"It's like a French Revolution in reverse in which the workers come pouring down the street screaming more power to the aristocracy." --Thomas FrankI read this article over at the BBC, and I have to tell you, they hit on something there. No one cares about facts. They only care about how things make them "feel." It's why people elect idiots to office, who serve not the people who elected them, but Corporate masters. It's why they blame Obama for the mess we're in, and why they blame him for not waving a magic wand to get us out of it. I suppose that Obama should have studied a bit harder at Hogwarts, because he just isn't all that good at magically cleaning up two decades of Republican mismanagement in a year.
Last time I checked, large, complex civilizations don't just turn on a dime. You can think of our civilization as a really big aircraft carrier. You don't just whip it right around like it's a Lamborghini or something. It's not possible.
People are stupid. They don't care about facts, or logic, or what is real, or what it actually takes to accomplish something. All they care about is listening to pundits and talking heads shriek about things that make them "feel" like they have some kind of power over the situation and that validate any emotions they might have about it. Because, when it comes to humanity, facts are never important and neither is the truth.
Wow--that Thomas Frank quote is great.
ReplyDeleteOne of the great robber barons around the turn of the last century said something like (okay, so this comment isn't exactly a writing sample for a graduate program in History) "I can hire half the working class to kill the other half." Since then, of course, the Republicans have realized they don't even need to pay anybody--they just put their candidate in a cowboy hat and dig up a picture of the other guy windsurfing (or, more recently, simply find lots of clever ways--Muslim, not an American citizen, hates white people--to say "he's black").
Okay, here's the actual quote:
ReplyDelete"I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half."
Jay Gould
I think you guys are being generous.
ReplyDeleteDr Jay, That's right up there with PT Barnum XD
ReplyDeleteSEC, I am too generous. I try not to think that the majority of humanity are idiots, but then invariably I read something somewhere, and I lose a little bit more of my hope in it.
Conservatives a branch off of the Self Flagellates and are seduced by good looks (Romney, Brown and Palin) and run to them yelling: Whip Us! Whip Us!
ReplyDeletePower to the Plutocrats!!!!
Has a nice resonation to me...