tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3980421295592818922.post6167640941969052631..comments2023-10-23T14:15:29.331-07:00Comments on Shallow Cogitations: Our Times Will Get More InterestingHank Greerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15243840232233423724noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3980421295592818922.post-28845681712636731102013-01-14T14:36:26.011-08:002013-01-14T14:36:26.011-08:00The feds are hounding young intellectuals like Aar...The feds are hounding young intellectuals like Aaron Schwartz to death, while refusing to investigate braindead crooks like Blankfein or Geithner. Ruling class America grows ever more stupid, and powerful.<br /><br />Step out of line, the man come and take you away.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3980421295592818922.post-91883990051937687212013-01-14T12:33:34.421-08:002013-01-14T12:33:34.421-08:00Maybe last week's excursion to the late 19th c...Maybe last week's excursion to the late 19th century to reargue the relative merits of metal backed currency aren't so surprising. Our top-down political system has become divorced from reality, including the natural reality of global warming. Our political elites do not understand their place in the historical moment, at a time when they have never possessed such concentrated power. As a result, they are reactionary, reductive, and gambling on the supression of real political debate and options.<br /><br />America's problem-solving genius has always resulted from the dynamic churning of expanding sufferage. By sufferage I mean not only the expansion of the right to vote, but of personhood extended to one ethnic group after another, one gender after the other, one generation after another, and, especially, one social class after another.<br /><br />We are now decades into a great contraction of sufferage. Yes, more are free to vote, but in elections that the elites have stripped of all meaning. Those with power have diluted the meaning of personhood through the expansion of corporate power under law, even as they steadily decrease the scope of human rights one illegally detained, tortured, or murdered citizen at a time.<br /><br />The simple fact is that Obama did not feel he could win the last election without help from the police state, both to imprison opponents (such as Stein) and to shutdown Occupy (with de facto threats of Ruby Ridge style surveillance). This contractive, paranoid style may be recurrent in US politics (Cointelpro, Japanese-American internment, Alien and Sedition), but what is remarkable now is the throughness and subtle nature of the suppression of dissent throughout society. <br /><br />The result is not the efficent (if imaginary) ruling class on the Singapore or Chinese model that the elite pundits swore we (meaning they) needed. Instead the elites pick fights over vanishingly small differences over tiny doctrinal differences. They agree only to decrease true democratic sufferage, and as a result lack ideas and make no progress on our common perils. They rehearse nostalic policy disputes from eras long past, and compliment themselves on knowing it all.<br /><br />To borrow a phrase, they will hang us from a super-heated cross of gold.<br /><br />Or platinumn. Same difference. <br /><br /> Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3980421295592818922.post-20044431547855153882013-01-13T12:22:21.196-08:002013-01-13T12:22:21.196-08:00The parties argue between gold and platinum standa...The parties argue between gold and platinum standards, while expanding fracking, drilling, and resource wars.<br /><br />Then they dismiss monetarist and fiscal approaches to global warming as extremist, and jail environmentalists under terror laws.Thoreau Cardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3980421295592818922.post-81458441071640116652013-01-12T19:14:59.335-08:002013-01-12T19:14:59.335-08:00But, not so important that you mentioned global wa...But, not so important that you mentioned global warming during the election, right? Not even when Obama illegally tied Jill Stein to a chair and stuck in her in a warehouse to shut her up.<br /><br />Democrats are not credible on this issue. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com