by Starman » Mon Aug 15, 2005 7:55 pm
AnnaLivia:<br><br>Brilliant cutting-thru the chase -- You saw right thru Norman's absurd ploy, claiming 'How Amazing!' which he contradicts in the VERY next sentence, 'I'm not surprised'. Good-eye, I *missed* this flub in my rush to catch-up on the thread, tho something within me wrankled. Man, you caught him WAAAY off-guard and knocked him ass-over-brain off-balanced with your (and others') gracious, well-intentioed and self-aware, genuinely-concerned Love out of regard -- In the interest to instruct the recklessly foolish.<br><br>Dear Norman -- valiantly asserting his insufferable 'correctness' based on nothing but a flawed perception that he's in the majority -- confusing popularity with integrity, opinion with reason. Like so many poor souls who are the unwitting beneficiaries of a corrupted Public Education program, to discourage generations of present and future citizens from developing critical-thinking skills. I used to (until I realized what an essentially lost-cause it was) engage in long, patient debates with folks who proudly exhibited their pro-rightwing, pro-war, pro-Bush biased vanities on their sleeves, as if they were 'proofs' for the correctness of their beliefs, never showing they have they slightest grasp of how to analyze information and reach their own independant opinion based on a rigorous vetting of substantiated facts. <br><br>It's hardly just coincidence that so many seemingly decent, ordinary good-hearted folks fall prey to crude propaganda, clever thought-avoiding slogans, bumper-sticker soundbite jingoism, and faux-patriotic 'popular' manipulated opinions -- it's been drummed into them, as the lessons of mass-marketting and psychological programming and media 'messaging' have been used by the PTB's technocrats to create large numbers of compliant, unquestioning citizens who fall-into-line as according to elaborate propaganda dogma. It's really rather scary how many people are hostile to ideas that challenge their deeply-invested core beliefs, which can be shown to be seriously flawed. The Alex Jones' post on his experience at Camp Cindy with the counter-demonstrators shows this extreme very clearly -- with the Marine-father raising his son to be another chunk of 'proud' but mindless cannon-fodder in one of tomorrow's Perpetual Wars.<br><br>My neighbor is one of those Born-Again Christian pro-Bush/pro-war Rupublicans who, while a generally nice-guy (he lets me use his lawn-mower), he's simply incapable of acknowledging the contradictio between Christ's teaching and the US's aggressive war-mongering and long history of destructive, exploitive, disasterous Foreign Policy, of which the US's Iraq and Afghanistan wars are just the latest chapters. Our few past discussions on political issues usually resulted in heated exchanges and angry, frustrated words -- we have both sort-of agreed to disagree -- IMO, he's simply unable to process new information that contradicts his position.<br><br>BTW: I LOVE your take on the whole issue of wealthpower giants, as forming the basis for the immense injustices and idiocies and horrors and outrages that curreently afflicts the world today. This is the same bunch I've been calling the globalist parasites, who steal the riches and feed off the energies of others, who actually produce little if anything themselves that is useful or of value. The radical privatization of Iraq's public resources and State Industries, and the resulting enslavement via pauperization of Iraq's citizens, is the ultimate neoliberal model of wealth allocation the corporate elites aka wealthpower giants would want to impose on the world -- an even more radical version of economic exploitation than the model they imposed on the former nation of Yugoslavia -- which coldblooded destruction for economic enslavement has STILL not been acknowledged for the immense crime against peace led by the US and NATO which it was. The US masses still buy the 'demon Milosevic & genocide' rationale -- just as they bought the Iraq-WMD line.<br><br>AnnaLivia said:<br>"while you were at Camp Casey, i posted something in another thread that i want to touch on again, to avoid any misunderstanding. i said, and i stand by it 100%, that fighting the wealthpower giants for our rights sends the wrong message. That it sends the message that it is GOOD to fight the wealth-power giants for our rights, that it is RIGHT to fight the wealth-power giants for our rights, that it is NECESSARY to fight the wealth-power giants for our rights, that we MUST ALWAYS fight the wealth-power giants for our rights....and that that is wrong.<br><br>wrong because it does nothing to get people to see that wealthpower giants are totally unecessary in the first place, and that the solution to the root cause of our troubles is to murder the idea of having/allowing ANY wealthpower giants.<br><br>so it may seem contradictory for me to then support what CS is doing, i realize. but here's the thing. i just see it as steps in a process. before people can really grasp the idea of seriously not having wealthpower giants at all, they have to have cause to consider that notion. and i think actions like Cindy's actually do get them further along that road (no pun intended). it would be grand to hear every activist include what i see as the biggest-picture thinking, and i work relentlessly at prompting them to do so, but even if they're not quite there yet, i have tremendous respect for all who are helping us take a step forward.<br><br>you pull. i'll push.<br><br>and we'll get there together.<br><br>i'm really curious about CS's future plans once August is over. i hate to see her disappear into Move-on or Answer or the Democratic party or something like that. ya know...i'd like to see her announce she's running for President. pretend she's serious as all hell for awhile and cause an even bigger commotion. can you imagine the buzz? strike while the iron is hot?<br><br>and she could just stash away any contributions she received to be returned later, mail herself and some sympathetic journalists a letter....to be kept sealed until time to call off the "stunt"...explaining she intended from the start to do it, not to trick people, but to do what she saw as absolutely vital to our nation's health and well-being...to help keep the groundswell growing against bushco (and the wealthpower giants). she could just shrug and say "hey, all's fair in war". i'd dearly love to hear the Bushies say they don't agree with that. how could they after Abu Ghraib and Gitmo?<br><br>maybe we should just start calling her President Cindy every time we refer to her. gee, it'd be fun to make Rush and Hannity have to speak the words just to disparage the idea, wouldn't it?<br><br>let's see...who can she announce would be her cabinet members and advisors...Cynthia Mckinney, Dr. Helen Caldicott, Sibel Edmonds, the Grandmother of Chase Comley...is Granny D still with us, bless her savvy heart?<br><br>let's dream big!"<br><br>--unquote--<br><br>'President Sheehan' -- Man, I can DIG IT! It's gonna take something like a popular that HUGE and 'outside the box' of corporate-controlled interets and influence, of people who are so deeply principled and committed to what is Right and Just, to turn the awful, destructive path this nation is on, seeking military-corporate targets of opportunity as temprary stop-gap solutions for the immense flaws, contradiction, inconsistencies and plain idiocies of modern neoliberal, 'free-market' notions requiring constant growth (like an out-of-control cancerous tumour) to reconcile -- entirely losing sight of alternative accounting systems, such as meeting all basic human needs (which OUGHT to be a global priority, doing more to eliminate terrorism and poverty and suffering than any number of limited initatives or 'programs' which don't adopt a sufficiently global perspective), living in-balance with the earth, protecting and stewarding fragile ecosystems, using the seventh-generation model of wise development, encouraging regional and intra-community models of initiative, cooperative self-reliance and diversity of development, and so-on.<br><br>GREAT insights on how steps are part of necessary, meaningful process of change -- we need to be awake and alert to options and strategies that help is think and see BIGGER, to dream MORE and MORE Creatively, to get Further.<br><br>'You pull, I'll push -- and we'll get there together.'<br><br>Precisely!<br>Regrdz;<br>Starman <p></p><i></i>