Another Example of American Shock Doctrine

In Naomi Klein's book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, one of the recurrent themes is of nations deciding (usually as terms of loans from the IMF and World Bank) to sell off state assets. These sales provided the government with short-term revenue and long-term loss of value. Of course, the corporatists LOVE this idea as they can slurp up revenue-generating assets for pennies on the dollar!

While a lot of people recognize the shock doctrine in other lands -- America is far too great for any of that -- too few people seem to understand that many of the aspects of this doctrine are being employed in the US today.

One example is featured in an article on Salon by Jonathan Easley.

In the past two weeks, President Obama dramatically freed himself from his enemies' suggestions that he is too "foreign" (with the release of his long-form birth certificate) and too "weak" (with the killing of Osama bin Laden). But you might have missed a subtler move by the president that could further erode his opponents' push to brand him a "socialist."

This past week, the administration asked Congress to form a commission to fast-track the sale of "excess" federal property in an attempt to wipe some zeros from the tail-end of the deficit figure.

The sale of public real estate to private interests has bipartisan support, but it's more significant than that: It's an indication that under Democratic leadership the U.S. government is beginning to behave as an entity that is concerned with such fiscal trivialities as ledgers and balance sheets. It's the opposite of state socialism and nationalization -- goals that Obama's critics on the right have relentlessly claimed that he's pursuing...

I am certain that some of this real estate indeed is excess. It probably represents unoccupied buildings that are doing nothing more than gathering dust. But we're talking about over 14,000 structures and I would bet that a lot of those buildings most likely currently are viable.

All this points to is that elements of the shock doctrine are creeping more and more into American politics and governance. Unlike in other nations, we are not being subjected to violent and life-altering shocks all at once. Our shocks are small, incremental and, sometimes, barely noticeable. Each one, however, establishes a precedent that later is expanded upon.

Sooner or later -- sooner if Congress stays on the current federal budget trajectory -- they will drop the hammer on us. Far too many Americans will be dumbstruck when this happens. How did this come to pass, they will ask, unaware that it has been creeping up on us for much of the last ten years.