The Shock Doctrine

Naomi Klein has a new book out called The Shock Doctrine and filmmaker Alfonso Cuaron has made a short video to accompany it.

It is quite shocking.

M.O.W. has long thought that political discourse is dominated by Order, Control, and Safety arguments. The Shock Doctrine would seem to substantiate her belief. The search for order, control, and safety is a natural human tendency, M.O.W. believes. We all would like to bring order to our chaotic worlds, control scary and unpleasant aspects of our environment, and create a safe place for ourselves and our loved ones. It is quite natural and even noble to be concerned with order, control, and safety. However, our needs for order, control, and safety can and are used against us by powerful others (parents, educators, politicians, governments) to scare us into allowing those in power to make decisions for us that are not in our best interest. When faced with scary events, or when we are convinced that we should fear something, we willingly give up our power to those who proclaim that they can once again restore order, control, and safety. We exchange justice, liberty, and freedom for order, control, and safety every time, M.O.W. thinks.

We haven't read The Shock Doctrine yet, but we look forward to reading what Ms. Klein has to say about Uncle Milty and his Evil Ways. We are sure that it will help us to think more about our next book on how order, control, and safety arguments have been used to produced apathy in American citizens.