waterfield wrote:

From what I’m seeing on tv all I can think of is that these riots will do nothing but help Trump remain in office. If the local D.A. does not seek total justice (2d degree murder at a minimum) then the Feds can step in and still prosecute the officer(s). But to see the riots all over the tv screen does not do justice for the Floyd family and it does not in any way help us get rid of Trump.

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

I have had those same thoughts. Because that seems to be the history of these things. People voted for Nixon, because he was the ‘law and order’ guy…and on and on and on.

Then again, Biden vs Trump is not McGovern vs Nixon. Its gonna be close. Very very close.

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Zooey wrote:

Oh, and a CNN reporter got arrested and Floyd’s killer(s) haven’t been.

=======

Yeah, its bad enough we have to live out our lives in a corporotacracy being lied to everyday by Corporate-CNN….but i suppose a Fascist-corporotacracy is even worse.

Ah well. How bout those Rams. I bet they’ll do better with canned-fake-noise instead of actual Packer-fan-noise in the stadium…

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This is the kind of dynamic that makes amerika so hard to describe in a few words.
Some things have gotten worse and worse and worse — pollution, extinctions, etc.
But some things have gotten better — we dont see black people bombed from airplanes anymore.

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I’ve often wondered why someone hasn’t come up with a way to modify/erase a QB’s interception numbers by adjusting for the “Clearly not his fault INTs”.

I mean baseball has ‘errors’ and unearned runs, etc.

It makes zero sense to say a QB was intercepted three times, if two of them bounced off a WR’s chest.

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Krystal said the leftist movement was ‘on the cusp of victory…’

But it wasn’t. It was a mirage. The only reason Bernie won so many states early was the Corporate-Neolibs had spread out their votes among all those Corporate-Dems.
As soon as the game got down to Corporate vs Bernie — Corporate dominated.

When you add up the Corporate-Dems and the Corporate-Rightwingers…..how big is the ‘progressive left’ really?

All ya haf to do is count that actual, real-life, real-left national office-holders. There’s AOC. There’s Bernie. And a few others.

A handful. Christ there were more leftist officeholders in the 1920s.

Ah well.

Granted, as Noam noted, the left has made some agonizing, slow, progress. Medicare For All is not anathema among the Dems anymore. As far as i can tell…thats about it. Thats what we got, after all these years. That much.

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waterfield wrote:

<

The reason I decided to even begin this post was in reality to explore the attitude of selfishness that is so obvious in our responses to COVID-19. Of course not everyone has displayed a “me,me,me” -and “you can go to hell” attitude but enough to cause me to ask -how did we get to that. Maybe I’ve answered my own question herein.

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

Well if you aren’t a system-blamer, I would think about the only alternative is to say, “well, lots of people just ‘decided’ to be more selfish.”

In that view there is no real ‘why’ to it. People just free-willed their rugged-individual-selves into more selfishness.

I’m exaggerating, but it seems like thats the only way a nonsystem-blamer could go. There’s no ‘why’ to it — people just ‘became’ more selfish.

Prosecutors tend to think that way. Poor people just ‘decided’ to commit more street crimes.

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Zooey wrote:

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

I dunno though. I think the Corporate-Media would smear a leftist Veggie like Cauliflower.

They would get behind processed meat, I think. Or maybe Wheaties.

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zn wrote:

ProFootballTalk@ProFootballTalk
Russell Wilson wants Antonio Brown in Seattle, reports @JohnClaytonNFL

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

Wow. Geezus.

That would either give Seattle the Division,
or it would destroy the whole team.

Antonio is kinda like the Ring Of Power. Or a Zombie-Ice-Dragon. Or somethin. I dunno.

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waterfield wrote:

Where we part is your belief that this was all a result of a “system” for profit.
If the system influences people how is that you, me and others here are not so influenced ?

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

Well yes that is where we diverge. I blame systems for how the system’s people are ‘treated’ and how the system’s people ‘turn out.’ If the people of a nation are ignorant and/or greedy, yeah i will blame the circumstances they grew up in. Ie., the system.

I do that for every system, not just the corporotacracy in America. Just seems natural to me to look at ‘the conditions.’ And the conditions are set up by the ‘System’ whether its the Nazi system or Rwanda or Finland or the US or whatever.

At any rate, I know I’m being totally reductionist and over-simplifying, but ya know, its a message board.

Also, i dont blame ‘everything’ on the system. There’s always human biology. Though the system even morphs that, at least somewhat. There’s also god-knows-what random, unknown, weird factors involved, I would think. But who can talk about those?

As to this: “If the system influences people how is that you, me and others here are not so influenced ?”

We ‘are‘ influenced by the system. We are products of it.
But, when i talk about the system shaping people I dont mean it in some black-and-white cookie-cutter way. I dont mean that the system just stamps people out in exactly the same shapes. I think it ‘nudges’ people, to various degrees. The system isnt like a ‘hammer.’ Its much much more subtle/pervasive than that.

I mean…oh…. just think about that whole Kaepernik incident. The National Anthem. The Kneeling. Look at how the system handled that.
Think about the mainsteam tv and mainstream radio and government and business and advertising responses to that whole thing. The way that all turned out was very predictable. It was a microcosm of the way corporate-systems work/handle-things.

There were indeed various kinds of resistance to the corporate-influences during the Kaepernik thing. There’s always resistance. There was resistance to the Nazi-Capitalist-System in Germany.

There’s systems. And there’s resistance to systems. The systems are dominant though. …until they’re not.

Btw, Waterfield let me ask you this — WHY do YOU think the far-left is so very small in America? I mean compared to Italy, Spain, France, Central and South America, etc? I’m talking about actual Socialist Parties. Social-Democrats. That sort of thing. In America its just Corpoate-Dems and Corporate-Reps, and a very very small number of everything else. You said it was natural for Americans to be scared of Communism, etc. Why was it so natural for Americans to be frightened away from socialism when the Europeans, African, South and Central Americans were, apparently NOT so ‘naturally’ scared of the Red-Beast?

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———–
“School is the advertising agency which makes you believe that you need the society as it is.”
Ivan Illich in his book Deschooling Society

———–

“Far from creating independent thinkers, schools have always, throughout history, played an institutional role in a system of control and coercion. And once you are well educated you have already been socialized in ways that support the power structure, which, in turn, rewards you immensely. Noam Chomsky
“What’s public opinion? It’s the education system plus the media.”
-Mark Green (President of Air America radio)

————-
“…Because the schools serve an economic system rather than a
political or philosophical idea, they promote, not unreasonably
, the habits of mind necessary to the preservation of that system,
which is why an American education resembles the commercial
procedure that changes caterpillers into silkworms instead of
butterflies. Silkworms can be turned to a profit, but butterflies
blow around in the wind and do nothing to add to the wealth
of the corporation or the power of the state. “ L.Lapham

————–

“The assault on education began more than a century ago by industrialists and capitalists such as Andrew Carnegie. In 1891, Carnegie congratulated the graduates of the Pierce College of Business for being “fully occupied in obtaining a knowledge of shorthand and typewriting” rather than wasting time “upon dead languages.” The industrialist Richard Teller Crane was even more pointed in his 1911 dismissal of what humanists call the “life of the mind.” No one who has “a taste for literature has a right to be happy” because “the only men entitled to happiness… is those who are useful.” The arrival of industrialists on university boards of trustees began as early as the 1870s and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business offered the first academic credential in business administration in 1881. The capitalists, from the start, complained that universities were unprofitable. These early twentieth century capitalists, like heads of investment houses and hedge-fund managers, were, as Donoghue writes “motivated by an ethically based anti-intellectualism that transcended interest in the financial bottom line. Their distrust of the ideal of intellectual inquiry for its own sake, led them to insist that if universities were to be preserved at all, they must operate on a different set of principles from those governing the liberal arts.”
― Chris Hedges, Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle
——————–

“Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: ‘You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself — educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.”
― Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook
————–
For if you suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this, but that you first make thieves and then punish them.”
― Thomas More, Utopia

Zooey wrote:

FDR.

And Sanders basically matches his policy positions, though being more modern, Sanders would include minorities in his programs from the beginning.

——————

…if ever there was a time when a country needed to turn to a new FDR its now, right? But who do the American voters choose? Herbert Hoover.

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waterfield wrote:

<

… I agree that a capitalistic society inherently breeds selfishness.
Human nature is to gather and protect what we’ve accumulated.
And of course that means it is profit driven.
But each known economic system has its own darkness.
I don’t think any system be it communism, socialism, capitalism has a monopoly on the concern-or lack of- for the sufferers among us. It’s part of human frailty.

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

Yes, I would think that every human system has its weaknesses or darkness.
We are talking-monkeys, after all.

But there are places in Europe and Scandinavia that do seem to have more concern for the poor. So, while no human-system is perfect, some human-systems are doing better than others. It would be nice if America could take the best of each major system and adapt it to work here. If nothing else, it would be nice to have a better safety net. If we are gonna live under capitalism, it would at least be nice to have a Green-New-Deal and FDR type leadership, etc. I mean, thats a pretty low bar. And we dont even have that. Voters didnt want it. They had Bernie right there in the race — and twice now, they have said “No, we want the Corporate-Dem.” So, progressives lose, again. Just like in the 1920s 30s, 50s, 70’s, 80’s, 90s, 00s, 10s, and so far in the 20s-again.

At any rate whatever you think of this Corporate-Capitalist-System, W,
its not sustainable. Corporations are killing the life on this planet. For profit. Amphibians, Birds, Fish, Trees, Bufferflies, Polar Bears…

Yes, Corporations make nice things. But what is the cost?

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waterfield wrote:

You guys are all wacko. It seems so evident to me that the big boogeyman (corporate culture) feeds on and uses the unintelligent, uneducated, ignorant, to accomplish their own goals. But they didn’t create that vehicle. To deny this just smells of agenda driven opinions.

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Well keep in mind, W, I am not saying the Corporations dummed down the public ON PURPOSE. I have never once talked about a Corporate CONSPIRACY. Or a Capitalist CONSPIRACY. Sometimes i think, that you think, I am talking about some secret cabal of rich people who sit around deciding how to make the masses ignorant.

I have no doubt there ‘are’ a gazillion conspiracies among the powerful in all parts of the political spectrums. But thats a separate subject and no-one is ever going to have much evidence of that.

I’m just saying, if you have an entire system based on profit, then the profit motive is going to…oh….’Snowball’ for lack of a better word. As Corporate-capitalism consolidates its gains, and as fewer and fewer giant corporoations own more and more and more and more…THEIR message dominates more and more and more.

And what is their message? You tell me.

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noam:https://billmoyers.com/content/noam-chomsky-part-2/
….BILL MOYERS: Are you suggesting that there’s a conspiracy’? That there are people who gather and decide we’re going to eliminate unions’? That we’re going to eliminate popular participation in political parties’? We’re going to do this, we’re going to do that? Is there a conspiracy’?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, my point is, in fact, exactly the opposite. I mean, I think, and stress again, that these are institutional effects. These are the ways the institution functions.

Let’s go back to the chairman of the board. There’s no conspiracy in the world of managers to try to raise profits and market share. In fact, if the world of managers didn’t pursue that program, they wouldn’t be in business any longer. It’s part of the structure of the social system, and the way in which the institutions fw1ction within it, that they are going to be trying to maximize profit, market share, decision-making capacity and so on.

BILL MOYERS: Doing what comes naturally.

NOAM CHOMSKY: It’s not that- you might say it comes naturally, because they would never have gotten to that point unless they had internalized those values, but it’s also constrained. If they stop doing it, their stocks start to decline and so on and so forth, then somebody else- it’ll be bought up and so on. Now, pretty much the same is true of these other institutions. If some segment of the political system- suppose we had an authentic political party reflecting the needs of the special interests, the population, it would no longer be supported. It would be denounced by the information system. It would be condemned for being anti-American or subversive and so on. It would not even have the minimal resources to keep functioning. And since we don’t have a network of popular structures to sustain it, it would disappear.

BILL MOYERS: You’ve said that the primary function of mass media is to mobilize public support for the special interests that dominate the government and the private sector. That’s not how the media see it. They claim, we claim that our news judgments rest on unbiased, objective criteria. That’s how we see it.

NOAM CHOMSKY: But, in fact, the chairman of the board also sees what he is doing as service to humanity.

BILL MOYERS: I mean, are we like a lobster in a trap- we can’t see it close behind us?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, the point is that no one would even make it to a high decision-making position in the media, whether as columnist or managing editor or whatever, unless they had already internalized the required values.

BILL MOYERS: Internalized?

NOAM CHOMSKY: They believe them. There are a number of things you have to believe to make it to top managerial positions. You have to believe that the United States is unique in history in that it acts from benevolent motives. Benevolent motives are not properties of states, whether it’s the United States or any other one. It’s meaningless to talk about it.

waterfield wrote:

zn wrote:

The fact that most people don’t have the slightest idea of how a bill gets passed in congress has nothing to do with Democrats or Corporations. I’s ignorance. The fact that more than half our population refuses to wear masks has nothing to do with democrats or corporations. Its pure selfishness and a lack of care for others. The fact that a huge part of our society still does not believe in man made climate change has nothing to do with the Democratic party or corporations. Its ignorance. The fact that there exists an ever increasing number of people who refuse to vaccinate their children has nothing to do with the Democratic party or corporations. Its ignorance.

At some point we have to stop deflecting our own ignorance by blaming the big targets and look to ourselves and ask -how did we become so ignorant. Otherwise we are trapped into being helpless victims of overpowering forces.

======

Well, I respectfully disagree. Those things all have to do with a Capitalist-System that has failed American Citizens. And yes, the Dems AND Reps ARE that system. Together. They make up the system.

So again, for the umpteenth time — I blame systems that shape individuals.

You just blame individuals.

You will say ‘individuals make up the system’. And i will say, the system shaped the individuals…..

Anyway. Its bad.

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link:http://normanfinkelstein.com/2020/05/17/a-little-humor/