Back home. We did end up stopping for a few hours sleep in Kentucky, but drove some into the night. About midnight, I heard Mike Savage and another guy afterward in Tennessee. Heard of Savage Nation but never actually heard him before. If I had to sum up what I heard (it did keep me awake ;-) in one word, it would be "poison."
It's no wonder half of America is angry if they're listening to this sort of stuff. Good grief, he virtually called O'Reilly, Hannity, etc part of a Republican establishment conspiracy.
In the midst of my despair at the irrationality of America right now, I thought perhaps it is time to start a new movement. The word "Remodernism" came back to mind. Yes, we have learned from the postmodern challenge that we cannot be objective. But it's about time we started trying again. One sided talk shows on both sides are poisoning the populace.
We need to return to dispassionate debate across the board, moderated by neutrals, with all major positions represented and objectivity the goal. The bottom line playing field must be evidence and coherency, or the West is lost to tribalism.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
"There is plenty of economic activity in the U.S., and plenty of wealth. But like greedy children, the folks at the top are seizing virtually all the marbles. Income and wealth inequality in the U.S. have reached stages that would make the third world blush. As the Economic Policy Institute has reported, the richest 10 percent of Americans received an unconscionable 100 percent of the average income growth in the years 2000 to 2007, the most recent extended period of economic expansion."
From here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/26/opinion/26herbert.html?_r=3&hp
This is the overwhelming reality. Nine out of ten, or 99 out of 100, of the available cookies go to the few at very top of the socioeconomic foodchain.
Guys like Savage are well paid to keep the rest of us fighting with each other over the one remaining cookie.
Kyrie Eleison!
FrGregACCA,
I'm not following how you get from Ken's encouragement to return to rationality to economics?
Are you suggesting because the media is paid well that they are biased "waterboys" to the wealthy, whom they protect? (I've heard this before)....
Please explain.
Angie, not in all case, but with people like Savage, Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, Malkin, Coulter, etc., yes.
My main point is that the current situation, in the making over the past 30 years, makes us all vulnerable to the kind of propaganda that these folks put out. They are misdirecting us away from where the source of the problem really lies, and that is in a system that inordinately, not to say obscenely, rewards those at the very top and drastically shortchanges everybody else.
Here's another piece. It is long but there is some very good concrete data within it.
http://www.truth-out.org/class-warfare-final-chapter68146
FrGregACCA,
I had a whole defense written about the value of the market, capitalism, against corruption of government officials, global economic problems, Big Labor and the promise of the President to uphold the Constitution and protect HIS OWN people. Sometimes that means that others might suffer, but this is an imperfect world and problems do not present themselves "nice and neatly" as "right or wrong"...but what is most effective for the interests involved....ETC.
Your equal economic plan, devaluing our military, the market, etc. is some "ideal" that won't be realized, either by the U.N. OR the Church...everyone and every organization has to have some benefit...whether it is just their value of "feeding the poor"...and doing so brings one joy...
The Founders understood that man needed a balance of power and checks and balances so that when interests of one branch get out of hand, then it can be reigned in by the others....but personal benefit is what drives power politics today...and it has much to do with the complexity of the global market.
Sorry, if this sounds irratonal. I thought my other post was more detailed...anyways..
And much has to do with government and corporations being in bed together..but this is the complexity of global markets...
Yes Angie, the founders understood something about the need for checks and balances, etc.
Well, over the past thirty years, we have completely lost any kind of balance of power between those at the top very top of the socioeconomic foodchain and the rest of us.
Things have not been this unequal economically since at least 1928, and maybe they have never been this unequal before. In any event, unless things change drastically, the economy WILL implode, like it almost did in 2007. When it does, the Great Depression will look like an idlyllic time of unprecedented prosperity and we will experience something that looks a whole lot like Fascism, Leninism, or first the former followed by the latter.
These are the stakes. We are now only at "the beginning of sorrows".
Post a Comment