General Discussions

Television Rant: Prove me wrong.

POSTED BY: HiroStone
UPDATED: Monday, February 23, 2004 16:35
VIEWED: 13366
PAGE 5 of 6

MILORADELL

Friday, February 20, 2004 12:54 AM

According to the 2000 US Census, the town I live in has 20,568 residents. We've been growing exponentially since then, so tack on another 10k, just for fun. We had a school bond vote this past Tues (2/17). There were only 3,696 people who voted (my husband and I were #'s 2985, 6). This was a 65 million dollar bond issue - and that's all that voted. Was it convenient? Nope - and we waited in line for about 1/2 an hour, and I've got the devil's own cold and thought I was going to die, standing in that gymnasium.

So when I'm griping about my property taxes going up yet AGAIN, at least I can know that I did vote. And you know, it felt good. So maybe more people just need to take some time out of their day and vote, when there's something to vote about. I wish all the people I had heard complaining that 65 million dollars is too much, could have been bothered to do the same.

Satan - thy name is apathy.

****
If you didn't vote, you can't bitch.

My Baby Brother

Friday, February 20, 2004 11:15 AM

Who was it that said, "we have nothing to fear but fear itself"?

Phobophobia, apparently.

If I can just use the old Jedi theory: fear-anger-hatred -

HIROSTONE

Friday, February 20, 2004 1:02 PM

I believe it was President FDR; Franklen Deleno Rosevelt. As a response to going into war.

Mal: May have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one.

-Hiro

DRAKON

Friday, February 20, 2004 1:53 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by BrownCoat1:
Miloradell wrote:

Quote:
Could the American Civil War happen today?

The possibility is there yes, but quite honestly, I doubt it. People have a tendancy to be sheep for lack of a better word. Without a leader type to whip them up into a fighting frenzy, no one will ever be bothered to fight for anything.

Ye Gods and little fishes. Do you realize just how this sounds? Maybe the reason why thing have not gone that far is that those "sheep" see war as far to risky to what they have now, or can see obtaining in the future. But because they don't run out and man the barricades and start shooting people for your point of view, they are "sheep".

Yes, there is no revolutionary spirit in the proletariat. Not because they are stupid, or frightened, but because they see what they got as better than what their grandparents had.

But I think there is something else at work here. Things have changed too much since the last war, such that the political fault lines are not about slavery, or state's rights or whatever. Its more along libertarian/communitarian lines. Or to put it more bluntly, between the NRA and Handgun Control Inc. Who would you pick in such a fight?

Civil ain't going to happen any time soon, because frankly, one of the sides does not have the military expertese to fight.

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Overlook the whole time-line thing, alternate future, etc. Think about this - your country is being hi-jacked away from you by money and corporations, rich old men are in power who couldn't give a fig about anyone outside whatever they perceive as their "own" people.

What you are speaking of is the "haves" and "have nots". People of wealth, power and position have everything, want for nothing, and are not held accountable to the law to the same degree the average person is today. The majority of our population is made up of those of us that have to work our butts off just to get by in the current economy and worry how we are going to live when we retire. We are held accountable to the fullest extent of the law, and because we are not celebrities or hold positions of power, we are not guaranteed the leniency as the privileged.

There is a big problem with this line of reasoning. Well several. Michael Jackson is in severe legal trouble, despite his celebrity status. The former CEO of Enron had to surrender to authorities just yesterday. Martha Stewart is on trial. So we see that celebrity status is not a guarentee of a free pass as you make it out to be.

The second, more important problem is the inherent assumption that the "haves" got it by cheating, defrauding customers, or stealing in some manner. The idea that they might have created something of value, that folks voluntarily gave their own money for, seems absent.

Bill Gates has a big house, Da Vinci's Codex, and a garage that looks like the batcave. But rather than forcing anyone to give him a dime, he offered a product that was cheap to build, and higly valuable to the market. So lots of folks, myself included, bought his products of our own free will. Handed him our hard earned dollars. Why? We saw it as valuable, and comparitively speaking, it is. I can do things with my Windows equipped computer that I can't do without it. Like write this stuff down in a manner where you can read it.

The third problem has to do with envy. Its one thing when someone is well off and you are starving. But lets face it. None of us are. There are just not enough starving deprived people in the US to get that upset by what someone else has. Yes, I would love my own Lear Jet, and a big fancy house and a batcave of my very own. But I ain't living on the street, worried about where my next meal will come from.

What Bill got, he got. It ain't mine, and I ain't justified in stealing it, taking it by force. I don't want him stealing from me, so I ain't setting a precident by stealing from him.

Envy just ain't that much a motivator. Especially in capitalist economics w

DRAKON

Friday, February 20, 2004 2:13 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by BrownCoat1:

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I do believe that the gap between the haves and have nots will continue to increase. Look at the cost of living compared to say 25 years ago. A dollar now is worth 20% of what it was in 1979. I make triple what my grandfather made, and nearly double what my parents make, yet they seemed to have had an easier time of it. Taxes are higher, healthcare is through the roof, and the only thing we are not charged for is air. Given time I am sure the feds will find a way to tax even air.

You are ignoring what all that increase in wealth, despite an inflation eaten dollar can buy. Your grandpa could not buy a computer. Even if you were Henry the 2nd, King of England, you would not be able to buy a computer in his day and age.

Its not quite a fair comparison. Henry did not have cars, or even penicillin available. You do. So in one sense, your dollar may not be 'worth' as much as several years ago, but on the other hand, it is much more valuable to you now, than it would have been back then. Today you can buy computers, and all sorts of neat gadgets that otherwise were science fiction, or delusions back then.

And actually tax rates are lower now than they were say, during the 60's and earlier. And one party is trying to keep them down and cut them.

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I do think that the class difference will come to a head in the next ten years, though I do not know for certain it will mean a physical conflict.

I don't think so at all. Not in the US. Because we ain't got no classes. (And some say we ain't got no class either )

Look, class is an artifical social construct. And here and now, it means less and less each and every day. It has no reality outside the skull of the person who thinks it. Like race, it is being shown to be such much horse manure.

You got UAW union members owning Ford stock. Is he a proletariat? Or bourgeois? Or both? Or is he suffering from "false consciousness" (whatever that means)?

You can't have class warfare, if the folks don't believe in the concept of class. And here in America, we started out without an aristocracy. Just peasant, and a few bourgeois. But since the bourgeois don't play within the same peasant/prince paradigm, the entire class structure did not survive the Atlantic crossing.

All we got are celebrities, which I guess can stand in for an aristocracy. But most of them are simply too silly to weild much in the way of political influence. We got rich folks, but if Bill Gates demanded you shine his shoes for him, you can tell him to get stuffed, with no repercussions whatsoever. Whats the use of being considered an aristocrat if you can't get some peasant to shine your shoes?

[Besides which, Bill's stock can get un-valuable quite rapidly on any given day. Its hard to be king if something short of an assisination can dethrown you without your approval. Even presidents are subject to impeachment. And if they lose, they just lose their job. Not their heads]

"Wash, where is my damn spaceship?"

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Friday, February 20, 2004 2:49 PM

Quote:

To put it another way, its not that you are unimportant. Its just you are no more important than the other 6 billion folks on this rock.

Never forget that you are unique, just like everybody else!

I think that there's a certain amount of wishful thinking going on about the amount of freedom and classlessness in the USA (certainly a socio-cultural form of classism seems apparent in many American movies I've seen), but I haven't spent enough time there to say anything for definite, so I'll leave that to someone more experienced in such matters. I will say, though, that if classism (and racism) exists in people's minds, it still exists, unfortunately, no matter that it's nothing but equine egestion.

To give a UK perspective on a couple of issues, then:

Elections - we have a 'first past the post' system, which I believe is similar to your electoral process. Basically, a party has a candidate for a specific area (not necessarily a county), and if that candidate wins, he gets a seat in parliament. The leader of the party with the most seats at the end becomes prime minister, so in theory, one party could get 51% of the vote in every constituency, and a second party could end up with 49% of the vote and not a single seat - no representation whatsoever. So, there's proportional representation (popular on the continent), which has the unfortunate potential of giving parties with a very small percentage of the vote (such as a neo-nazi group) the opportunity to wield an excessive amount of influence in a coalition government. So, what can you do, eh?

Besides, over here the civil service secretly runs everything anyway, and nobody even knows who they are, let alone votes for them! (cf. old British comedy, "Yes, Minister"/"Yes, Prime Minister")

Don't know that this helps - just felt like sharing - but with any luck a different perspective may spark off different viewpoints.

MILORADELL

Friday, February 20, 2004 4:31 PM

Hooo-boy - what happened here? Yikes! Eh, that's ok.

Fear - just reminded me of an interesting experience I had back in the day. It was some go se high school class, and we were all 'stranded on a desert island' and had to figure out how to survive. Well, after arguing and arguing, I fed myself to the sharks. Why? The others in the group thought it was more important to build a prison, rather then think about food, shelter, fresh water - you know, the stuff that keeps you alive! And I never realized before right now - that was their fear talking. That was well over 15 years ago, and this whole culture of fear thing was already happening. I don't know why, but I always thought it was a more recent attitude for the population. Hmmm........

Haves/have nots, envy. Not my thing. Who in their right mind would envy Paris Hilton? Or Bill Gates, for that matter. Fame, celebrity, wealth - these are gifts, of a sort. Some people make it for themselves, a lot more people inherit it. Now here's me - if I have a whole loaf of bread, and I only need 1/2 of it, what's wrong with sharing the other half? Why do people act like that's some weird-o idea - I'm not giving away the whole loaf! What I think is a weird-o idea is stuffing that 1/2 loaf into some off-shore banking account so I don't have to pay federal taxes on it. I don't believe in blindly helping, mind you - the school bond, for instance. We need a new high school, yes, but they can do it for less than 65 million, that's just being greedy. So when the 'president' sends our soldiers to war, and then cuts their combat pay, hacks the hell out of the veteran's health budget, and the programs which educate a lot of their kids - that just kind of bugs me. Where's the responsiblity in that?

As far as social justice and bad tv being so not the same thing....they're parts of the same cube. I believe the world is one giant connect-the-dots puzzle, and everything effects everything else. So if your content with really crappy tv, why would you bother about your civil rights disappearing? It all comes down to one of two things - lazy, lazy, lazy or stupid, stupid, stupid. Wait - does that count as 6 things??

Oh - it's not my intention to piss off anyone! I like doing that in person, better .

****
I'm not that naked....or articulate.

MILORADELL

Friday, February 20, 2004 4:39 PM

Oh - I forgot. I'm not going to be posting anything for a spell, here. I'm really, really sick and I need to get better before attempting any more rants !

So don't think I'm ignoring anyone - it's just kinda hard to type when every orifice in your head is leaking! Blech...

DRAKON

Friday, February 20, 2004 5:06 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by AJ:
Quote:

To put it another way, its not that you are unimportant. Its just you are no more important than the other 6 billion folks on this rock.

Never forget that you are unique, just like everybody else!

Bingo, thanks.

Quote:
I think that there's a certain amount of wishful thinking going on about the amount of freedom and classlessness in the USA (certainly a socio-cultural form of classism seems apparent in many American movies I've seen), but I haven't spent enough time there to say anything for definite, so I'll leave that to someone more experienced in such matters. I will say, though, that if classism (and racism) exists in people's minds, it still exists, unfortunately, no matter that it's nothing but equine egestion.

Whether it exists in the mind of an individual is one issue, whether it is part of the national narrative, the conceptual framework of nation, what the nation tells of itself and too itself, its self image is something altogether different.

We do agree that it is an artifical pile of horse dropping. We might express it differently, but still.

Just read about the Italian Prime Minister. He was saying that in Europe, when folks find out he used to play piano on cruise ships, people look at that disdainfully. But here in America, we love that stuff. Its honest work, and fits in more with our 'sense of self'. The self made man who worked his way up from cruise ship pianist to Prime Minister of Italy, that is an accomplishment.

Looking down on someone just because he started off in a low class job, that is something we just don't get.

Even our presidental candidates all make an attempt to look like "just plain folks" Bush has his ranch. Edwards has his story about his milkman father, growing up poor. Clinton childhood was anything but privileged. At least that is the offical narative. Now, if class consciousness was such a big issue, why shoot for protraying yourself as lower class, instead of upper crust?

Like I said before, all the aristocracy stayed home. Only the folks for whom Europe sucked came here (or were sent here involuntarily) and it did not suck if you were lord of the manor. So we started off without such trappings. And all in all, especially considering the great success we've had as a nation, economically, militarily, scientifically, politically, culturally (which I would like to discuss at a later date) has shown us what unnecessary parasites such "betters" are.

Quote:
To give a UK perspective on a couple of issues, then:

Elections - we have a 'first past the post' system, which I believe is similar to your electoral process. Basically, a party has a candidate for a specific area (not necessarily a county), and if that candidate wins, he gets a seat in parliament. The leader of the party with the most seats at the end becomes prime minister, so in theory, one party could get 51% of the vote in every constituency, and a second party could end up with 49% of the vote and not a single seat - no representation whatsoever. So, there's proportional representation (popular on the continent), which has the unfortunate potential of giving parties with a very small percentage of the vote (such as a neo-nazi group) the opportunity to wield an excessive amount of influence in a coalition government. So, what can you do, eh?

Besides, over here the civil service secretly runs everything anyway, and nobody even knows who they are, let alone votes for them! (cf. old British comedy, "Yes, Minister"/"Yes, Prime Minister")

Don't know that this helps - just felt like sharing - but with any luck a different perspective may spark off different viewpoints.

Well, it looks like the same system here too. Does that go for both houses of parliment, or are the House of Lords different?

In the Presidental elections, the popular vote for each candidate gets added up on a state by state basis. Each state is accorded electoral votes based on the number of Congress critt

ARAWAEN

Friday, February 20, 2004 5:19 PM

Quote:

I don't think so at all. Not in the US. Because we ain't got no classes. (And some say we ain't got no class either )

Look, class is an artifical social construct. And here and now, it means less and less each and every day. It has no reality outside the skull of the person who thinks it. Like race, it is being shown to be such much horse manure.

What a crock! People like Ken Lay and Bill Gates can get meetings with the president, I can't . Where is my invitation to the Republican Convention (I am a registered party member)? Where is eminent domain being applied to wealthy neigborhoods? During riots, why are wealthy communities given priority?

"That a peasant may become king does not render the kingdom democratic."(Woodrow Wilson) There is some mobility between classes in our society I won't deny that, but we are hardly without boundaries. When are we going to see executives outsourced overseas, companies could save a fortune doing this? Has the ghetto dissappeared?

Class might be an artificial social construct, as in it doesn't exist naturally, but humans create one in every society that exists.

Its not how hard people work either. There are a lot of hard working people at the poverty level. And most of the ultra-rich don't work at all, they have their money work for them.

"Governments, if they endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic forms. No government in history has been known to evade this pattern. And as the aristocracy develops, government tends to more and more to act exclusively for that class, whether that class be hereditary royalty, oligarchs of financial empires, or entrenched bureaucracy."
--Frank Herbert

And the point is not that different people have different levels of wealth, nor that wealth should be redistributed, but rather that people with wealth wield power and are given special consideration because of it. That is what class is all about, that people at different social levels are treated differently by society and the government.

I honestly don't know if it was Drakon or Browncoat1 (or even somebody else) who said the above, post was confusing (missing an end quote). But as you can see it touched a nerve in me. I don't mean to flame or anything.

Um, I'm lost. Uh, I'm Angry. And I'm Armed.