I sent out an email other day. One answer bothered me. I was asked not to send comments that made one person too angry.
I wonder what has happened to discourse in this country? When did we, as a nation, reach a point where we can not discuss the issues with which we disagree. When did honest discourse about difficult issues become war? I agreed to the request. I have a similar agreement with my brother, though the topic is different.
Why must we all march in lock step like good soldiers. Why can’t we disagree and still get along. The health care issue shows that point perfectly. The right has issued a stream of lies and distortions, organized their people, and sent them to Town Hall Meetings and Tea Bag Parties everywhere. I can not swing a dead cat, or click a button on my remote, without hitting some person who believes that a public option is socialism, Democrats are out to kill their grandma, and Obama was born in Africa. When did disagree about an issue become attempted murder of a persons ideas?
The American Medical Association has weighed in on the new Obama health care proposals.
The Allergists voted to scratch it, but the Dermatologists advised not to make any rash moves. The Gastroenterologists had sort of a gut feeling about it, but the Neurologists thought the Administration had a lot of nerve.
The Obstetricians felt they were all laboring under a misconception.
Ophthalmologists considered the idea shortsighted. Pathologists yelled, “Over my dead body!” while the Pediatricians said, “Oh, Grow up!”
The Psychiatrists thought the whole idea was madness, while the Radiologists could see right through it. Surgeons decided to wash their hands of the whole thing. The Internists thought it was a bitter pill to swallow, and the Plastic Surgeons said, “This puts a whole new face on the matter….”
The Podiatrists thought it was a step forward, but the Urologists were
pissed off at the whole idea. The Anesthesiologists thought the whole idea was a gas, and the Cardiologists didn’t have the heart to say no.
In the end, the Proctologists won out, leaving the entire decision up to the Assholes in Washington.
I’ve been watching “The Century of Self” by By Adam Curtis on youtube. It is a disturbing series about the way that Freud’s ideas were used by Bernays and others to control humans. This material is not entirely new. I’ve touched upon it in other blog entries “Capitalism, Media Ownership, and Change,” “Globalism – An Historical Fable,” and “Swimming in Cocytus….” Discovering this video, recommended highly by my SIL, has pushed my own ideas about humanity in new ways. The idea that we are driven by unconscious desires that can be manipulated by corporations to sell us things we don’t want and politicians to lead us to places we don’t want to go is disturbing. I have to ask, are we rational beings, irrational beings, or a strange blend of the two?
What this really did was to get me thinking about society, history, and humanity. Because Freud’s ideas were and are used to control what Americans want and believe, I began wondering about history as a whole. It appears, that all of history could be defined by looking at the way that cultures attempted to control people. The way Freud’s ideas are tied up with Democracy and Capitalism are really no different form the ideas of Imperial Britain, or Medieval France. People must be controlled, and so societies were engineered, often with no real idea that they were engineering societies, so that people could be controlled. Clearly that drive to control humans goes back to the beginning.
Our earliest ancestors, I hesitate to call the primitive because clearly their societies were as complex as ours, humans were managed in a different way. For most of our history, we evolved in small, exogamous groups that lived in balance with other species in nature. This, however, greatly limited population and left them prey to shifts in climate. As we moved to agriculture, a more stable source of food was found, but it required more work to control people. This has continued to the present time. The difference is that Freud and his family showed us how we could manipulate people to sell us things we don’t like and to create stable societies. What his has done is to change my very ideas about the nature of freedom. I am not yet entirely sure of where I am going, but my very ideas about our nation, our shared culture, are changing.
This morning, while dropping my kids off at summer camp, I heard the big economic news on NPR. This news is covered, also, on the Washington Post, European, and Asian News Sources. Japan Joins Recent Wave Of Economic Expansion
Germany, France, and Japan are all in recovery with expanding economies. In this same period of time, the US economy continued to shrink by about 1%. I find it curious that countries those on the right like to call socialist and brand as inferior are recovering and showing growing economies when we continue to decline. Of course, those countries are not socialist and Conservatives would not recognize socialism if it bit their behinds. But countries that are willing to regulate banks and industries prove that regular monitoring of a economy is better for its health.
A few days back Georgia Congressman David Scott (D-Georgia) held a heated townhall meeting where opponents to Health-care Reform attacked him with the normal lies, misinformation, and unveiled threats fo violence. Today, they upped the hyperbole and showed that the same crowd opposing health-care (that being Republicans, Conservatives, and mindless neanderthals, and the Health Insurance Ponzi industry, mostly) upped the rhetoric by painting a Swastika on the Congressman’s sign at his office. Congressman Scott is black, and so these good old white racist Nazi’s have decided to use the tried and true method of white supremacists to try and terrorize him.
Last night I heard good news. Olberman Lambasted Bill O’Reilly and Fox news. What is good about that? Well, other than hearing someone say something about the Fox Propaganda outlet, it proved that a story “Voices From Above Silence a Cable TV Feud” was either grossly wrong or simply made up. I mean, I wouldn’t have been surprised if Corporations like Fox and GE colluded to remove some unflattering bit of information about their respective corporations. But I was disappointed. Now, I am not surprised that the New York Times (falsely accused of being a liberal news outlet) would print a story that has proven to be so wrong. But my happiness over hearing Olberman’s O’Reilly voice wins out.
Sad
For years, I have hung out at a virtual place on the web called “WrestoftheStory.” This wonderful community grew up in the aftermath of the 2006 Israeli/Hamas war. It became a place where we could hang out, talk, argue, and fight cosmic battles over the nature of the world we live in. I met great people like Spencer, Donna, Joe, Kathy, Lance, Mark, Senator Hatrack, Black Rain, Bryan, Al, Sandy, Martha, and way too many to name here. It has been one of the most valuable experiences of my life and changed me for the better. I did not always agree with these people. With some of them, the disagreements were epic. But as the Wrest closes its doors I find myself remembering all of them fondly. I will miss this place and I will miss those that I will never talk with again. May you all live long and prosper.
Say What?
From the Republican party has come the strategy to ship conservatives from around the country into town-hall meetings where Democrats are seeking to answer questions from their constituents. This originated in a leaked memofrom Robert MacGuffie. The right knows that a huge percentage of Americans want the health-care system fixed. Rather than try to put forth their own ideas or discuss rationally, Republicans and Conservatives have chosen to sell terror. This plan to ship in a tiny minority to terrorize those who disagree with them politically and make people think that they are actually large group goes back to 1921 and the formation of the Sturm Abteilung by Adolf Hitler. The people we see storming the town hall meetings are modern day brown-shirts, and that is the best thing I can say about them.
Of course, they call it a militia. Clearly, their attempt is to organized in a paramilitary fashion with the intention to destroy the United States and replace it with something from their own paranoid racist dreams.
Posted on Thursday, July 23, 2009 9:30:21 AM by dools007
It is about time those of us who believe in the 2nd Amendment to form our own “Militia Clubs”. These clubs would be comprised of local volunteers led by peers of their choosing. Individual units would not necessarily be formed by state or town. Militia Club members would be expected to adopt military organization and skills–and become proficient in them.
Thoughts anyone?
Interestingly, this parallels the militias set up under the Clinton administration that led to the Oklahoma City bombings. Are they looking for McVeigh
