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The Peasants Need Pitchforks
A “working class hero,” John Lennon told us in his song of that title, “is something to be/ Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV/ And you think you’re so clever and classless and free/ But you’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see.”
The delusion of a classless America in which opportunity is equally distributed is the most effective deception perpetrated by the moneyed elite that controls all the key levers of power in what passes for our democracy. It is a myth blown away by Nobel Prize winner Joseph E. Stiglitz in the current issue of Vanity Fair. In an article titled “Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%” Stiglitz states that the top thin layer of the superwealthy controls 40 percent of all wealth in what is now the most sharply class-divided of all developed nations: “Americans have been watching protests against repressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few. Yet, in our own democracy, 1 percent of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation’s income—an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret.” 
Protesters yell at people looking out from the windows of an AIG building in New York during a 2009 rally against government bailouts for corporations. (AP / Jason DeCrow)
That is the harsh reality obscured by the media’s focus on celebrity gossip, sports rivalries and lotteries, situations in which the average person can pretend that he or she is plugged into the winning side. The illusion of personal power substitutes consumer sovereignty—which smartphone to purchase—for real power over the decisions that affect our lives. Even though most Americans accept that the political game is rigged, we have long assumed that the choices we make in the economic sphere as to career and home are matters that respond to our wisdom and will. But the banking tsunami that wiped out so many jobs and so much homeownership has demonstrated that most Americans have no real control over any of that, and while they suffer, the corporate rich reward themselves in direct proportion to the amount of suffering they have caused.
Instead of taxing the superrich on the bonuses dispensed by top corporations such as Exxon, Bank of America, General Electric, Chevron and Boeing, all of which managed to avoid paying any federal corporate taxes last year, the politicians of both parties in Congress are about to accede to the Republican demand that programs that help ordinary folks be cut to pay for the programs that bailed out the banks.
It is a reality further obscured by the academic elite, led by economists who receive enormous payoffs from Wall Street in speaking and consulting fees, and their less privileged university colleagues who are so often dependent upon wealthy sponsors for their research funding. Then there are the media, which are indistinguishable parts of the corporate-owned culture and which with rare exception pretend that we are all in the same lifeboat while they fawn in their coverage of those who bilk us and also dispense fat fees to top pundits. Complementing all that is the dark distraction of the faux populists, led by tea party demagogues, who blame unions and immigrants for the crimes of Wall Street hustlers.
My book on the banking meltdown, “The Great American Stickup,” begins with the following words. “They did it. Yes, there is a ‘they’: the captains of finance, their lobbyists, and allies among leading politicians of both parties, who together destroyed an American regulatory system that had been functioning splendidly. …” They got to rewrite the laws to enable their massive greed over everything from the tax codes to the sale of toxic derivatives over the past quarter century, smashing the American middle class and with it the nation’s experiment in democracy.
The lobbyists are deliberately bipartisan in their bribery, and the authors of our demise are equally marked as Democrats and Republicans. Ronald Reagan first effectively sang the siren song of ending government’s role in corporate crime prevention, but it was Democrat Bill Clinton who accomplished much of that goal. It is the enduring conceit of the top Democratic leaders that they are valiantly holding back the forces of evil when they actually have continuously been complicit.
The veterans of the Clinton years, so prominent in the Obama administration, still deny their role in the disaster of the last 25 years. Yet the sad tale of income inequality that Stiglitz laments is as much a result of their policies as those of their Republican rivals. In one of the best studies of this growing gap in income, economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty found that during Clinton’s tenure in the White House the income of the top 1 percent increased by 10.1 percent per year, while that of the other 99 percent of Americans increased by only 2.4 percent a year. Thanks to President Clinton’s deregulation and the save-the-rich policies of George W. Bush, the situation deteriorated further from 2002 to 2006, a period in which the top 1 percent increased its income 11 percent annually while the rest of Americans had a truly paltry gain of 1 percent per year.
And that was before the meltdown that wiped out the jobs and home values of so many tens of millions of American families. “The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles,” Stiglitz concludes, “but there is one thing that money doesn’t seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late.”
104 Comments so far
Show AllThe peasants were given pitchforks in Lybia.
What the peasants need is a working government either in exile or on the web. Until the peasants take as much control of their own lives as possible (except for the government coercion part), they're better off not picking up the pitchforks.
During the recent Egyptian Revolution it was pointed out (not by US media) that income disparity was a major driver of that event and income disparity in the US is not only worse than in other developed nations, income disparity in the US is worse than it is in Egypt.
'There is little relationship to being poor in America and being poor in Egypt, the Sudfan, Ethopia, etc.'
That's true for now...but if don't break free of the neoliberal, Shock Doctrine path we're on, it won't be long before the lives of the poor and middle class in the US will, indeed, be indistinguishable from those in the third world.
That's the plan of the C street gang, an Indonesia type society complete with military dictator like Suharto. The C street family articulates the unofficial Republican Party policies which are paramount. Official policies are for PR propaganda. The C street family hero's are; Suharto, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pinochet, Pol Pot all the most and least known dictators. This is the plan for American society which will be required to be morally bound subject to legal retribution. The C st. family is exempt from all moral considerations. Notable C st. family, Gov. Sanford of South Carolina, Sen. Ensign of Nevada, Sen. Vitter of Louisiana being the most notable. others would be Newt Gingrich, John McCain who both divorced wives who were in the hospital for cancer and that's where they were served.
The main differances, being our Safety Net programs, Taks them away as the Corporate controled leadership in the Senate and Congress are trying to do, with the help of our Corporate Controlled President!
When the Safety net is gone and we heve real poverty like egypt and the other 3rd world nations have. It will be obvious to everyone that our dispatity between rich and poor is worse than anyone could have belived.
>^^<
I actually have to disagree. While I think it's likely the previous economic freedom granted to the middle class will become more and more debt-oriented, I liken living in America (or the much of the developed world) to being a house slave instead of a field hand. We all still technically have the same voting power as the rich, and one of the ways they've learned to prevent outright rebellion is to give us just enough table scraps and freedoms (or illusions of freedom) to keep us complacent. I think the rich elite in this country is too bright to throw that mechanism of control away. Heck, most of the reforms they've consented to were done in the name of market stability and preventing worker uprisings so they aren't in danger of losing their wealth.
I also sort of wince at your comments, because having been to developing nations, the poorest person in this country is just so much better off than individuals in the developing world. We'd have to fall a long, long ways to get there. There is no way our problems, as bad as they'll get, will ever get to the point of having to walk miles upon miles a day for polluted drinking water only to die of intestinal parasites. There'd have to be a complete collapse of our economic system that even leaves the ultra-rich broke for that to happen.
Things may get worse, but I'll continue to be extremely grateful I live in a country where even the homeless still aren't likely to be counted among the billions who live on less than a dollar a day.
And our government (both parties) have had plenty of experience in creating this exact scenario the world over.
Have you looked out on the street lately??? Tent cities, vagrants, the homeless everywhere. It's not lookin too pretty.
Not having a home or enough food is pretty similiar everywhere, but you are correct that in some locations there more fallback resources.
But then again few nations expect people to work so many hours just to be in endless debt.
In most nations the above scenario is reserved for the lowest underclass in the USA it is standard or the middle class.
Pitchforks?!
Hell! The peasants need GUILLOTINES!
Amen? Um, Guillotines are resource heavy. Machetes would serve the same purpose, though I understand they don't always power through the first time. Some peasants might regard that as advantage. In the meantime, I have the knitting out.
Raydelcamino
Your trenchant point is driven home most effectively and persuasively by British writers Richard Wilkinson's and Kate Pickett's book The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger.
Great book. I highly suggest it.
Yes! I, too, have been urging a General Strike. If the 99% (or even a substantial portion of us) bring things to a halt, the 1% will begin to realize that they DO need us.
But I fear things must get much worse for most USans to participate in such an action.
Identifying, then boycotting the war profiteers, including all their subsidiaries, would also be useful.
The political system - all three federal branches plus state and local ones - no longer works for anyone but the 1% and their planet-raping corporations, so it is up to us to withdraw as much support as we can from that murderous system.
VP,
I don't have the answer but I've been pondering a general strike also. What I can see is that we have some real issues to work out before anything like this can be attempted. Here's what I've come up with so far. Would appreciate your response.
General Strike
What would be the goal(s) of a general strike? Sounds simple enough, doesn't it? Stop and actually think about it and the answer is actually not so simple.
Would the goals be purely economic? Would it include halting the ongoing wars? Would the demands include restoring our civil liberties that have been eroded or taken away in the name of fighting terrorism? Would we demand that the Bankers and Wall Street Barron's be held financially and criminally responsible for the financial meltdown? To hold those responsible for these prisoner abuses and torture criminally accountable?
Would we hold a short one or two day general strike as a show of what the nation's workers could do or would we hold out until all or most the demands are met?
Then we also have the practical issues to address. At the top of the list would be the fact that the vast majority of the population does not have the self sufficiency to survive for more than a few days, possibly a few weeks, without buying food or other necessities such as medicines.
In far too many cases people are literally living paycheck to paycheck. While some bills or expenses can be put off, many others can not - food and medicine for instance. Then we have the problem of those living paycheck to paycheck falling into a financial hole they won't be able to easily climb out of.
A general strike, especially one that is protracted, would effect the working class as much (or more) than those whom such a strike is directed at. Many of the ultra wealthy can either do without the services of the working class (at least for a longer time) or else they can simply leave the nation.
Another large issue to address would be how do we ensure that essential workers can still perform their jobs. We do have jobs that would still need doing unless we ourselves are willing to cause physical injury or death. Intensive care physicians and nurses, paramedics, power plant operators (power is needed for trauma centers, nursing homes, dialysis patients, etc.).
It has been suggested that police and firefighters participate in a general strike, but is that truly desirable? Would our nation's criminals also go on strike or would they take advantage of the lack of police presence? While I don't believe we would see an arson wave, our firefighters are also our emergency responders to vehicle accidents and other such emergencies.
Something I haven't seen discussed anywhere is how to handle strike breakers? I grew up in the sixties raised by blue collar union workers and was taught that one should never cross a picket line for any reason. Over the years since, it seems that fewer and fewer people have ever been taught this simple lesson. Workers should never undermine their fellow working man (or woman).
I can't tell you how many working people I've seen cross an active picket line to patronize a business thereby undermining the position of the workers. During a general strike I don't see how this would be any different. After decades of anti-union talk from our politicians and the nation's media, we now have a vast number of working people who are actually anti-union themselves.
Throughout history, successful labor uprisings have also hinged on the fact that the workers, and their supporters, also looked down upon those who would cross a picket line either to work or just patronize the business. While historically this has also included violence it doesn't necessarily have to. Public shame and social ostracism would have to be a tool striking workers are willing to use - even to the point of breaking longstanding friendships.
Since not only a general strike is against the law, but most public workers are prohibited by law from striking at all, without overwhelming public support for such a strike those who engage in a strike or are deemed leaders of the strike could see not only their jobs in jeopardy, but find themselves in serious legal trouble.
Lastly, we should realize that if the nation's workers actually engage in a general strike, then it really is an all or nothing proposition. There really will be no turning back - either the workers prevail and real changes are made or the opposition will rightfully realize that the working population has no power to stop them.
“The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles,” Stiglitz concludes, “but there is one thing that money doesn’t seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late.”
LOL, (in a vary sad way) so true! In just one year we have had one of the largest oil spills, and one of, if not the largest radiation spills ever. When the rich eat their expensive sushi, or fancy salads in their fancy 5 star restaurants, they are eating traces of crude oil, Corexit, heavy metals, and radiation just like the rest of us. I wonder what all the Koch suckers out there think about that, if they think at all?
I supposed they can ignore it, be in denial, hire think tanks to tell everyone including them that all is good. But none of that matters. Statistically they are at the same risks of cancer and other diseases that we are. Sure they have access to better health care, but in some cases that just means suffering longer as you desperately try to hold on to what has become a miserable life for a few more weeks, or months.
So all you Senators and lobbyists I hope you all enjoy your tainted buffets at your upcoming fund raisers. Every year you roll back environmental protections YOUR food, air, and water, becomes just a bit more tainted just like ours does.
Bon Appetit to all you SOBs!
Thank you for saying that, NC-Tom.
Stiglitz isn't so much referring to oil spills, or nuclear blowups.
He is (obliquely) referring to revolutions.
" Any ideology that needs to attack
the thing that least threatens it
is an ideology that will not
outlive its own generation.
Inclusion, gentlemen, not
exclusion, is the key to survival."
- ST. JOHN -
from the 1992 Movie THE POWER OF ONE
It's Grasshoppers and Ants baby! Grasshopper and Ants! The Ants need to get off their asses.
"... but there is one thing that money doesn’t seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late.”
The fundamental truth that all living things that share this planet are interconnected, and that all the human beings on the planet are interconnected to a much greater degree, must be suppressed at all times for the capitalists to plunder without resistance. As the elite capitalists strive to suppress this idea, they even manage to convince themselves, possibly quite unintentionally, of its invalidity. And from that their fate is sealed, along with that of the rest of us.
As one of the more famous victims of a long ago elite once uttered. "Father forgive them for they know not what they do." But, do they truly know not? Or was he really saying they prefer not to know? I know some of "them" and what I've heard and seen I tend to believe it's the latter.
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it." Upton Sinclair
And one can substitute "his income" for "his job" and it works quite well here.
It does not matter if they know or prefer not to know.
The environment, (nature,) speaks last.
You can only pour oil, radiation and other poisons into the habitat before your mansion in the Grand Caymens has poisoned water.. Moving to a "nicer" place away from all the wars for resources only works up to a point.
Unless they plan on moving to Mars, and soon, Barack Obama's children will pay for his decisions to ignore the obvious.
Just this week, a record number of storms swept through the US. It doesn't matter if you live in the top one percent or not. Storms don't care.
Obama said he was going to reverse course. He said we were on a train about to hit a wall with the environment and he was going to change course, making this a top priority. He said we would have investment in renewable energy. We would have new technologies rebuilding the crumbling infrastructure.
Instead we have oil, coal, gas and nuclear, and he's ignored the wall.
Doesn't matter. Nature does not care. A storm does not care. Radiation does not stop at the door of the top one percent and turn around.
The question is, "Do we care?" Obama has just opened his campaign to retain his position as our President---well, not really OUR President but the President of the corporations. And do we care? Here we are without a pitchfork, or a job or many of us are without a home and all of us have given up on hope---we know we are screwed. We looked in vain for any change and now the PR people will spend billions on the boob tube to get us to buy their line again.
Want more of the same? Is is only going to get worse, much worse, if you voters stick with either of the political parties funded by, and working for, the richest people in our nation.
The real sad part is voting doesn't count anymore. Those wonderful computer voting machines took care of that. As we save up to buy those pitchforks, we need to get out and demonstrate so that we can see how many of us there are and gain strength by that knowledge -- as well as to frighten the top boys that we are a danger to them.
We just passed the anniversary of the day that Martin Luther King Jr. was killed with government involvement because he started to scare the big boys. As long as he talked about his dream for the little children going to school together, he was not a threat--but when he was joining with Malcolm X planning a Poor People's March on Washington and he spoke the truth of the war; they killed him. We, the people must pick up his banner and fight back!! Austerity NO! Tax the rich and end the wars!
Get out on the streets and frighten the big boys. Or vote for hope and change again and get more of the same. Doing the same thing over and over and getting the same result is insane.
Don't vote corporate!! Turn of the TV and get out on the streets. Turn off the computer too, for a bit. All those email petitions are of no purpose. Makes you feel like you are doing something---but you are not. Do something real, with or without the pitchfork.
Where can we find US made pitchforks? We'll also need some way to disable the heat ray weapons ... I was never a fan of David Koresh; but don't forget what happened with his little fight with the Feds. All some cop has to do is say there's a meth lab in someone's house, and the hounds, tear gas, and tanks will be unleashed.
You're right! Pitch Forks against machine guns, just arent great odds. Lookup WW1 to verify this!
>^^<
a small stone worked quite well for David........
i've never had to fight such a great big man
just gimme a stone and I'll do what I can
we'll see how he laughs when i put out his eye
there he'll fall and there he'll die
so someone gimme a stone, gimme a stone!
A stone that i can hold, a stone that I can throw
someone gimme a stone, gimme a stone!
GIABO!
victory always looks unachievable UNTIL it happens ALL OF A SUDDEN
these predators will get theirs soon is my guess.................
When you grow up being brainwashed into believing you live in the greatest country in the world and you identify with the world's most powerful military as it starts wars against weak opponents all over the world you feel unbeatable unless you are in the minority of Americans who do not worship violence. Now as the wealthy elites through their puppets in congress are getting greedier people still believe they can rely on the democratic party to defend them so they do not revolt but instead invest in this corrupt party and president. There is still a far greater danger of a dramatic turn towards a theocratic dictatorship than there is of a serious revolt in favor of social justice because racism, right wing religion and general ignorance are so pervasive they outweigh all other considerations.
An old Indian told me once that the earth would one day "rise up and shake the fleas
off her back"
The problem with amerikan sheeple is that they really really believe that they will
one day be rich and there for do not wish to do anything that will mess up their future.
How you going to educate a society that is that stupid, yes stupid is the only word that
fits..
And to quote a great Amerikan "stupid is as stupid does"
Forrest Gump's mama would surely appreciate that!
Very well said. I have to say that we can have all the guns and pitchforks ready to take aim but unless all that is being directed towards the right targets, we still lose in this class war.
I used my pitchfork yesterday to spread mulch on new garden beds. It is the second most used tool/weapon, only to a shovel.
They fight dependence on the corporate system.
All true, but this must be about the 800th time I've read this article, in a few dozen variations. How much longer must we be reminded of these things before we figure out what sort of ACTION to take to redress all our accumulated grievances? If all we're ever going to do is compare complaints, embellish our collective outrage and lament what these bastards have done to the world, then they have won, even if they have to physically suffer with everyone else in the form of cancers and other debilitations from the environment they've destroyed. At least they'll have the comforts of knowing they have top shelf health care, while goons like Paul Ryan dismantle Medicare so the rest of us can go hang. When do we finally begin to move against these fucking monsters?
It doesn't matter who we vote for... a Democrat or Republican gets in every time!
see, so with you, the republicans have won, because they seek to have the democrats viewed as no differrent from them with all voters except right wingers
but do you really think democrats would eliminate collective bargaining as soon as they got in power??
Do the peasants need pitchforks or proper information and some basic smarts?
Look at this argument. Why is it that Germany, with the 4th largest economy in the world and 80-90 miilion people can ALL enjoy top rated health care, fantastic public education right through terrific techincal colleges, social security, paid vacations of 4 weeks at least and so on on the SAME per CAPITA income as America? Why is it that there are no convulsions there such as those happening in the US now? Why is there labour peace with labour reps sitting on every board of directors?
Why is it that they they produce the best products so that they are a bigger exporting powerhouse than China? How did they manange to assimilate a huge, underdeveloped country of 25 million - - East Germany-- about only 20 years ago and have brought up its standard of living to nearly comparable level as West Germany? And all by democratically sanctioned massive wealth transfers from West to East!
How is it that they do not have perrenial budget deficits, but recently bailed out large areas of Europe with nearly a $Trillion Euros?
It is therefore clear from this example that the economic/fiscal problems in the US are solvable - - EASILY-- by the German model. Then why is there a surfeit of stupidity at the highest levels of government in the US, from the President on down through Congress and to State levels as in Wisconsin? Why are the American masses so incredibly stupid, ill-informed and also quite brutish and sort of cave-men like, in thinking and, as is now increasingly evident, even in appearance?
So here is a fantastically succesful developed LARGE country AND ECONOMY- - Germany - - having a great social democratic value system, running a spectacular capitalist country, but with a large dose of humanistic ethos. And in stark contrast to it we have this behemoth country - - USA -- with 10 times more natural resources and land area-- perennially trying to genocide the poor, the weak, the disabled, the elderly, blacks, indigenous peoples, now latinos, and hoist extremist Christian religion on everybody, especially women who are pregnant?
To me this is a mystery. I don't believe that the masses are misled by the MSM on this basic comparison between Germany and the USA. They could be obtained in a two page download from numerous public sources. So it must be that the American masses are self-destructive in the extreme. Never seen anything like what is happening this year in Congress and in states with Rethug governors. And the totally UNNECESSARY wars that the masses in their yahoo impulsive moments give thumbs up and then cry when the war bills start stealing food from their kids mouths,
My insitinct tells me that what Scheer is saying - - pitchforks - - will prove dangerous. The Murkan peasants are so dumb that they will hoist each other on the pitch forks.
What can one do about America? Sigh.
Exactly right. Very well said. MSM and our pathetic educational system are jointly responsible for the many decades of brainwashing that have effectively disabled Americans' critical thinking skills to the point of near non-existence.
The lead article here today is about how fewer Americans now have a positive reaction to the notion of "free markets," having at least perhaps begun to see through that pernicious canard. But this is like so many other issues of national, political and economic importance. It's often pointed out that most Americans come down on the progressive side on most issues, taken issue by issue. But they never seem to put any of this together into a coherent perspective on how things are actually run. They can sound like radical leftists on specific issues, but they tend to flock to tea parties or rally around rightwing populists like Rand Paul when it comes to expressing a general political will.
This can all be attributed to very deliberate and conscious propagandizing constantly churned out by corporate media, and echoed in most of our "educational" system. If they think Wall Street is getting away with highway robbery, and yet "don't trust" government to provide us with a fair healthcare system, such as single-payer, Americans are hopelessly addled. Corporate media have totally won this battle.
So was this budget fiasco only another diversion tactic while "Iraqi President Jalal Talabani (R) receives US Defense Secretary Robert Gates at the presidential palace in Baghdad on April 7, 2011... [when] Months before the United States is due to complete its withdrawal from Iraq, Washington has launched a campaign to prolong its presence in the country." ???
"
Its starting to look that way......surprise .
REASON: I like your post, however, if doesn't explain WHY Germany has this mindset. The answer is that having experienced war first hand, it has decided NOT to invest in it, and therefore all of its enterprising engineering efforts can be directed at things that actually make for a better society.
Years ago I asked a cartoonist to present the following caricature:
A Nazi in uniform has a gun pointed at the head of a mechanic as he tunes up an engine. The caption reads, "From a long line of excellence in German engineering..."
The ENLIGHTENED warrior understands the benefits of peace, not war. In America, with its citizenry never having experienced the footprint of a direct enemy (or the lingering scars of warfare), that enlightenment is woefully missing. We know that 50% of our nation's budget is still directed at militarism, armaments, more weapon development, and caring for those damaged by wars. It's an INSIDIOUS system that serves no one.
It dawned on me that in a sense, Hiroshimo's Revenge, and/or karmic blowback is taking shape as the winds carry the detritus from the horrific Japanese nuclear plant meltdown right to one of our nation's key agricultural zones.
Truly, what goes around comes around. However, enlightenment can and does happen. Of course in a nation where mass culture, "leaders," Media/Hollywood, and even religion! teaches the glory of war, and uses an enemy-driven ethos, bringing the higher awareness to the public is made all the more difficult.
You nailed it. But let me go further. Germans value their vibrant democracy and participate fully in it. Why? They experienced and participated (knowingly or unknowingly) in one of the darkest chapters of human civivilization: extreme fascism, the Nazi era, and the holocaust. Their post-war shame and guilt led them out of this ugly era and into forging a society that they could be proud of.
Yes, you're right, the American citizen has not experienced the widespread devastations of warfare in their backyards (Pearl Harbor & 9/11, though shocking, were "contained" events). What they are (sadly) on the brink of experiencing is their own "German episode" of political tyranny, fascism, enslaving economic oppression, and yes, genocide on its American soil. It may unfortunately be the only way for them to emerge---as the Germans have---into a truly wise civilization. Sometimes a people will evolve into the light only after they've gone through darkness.
I'm with you, mostly...but think you've missed a point - which might be a chance for more discussion...
"America, with its citizenry never having experienced the footprint of a direct enemy (or the lingering scars of warfare)'
1860-1865. My family lived in Tennessee - and left us records of what life was like under occupation
Great comment. Also, let me add that In germany, by law, every corporation board is mandated to have 50% representing LABOR! That's how the good ol' boy network of CEO's (aka interlocking directorates) are refrained from manipulating stock prices through worker layoffs, etc.; there is a counterforce present against any greedy, or destructive decisions. They (labor & management) work together to advance the realistic and wise interests of their company.
American are so stupid they will sit on the pitchforks trying to figure out what to do. Actually people in the so called poor countries are better equipped to live through hard times because they do it all the time. Perhaps the most impressive persons I've ever met were; a one legged farmer in the Blue Mountains of Jamaica and the only thing he wanted was a small portable radio to listen to when he was working his field. Another, a disabled beggar that I would give all my change to whenever I encountered him. He lived around a market in Kingston, Jamaica and the women vendors kept him living by giving him food. All done without the fanfare of the pretend christians in the USA who proclaim their godliness on TV trumpeting their own generosity, all the while begging for money, calling their begging as "giving" and their gimme 10% chant.The Jamaican beggar, dressed well worn clothing had dignity and all the phony TV preachers not only don't have a thread of dignity, they don't even know what dignity is. The farmer also had dignity, in fact dignity is plentiful in poor countries and doesn't exist in the USA, especially by the self professed leaders of government, business and religions.
Very good argument reasonisreligion:
"Germany...having a great social democratic value system, running a spectacular capitalist country, but with a large dose of humanistic ethos." I guess all we can do is hope that the majority of people in this country come to accept the fact that American greed has come near to destroying everything and that we are all dependent upon each other and the earth in order to unite for the common good for all upon this earth.
Visiting Professor, Ephraim, Sioux Rose, SocJustice4all, pavroviandog, fusion, bogi666.
I am replying to y’all’s interesting discussion comments posted in response to my post by replying to myself. I hope some of you can revisit this discussion even though it is now April 8, two days after CD has moved on with another batch of ten or so articles a day, scattering the attention span of readers and commentators. This knowledgeable discussion is valuable; it cannot get to the a Eureka moment for the discussants to strike upon solutions based on the concrete examples of Germany and other North European countries such as Scandinavia. Germany was just an example and not an exception in that group, a point that will become important as I attend to the important discussion points.
Perhaps the major point several people raised was that Germany learnt the lessons of fascism by suffering a devastating war as a consequence of adopting Nazism; and that it emerged chastened from that wreckage as an enlightened, humanistic people with a progressive social democracy. (All in a span of just 25 years ( 1945-1970)?). Also, it is argued that the American people have not had a similar searing war experience. Thus we cannot expect Americans to achieve the humanization of the Germans. Some even argue that America would have to experience similar fascism/war to realize a German-type humanistic, social democratic soul awakening.
Truth be told, I have for years often heard this argument by American intelligentsia. At first, before Ronnie Raygun, I was somewhat persuaded by it. Especially knowing that were it not for the Marshall Plan, most of destroyed Europe would have quickly sunk into abject despair and joined the totalitarian Soviet Empire. But now older, wiser, and more knowledgeable, I find that argument as a disguised American liberal-progressive apologetic for the benighted American people, who are child like blank slates with hearts of gold but misled by the MSM and kept ignorant of the facts. In this day and age of the Internet, that meme is a soporific to the liberal-progressive conscience. Actually, I remember from my Professor days in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, around the dot com bust, the MSM - - Business Week, News Week, CNN, the Econmist - - ran large, urgent and action demanding cover and top stories on INEQUALITY in America with dire warnings of economic/social malaise to follow. Germany was held up as a prime COUNTER example of little inequality and excellent capitalist performance.
So I started with Germany only as an example because it is a very large economy with nearly 90 million people and so comparable to the US. Plus it is capitalist, and an exporting juggernaut to boot. The Japanese Lexus from Toyota could not catch up to the engineering of a BMW, even today after nearly 20 years of trying with billions spent in R&D. That Germany is capitalist country that produces industrial products that are generally of higher quality than the US is a function of the superb education German youths are given free of charge up to their first degree or Technical diploma at their superbly run, staffed and equipped Polytechnics. America had that under the FDR GI bill up till 1965. It is difficult to believe that this very meticulous attention to the scientific knowledge base of the German masses is an outcome of the people feeling war guilt or humanism. In fact the CONVERSE is true. Germans became less religious and more aware of the potential of science and technology for BOTH public good AND for private enterprise. That realization also sparked the REORGANIZTION of the German work place following the Swedish model of labour/management cooperation ( see Pavriondog) which was put into law above the protests of the Krupp and others. Fact is Germans had enlightened leaders such as Willi Brandt and not necessarily enlightened masses. Plus the doddering old generation, which typically tends to be regressive and authoritarian, was decimated in the war. The support for Willie Brandt and others came from the generation that was born AFTER the war.
In contrast Britain also experienced war first hand, much more so than America. But Britain produced Margret Thatcher and Thatcherism, the model for Reaganism. It seems that fascist, retrograde thinking is the hall mark of the English speaking world today. Canada under Stephen Harper, with Australia and New Zealand under fake “labour” or “social democrats” Obama style are even worse Reaganites. They want to dismantle their social democratic public health care and education. It seems that the fascist disease is, factually speaking, the plague in ENGLISH SPEAKING western world, not Europe.
Instead of Germany, I could have given the example of Sweden which never has experienced any war after it CONSTITUTIONALY went off the war grid 150 years ago under the kingship of an ex-general from Napoleon’s Army – Count Bernadotte. I didn’t give that example because I have tried it before. It meets another meme apologetic that Sweden is ethnically homogeneous (not any more), it has a small population (10 million ?), blah, blah.
The war chastening argument can also be pushed only so far. Look, Japan suffered as much, perhaps more destruction (Hiroshima/Nagasaki), than Germany. They also got American aid and an American occupation government to boot that imposed a no-war constitution on the Japanese. But I didn’t give that as an example since in my estimate Japan is still a semi-fascist country ruled by the Samurai gangster class. It is an EXTREMELY male-dominated, caste conscious society. The position of women in Japan is horrible. South Korea is even worse.
As for MSM corruption, have you seen the RW Der Spiegel? Germans take it in stride.
We need to chew on the German/Scandinavian example much more. So I would love to continue this discussion here or in another thread as a sustained effort at solution to the American malaise.
VP
I am not dismissing the fact that the MSM in America is a worse propaganda machine for the rich oligarchy than Pravda and Izvestia in the former Soviet Union. In fact, I believe it was some Soviet leader (Gorbachev?) who made the comment that the US polity is the most brainwashed society he had ever seen, worse than the Ruskies under Communism at the time. And Chomsky and others have argued quite cogently how consent for terrible actions such as war is manufactured in the US MSM.
What I am questioning is whether the causality of the incredible level and deeply embedded ignorance and anti-human nastiness of at least 40% of the American masses, especially the vocal, militaristic, capitalistic and jingoistic self-proclaimed born again Christian, 90% of whom are white, Southern or Midwestern can be pointed to the MSM media alone. I believe the case to be otherwise if you consider the following reasoning.
1. The inability to reason things through and being abjectly submissive to authority that charachterizes this mass of people has other proven historical roots rather than the MSM. It is the Puritanical, especially the Evangelical Christian dogma that informs these 40% masses. There are hundreds of historically sound documents that vouch for this claim. A very informative book just published ( 2011) on this very religio-fanatic character of the American people is by Timothy Beal who is the Florence Harkness Professor of Religion at Case Western Reserve University. Beal grew up in a fundamentalist household in Anchorage Alaska as he describes in his book. Apparently he is an award winning author of several books. But this is the first book by him that I picked up from the local library recently and just having read the first 70 or so pages sent a chill down my spine. The book title: "The Rise and Fall of the Bible". I will cite just a few chilling facts from the book.
FACTS: The American Bible Society, modelled after the British Bible society was founded by and financed "primarily Christian Businesssmen who made their money in the emerging fields of insurance and banking."[So much for the canard of a Jewish Bankster conspiracy]. He continues that the American Bible Society followed the "latest industrial business models and was quick to adopt new innovations in the print industry" which led to tremendous success in fulfilling its mission" to distribute (Gideon's) bibles "without note or comment" to the masses, millions of them on the farms and in small and large towns. The millions of members of this Protestant society "fervently believed [Bible] to be THE ONLY WAY to save American society." Further "At the heart of the biblical fundamentalist movement was BIBLE STUDY, a small group of people that gathered in someone's house or at lunch break for Bible reading, sharing and prayer." Then in the "aftermath of the Scopes trial[anti-Darwinian evolutionary theory], fundamentalism lost much ot its former respect..." but "by the late 1940's it REEMERGED in the form of 'NEO-EVANGELISM', a MEDIA SAVVY parachurch movement that saw American popular culture as its mission field....Central to neo-evangelism was the Youth for Christ movement" in the late 1960's and 1970's which, in trying to seduce the educated youth morphed into the "Christian entertainment industry" that I believe in retrospect was instrumental in the victory of Ronald Reagan. The flagship of this movement was a new, more hip Bible called "The Way: The Living Bible Illustrated", which was first published in 1972 by a fellow called Kenneth N. Taylor publishing himself with his wife as "Tyndale House." It was a jaw-dropping success in the so called enlightened America of the 1970's. "It was the New York Times nonfiction bestseller in both 1972 and 1973. In 1983, Taylor presented the 28 MILLIONTH copy to Ronald Reagan in commemoration of the Year of the Bible. As of 1996, the Living Bible had sold 40 MIILION copies."
Why is all this so important. Beal says that for fundamentalsit Christians like his Mom and Dad, and he ,himeself while young, the Bible was the WORD OF GOD plain and simple against which there was NO INTELLECTION as to how an individual, family and society ought to live their lives. The authority for that was first the Bible itself and secondly the preachers such as Billy Graham and others.
2. Along with this biblical fervour is an ingrained bias against intellectuals and intellectual knowledge especially science. There is MASSIVE coverage of science in the MSM and in popular print outlets including glossy science magazines and TV shows. Sci -Fi entertainment shows such as Star Trek have been tremendous and lasting popular hits. So the inveterate ignorance of large part (40%) of the American masses cannot be laid at the doorstep of the MSM but on this inherent bias towards wilful ignorance. Such traits can be seen in Muslim and Hindu societies, or in Sub-Saharan Africa informed by Evangelical and Catholic Christianity and fundamentalist Islam. America, and secondly English speaking countries such as Canada, Australia and even Britain one sees anti-intellect and anti-education fervour. In Britain it is slightly less because of the civilizing influence of Continental Europe.
I can continue with one more causal factor - - innate anti non-white, primal and purely skin based, racism [superbly concealed with tokens like Obama] of the largely white Tea Party and Conservative Republican party and their financiers such as the Kochs, Waltons and Amway and others. One does not see such racism in Bill Gates for instance.
So to sum up, the use of MSM as a convenient scapegoat for all the ills afflicting the American mass psyche is to me at best a slogan and at worse leaves the progressives unprepared for the 100 million or so, very brute-force oriented, Midwest and Southern religio-fanatic and anti-intellect masses that drive the political agenda in the US. That is my reasoning.
Visiting Prof: You are being dismissive of my arguments and reasoning without providing substance to your hypothesis about the MSM and the otherwise saintliness of the American people, who would be saints if only the media (which ones?) did their job according to the specifications of the American liberal class.
The religious brainwashing point which I made with extensive documentation from a very reliable, recent source -- you are rather quickly dismissing without any counter-evidence. Poll after poll shows that among the industrialized countries, the US is the most fanatically religious. The total number of hardcore fundamentalist Christian and born again Americans in the wide and deep swath of the country outside the two coasts and parts of the northern tier, namely the Midwest and South, is about 100 million, nearly 33% of the total. It is violently militaristic with reasoning-dead brains. There has never been any time in the history of the US that that part of the country has not been religious, fascist and genocidal (millions of blacks and native Americans will tell you a thing or two about that).
You are being dismissive of brainwashing without scientific evidence to the contrary. We know now from the latest research in neuroscience that brainwashing of this kind over centuries of a closed knit people not open to outside influence produces irreversible changes in brain structure which "education," the miracle hope of liberal dreamers, cannot undo. For example there are tens of thousands of doctors, fully trained in biology and physiology, among these 100 million who cannot overcome their race prejudice based on purely skin and facial feature biology. Plus they are firm believers in Christian cosmology and creationism. Liberals like to put forward the "cultural" argument. But the fact of the matter is that this is a personal sanity-preserving denial mechanism for liberals, not logical explanation for that prejudice. At any rate, if this level of education cannot overcome knee jerk biological negativity against the other, or even unreasonable cultural antipathy, what do you expect media to do to de-brainwash the USA Christian fanatic?
Muslims and Hindus have the same problem.
To summarize, the Enlightenment in Europe did not take hold among the American masses largely because of Christian fanaticism and partly because of Calvinist anti-intellectualism and worship of capitalism. America is made up of two distinct parts. One is incorrigibly regressive and the other reasonably progressive. Since you belong to the latter class, there is a tendency to look at your American compatriots with a lot of paternailistic indulgence. I have lived with Muslim and Hindu fanatics and I can tell you that the best cure for humanity is the Enlightenment, religionless humanism and the elimination of male brute-force hegemony over the last 1 million years. The MSM has recently (since about 1994) become this infantile in the US. Also, courtesy of Rupert Murdoch, other parts of the English speaking world are increasingly resembling the intellectual wilderness of AmriKKKa. But so many alternative sources of information have become available, also in the last 10-15 years as a result of the Internet, that the hard-core liberal-progressive part of America (about 30-35 % of the population) has made use of it to become informed.
So in sum, you are making not an argument but repeating a mainstream liberal trope.
So where can I download this 'pitchfork' app?
Snark snort!