Friday, April 22, 2011
Saturday, April 9, 2011
There is Power in a Union: The Epic Story of Labor i America
"There is Power in a Union: The Epic Story of Labor in America," by Philip Dray
"The right to property, to own and conduct a competaitive business--these were concepts held sacred--while the notion of an independent group of workers leveraging power, impacting economic and social policy, was not." 8
"The right to property, to own and conduct a competaitive business--these were concepts held sacred--while the notion of an independent group of workers leveraging power, impacting economic and social policy, was not." 8
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Note: What's the Matter with Kansas
by Thomas Frank
...if we are to understand the forces that have pulled us so far to the right, it is to Kansas that we must turn our attention [Frank's home]. The high priests of conservatism like to comfort themselves by insisting that it is the free market, that wise and benevolent god, that has ordained all the economic measures they have pressed on America and the world over the last few decades. But in truth it is the carefully cultivated derangement of places like Kansas that has propelled their movement along. It is the culture war that gets the goods." 10
..god's holy hate 35
poverty is profitable: poverty makes stock go up and labor [cost] go down. (Describing the unregulated corporate beef industry in rural Kansas. 55
"minister of the market" "high priest of capitalism" 80
The Kotch brothers: Koch Industries: the second largest privatly held company. Koch's business is oil and the right wing propaganda industry: Dynasty founder is Fred Koch, who was a charter member of the John Birch Society; billionaire son Charles founded the libertarian Cato institute in 1977; another billionaire son, David, ran on the Libertarian ticket in 1980. Koch money props up "Reason" magazine, the Manhattan Institute, the Heartland Institute, Citizens for a Sound Economy, and the Democratic Leadership Council. 81
Conservative pundits like Limbaugh, Coutler, Hannity, O'Riley, with few exceptions don't talk about economic issues. Why, because the great goal of the backlash is to nurture a cultural class war, and the first step in doing so, as we have seen, is to deny the economic basis of social class?..you can hardly deride liberals as the societies "elite" or present the GOP as the party of the common man if you acknowledge the existence of the corporate world--the power that creates the nations real elite, that dominates its real class system, and that wields the Republican party as its personal sidearm." 128
"And this is the logical terminus of backlash [fundamentalist, right wing] reasoning. When you have rejected all the accepted social science methods for understanding the way things work, when you can't talk strait about social class, when you can't acknowledge that free market forces mightn't not always be for the best, when you can't admit the validity of even the most basic historical truths, all you're left with are these blunt tools: journalists and sociologists and historians and musicians and photographers do what they do because they are liberals. And liberals lie, Liberals cheat...Liberalism in not a product of social forces, it is a social force, a jugernaut moving according to its own logic all its own, as rigid and mechanical as anything dreamed up by the Stalinists of yesterday."
"...the people on top know what they have to do to stay there, and in a pinch they can easily overlook the sweaty piety of the New Republican masses, the social conservatives who raise their voices in praise of Jesus but caste their votes to exault Caesar." 178
screed: ranting piece of writing.
Conservatism provides its followers with parallel universe...the most important similarity between backlash and mainstream commercial culture is that both refuse to think about capitalism critically. Indeed, conservative populism's total erasure of the economic could only happen in a culture like ours where material politics have already been muted and where the economic has largely been replaced by ...pseudospiritual fulfillments [authenticity (identity of a "conservative" and victimization by "liberals", rebellion, the nobility of victim hood, individuality]. This is the basic lie of the backlash, the manipulative strategy that makes the whole senseless parade possible. In all of its rejecting and nay-saying, it resolutely refuses to consider the assaults on its values, the insults, andthe Hollywood sneers are all products of capitalism as surely as are McDonald's hambergers and Beoing 737's. 242
Why shouldn't our culture get worse and worse , if making it worse will only cause the people who worsen it to grow wealthier and wealthier? 250
"The fever-dream of martydom that Kansas follows today has every bit as much power as John Brown's dream of justice and human fraternity. And even if the state must sacrifice it all, it's cities and its industry, its farms and its small townl, all its thoughts and all its doings--the brilliance of the mirage will not fade. Kansas is ready to lead us singing into the apocalypse. It invites us all to join in, to lay down our lives so that others might cash out at the top; to renounce forever our middle-American propserity in pursuit of a crimson fantasy of middle-American righteousness." 251
...if we are to understand the forces that have pulled us so far to the right, it is to Kansas that we must turn our attention [Frank's home]. The high priests of conservatism like to comfort themselves by insisting that it is the free market, that wise and benevolent god, that has ordained all the economic measures they have pressed on America and the world over the last few decades. But in truth it is the carefully cultivated derangement of places like Kansas that has propelled their movement along. It is the culture war that gets the goods." 10
..god's holy hate 35
poverty is profitable: poverty makes stock go up and labor [cost] go down. (Describing the unregulated corporate beef industry in rural Kansas. 55
"minister of the market" "high priest of capitalism" 80
The Kotch brothers: Koch Industries: the second largest privatly held company. Koch's business is oil and the right wing propaganda industry: Dynasty founder is Fred Koch, who was a charter member of the John Birch Society; billionaire son Charles founded the libertarian Cato institute in 1977; another billionaire son, David, ran on the Libertarian ticket in 1980. Koch money props up "Reason" magazine, the Manhattan Institute, the Heartland Institute, Citizens for a Sound Economy, and the Democratic Leadership Council. 81
Conservative pundits like Limbaugh, Coutler, Hannity, O'Riley, with few exceptions don't talk about economic issues. Why, because the great goal of the backlash is to nurture a cultural class war, and the first step in doing so, as we have seen, is to deny the economic basis of social class?..you can hardly deride liberals as the societies "elite" or present the GOP as the party of the common man if you acknowledge the existence of the corporate world--the power that creates the nations real elite, that dominates its real class system, and that wields the Republican party as its personal sidearm." 128
"And this is the logical terminus of backlash [fundamentalist, right wing] reasoning. When you have rejected all the accepted social science methods for understanding the way things work, when you can't talk strait about social class, when you can't acknowledge that free market forces mightn't not always be for the best, when you can't admit the validity of even the most basic historical truths, all you're left with are these blunt tools: journalists and sociologists and historians and musicians and photographers do what they do because they are liberals. And liberals lie, Liberals cheat...Liberalism in not a product of social forces, it is a social force, a jugernaut moving according to its own logic all its own, as rigid and mechanical as anything dreamed up by the Stalinists of yesterday."
"...the people on top know what they have to do to stay there, and in a pinch they can easily overlook the sweaty piety of the New Republican masses, the social conservatives who raise their voices in praise of Jesus but caste their votes to exault Caesar." 178
screed: ranting piece of writing.
Conservatism provides its followers with parallel universe...the most important similarity between backlash and mainstream commercial culture is that both refuse to think about capitalism critically. Indeed, conservative populism's total erasure of the economic could only happen in a culture like ours where material politics have already been muted and where the economic has largely been replaced by ...pseudospiritual fulfillments [authenticity (identity of a "conservative" and victimization by "liberals", rebellion, the nobility of victim hood, individuality]. This is the basic lie of the backlash, the manipulative strategy that makes the whole senseless parade possible. In all of its rejecting and nay-saying, it resolutely refuses to consider the assaults on its values, the insults, andthe Hollywood sneers are all products of capitalism as surely as are McDonald's hambergers and Beoing 737's. 242
Why shouldn't our culture get worse and worse , if making it worse will only cause the people who worsen it to grow wealthier and wealthier? 250
"The fever-dream of martydom that Kansas follows today has every bit as much power as John Brown's dream of justice and human fraternity. And even if the state must sacrifice it all, it's cities and its industry, its farms and its small townl, all its thoughts and all its doings--the brilliance of the mirage will not fade. Kansas is ready to lead us singing into the apocalypse. It invites us all to join in, to lay down our lives so that others might cash out at the top; to renounce forever our middle-American propserity in pursuit of a crimson fantasy of middle-American righteousness." 251
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