tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32931256.post4529889719927002493..comments2024-03-22T05:20:44.167-07:00Comments on The Disaffected Lib: North America's North KoreansThe Mound of Soundhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09023839743772372922noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32931256.post-61631468386697260012012-08-26T15:33:25.875-07:002012-08-26T15:33:25.875-07:00Hey, Troy. Thanks for the links, both good reads....Hey, Troy. Thanks for the links, both good reads.<br /><br />America was the society that virtually defined "middle class" for the world - until Reagan came to power. Gradually the three great inequalities (wealth, income, opportunity) were ushered in again largely through government policy aimed at benefitting the richest at the expense of blue and white-collar Americans. That effected a huge transfer of not only wealth but the political influence that goes with it.<br /><br />How did the American public allow themselves to be so thoroughly hoodwinked? In part it resulted from working America being transformed into what Allan Greenspan called the "precariat." Fearful, enfeebled, insecure and angry people are pretty easy to manipulate.<br /><br />http://the-mound-of-sound.blogspot.ca/2012/05/chomsky-on-plutonomy-and-americas.html<br /><br />As Chomsky writes, the ascendancy of the Plutonomy has come to define the struggle for the survival of democracy itself in the 21st Century. And because of that we have to be really vigilant.The Mound of Soundhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09023839743772372922noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32931256.post-6418114371799963872012-08-26T15:09:30.729-07:002012-08-26T15:09:30.729-07:00I am reminded of Matt Tabbi's column from a fe...I am reminded of Matt Tabbi's column from a few years ago, "<a href="http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/04/14/americas-peasant-mentality/" rel="nofollow">America's Peasant Mentality</a>".<br />How did it come to exist, anyhow? Was it generations of under-funding to education and health-care in red states? It probably played a major role, yes. And there is also need to consider the decades, even centuries long role of propaganda that has been railing against unionism and socialism, and that has somehow managed to conflate liberalism and communism as the same.<br />And then there were the assassinations of leaders such as Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and Fred Hampton, and the recent discrediting of true liberal leaders such as John Edward and Elliot Spitzer. The former illustrates to people it's dangerous to be a populist activist working to change the government's behaviour from without, and the latter shows the US liberal class has no solidarity, because it was liberals who en masse abandoned those two, who were two of the too few examples in US politics willing to speak about class differences.<br />No, there is little to no hope to have about US politics or social change. It is a country, well done over by its rich and powerful.<br />I also gotta agree with <a href="http://www.ianwelsh.net/thank-god-for-our-enemies/" rel="nofollow">Ian Welsh's assessment</a> of the liberal leadership class in the US, "This entire generation of leadership on what passes for the left is beyond contemptible."<br />The people who call themselves American are truly those who are willing to 'live on their knees', as Ian Welsh illustrates. I'd even state that our cousins down south are even willing to 'crawl on their bellies' for their masters.Troyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10759047914577194212noreply@blogger.com