There is massive propaganda for everyone to consume. Consumption is good for profits and consumption is good for the political establishment.

Most of us who were opposed to the war, especially in the early '60's - the war we were opposed to was the war on South Vietnam which destroyed South Vietnam's rural society. The South was devastated. But now anyone who opposed this atrocity is regarded as having defended North Vietnam. And that's part of the effort to present the war as if it were a war between South Vietnam and North Vietnam with the United States helping the South. Of course it's fabrication. But it's "official truth" now.

The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies.

Under capitalism, we can't have democracy by definition. Capitalism is a system in which the central institutions of society are in principle under autocratic control.

Cuba forces in Angola gave a real shot in the arm to the liberation movements, and it also was a lesson to the white South Africans that the end is coming. They can't just hope to subdue the continent on racist grounds.

The attack on Social Security is similarly motivated. Social Security is based on the conception is that we should have sympathy for others, not function merely as isolated "rational wealth maximizers."

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.