Madame Gracious,
You have shown us how clever are the
manipulators! The very ones they weaken
and subjugate they then call on to turn against those who might seek to improve
their position! The trick—perfected by
the propaganda and misinformation/disinformation/deception/deflection/diversion
bureaus of intelligence agencies, political offices, and corporations—is to
insert some truth, particularly one that resonates emotionally, and then infuse
the rest of the mono-message with irrelevant, contradicting, confusing, or
misleading tsunamis of “information.”
Santorum had a point, which he didn’t care to make but just use to
misdirect. The point—that there are
viable and good options besides college, which is true—was swallowed up by the
cynical manipulation for attempted political advantage. How our democracy suffers. Little is being demanded from either purveyor
or receiver! We remain “passive, mesmerized by the enticing shadows on the wall,
assured our tickets to success, prosperity, and happiness are waiting around
the corner.” (142)
Oh, Madame, we have the historical
references for much. We just either are
ignorant of them (often willfully, even exultingly), or don’t value them, have
no ability to process them, or even take all the wrong lessons from them!
We have yet to transform this
materialistic, consuming, sell, sell, sell, planned obsolescence, and obsessed with
constantly new/latest/updated brand of capitalism into something more
spiritually, emotionally, physically, environmentally, financially, and
societal-ly sustainable.
I agree with you on everything you have
written since I was away (if you require smelling salts at this point, I
understand, lol). And yes, Hedges would
make Socrates proud. Well, as proud as
Socrates could be of anyone, I suppose. :)
We have, in Hedges’s words, a government
“stripped of any real sovereignty…and we continue to place our faith in a
phantom economy, one characterized by fraud and lies, which sustains the
wealthiest…” We have a “corporate power
that holds the government hostage…purports to defend freedom, which it defines
as the free market, and liberty, which it defines as the liberty to exploit.” When the “house of cards collapsed…these
corporations needed to fleece the taxpayers (Prof’s situational synonym:
suckers) to survive. Making that process
even more insidious, the real sources of power remain [largely] hidden [and
unaccountable]. Those who run our
largest corporations are largely anonymous to the mass of the citizens…and they
have the means to hide and to divert us from examining the decaying structures
they have created.” (143)
Because we have been conditioned to
react UNTHINKINGLY and wholly emotionally, the public is unable to learn
warnings from those whose names are spit like epithets:
Names like Marx, Engels, Lenin. Because we have been conditioned to embrace
capitalism WITHOUT QUESTION and to dismiss EVERYTHING ever uttered by those
three gentlemen who so severely critiqued capitalism. Since much or most of what they advocated
turned out badly (at least in the forms that developed or were perverted), we
are steered away from their warnings (even when they can heard in political
science, history, or philosophy, as they have been forcibly muted). Hedges reminds us, however: “As Karl Marx
understood, capitalism when it is unleashed from government and regulatory
control is a revolutionary force.” (143)
Again, dear readers, who would want us
to not know the man’s words, to not realize that?
We are fond of condemning those around
the globe who are ignorant of their own religious texts or history, or who we otherwise
feel remain “backward.” Yet how much do
we really know about our capitalism, which has many of the marks of religiosity? And how can we be sure of what we know if we
do not even know what the classic critics have said about it? Indeed, if we hate and react emotionally to
things we have only been TOLD are the case but never read for ourselves, the
title of the best selling book should be revised to YOU, PAWN or YOU, SERF, or
YOU, SLAVE.
Lather, rinse, repeat. Socrates would not be very impressed at our “progress”
in 2500 years.
Thank you for yielding back the balance
of your unused paragraphs! I apparently needed them after all this time away! :)
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