Nick Buxton is a publications editor and future labs coordinator at the Transnational Institute. He is the founder and chief editor of TNI’s flagship State of Power report. Welcome. Nick.

NICK BUXTON: Thank you very much, Lynn.

FRIES: The Transnational Institute was co-organizer of The Great Takeover webinar. So what is it that you’re mobilizing against by opposing this Great Reset Initiative.

BUXTON: What we're really concerned about is really that this initiative by the World Economic Forum actually looks to entrench the power of those most responsible for the crises we're facing. In many ways, it's a trick. It's a sleight of hand to make sure that things continue as they are; to continue the same.

 That will create more of these crises, more of these pandemics, will deepen the climate crisis, which will deepen inequality. It's not a Great Reset at all. It's a Great Corporate Takeover. And that's what we were trying to draw attention to.

What we've been finding in recent years is that really there is something I would call it a kind of a global, silent coup d’état going on in terms of global governance. Most people don't see it.

And people have become familiar with the way that corporations have far more influence and are being integrated into policymaking at a national level. They see that more in front of them. People see their services being privatized. They see the influence of the oil companies or the banking sector that has stopped actions such as regulation of banks or of dealing with a climate crisis.

What people don't realize is a global level there has been something much more silent going on. Which is that their governance, which used to be by nations, is now increasingly being done by unaccountable bodies dominated by corporations. And part of the problem is that that has been happening in lots of different sectors but people haven't been connecting the dots.

So what we've been trying to do in the last year is to talk with people in the health movement, for example; people involved in public education; people involved in the food sector; to say what is happening in your sector?

And what we found is that in each of these sectors, global decisions that used to be discussed by bodies such as the WHO or such as the Food and Agriculture Organization were increasingly done by these unaccountable bodies.

Corporations have stepped beyond lobbying governments. They are integrating in policy making at the national and international levels. Decisions historically taken by governments are increasingly taken by secretive unaccountable bodies run by corporations says Nick Buxton describing The Great Corporate Takeover mapped by peoples movements and scholars.

Trump didn't win the working class, the Democrats lost it; it's urgent that progressive organizing focus on the working class and unions - human civilization depends on it. There should be a focus on union organizing at Amazon. Noam Chomsky on theAnalysis.news with Paul Jay.

Trump didn't win the working class, the Democrats lost it; it's urgent that progressive organizing focus on the working class and unions - human civilization depends on it. There should be a focus on union organizing at Amazon. Noam Chomsky on theAnalysis.news with Paul Jay.

Paul Jay

Hi, I'm Paul Jay. Welcome to theAnalysis.news. Please don't forget there's a donate button at the top of the webpage.

At 92 years old, Noam Chomsky never stops learning and never stops teaching. His latest book, Chomsky for Activists and that's another thing that Noam never stops: his activism. Every drop of his life's blood is dedicated to changing the world for the better. Now joining us is Noam Chomsky. Thanks for joining us now.

Noam Chomsky

Very glad to be with you again.

Paul Jay

So before we dig into this very peculiar moment in American history, let me ask you something a little personal, because the book kind of starts with some personal reflections.

What keeps you learning and teaching? How do you stay motivated? Given the existential threats facing us, the relative strength of the elites and I would say the relative weakness of revolutionary and progressive movements around the world, you seem to just never tire of picking activists up, encouraging organizing. You never seem to lose your fighting spirit. What gives you such hope and conviction?

Noam Chomsky

Well, what makes the commitment is what you just describe. We're facing catastrophic threats, like nothing that has ever arisen in human history. There are ways to deal with them. There are opportunities. If we don't deal with them very soon, in not many years we'll be finished. Never risen before. We're in a unique moment of human history where we have to answer the question of whether the human experiment will survive or whether it'll end in glorious failure. We don't have much time.

That's enough to keep going. The actual situation doesn't look as grim to me as you describe. It's true that there are no revolutionary movements, but when were there? There are movements, substantial, energetic engagement over a very broad breadth of great many people, actually. I think if you count those, it's higher than was the proportion of the population than it was in the 60s except for a very brief moment and its committed, engaged, doing things, making progress, we have a long history of success.

Countries a lot better than it was in the 1960s in many ways, thanks to the activism of the 60s in the aftermath. There are lots of things we don't have to struggle about anymore because they won. It's a bad period in many ways, a dangerous period, and there's plenty of, there are both opportunities that are available and there are people engaged, should be a lot more. It's kind of astonishing. We've been through seventy-five years of the nuclear age and things that I remember on August 6, 1945, and astonishingly then, still astonishing.

So on August 6th, I happened to be a junior counselor at summer camp, the news came over the loudspeaker in the morning, early morning: atom bomb destroyed Hiroshima. There was some light applause, great wars ending, all that, then everyone went off to their own activities, and that's pretty much the way it's been since. On August 6th, anyone who was thinking realized that not only had horrible events taken place, but that human intelligence had reached the point where very soon it would progress or maybe decline to the level where it could destroy all human life on Earth, and most of the species with it.

Which in fact happened in 1953 when thermonuclear bombs were explode...