Political Myths We Live By

Here's an excellent itemization of the tacit assumptions that many people hold about our political situation, from Z Magazine:

It includes such very important points as

8. Public opinion is made by the public. (The Public Opinion Fallacy)

It isn't. It is made for the public by a process of selective filtering and re-framing on the part of the owners, managers and employed commentators of the corporate media. Corporate think tanks and PR machines also play important public opinion-forming roles, often behind the scenes. The important ideological and manipulative work of all these ‘pundits' is to keep public discourse within the tight parameters and limited concepts of allowed official discourse. The purpose is to manufacture consent for the decisions and policies of the ruling elites. There is no conspiracy involved here, it is a ‘natural' part of the system and works largely by cultural osmosis and conformity.

and

10. Economically, this is a Free Market Society. (The Free Market Fallacy)

There is no free market and never has been, even under the rule of the deregulating, neo-liberal state. A completely free market system would self-destruct in no time. Because it can, by definition, only care for its individual vested interests and not for the good of the whole system, capitalism needs constant saving from itself by the state. The capitalist state has always been there to massively support, gently oversee, subsidize and bail out the capitalist economy in countless ways, not only in times of crisis. Corporate and middle class welfare is actually its main game. The state helps capital privatise the profits and socialise the costs. It provides the physical infrastructure, educational development of the ‘human capital' and picks up the immense social, health and environmental costs of the latter's wrecking balls. All this happens whether the state is neo-liberal or social democratic (Keynesian) in nature.