745 - The Hall Of Mirrors (John Taylo Gatto Special)

This bonus episode was inspired by John Taylor Gatto's Kickstarter campaign to produce a child's book.
With your help, he passed the required $15,000 with just 6 days left to go. Many thanks to everyone who contributed.

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Episode #745 - The Hall Of Mirrors (John Taylor Gatto Special)

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⌚ Fri 9 December 2016  ☻John Taylor Gatto

Download Hour1 Download Hour2John Taylor Gatto has contributed a lot to this show, perhaps more in terms of episodes than anyone else. Nevertheless, I'm giving another show over to him, since this speech, The Hall Of Mirrors, is such an excellent summary of the predicament of the United States of America - a nation which for generations has been attempting - not without success - to indoctrinate each new generation to greater heights of dependency upon the corporate system. This speech, from about 2009, really pulls it together, and gives a great historical perspective.

To most of you, John Taylor Gatto will need no introduction - of the hundreds of speakers on the show, none has contributed to as many episodes. New listeners may wish to check his page here. This is the most political of all his lectures, but not in the sense of Republican or Democrat. He rejects modern politics as nothing but a veil on the real business of corporate governance:- cowing the USA domestic population to control by their masters.

Gatto emphasizes the twin threats of Hyperdemocracy - when ordinary people feel like they have the right to make themselves heard, and get angry if their voices are not being listened to - and Overproduction - when corporate profits fail because increases in productivity lead to falling prices and/or falling demand for new products. The episode begins with Gatto's observation that "Under corporate capitalism and corporate governance, ways must be found to make the general public less productive and less self-reliant, and school is a mechanism to do that." Even if his expose of schools is familiar to you. I recommend this speech as one of his finest, and a help to understand the conduct of the modern "democratic" nations:

As a vampire fears garlic, the marketplace fears wisdom. Well schooled populations are usually trained to pay lip service to democracy. At the same time, they are being conditioned to avoid the attitudes and behaviors democracy requires. It's a dilemma without an easy answer, because though our national consciousness honors the idea of a democratic society, our national economy and our government would wither and die under anything less than a command and control reality. Would you teach critical judgment and moral behavior to everybody? Tell me something, if you would. How could an economy like ours, grounded in the global sale of war machinery, industrially produced meat, fruit and vegetables which has a nutritional value about half of what farm products did in 1940, that relies on financial trickery and the mass sale of magical programs of schooling (not all of them inside school). How could an economy like this endure in a climate of critical intelligence?" John Taylor Gatto, 2009

We conclude with our first appeal for funds since Episode #631: The Neglected Genius of John Taylor Gatto.
Thanks to John Taylor Gatto for this remarkable speech. And Thanks to everyone who heeded this last minute appeal to meet Gatto's Kickstarter deadline. He crossed the $15,000 minimum requirement within 24 hours of this episode being posted!
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Source archive: The Hall Of Mirrors (147 min) John Taylor Gatto

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