The Non Shocked Doctrine

For more pseudo-book-reviewing go here and here. With that said, this too is almost a book review. Keep in mind, I’m just a bloke with nothing better to do during the day because I can’t finish yet another novel that will ultimately end up on my shelve(s) as rejected-novel-number-five.

Here’s a link to Naomi Klein’s website. Here’s a link to a short film produced by Naomi and directed by the guy who made the dystopian science fiction film “Children of Men”. Here’s the (my) standard wiki link about Naomi Klein.

If you haven’t discerned by now, I’ve just finished Naomi Klein’s … I read it in, like, x weeks. Seriously. It has a million and a half pages, although I might have counted a few twice. Here a few thoughts to ease you into my world of critique-intrigue:

• Wow.
• A Wonderful, meticulously researched book.
• A great new take on the issue and/or question of the result of twentieth century mixing of all-things-politics and all-things-economic (at least from the perspective of western thinking).
• Very wordy and sometimes repetitive but well structured and extremely informative.
• I wish the author would have put a bit more from her own head (or thoughts) into this book. The constant barrage of well-researched and footnoted/end-noted information was at times distracting - but in the end it’s what saved the book for me. To some, so much fact-checking might be distracting but at least you can find solace in the fact that this book is not an academic textbook. I enjoyed the footnotes a whole heck-of-a-lot.
• Although she is (or claims to be) a journalist, more often than not while reading this, I hoped she would/could turn into a philosopher or, perhaps, at the least, a political scientist with a tendency to über-dramatize. The book could use a lot more touchy-feely - both in things that draw tears and things that draw anger. (Not sure if that makes any sense because I did find myself tearing up a bit while reading the chapters about Thailand and New Orleans and even those chapters about Pinochet.)
• This book is missing the thing that “No Logo” had. “No Logo” by way of a very simple premise was a wonderfully creative way of questioning corporatism in the west and especially in my United Mistakes Of America (U.M. of A). To me, that simple premise was almost poetic in “No Logo”. Unfortunately, there’s nothing poetic about “The Shock Doctrine” and there is really no simple premise to this new book - even though Ms. Klein sells it with a great blurp/blurb at the cost of a what many people consider a great economist.
• On the other hand, if you want Naomi Klein fact after a fact after fact… about the ills of bad “capitalism” and bad politics then this is your book; it will give everything and nothing you need to know about life & death in a world of greed.

I feel it necessary due to the political and wing-nut positions put forth with this book my responsibility to inform (a little) of my orientations…

But this is no way a coming out…

I’m all for Capitalism. At the least, it’s the best of the worst. With that in mind, capitalism should never presuppose (Individual) Liberty. Capitalism is not a political system - it should be a sub-category of politics. The problems rational people face today is that capitalism has gone awry and that is coinciding very conveniently with politics doing the same. Hence, by default, there is no place for rational people to make important decisions for others. Here we have the quagmire of survival based on consuming. Fortunately Naomi Klein is very good at pointing fingers, but that’s about it.

“The Shock Doctrine - The Rise of Disaster Capitalism”

The biggest problem with this book is that it focuses too much on criticizing something that doesn’t really exist and the rest of the time it tries to create a bunch of bogeymen. Too often Naomi Klein comes across as someone with a vendetta and by doing so gets lost. Did the west do bad things in South America? You betcha! Did we manipulate South East Asia? Uhhhhh… Yep. How did Saddam get fictional WMDs? Well…? We gave them to him?

Correct! We are the champions of multiple choice tests issued by…

Naomi Klein completely misses any potential point regarding politics and participatory democracy, whether failed (failing) or flourishing. She then also misses any chance of providing some insight into how to deal with all the bogeymen that she puts on various pedestals. The one thing that Ms. Klein gets right is her referencing twentieth century political and economic antics and how that has enabled and fostered totalitarian corporatism. But she doesn’t quite put it that way. I would think that most people who choose to read this book already know about the demon of corporatism - which, ironically, is a term I think she coined - at least for a certain generation - by writing “No Logo”.

“The Shock Doctrine” would have been better served if she would have continued where “No Logo” left off. I kind of miss her rebel with a cause attitude which was all over “No Logo”. Instead, she gives us/you fact after fact after fact about bad politics and “capitalism” - most of the fun of which is in her footnotes - which only failed writers with nothing better to do will actually read. Only at the end of the book does she allude to the idea that something needs to be done to get this system-gone-awry back on a somewhat more (can I use this word?) egalitarian track. But then the book just ends. I guess she ran out of facts - or footnotes.

Now get this. While reading this book I was completely withdrawn from all things Orwellian. Seriously. Ever since I became an expatriate almost everything I ventured to read or study makes me think of things Orwellian. Everything except Naomi Klein. Now. That might not be such a bad thing. I’m on the verge of going postal - with a new-fangled weapon that either shoots bitter chocolate or undresses women. To me, this is more the direction Ms. Klein should have taken if she actually wanted to say something profound with this mass of research. (The Orwell part, not the postal with the chocolate gun part.)

This book seems to pander to overly ambitious PhD theses writers in either the humanities or social sciences or it attempts to bridge the gap that is college educated idiocracy that makes-up the demographically profitable side of Pareto’s Principle (80/20 rule) in all this consumer chaos. And… yes, ultimately, I believe that it is the college educated that are the ones making things so bad in this world. Remember, if you are one of the few that actually manage to get a college education (degree) and then, on top of that, manage to get a “career”, what else can you do with your life but… Shut the F-up and buy things and be your own narcotic?

Below a quote from a letter from Aldous Huxley to George Orwell in 1949 regarding 1984. Huxley and Orwell had it down back then and their thoughts should have served as seeds for Ms. Klein and all the idiot careerist college grads that read “The Shock Doctrine” and then think “Yeah she’s right” and then go back to their comfort-zone, status-quo corporate careers.

“Within the next generation I believe that the world’s leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, then clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience.” (See Huxley at Wiki, if you will.)

I hate to say this because it’s very pretentious of me, but, what the heck: I have the feeling that Ms. Klein is out of her league here. Don’t get me wrong. I really enjoyed reading “The Shock Doctrine” - even though I’m aware of most the stuff she writes about. But then again, I’m kind of a masochist - I guess. Ms. Klein’s research is impeccable. But other than retelling the news, well…

Where’s the poetry?

For Aldus Huxley to suggest in 1949 that the future would be able to “suggest people into” their corporate servitude is what I mean when I say that Ms. Klein lacks anything poetic in this very large work of research. I heard in an interview with her that she lived for a year in Argentina as part of her quest to research/write this book. Then came the Iraq war. She said in the interview that she got side-tracked and continued her research in Iraq. If she was in Argentina to research the negativity of fundamentalist capitalism from Milton Friedman and the so-called Chicago School and all it did in S. America, well, yeah, I guess she really did get side-tracked. I think she gets lost in one mess-a-potamia (United Mistakes of America in South America) and then gets lost in another mess-a-potamia (U.M. of A in Iraq) and the key word is “lost”.

The issue of torture - as wrong as it is, and bad “capitalism”, as bad as that obviously is - requires a little bit more connectivity to be brought together between Chile (of the 1970s) and Iraq (who knows when that’s going to end).

Are all things lost? Beyond the geo-political aspect of Ms. Klein’s critical work she has one other problem with this humongous book. To me she blatantly affronts Milton Friedman. In fact, she seems almost obsessed with him. Can you say “bogeymen” Ms. Klein? Friedman does not deserve so much of Ms. Klein’s attention in this book - unless she’s trying to attack academia - which I wish she would. Even if Donald (the rich-small-minded-fascist) Rumsfeld was schooled by Friedman you ultimately can’t blame the teacher. Friedman was either a good teacher or a bad teacher - nothing more.

In fact, of all the nation-state evil deeds done in (recent) history and of all the bogeymen we know about, I’m not aware of anyone trying to condemn their (bogeymen) teachers.

As far as Friedmanism goes… Let me say this in the only pretentious way that I can. I first heard of Friedman when that dimwit politician Ronald Reagan used to carry him around in the form of a book. But then I thought of that old toothless, redneck, raping uncle who lived in the valley above and I quickly learned: if these (then they weren’t known as “neo-cons”) self-loving morons are getting their economic ideology from a school teacher and because of them I couldn’t get any financial help to go to college… Well, it might be better if I resort to self-teaching and continue reading Gogol, Henry Miller, Bukowski, etc. I knew, at the least, I would expand my mind instead of closing it in order to make a buck. At least that’s what I remember my creative and giving Aunt saying before she died of abuse in the valley below.

Please forgive me if I drift… It happens to me when I think about our U.M of A. God: Money.

One thing I’ve gathered over the years about Milton Friedman is that he believed in liberty - and even I’m not cynical enough to believe that his liberty was only about corporate liberty. Check out any interview with him. His problem - if any - was that he was an elite academic entrenched in theory. He was nothing but a fuckin’ school teacher who never earned a living from the/a “free market” that he preached. Maybe that in itself is worth criticizing - or laughing at. Either way, there is no reason for Naomi Klein to turn Friedman into 666. I went through American public schooling - and a bit of college (until Reagan made college impossible for me and millions of others from the low-middle-classes).

Seriously. I had some pretty whacked-out teachers. I don’t blame one of those teachers for all my failure today.

I think Ms. Klein spends too little time on issue(s) regarding human behavior, collectivism, social ignorance, merit-less achievement, serfdom, or even modern media driven politics, etc., all the things and more that will make up the end of Rome - I mean, America. Instead she likes Torture and describing Sadistic behavior - which ain’t about to be expelled from man’s mind - no matter how many pages you write. She should spend at least a bit of time talking about the level of ignorance and stupidity that has become the American Way of Living. As I said here, in a completely unrelated post, and with tears in my face: the way America has been acting as a collective nation domestically and internationally, it deserves the ugly white men that are hell-bent on…

If only I could digress.

The thing that Ms. Klein does well with her book is to distort the fact that only one form of “bad capitalism” actually exists which in turn leads to a thorough depiction of bogeymen - who are sitting atop all things bad. With that in mind, it is not my intention to belittle the atrocities that right-wing, neo-cons have caused in the world in the last fifty (or so) years - which she do diligently footnotes.

I simply do not believe that these idiots (neo-cons) do these things in the name of… “capitalism”.

I believe that liberty (or freedom) is something that has to be politically protected and obviously shielded from those who would take it away. It is a matter of inalienable rights - which some of us have heard mentioned in a relatively famous document, although the intention of such words in the past might not be the same today. I also believe that (a) capitalist economy can co-exist with a participatory democratic system. The failure I live with in this life is due to a world where words, like goal posts, are changed according to frivolous will. In fear of being redundant, I’ll say again, there is no real “capitalism” in the world. Therefore, as an individual I am incapable of engaging in a system-gone-awry where words take on more meaning than the value of my time and effort.

• Professionalism = Obedience.
• Career = Lifestyle
• Survival = Consume(r)

Noami Klein should have addressed what “capitalism” could be in her book instead of just dogging on it and showing her disdain for certain influential people. If she would have gone that route then we would hit it off because I think, well, she’s hot. Instead, the system she criticizes isn’t the problem, and I wonder if she’s ever going to address what the problem really is. Even if you continually call it things like “disaster capitalism” or “vulture capitalists”, “monetary whiplash”, “casino capitalism”, “great creative cauldron of capitalism”, “Friedmanism”, “Chicago School Capitalism”, etc, etc. None of that matters because you can’t take it all out of the context of what is real in the world today. There is not just a fight of things evil or of things terroristic or trying to protect the environment or being social or saving the f’n whales. We are in a struggle of survival and that struggle is being sanctioned completely and utterly by SUV-driving ignorance in ALL aspects of humanity - by both rulers and followers.

But then again… At least I take some comfort knowing that Ms. Klein spent half of this very thick book thinking of new ways to give a name to something that doesn’t really exist.

Go to commercial break. Here now a word from my inner sponsor. Lackadaisically I tried to manifest my idea(s) of “capitalism” in a play I wrote a few years back - before becoming (worst)writer - after experiencing the disillusioning reality of dotcom dystopia first hand. I titled the play “The Good Criminal” (Der Gute Kriminelle). It was/is a really cool play. If I ever get a chance to produce it again, I need to rewrite the ending. That’s all. Whoopee.

Book review and rant on.

-tgs-