Shadow Elite: How the World's New Power Brokers Are Upending Our Democracy

[marmar]

via AlterNet:



AlterNet / By Janine Wedel

Shadow Elite: How the World's New Power Brokers Are Upending Our Democracy
Wedel argues in her new book that a group of corrupted elites are destroying the principles that define modern states, free markets and democracy itself.

February 4, 2010 |


Editor's Note: Any time you turn on the television these days, you'll find pundits sounding off on the policy debate du jour. Labeled something along the lines of "military experts" or "Democratic consultants," you have to wonder what they're hiding behind those vague-sounding titles. In an era when mainstream media turns to punditry to shape the American public's view of the most important policy issues, it's worth looking into who these so-called experts are and what effect they're having on our society. As Janine R. Wedel writes in her new book, Shadow Elite: How the World's New Power Brokers Undermine Democracy, Government, and the Free Market (excerpted below), the rise of a new breed of confidence men and women -- think-tank members, government advisers, business consultants and television pundits -- upend our democracy. Because they are technically individual actors, they claim to hold no allegiances; in fact, they usually hold too many.


* * *

We live in a world of flexibility. We have flex time, flex workers, flex spending, flex enrollment, flex cars, flex technology, flex perks, mind flex—even flex identities. “Flex" has become an integral part not only of how we live, but of how power and influence are wielded. While influencers flex their roles and representations, organizations, institutions, and states, too, must be flexible in ways they haven’t been before. The mover and shaker who serves at one and the same time as business consultant, think-tanker, TV pundit, and government adviser glides in and around the organizations that enlist his services. It is not just his time that is divided. His loyalties, too, are often flexible. Even the short-term consultant doing one project at a time cannot afford to owe too much allegiance to the company or government agency. Such individuals are in these organizations (some of the time anyway), but they are seldom of them.

Being in, but not of, an organization enables these players to pursue a “coincidence of interests,” that is, to interweave and perform overlapping roles that serve their own goals or those of their associates. Because these “nonstate” actors working for companies, quasi-governmental organizations, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) frequently do work that officials once did, they have privileged access to official information—information that they can deploy to their own ends. And they have more opportunities to use this information for purposes that are neither in the public interest nor easily detected, all the while controlling the message to keep their game going.

Take, for instance, Barry R. McCaffrey, retired four-star army general, military analyst for the media, defense industry consultant, president of his own consulting firm, part-time professor, and expert, whose advice on the conduct of the post-9/11 U.S. wars was sought by the George W. Bush administration and Congress. Crucial to McCaffrey’s success in these roles was the special access afforded him by the Pentagon and associates still in the military. This included special trips to war zones arranged specifically for him, according to a November 2008 expose in the New York Times. McCaffrey gleaned information from these trips that proved useful in other roles—and not only his part-time professorship at the U.S. Military Academy, which the Pentagon claimed is the umbrella under which his outsider’s perspective was sought. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/books/145533/shadow_elite%3A_how_the_world%27s_new_power_brokers_are_upending_our_democracy

[Uncle Joe]

1. The men and women in the camouflaged flannel suits will have to make their choices,

but the current corrupted, self-aggrandizing, lust for profit at all costs incestuous corporate system is destroying their national family.

Thanks for the thread, marmar.

[truedelphi]

2. Of course, none of this would be happening if our Fourth Estate was really truly of the People,

By the People and for the people.

But the Media has allegiances of its own - often to those who can fuel the advertising dollars. Thus the endless TV ads for Big Pharma's prioducts. Survey after survey shows the American TV watcher clicks away from those ads.

But the ads do the job Big Pharma wants them to do. For instance, during the last two years of health care reform discussions, has anyone here ever heard a local or national TV news anchor use the expression "Single Payer Universal Health Care?" And talk about how valuable a program it would be?

Only Fox TV does that, and it brands that expression as an indication of Communism.

But the other TV stations never even mention Single Payer - they really do not wanna lose their Big Pharma ad dollars.

[bemildred]

3. The problem is, as in all declining decadent empires,

that these people are narrow, indoctrinated, self-aggrandizing fools, and one need only consider the trajectory of the USA since WWII to see the trajectory of their work, and to judge them by it. There was nothing in the facts of the situation that mandated the disastrous, precipitous decline which we have experienced, and which continues as we speak.