Last edited Sat Oct 13, 2012, 08:02 PM - Edit history (1)
1984 = 2004 was a bumper sticker where I live now. In the progressive era that I grew up in,
1984 was a warning. To the GOP and FOX, it's their handbook. In the 1990s, as the current crop of cable propagandists were hired, there was not one technique left unused from that book.
But the roots are deeper, all the way back the
Business Coup that failed, which might not fail now, and the strategy applied by the Koch family. Left and right agitation with conspiracy theories woven in. I don't buy the CT world view, even though there are glimpses of truth. I listened to their support of the
Libertarian Party and the
John Birch Society and knew the source, that showed the journey it was taking us on.
This is the bulk of the patriot, the Ron Pauls and Tea Party. The Koch family have had a long-term plan. I remember the actions of the Birchers before JFK was killed and their intense hatred of liberals. RFK, Jr. also noted their influence.
Now they, through their friends like Mitt and Bain, own the media, have decimated the flow of ideas under the name of freedom, having frustrated the purpose of the New Deal's FCC, to stop from having only one view expressed, the narrowing of communications from falling into the hands a few demagogues. The danger is more apparent daily.
It is almost impossible for people to say other than what they hear daily in every media venue. Some embrace the message fully, others who do not, but know better than to speak against it, as Voltaire said, '
It is dangerous to be right in matters where established men are wrong.'
That sentence has been misquoted to change if from the word
men to
government, no doubt by
Libertarians. Our form of
RW Libertarianism was trounced by Monbiot:
How Freedom Became Tyranny
by George Monbiot
Rightwing libertarians have turned “freedom” into an excuse for greed and exploitation.
Freedom: who could object? Yet this word is now used to justify a thousand forms of exploitation. Throughout the rightwing press and blogosphere, among thinktanks and governments, the word excuses every assault on the lives of the poor, every form of inequality and intrusion to which the 1% subject us. How did libertarianism, once a noble impulse, become synonymous with injustice?
In the name of freedom – freedom from regulation – the banks were permitted to wreck the economy. In the name of freedom, taxes for the super-rich are cut. In the name of freedom, companies lobby to drop the minimum wage and raise working hours. In the same cause, US insurers lobby Congress to thwart effective public healthcare; the government rips up our planning laws(1); big business trashes the biosphere. This is the freedom of the powerful to exploit the weak, the rich to exploit the poor...
http://www.monbiot.com/2011/12/19/how-freedom-became-tyranny/
Democrats still support of the poor, do not exalt the rich 'producers,' so they are called 'statists' and 'sheeple' who haven't gloomed onto to the BIG BAD conspiracy and aren't willing to accept the need for the Supermen and Individualists that will be necessary in bad times.
We've had these SOBs running things on and off throughout history. I believe we going into an age of technocratic rule, a combination of Huxley's
Brave New World (which was also part of the public school curriculum when I was growing up) and Orwell's
1984..
Various groups, the baggers, resist 'progressive' ideas in fear of this coming to pass by our wide acceptance of many things they think are more natural and to their mind, closer to the 'world as God intended it to be' or something to that effect. In the interest of disclosure, I am not a believer, I am a shameless treehugger. But it appears we are going there whether we like it or not and will have to shift for it. We can, however, or we hope, that we can make a more humane and sustainable future for coming generations.
Back to Orwell and the use of media and how it affects power. We have a media not controlled by the evil state, but by corporations. These same corporations advocate supporting oligarchs. There is a thread that pulls what the Koch family has done together here, well worth reading the transcript if one doesn't have time for the video:
Thom Hartmann: Conservative Millennials, Boomers & Libertarians all being Conned
http://www.democraticunderground.com/101744227
I do not accept the premise that in supporting Obama or the Democratic Party one is playing the game for power itself; as we have little power. We have not made a manifesto of selfishness and painted it with words that have been twisted to justify cruelty and hatred. We are in dangerous times and have a choice to make. Obama has tried to make the case for the kind of America many of us grew up in and the hope for equality reflected the idealism of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Howard Zinn, no matter how imperfectly.
It is not a game. Millions of dead show that to be true. And I'm just venting there, I do tend to whip these dead horses on occasion. Thanks for your thoughtful reply.
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