Another Response

[degringolade]

 

A Friday morning, end of one shitty week.  I think that I will hole up this weekend.  Laundry and rest.  I was half considering going out on Saturday night to watch the GBB, but as the time gets closer, the less likely this looks.  

I gotsta get back on the diet.  I have been pretty good with the walking and exercise, and I don't think that my weight has gone up appreciably, but emotional eating is a tried and true response to emotional train-wreckiness 

“There is massive propaganda for everyone to consume. Consumption is good for profits [clickbait] and consumption is good for the political establishment.”

Noam Chomsky

MICHAEL:

If it is true that the elites care little for the common man, this cannot be considered something new/changing that explains new conditions. What news could be older and less interesting than this? This “news” has always been supposed; in fact, in almost every case these days, this negative characteristic is implied by the way the term is used. Are we supposed to think that this is a new condition - that the elite have now somehow learned to care less than the previously assumed zero - and that this new magic is what is moving us downward? Our “predicament” is not due to some enhanced form of corporate/elite greed that did not exist before; the same maximum greed existed during the periods of greatest prosperity for the middle class.

JOHN:

The only real issue that I have with this sentence is the last one.  Not the truth of the statement, it is self evident, instead I want to point out what was not said.  The time of the greatest prosperity for the middle class in the history of the world was the time of the most progressive tax system in our country’s history and the greatest government restraints on business.  

MICHAEL:

The real problem is that “we the people” have the very-same bad characteristic that we like to point out in the elite. The true enemy is us - we the people. We are not better than conditions suggest. What on earth gives any people the right to claim that they are better than what they have done or what they are doing? Talk about bullshit - and this is the thought that is allowing most Americans to keep their spirits up these days. Perhaps it is time for a real Newsflash! Real newsflashes tend to be poor entertainment, so nobody should hold their breath.

JOHN:

I think that one of the things that the press has very consistently done over the past 30-some-odd years is to deliberately target the idea of American Exceptionalism.  This is due to the simple fact that if you convince people that they are special, they have a much higher chance of buying useless shit because they “deserve” it.  

In my honest opinion, the main purpose of government is to restrain and channel human greed and self-centeredness.  The government has lost this ability.  It has abrogated this central responsibility completely and had instead “gone native” and is now actively attempting to dismantle the political and moral edifices that were the temples of this task.

Trump is the epicenter of this phenomenon.  Trump is the epitome of personal greed and self-centeredness.  He is arrogant, vulgar, greedy, and self-centered.  The deplorables love him because he represents them so damn well.  The liberal’s hate him because he is vulgar.  Because the vulgarity he displays cracks the mirror used to view the country and the president’s role as symbolic “good example” of who we are.  Liberals are just as arrogant, greedy and self centered as anyone, they just do it in a manner that they feel is more tasteful and thus more socially acceptable