Talk:Plutonomy

While the fact it came from a Citigroup memo gives me the heebie-jeebies (though, as the article states, it's probably more of a marketing pitch than a New World Order-type plan or an Assault on Wall Street-style eye-opening admission of How the World Really WorksTM), it appears to be one of those terms coined retroactively for the express purpose of describing an existing social/economic/political order in a deliberately scary way. Another term in this category would be "inverted totalitarianism", which was coined and defined by political philosopher Sheldon Wolin with the sole and express purpose of taking the most disappointing aspects of the current United States political system and expressing them using terminology and frames designed to make them sound scarier. Anyone reading Wolin's definition of "inverted totalitarianism" (even if one ignores that Wolin openly coined it to describe the U.S.) will realize the definition mirrors rhetoric about problems within U.S. politics (two-party system, various silliness during election campaigns, undue influence of special interests on legislation and campaign finance, allegations that the two dominant parties are the same, etc.), albeit dressed up in scary conspiratorial language. More gullible readers may think "Oh my gosh, America is an inverted totalitarian state! (*gasp*)." Of course, Wolin wants the reader to react that way, as he mixed truth with framing designed to compare the United States to Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union under Stalin (an excellent example of bullshitting). Another, less poltically charged example might be the "Nacirema" stories used by anthropologists to describe American culture as though it were a tribal culture. A number of people in a class I was in where a "Nacirema" story was used were weirded out by the descriptions, but this doesn't necessarily mean American culture is somehow "disgusting when you really think about it." My hypothesis is that it plays on many people's aversion to "exotic" ritualism and even subconscious ethnic prejudice, as some people may think less highly of ritualistic behavior when they imagine primitive brown people doing it. Whatever the case, it should be clear that biased post-hoc definitions don't have the highest analytical value. The One They Call Mars (talk) 17:55, 3 February 2014 (UTC)