For me, the pursuit of knowledge, the creation of art, will always tower above the extraction and accumulation of wealth. It’s not even in the same universe, morally, ethically, spiritually, etc. etc.

I find the former a great addition to the world and the latter a subtraction from it (at best).

So if I have to deal with “elitism” from either “camp,” I have that in the back of my mind.

Of course, it would be a thousand times better not to have elitism, period. A truly democratic spirit should permeate the arts and academia as well. Whitman comes to mind, as does Dewey. They weren’t “elitists” inside or outside the Humanities. And it’s just not a working formula for those of us left of center to even have the appearance of intellectual elitism. But it’s not really “dangerous” for a nation. Economic elitism, however, always is. Under the capitalist system, it tends to accelerate the creation of poverty, homelessness, inequality and wars well beyond the normal odious generation of those things.

“Talking down” to people about various intellectual matters? I may be missing something, but I can’t see how that leads to wars, environmental devastation, the surveillance state, the carceral state, mass inequality, etc. etc.

zn wrote:

JackPMiller wrote:

The problem with Trump’s comments to Trudeau is that British troops burned down the White House during the War of 1812. Historians note the British attack on Washington was in retaliation for the American attack on York, Ontario, in territory that eventually became Canada, which was then a British colony.

But, see, the difference was, America was just making the world safe for democracy.

The Canadians, in contrast (though admittedly they didn;t exist yet) were trying to take away our freedoms and impose sharia law.

If every American had a gun back then, none of this would have ever happened. Except of course the burning of Toronto (which at the time was mistakenly called “York”).

I had family in Toronto. They took me to Fort York when I visited. It’s still there now as it was then, for all the good it did.

__

Don’t forget, not just Sharia. But gay Sharia. And gay Marxist Sharia. Well, actually, it was gay, trans-gendered, Marxist Sharia.

For some reason that reminds me of this (my brain works in mysterious ways these days):

• This reply was modified 6 years, 5 months ago by Billy_T.

Have you seen this article, WV?

Here’s your lie factory at work, in the private sector. Amazing that our gubmint lets them get away with this:

Facebook Gave Device Makers Deep Access to Data on Users and Friends The company formed data-sharing partnerships with Apple, Samsung and dozens of other device makers, raising new concerns about its privacy protections. By GABRIEL J.X. DANCE, NICHOLAS CONFESSORE and MICHAEL LaFORGIA JUNE 3, 2018

Interesting video, and it passes the old “smell test.”

I’d love to see a similar study done of trajectories within a musician’s career. I’m betting it would find that most of them tend to start out with greater musical diversity and complexity, and their lyrics were superior in the beginning as well.

Bruce Springsteen comes to mind right off the bat. His first two or three albums had far richer textures, tonal diversity and complexity than his later albums, and he took more chances with his lyrics. Strangely enough, they seemed more “mature” than many of his later offerings — at least to me.

U2 strikes me as having a similar trajectory and loss over time, though they had a pretty good run through the 1980s. Bad Company as well (in the 1970s), though it happened faster with them. Perhaps just one great album, and a descent into pop.

Some artists hung in there longer than others. In my view, Cat Stevens made four great albums before he basically lost it, but the first two on that list — Tea for the Tillerman and Teaser and the Firecat — were richer lyrically, while the last of the four, “Foreigner,” took the most chances musically.

That study might stumble upon a few who never fell. I’d place Van Morrison in that group. He seems never to have lost his innovation, complexity, intelligence, etc. From beginning to end.

wv wrote:

nittany ram wrote:

So, msnbc has a story about a boy who raised $6000.00 with his lemonade stand to pay for his terminally ill brother’s medical bills. They reported it as an inspirational story.

However, the story’s not inspirational. It’s a tragedy and should be reported as such. It’s a tragedy because a family has to figure out a way to pay for the medical bills of a dying child. The horrible grief isn’t a big enough price to pay.

==========================

Yup. And that kind of story/dynamic is repeated on the corporate news, NON-STOP 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That kind of story/angle. Nonstop.

And YOU are a leftist. Leftists notice that instantly. Libruls dont see it.

w
v

Thing is, most Americans are one bad accident away from that kind of situation. I’m very lucky that I established excellent credit over the decades, or I’d be selling lemonade too. Most Americans aren’t so lucky.

But all of that could change easily next year. Deductibles go back to dollar one, and max yearly payout too. All bets are off if serious health issues continue into 2019.

It doesn’t get much attention in the MSM, but literally tens of millions of Americans are close to the edge right now (43% of the country, according to the United Way), and neither party is doing what’s necessary to fix it, to put it all too nicely.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 5 months ago by Billy_T.

wv wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

Both major parties, corporate America, the intel community, the Pentagon, etc. I’m just not really seeing how this is all that different from, or worse than . . . 50 years ago, with one caveat:

I think corporate lying has gotten far more sophisticated (and coordinated), and since the early 1970s,..

===============

Well the corporate component of the system is huge, I’d say. And I think its gotten worse as the Media has come under the control of fewer and fewer Corpse.

I also think the new technologies have helped the lie-factory. Except for the internet. And thats why, of course, the internet is coming under control of the Lie-Factory. At least they are trying. I wouldnt bet against them.

w
v

That makes sense. Fewer and fewer media companies, but far bigger and more powerful than ever before. They’ve become “too big to fail,” basically.

And now Sinclair has bought up almost every local news channel, and they’ve been caught recently spreading government propaganda about drinking water, the environment, covering for Scott Pruitt, etc. etc.

That’s dangerous because a lot of people, for some reason, tend to trust their local news folks but not the Networks.

I don’t trust any of them without corroboration, etc. etc. Which is where the Internet can really help.

Trust, lies. The thing that still baffles me is why so many people trust Trump and the GOP. I understand perfectly saying FU to the Dems. But it’s just not logical to choose Trump and the GOP as a champion of truth and anti-corruption. If the issue is a lack of trust for any political party, shouldn’t it be both of the majors? Or, if it’s “government” in general, both parties too?

• This reply was modified 6 years, 5 months ago by Billy_T.

. . .

• This reply was modified 6 years, 5 months ago by Billy_T.

wv wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

The conspiracy stuff drives me crazy. The political right has promoted some truly sick examples for generations, but some parts of “the left” are echoing these today and that needs to stopa…

——————-

Ok, but ask yourself how and why the conspiracy stuff has just taken off recently.
(or has it? seems like it has to me, but i dunno the history)

Seems to me, so many people are susceptible to conspiracy-stuff BECAUSE they have figured out they are being LIED to so much and so often by the official powers-that-BE.

To me, the conspiracy stuff is a SYMPTOM of something large and ugly that is wrong with the Corporotocracy.

A related issue is the anti-science stuff that is common now. People dont trust science-news.

Add it all up and eventually, it could mean the end of the biosphere as we know it.

Which would be a shame. It’d be a shame to lose the Orcas and Tapirs. If only we could just get rid of the humans.

w
v

WV,

You and I agree about the lying. But I think we may differ a bit regarding its recent acceleration. I don’t see that, really. I see the same forces spinning their BS, just like always. Both major parties, corporate America, the intel community, the Pentagon, etc. I’m just not really seeing how this is all that different from, or worse than . . . 50 years ago, with one caveat:

I think corporate lying has gotten far more sophisticated (and coordinated), and since the early 1970s, they’ve been supported to the nth degree by both parties. I’d say their lying has become a part of the woodwork so that Americans don’t even see it anymore, and with the collapse of “the left,” or a left that thinks in terms of class analysis, especially, there is almost no exposure of this any longer. We don’t have a modern day Frankfurt School, basically, going after this part of the nexus.

Which means our focus is almost entirely on political parties, government, intel, the FBI, etc. etc. And mostly just Dem versus Republican. Dumb versus Dumber.

The above is a thousand times necessary, of course, but I think we need to expand our view to include class, the economic system, how it actually owns the two parties, and needs to be held to account along with them.

(I’m not saying you. You’ve seen the Big Picture stuff for decades, likely well before I started to)

But, yeah. We need to keep the tapirs and the orcas.

waterfield wrote:

“So why do so many folks think this disgusting health-care system is just fine and dandy?”

I don’t know. Sometimes I think we look at everything from a political view when stuff can be fairly simple. IMO “so many folks” have their own physician that they favor for a variety of reasons. So the mention of single payer or universal care causes anxiety over the prospect of losing that personal relationship with their doc. I don’t think it has much to do with the bad guys propagandizing the good guys as much as we want it to.

As far as being selfish I again don’t think the bad guys have caused this. We are born selfish. The baby cries cause he or she wants something. Gimme gimme gimme-until they get it. As the baby gets older the movies, television, etc tells the individual its OK to “gather” stuff and it becomes a matter of entitlement and “what’s in it for me”. The key to having a more compassionate society is to “learn” how to be unselfish. The only way I know how that can be done is through parenting. And good luck with that. But the first thing that needs to be done is to stop blaming big government and the politics for all that ails us. That’s simply an easy answer. The difficult one is how to teach a parent who has been raised with a sense of entitlement to reverse that in their children. And that’s difficult because to do that one has to lead by example. But that’s hard as most of us would rather sit back and say its the smelly leftists or the reactionary right wing or capitalism or corporations or this or that -when the real answer is within themselves. Any change in the form of government or its leaders won’t matter a lick if the “people” have no sense of empathy toward those of less fortune.

Now enough of my soap box theories.

Waterfield,

A Single Payer system won’t take doctors away from patients. Quite the opposite. It will ensure they can continue to see them, while private insurance company after private insurance company says no to their claims.

And, no, we’re not born “selfish.” Science tells us we’re born with an innate sense of fairness and a desire to share, as studies of small children show again and again. Kids will loudly insist that toys and food are shared equally, and they actually have been observed getting angry when this is not the case.

This is later beaten out of us via propaganda from above that it’s a dog eat dog world and that we must compete to survive. But that’s just cover for the tiny percentage of humanity that truly is “born selfish” and acts on that. And let’s not forget, locked as we are in a Eurocentric, capitalist mindset, that for our first 300,000 years on this planet, we lived communally, cooperatively, shared pretty much everything. This lasted in some parts of the world well into the 20th century too.

Btw, babies are born helpless and with the instinct for survival. Of course they’re gonna call for attention and nourishment. Selfishness? No. That’s just the will to survive and the almost instantaneous realization of helplessness and dependency. “Gimme gimme gimme” means “I want to live!”

The problem is complicated, of course, and more than just on the insurance side . . .

I went in for labs today and was told a request for a PET Scan had been turned down by my insurance company. This is rather important, as it was supposed to give the oncologist the best map for the remainder of my treatments. A good PET Scan could mean ending the full blast chemo and perhaps going to a maintenance regimen instead. A bad PET Scan would mean extending the full blast stuff, perhaps through July — which is taking its toll. I’ve been violently ill after the last two rounds.

(Ironically, the PET scan could save the insurance company money.)

But I don’t think the insurance companies are the only problem here. As long as our health care is subject to a for-profit model, anywhere in the process, there will always been massive conflicts of interest. For instance, on the delivery side — and I’ve heard doctors talk in these terms — they’re going to basically ask for as much as they can get away with. When I’ve expressed concerns about total costs, doctors have as much as said, Why worry? Insurance will pick it up.

An insurance company can act as a check on this, saying, We’ll pay X amount, but not X+++. Or it can deny coverage altogether. Either way, there is no win/win scenario, especially for the patient.

As I’ve mentioned before, I think we should have an all non-profit economic system, for everything, but well shy of that, we should at least carve out certain areas that can no be commodified.

Education and health care strike me as immediately logical candidates — and I mean womb to tomb/cradle to grave, not just a certain chunk of time.

There’s a double-standard when it comes to double-standards.

I’ve experienced this for decades now. Call out someone (or American history) on racism, and they’ll either claim it’s racist to even talk about it, or claim that you owe them an apology for saying such an ugly thing.

As in — and this is almost completely a matter of right-wing America — they want to equate the exposure of racism with racism itself, and put them on the same moral plane.

Now we have the Samantha Bee thing, which isn’t quite the same, but it has the same basic angle. Bee used some rough language to call out Ivanka Trump for doing bad shit, or turning a blind eye from the bad shit, so conservative pundits are trying to equate the two. Not just Bee’s words with Barr’s, but Bee’s words with the actions of the Trump crime family.

Made me think of this little all-purpose analogy:

“You’re a fucking, vile, piece of shit arsonist!!”
“How dare you say that about me!!”
“Well, you ARE an arsonist!!”
“Yeah, of course, but you owe me an apology for saying it that way, and your company should fire you!!”

If the Dems wanted to run a “far left” agenda, backed it entirely, with no apologies, and no undermining, they could win election after election, for a host of reasons:

1. Americans want the best deal possible, as they perceive it. The “far left” can provide that better than any other part of the political spectrum, and it’s not close. They can provide the best possible deal, in concrete terms, and no other part of the spectrum comes close.

2. The right wins on deeply unpopular platforms. They can’t make the case that any of their policies provide the best possible deal for Americans, ever, not once, not ever — unless they’re super-rich. But they keep winning.

3. Americans can be convinced of almost anything, tragically. Sales and marketing, personality, charisma, self-confidence, a certain presence, a certain ability to connect — these things win elections, not policies. If they didn’t, centrist and right-wing candidates in both parties would never win a race.

4. Certain parts of the political spectrum aren’t “extreme” due to their distance from the mythical and mythological center. They’re “extreme” based on their distance from reality, from what’s best for humanity and the planet. So, a “center” which supports endless war, coups, regime changes, ecological destruction, the surveillance state, skyrocketing of economic inequality, the carceral state, etc. etc. is the very definition of “extreme.”

5. It’s pretty obvious why neither the GOP nor the Dems will move well to the left. It’s not about winning elections, cuz, again, they would easily win with a far left agenda. They won’t do it because it would hurt their donors and themselves, being in the 1%. They won’t do it because it would mean the dispersal and sharing of power, as close to equally as is humanly possible, and they didn’t get into the game for that. Nor did their donors.