Did the CIA fund creative writing in America?

[FourthBase]

You think what is still happening? You think that leftist-dominated elite writers' and artists' workshops are encouraged by the CIA to enforce boundaries of left wing acceptability?

I suppose I meant all of the values could be those that the CIA would want to quiet, and would promote any figure who might do so. I imagine that there could have been a Rachel Carson before Rachel Carson, but she wasn't given a chance for whatever reason.

You're resorting to imagining hypothetical precursors?

I also imagine there are still-standing operations to infiltrate and redirect dissent, now even more than during the cold war. I'm involved with groups and organizations from mainstream professional creative organizations to radical groups and, despite being mostly non-paranoid about myself, I don't imagine that any are free from intelligence. I attended a farewell toast for the executive director of one of my groups and the joke was raised about his murky past work in Southeast Asia and the fear that he himself was a spook. I was actually flummoxed. In more radical groups, the stakes are higher but the signs can feel more insidious and personal.

1. Even more now?
Than during the Cold War?

2. What dissent is unacceptable today in elite creative circles? Maybe you live in a different world, in a different time, but as far as I can tell, today, in America, in 2015, in elite creative circles, there is literally no form of left wing dissent too radical to be acceptable discourse. If anything, the unacceptable thing is being insufficiently radical. What kind of political utterances will now get you suspended, fired, blacklisted in the elite creative world?

3. You realize that leftists also work in the intelligence profession, right?

[FourthBase]

I don't see any easy marks standing around here holding a copy of The Daily Worker do you?

Fourthbase wrote:
Do you realize how much of an overlap there'd be between this board and The Daily Worker, or are you just being coy?

Are you serious? Like for one, didn't the DW think Stalin was a good guy? Like who has said that here? And didn't they cease publication in the 50's or something? Who here has 50's era Communist ideology? Am I'm missing the threads on this?

1. So, you seriously meant a vintage copy of The Daily Worker? It wasn't a signifier, a metonym?

2. "How much of an overlap" does not mean 100% overlap. Shit, I bet about 5-10% of me would overlap with The Daily Worker.

3. Who here has a 2015-era Communist ideology? Or how about, oh, 75-90% of a 2015-era Communist ideology?

And all this begs the question as to whether you have a problem or not with the government stepping in cases like this?

I have a general problem with a government interfering with art and literature production, but once it does, no, I have no problem with a government opting not to subsidize or hype the propaganda of its enemy. Which other governments are expected to pay for and publicize their enemies' propaganda?

Is this Information Please? Date a Reference Librarian or let your fingers doing the walking

Fourthbase wrote:
I pasted that into Google Translate and apparently what brekin means is, "I got nothing and I'm totally full of shit."

Ok, good first attempt but don't give up on internet research. And its good your fingers are starting to get their exercise but just remember your first time out you may end up some strange places. Bring a friend to help you, maybe team up with Ask Jeeves on your first few forays. I think you, Ask Jeeves and old Joe McCarthy would be a great fellow travelers.

Ah yes, McCarthy. As self-defeatingly un-American as the process may have been, how many of those suspected by the anti-Communist witchhunters actually were Communists? Not just as an intellectual hobby, but as a mission for a hostile foreign entity? How much angst do you feel over pro-American agents of influence who've been caught, interrogated, ejected, jailed in other countries?

[tapitsbo]

Who has much sympathy left for the US state in Current Year unless they're getting a paycheque from it?

Regardless of what happened in the cold war (when the suppression of Stalinism seems to have furthered the eventual hegemony of the left)

[brekin]

Fourthbase wrote:
1. So, you seriously meant a vintage copy of The Daily Worker? It wasn't a signifier, a metonym?
2. "How much of an overlap" does not mean 100% overlap. Shit, I bet about 5-10% of me would overlap with The Daily Worker.

As would probably 5-10% of everyone on this board. So, I'm still not seeing your:

"Do you realize how much of an overlap there'd be between this board and The Daily Worker, or are you just being coy?"

Honestly, that is almost along the lines of people who froth about Obama being a socialist. This is a conspiracy board really, and I've noticed "those people", um, don't tend to trust the state, or actually most small, med, or large orgs in general. Why would they turn around and surrender their whole destiny then to an apparatus, the federal government, that they believe is openly destroying lives in plain view and has been doing so also secretly forever i.e. brainwashing, torturing, killing etc. And since one of the conspiracy bugaboos is secret police forces, complete citizen survellience and detention camps and the Communists were the All Time World Champions for around 50 years in that league, why would they want to play under that conference?

Really we have more closet Ickians here than Reds.

Fourthbase wrote:
3. Who here has a 2015-era Communist ideology? Or how about, oh, 75-90% of a 2015-era Communist ideology?

Well, probably everyone, everywhere. Look at Russia and China today. How much of their Communist ideology is just ceremonial now? 2015 Communist ideology is really not foreign to our shores, if anything we've exported more than imported lately and aggressive full spectrum capitalism has become a monolithic power where corporations promise to deliver the working environment and benefits that the state can't mandate. Many people are more concerned with getting a better job than a better economic world model. Have you noticed how everyone, everywhere, wants to be filthy fucking rich so they can become a state unto themselves, but failing that, which a few tend to do, they want someone to pay their hospital, education, childcare, insurance, rent bills? Even Wall Street sounds like Lenin buttering up the State when they get kicked in the nuts financially and need to get rescued.

But back to this:

And all this begs the question as to whether you have a problem or not with the government stepping in cases like this?

Fourthbase wrote:
I have a general problem with a government interfering with art and literature production, but once it does, no, I have no problem with a government opting not to subsidize or hype the propaganda of its enemy. Which other governments are expected to pay for and publicize their enemies' propaganda?

I don't follow. You have a problem with it, until it happens and then its not a problem?

And this isn't the government giving grants and funding speaking tours and appointments to people who are their "enemies". No one is suggesting they subsidize views anti-ethical to their aims. We are talking about them stepping into, or stomping on really, other industries and preventing opposing or even views that shed light on a touchy area. You do know the publishing industry is suppose to be separate from the CIA right? And the public votes with their pocket book whether they like something, they don't ask the Treasury to buy it for them. The gov isn't suppose to be paying for shit to be published or not in the private sector.

Also, in this case, it shows how you can conflate supposed "enemy propaganda" in Ethiopia coming from Russia. With that logic, any struggle anywhere talking about redistribution of wealth in whatever manner would be labeled Communist and blocked by the CIA from getting artistic representation.

And the government is just people. People like you and me, who would have the power to say yes, that book should be published, but that one? No, fuck him.

Imagine the book that changed your life.
But now imagine I don't like it.
Now you've never read it.

[IanEye]

Even Wall Street sounds like Lenin buttering up the State when they get kicked in the nuts financially and need to get rescued.

"We been working and slaving our whole lives away." - Buster Poindexter

In other words the Soviet military gets its parts and materials from Soviet industry. There is a Soviet military-industrial complex just as there is an American military-industrial complex.

This kind of reasoning makes sense to the man in the street. The farmer in Kansas knows what I mean. The salesman in California knows what I mean. The taxi driver in New York knows what I mean. But the policy makers in Washington do not accept this kind of common sense reasoning, and never have done.

So let's take a look at the Soviet industry that provides the parts and the materials for Soviet armaments: the guns, tanks, aircraft.

The Soviets have the largest iron and steel plant in the world. It was built by McKee Corporation. It is a copy of the U.S. Steel plant in Gary, Indiana.

All Soviet iron and steel technology comes from the U.S. and its allies. The Soviets use open hearth, American electric furnaces, American wide strip mills, Sendzimir mills and so on — all developed in the West and shipped in as peaceful trade.

The Soviets have the largest tube and pipe mill in Europe — one million tons a year. The equipment is Fretz-Moon, Salem, Aetna Standard, Mannesman, etc. Those are not Russian names.

All Soviet tube and pipe making technology comes from the U.S. and its allies. If you know anyone in the space business ask them how many miles of tubes and pipes go into a missile.

The Soviets have the largest merchant marine in the world — about 6,000 ships. I have the specifications for each ship. About two-thirds were built outside the Soviet Union.

About four-fifths of the engines for these ships were also built outside the Soviet Union.

There are no ship engines of Soviet design. Those built inside the USSR are built with foreign technical assistance. The Bryansk plant makes the largest marine diesels. In 1959, the Bryansk plant made a technical assistance agreement with Burmeister & Wain of Copenhagen, Denmark, (a NATO ally), approved as peaceful trade by the State Dept. The ships that carried Soviet missiles to Cuba ten years ago used these same Burmeister and Wain engines. The ships were in the POLTAVA class. Some have Danish engines made in Denmark and some have Danish engines made at Bryansk in the Soviet Union.

About 100 Soviet ships are used on the Haiphong run to carry Soviet weapons and supplies for Hanoi's annual aggression. I was able to identify 84 of these ships. None of the main engines in these ships was designed and manufactured inside the USSR.

All the larger and faster vessels on the Haiphong run were built outside the USSR.

All shipbuilding technology in the USSR comes directly or indirectly from the U.S. or its NATO allies.

Let's take one industry in more detail: motor vehicles.

All Soviet automobile, truck and engine technology comes from the West: chiefly the United States. In my books I have listed each Soviet plant, its equipment and who supplied the equipment. The Soviet military has over 300,000 trucks — all from these U.S. built plants.

Up to 1968 the largest motor vehicle plant in the USSR was at Gorki. Gorki produces many of the trucks American pilots see on the Ho Chi Minh trail. Gorki produces the chassis for the GAZ-69 rocket launcher used against Israel. Gorki produces the Soviet jeep and half a dozen other military vehicles.

And Gorki was built by the Ford Motor Company and the Austin Company — as peaceful trade.

In 1968 while Gorki was building vehicles to be used in Vietnam and Israel further equipment for Gorki was ordered and shipped from the U.S.

Also in 1968 we had the so-called "FIAT deal" — to build a plant at Volgograd three times bigger than Gorki. Dean Rusk and Wait Rostow told Congress and the American public this was peaceful trade — the FIAT plant could not produce military vehicles.

Don't let's kid ourselves. Any automobile manufacturing plant can produce military vehicles. I can show anyone who is interested the technical specification of a proven military vehicle (with cross-country capability) using the same capacity engine as the Russian FIAT plant produces.
- Antony Sutton, 1972

[Luther Blissett]

You think what is still happening? You think that leftist-dominated elite writers' and artists' workshops are encouraged by the CIA to enforce boundaries of left wing acceptability?

I suppose I meant all of the values could be those that the CIA would want to quiet, and would promote any figure who might do so. I imagine that there could have been a Rachel Carson before Rachel Carson, but she wasn't given a chance for whatever reason.

You're resorting to imagining hypothetical precursors?

I also imagine there are still-standing operations to infiltrate and redirect dissent, now even more than during the cold war. I'm involved with groups and organizations from mainstream professional creative organizations to radical groups and, despite being mostly non-paranoid about myself, I don't imagine that any are free from intelligence. I attended a farewell toast for the executive director of one of my groups and the joke was raised about his murky past work in Southeast Asia and the fear that he himself was a spook. I was actually flummoxed. In more radical groups, the stakes are higher but the signs can feel more insidious and personal.

1. Even more now?
Than during the Cold War?

2. What dissent is unacceptable today in elite creative circles? Maybe you live in a different world, in a different time, but as far as I can tell, today, in America, in 2015, in elite creative circles, there is literally no form of left wing dissent too radical to be acceptable discourse. If anything, the unacceptable thing is being insufficiently radical. What kind of political utterances will now get you suspended, fired, blacklisted in the elite creative world?

3. You realize that leftists also work in the intelligence profession, right?

Well I don't know what else to do in this discussion other than hypothesize. I've done a little extra reading outside of the thread but I don't think we're going to be able to find out the complete history of CIA infiltration of writers' workshops.

Let's take Wisner's boast about Mockingbird as perfectly accurate, that he had about 400 journalists across the country in the employ of the CIA. Just projecting out from the size of the intelligence community now vs. then, the omnipresence of media and digital communication, the technological prowess of the intelligence community, the paranoia of corporations and the state, population growth, and egregious inequality now vs. then — yes I feel pretty confident saying that the powers of the intelligence community have greatly increased since the Cold War, and that relates to infiltrating activist groups.

I don't know how to answer your second question since I don't often see the overlap between "elite" and "creative" — if an institution is elitist than I think of it as inherently conservative, like a museum — my peers aren't getting their work in if they're complaining about police brutality, Gladio, billionaire pedophiles, domestic surveillance, etc. If it's done in a funny or observational or misinformational way, then maybe, but I can't think of any examples. In my creative professional organization, I'm not allowed to produce half the programs I want to, and they're not that elite. In my university (admittedly not that creative of a place) they love to deplatform and fire teachers for even the most basic anti-war, anti-police brutality, or environmental messages. I keep my peace-loving ways under tight wraps around here because my boss's boss hates lefties.

I'm not aware that leftists work in the intelligence community, no. I suppose it's possible. I've known a few people who have entered the field with good intentions but they've all gone over to being pretty hawkish / racist.

[tapitsbo]

When I said the Left is hegemonic I wasn't trying to suggest that the intelligence community or other players actually believe in it, they simply push it on others.

I also meant the new left that merges identity politics and neoliberalism.

An old-left that is anti-war, etc. is indeed marginal.

Things like police brutality are interesting. The police receive a lot of criticism from the cultural establishment (and the cops basically deserve it) but said establishment couldn't exist without police protection.

[JackRiddler]

When I said the Left is hegemonic I wasn't trying to suggest that the intelligence community or other players actually believe in it, they simply push it on others.

I see what you mean. This is why the media right now are treating a Sanders presidency like a foregone conclusion, and Trump despite his popularity faces a virtual blackout in coverage.

I also meant the new left that merges identity politics and neoliberalism.

Left is whatever you want it to be. The media and the right said Clinton and Blair are the left, so they are.

[FourthBase]

Fourthbase wrote:
1. So, you seriously meant a vintage copy of The Daily Worker? It wasn't a signifier, a metonym?
2. "How much of an overlap" does not mean 100% overlap. Shit, I bet about 5-10% of me would overlap with The Daily Worker.

As would probably 5-10% of everyone on this board. So, I'm still not seeing your:

"Do you realize how much of an overlap there'd be between this board and The Daily Worker, or are you just being coy?"

Yeah, uh, way more than that much overlap in others.

Honestly, that is almost along the lines of people who froth about Obama being a socialist.

Yeah, what a mentally ill conspiracy theory.

This is a conspiracy board really, and I've noticed "those people", um, don't tend to trust the state, or actually most small, med, or large orgs in general. Why would they turn around and surrender their whole destiny then to an apparatus, the federal government, that they believe is openly destroying lives in plain view and has been doing so also secretly forever i.e. brainwashing, torturing, killing etc. And since one of the conspiracy bugaboos is secret police forces, complete citizen survellience and detention camps and the Communists were the All Time World Champions for around 50 years in that league, why would they want to play under that conference?

Good question. Indeed, why does this board's judgment of history so often align with the Soviet perspective? Sure, the USSR and current anti-American regimes may be faulted here for being brutal and authoritarian and occasionally weird...but why are they so rarely theorized as prime conspiracy perps? Fuck, if one relied on RI for a bold, taboo-rejecting tinfoil accounting of the world, you'd get the impression that leftist entities practically never assassinate anyone, never stage false flags, never try to brainwash the masses, never organize sexual blackmail, never sabotage economies, never manipulate elections, never infiltrate the opposition, etc.

Really we have more closet Ickians here than Reds.

How about not just Reds but, uh, Pinks?
Which, uh, milieu is more prominent and prolific?

Fourthbase wrote:
3. Who here has a 2015-era Communist ideology? Or how about, oh, 75-90% of a 2015-era Communist ideology?

Well, probably everyone, everywhere. Look at Russia and China today. How much of their Communist ideology is just ceremonial now?

Merely ceremonial and in actuality all the leftists currently in power in the world are fascist posers using the ideology as window dressing...just like Stalin and Mao were, too? /revleft

2015 Communist ideology is really not foreign to our shores, if anything we've exported more than imported lately and aggressive full spectrum capitalism has become a monolithic power where corporations promise to deliver the working environment and benefits that the state can't mandate. Many people are more concerned with getting a better job than a better economic world model. Have you noticed how everyone, everywhere, wants to be filthy fucking rich so they can become a state unto themselves, but failing that, which a few tend to do, they want someone to pay their hospital, education, childcare, insurance, rent bills? Even Wall Street sounds like Lenin buttering up the State when they get kicked in the nuts financially and need to get rescued.

Right, so, this is all supposed to signify an ascending hegemony favorable to, uh, what...not communism? Are you describing the natural decay of late-stage capitalism, or the fulfillment of commie prophecies via the enemy-facilitated cultivation of revolution-friendly conditions? The majority of Americans under 30 now prefer socialism to capitalism. Presumably that means a supermajority of the elite-educated ones, the ones who'll assume all the power in a generation or two. Do you think that just happened organically, a purely justifiable collective response to a world ruined by capitalists?

But back to this:

And all this begs the question as to whether you have a problem or not with the government stepping in cases like this?

Fourthbase wrote:
I have a general problem with a government interfering with art and literature production, but once it does, no, I have no problem with a government opting not to subsidize or hype the propaganda of its enemy. Which other governments are expected to pay for and publicize their enemies' propaganda?

I don't follow. You have a problem with it, until it happens and then its not a problem?

I don't think governments purportedly representing the principle of liberty should interfere with art and literature industries. But when they inevitably do, especially in the face of an existential enemy with zero qualms about it, I don't blame them for not supporting their enemies' propaganda. Still don't follow?

And this isn't the government giving grants and funding speaking tours and appointments to people who are their "enemies".

Actually, that is exactly what we're talking about with the CCF, with abstract expressionists, with the literary journals, etc. People are supposed to be upset that the government was favoring artists and writers, excluding other artists and writers from that favor. The artists and writers we're supposed to be upset about having been excluded from that favor are...further left than the NCL. That's what is making me go "REALLY?"

No one is suggesting they subsidize views anti-ethical to their aims. We are talking about them stepping into, or stomping on really, other industries and preventing opposing or even views that shed light on a touchy area.

Preventing WHICH views? WHAT light? You brought up Cummings, whose story is sketchy to put it generously. (Well, first you brought up Robeson.) But look at this thread: "Did the CIA fund creative writing in America?" Not, did the CIA directly squash the publication of creative writing in America. So, the situation with Cummings, however it actually happened, is a related but still separate thing from the funding situation. Are we supposed to be upset that by supporting only the Non-Communist Left the CIA was indirectly depriving the Communist Left of CIA support? Yes or no?

You do know the publishing industry is suppose to be separate from the CIA right?

Yeah, no shit.

And the public votes with their pocket book whether they like something, they don't ask the Treasury to buy it for them.

Uhhh...

The gov isn't suppose to be paying for shit to be published or not in the private sector.

So...does that also apply to all public funding of art and literature? Which happens to be skewed even more to the left now than it's ever been? I'm going to assume you're not anti-NEA, anti-grant? Why is the government paying for art and literature any better when its support for propaganda is arbitrarily labeled "public sector"?

Also, in this case, it shows how you can conflate supposed "enemy propaganda" in Ethiopia coming from Russia. With that logic, any struggle anywhere talking about redistribution of wealth in whatever manner would be labeled Communist and blocked by the CIA from getting artistic representation.

I was more referring to those to the left of the NCL. I still have ultimately no idea what to make of Cummings, except that he was a fucking spook himself and so him getting cockblocked by other spooks seems to me mostly like an internal company matter. Find a non-spook.

Be real for a second, too: What percentage of the art about global redistributive struggles back then was labeled Communist because it literally was?

And the government is just people. People like you and me, who would have the power to say yes, that book should be published, but that one? No, fuck him.

We have that power? Really? Not an insular elitist cartel of left-tilting radical-fellating tastemakers and gatekeepers?

Imagine the book that changed your life.
But now imagine I don't like it.
Now you've never read it.

And per this imaginary, you are...
...a politically correct Ivy League progressive?

I've never read it because...it was rejected by a major publisher? Because I'm the kind of person who keeps an eye on boutique and fringe publishers, too, so...if someone wants to change my life with a novel about Ethiopia in the 70's, but he or she completely gives up trying to get it published after losing a lucrative deal with a major publisher, I'd say that person wasn't really invested in their own book for its own sake, and so fuck 'em.

[JackRiddler]

Presente!

[FourthBase]

You think what is still happening? You think that leftist-dominated elite writers' and artists' workshops are encouraged by the CIA to enforce boundaries of left wing acceptability?

I suppose I meant all of the values could be those that the CIA would want to quiet, and would promote any figure who might do so. I imagine that there could have been a Rachel Carson before Rachel Carson, but she wasn't given a chance for whatever reason.

You're resorting to imagining hypothetical precursors?

I also imagine there are still-standing operations to infiltrate and redirect dissent, now even more than during the cold war. I'm involved with groups and organizations from mainstream professional creative organizations to radical groups and, despite being mostly non-paranoid about myself, I don't imagine that any are free from intelligence. I attended a farewell toast for the executive director of one of my groups and the joke was raised about his murky past work in Southeast Asia and the fear that he himself was a spook. I was actually flummoxed. In more radical groups, the stakes are higher but the signs can feel more insidious and personal.

1. Even more now?
Than during the Cold War?

2. What dissent is unacceptable today in elite creative circles? Maybe you live in a different world, in a different time, but as far as I can tell, today, in America, in 2015, in elite creative circles, there is literally no form of left wing dissent too radical to be acceptable discourse. If anything, the unacceptable thing is being insufficiently radical. What kind of political utterances will now get you suspended, fired, blacklisted in the elite creative world?

3. You realize that leftists also work in the intelligence profession, right?

Well I don't know what else to do in this discussion other than hypothesize. I've done a little extra reading outside of the thread but I don't think we're going to be able to find out the complete history of CIA infiltration of writers' workshops.

Let's take Wisner's boast about Mockingbird as perfectly accurate, that he had about 400 journalists across the country in the employ of the CIA. Just projecting out from the size of the intelligence community now vs. then, the omnipresence of media and digital communication, the technological prowess of the intelligence community, the paranoia of corporations and the state, population growth, and egregious inequality now vs. then — yes I feel pretty confident saying that the powers of the intelligence community have greatly increased since the Cold War, and that relates to infiltrating activist groups.

I don't know how to answer your second question since I don't often see the overlap between "elite" and "creative" — if an institution is elitist than I think of it as inherently conservative, like a museum — my peers aren't getting their work in if they're complaining about police brutality, Gladio, billionaire pedophiles, domestic surveillance, etc. If it's done in a funny or observational or misinformational way, then maybe, but I can't think of any examples.

Are you joking? Elite contemporary art museums and publications LOVE those themes. Who the fuck do you think is curating them? Who do you think comprises the elite art world? People who aren't Glenn Greenwald readers, aren't self-declared Black Lives Matter allies, aren't True Detective fans? And, wait, hold up...if it's "funny" or "observational" then it's degraded? What, so it has to be didactic and humorless or it doesn't count? Good news, then! A shitload of it is EXACTLY that. Get out more, browse more glossy art magazines. I hate to burst your perpetual underdog self-image. You might gnash your teeth about this or that radical angle, but...hold up, reading ahead...

In my creative professional organization, I'm not allowed to produce half the programs I want to, and they're not that elite. In my university (admittedly not that creative of a place) they love to deplatform and fire teachers for even the most basic anti-war, anti-police brutality, or environmental messages. I keep my peace-loving ways under tight wraps around here because my boss's boss hates lefties.

HAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAA...
AHAHAHAHAHHHAAAA...
...hahahahaaaaaaa!!!

Where in the FUCK do you work, Liberty University?

Show me a SINGLE FUCKING TEACHER deplatformed or fired ANYWHERE IN AMERICA for "even the most basic anti-war, anti-police brutality, or environmental" message.

I'm not aware that leftists work in the intelligence community, no. I suppose it's possible. I've known a few people who have entered the field with good intentions but they've all gone over to being pretty hawkish / racist.

HAHAHAAAAHAHAHA...oh, man. You're hilarious.

[tapitsbo]

Trump vs. Sanders hardly matters to me, I am not going conflate the two however.

Where do you see someone like Judith Butler JackRiddler? Hardly a far-leftist but still to the left. People like her criticize the USA ideology yet their own ideas fit very snugly into the education system... This is what I mean by hegemonic. People who have determined the parameters of socially acceptable ideas for the hipster youth decades.

[General Patton]

I'm not aware that leftists work in the intelligence community, no. I suppose it's possible. I've known a few people who have entered the field with good intentions but they've all gone over to being pretty hawkish / racist.

The CIA is filled with people who fit in with the NPR demographic, particularly outside of the Directorate of Operations. You have to remember that someone in the field is backed by around ~200 people in office (whether that is a good tooth to tail ratio is debated). Lots of papers to write, it's like a pretend Ivy League University with lower standards. Most of DC's bureaucracy is that way, look at their voting patterns. Ultra blue.

[JackRiddler]

Where do you see someone like Judith Butler JackRiddler? Hardly a far-leftist but still to the left. People like her criticize the USA ideology yet their own ideas fit very snugly into the education system... This is what I mean by hegemonic. People who have determined the parameters of socially acceptable ideas for the hipster youth decades.

So you think, as the result of what I expect is an extraordinarily superficial and irrationally angry reading of images in the non-news media.

Except you are not sitting in a classroom in Texas, Arizona, or even New York City (by the day home of more and more neoliberal super-specialized job-oriented "academies" in lieu of high schools). Let alone the -- white, Republican-voting -- suburbs. Judith Butler ain't hegemonic and ain't present (obviously not by name, but also not by ideas) in 90-99% of those. Only in Glenn Beck's imaginary, which is yours (based on the nonsense you write).

Nor is Butler's kind of politics and thinking dominant in the universities at the departments that really are hegemonic -- STEM, economics, "government," applied social sciences, etc. Nor is it particularly present at the think-tanks and private "idea" factories and politically influential media that share in hegemony.

All I hear in your passage, to be sincere, is your resentment of the (presumed majority of) those educated in the beleaguered and shrinking humanities, and for -- what? For not meeting your purity test on the beliefs you have imputed to them. They still pay rent, they don't live as St. Francis or Diogenes would have, they use fancy big words, therefore they are hypocrites and a burden to the peoples with whom they are supposedly solidarous. Or else, they are not working for "their group," as you have defined it, which is: white! Not black!

.

[JackRiddler]

The CIA is filled with people who fit in with the NPR demographic, particularly outside of the Directorate of Operations. You have to remember that someone in the field is backed by around ~200 people in office (whether that is a good tooth to tail ratio is debated). Lots of papers to write, it's like a pretend Ivy League University with lower standards. Most of DC's bureaucracy is that way, look at their voting patterns. Ultra blue.

Do you have the survey data on who works as staff the CIA? No, seriously, do you? If not, what is your method for divining this conclusion? (The voting patterns of DC, or Chocolate City as Gil Scott Heron called it, are evidence of nothing -- the government employees mostly live in MD or VA.)

And since when is National Pentagon Radio... what, liberal? Seriously? Because of Terry Brooks once a week? Because the right-wing noise machine said so?

And you also have to remember that someone officially at the CIA, field and staff included, is one out of around 10+ other intel personnel employed by the federal government, who in turn are maybe only 1/3 of the total intelligence/top secret complex, since the majority of those in the system are employed by private contractors.