-----Original Message-----
From: miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, February 21, 2020 9:45 PM
To: 'Carl Jarvis' <carjar82@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: RE: [blind-democracy] Re: The Escalating Class War Against Bernie
Sanders
Statistics? I must have told you about the Sociology Statistics course I took
in college. The professor was a concentration camp survivor, a kind and patient
man. As I've said, I've always had a terrible time with math although somehow,
when the teacher was superb, I managed to get a good grade. Like in high school
when the teacher was wonderful and was then fired for having been a Communist
in the 1930's. I got an A minus on a final exam because I forgot to do the last
step in a quadratic equation. God knows how I managed to get all of those other
examples correct. In college, I got a B plus on that final statistics exam, but
all of the math answers were incorrect. After class, I took my paper up to Dr.
Neurath and asked why he'd given me a B plus when the answers were wrong, and
he told me that I'd understood all of the concepts, but had messed up in the
arithmetic, and it was the concepts that were most important. It's amazing what
a wonderful teacher can accomplish.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: Carl Jarvis <carjar82@xxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, February 21, 2020 8:52 PM
To: Roger Loran Bailey <rogerbailey81@xxxxxxx>
Cc: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [blind-democracy] Re: The Escalating Class War Against Bernie
Sanders
Ah yes(great big grin), I knew I could count on you, Roger, for a wee bit of
sympathy for my old elitist professor. After all it was beneath his greatness
to have to stoop to "teaching" an introductory course in Statistics. And,
viewed from his high perch atop his ivory pedestal, being set upon by the
Institution to stoop to being wet nurse to a bunch of Chimpanzees, I can
certainly understand his irritation, having been treated with such indignity.
Most of my professors, fortunately for me, were teachers. Most of them saw
their job as one of instilling their knowledge and wisdom in the heads of
youngsters still wet behind the ears.
However, mine was not to question why. Mine was but to try and try.
And after all, I could not complain too loudly since tuition was a mere $50 a
quarter for a full 15 hours of credit. Back in those long ago days I'll bet
that the University of Washington could put its teaching staff up against any
public university in the nation, and come out on the plus side.
Incidentally, three blind students took that Stat course. One took a
pass/fail, and another took the course three times before she snuck a C out of
the lofty professor. The third, me, earned a B.
In spite of the professor's attitude of being put upon for having to teach such
basic courses, my two colleagues went on to become Social Workers, while I
spent a few years teaching Food Service to blind students, and Braille and
Daily Living Skills, before winding up as Assistant Director of the Washington
State Department of Services for the Blind.
Carl Jarvis
On 2/21/20, Roger Loran Bailey <rogerbailey81@xxxxxxx> wrote:
I can feel some sympathy for your professor. If you say something as
clearly as you possibly can and it is still not understood then what
can you do but repeat yourself. It is a bit frustrating to say the least.
___
Sam Harris
“Tell a devout Christian that his wife is cheating on him, or that
frozen yogurt can make a man invisible, and he is likely to require as
much evidence as anyone else, and to be persuaded only to the extent
that you give it. Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed was
written by an invisible deity who will punish him with fire for
eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible claim about the
universe, and he seems to require no evidence what so ever.”
― Sam Harris,
On 2/21/2020 12:16 PM, Carl Jarvis wrote:
Now here's something I understand. Roger wrote, "when you try to
change the system from within the system it is not the system that
gets changed. It is you who will change."
Speaking of Labels, I have said, I don't care for labels. But I
should have said, "I don't like Some labels, in particular those that
are used to dismiss entire groups of people".
While I appreciate Roger's careful explanations, often he sounds like
a professor who is fast running out of patience. Although Miriam and
I are much looser with the use of words, we seem to bumble about
until we understand what we're trying to get across. Language is fluid.
Label meanings change over time.
I had a professor who had a super high IQ...he told us so...and when
I would raise my hand and ask for an explanation to something he just
said, he would raise his voice and loudly repeat, word for word, the
same information that I still did not understand. So, just to prove
to you that I'm not the brightest bulb in the knife drawer, I went to
his office and attempted to explain what I thought was quite obvious.
"If you can't speak the King's English", he clipped, "Then what the
Hell are you doing at the University of Washington?" That was back
in 1968. He was about my dad's age, so I can safely say that he is
long gone. But here I am, bringing him up as an example, and getting
all hot under the collar just remembering that rebuke. I do recall
the course was the Sociology Statistic class. But all I learned was
to keep my mouth shut and nod my head.
I did locate a student from a previous class, and paid her to coach
me. She was not only a better teacher, using language in a way I
understood, but she also offered to read my exam for me. I will not
suggest that she and I cheated...just that she was super helpful.
I almost forgot the other part of my story. After I realized the
professor was not interested in my problem, and before I hunted down
a former student to coach me, I said to myself...Self, you'll just
bring up the question again in Sections. We had the professor three
days a week and went to Sections two days a week, where we had a
Teacher's Assistant (T A)to help us understand the process. The T a
rushed in and said, "Harrow! I am...", and his accent was so strong
those were the only words I understood.
Carl Jarvis
On 2/20/20, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
If other people are not using words as precisely as I am then that
is as if we are speaking separate languages. That would mean that
they are only receiving vague impressions while I am talking about
something specific and if I started speaking only vaguely then I
would not be communicating what I am trying to communicate. I don't
see what is so difficult about learning one's own language including
the vocabulary of that language. It is not even necessary to read
dictionaries. All you have to do is to pay attention to how words
are used and you learn the meanings of those words. That's how I do
it. A major interest of mine is socialism and communism and so I
read about it. Sometimes I will read a book with a glossary, but I
rarely need it. I can tell by context what a word means and when the
context consistently shows the word to mean the same thing every
time I have learned what a word means. That means that when I come
across the word again I have no need to just interpret the word as a
vague emotional impression. It is really difficult for me to
understand why other people do not do the same thing. As for whether
a socialist state is authoritarian or not, that is something else
that I have discussed on this list time and time again. It depends
on how the socialist state is achieved. As I have explained before,
we would prefer to just get our candidates elected and to change the
constitution and laws to legislate socialism. That is what the
social democrats started out to do, but there is an aphorism that
when you try to change the system from within the system it is not
the system that gets changed. It is you who will change. The social
democrats are a perfect example of that. When you give up trying to
abolish capitalism in favor of just regulating capitalism then you
have given up being socialist. But when the capitalists get to
feeling really threatened they lash out violently and because of
exercising the right to self defense a civil war is likely to
result. Once the capitalists are overthrown then in order to keep
them from walking right in and reestablishing their capitalist state
then the new socialist state has to be somewhat authoritarian to
survive. It should never be forgotten, however, that this is only
temporary until there is no chance that the capitalists can regain
power. Furthermore, any state is authoritarian. Again, the state is
the apparatus by which one class exercises power over other classes
by violence or the threat of violence. That is what police forces
and standing armies are all about. Like it or not, you are living in
an authoritarian state. But once everyone in society plays a role in
maintaining society, that is, when classes have been abolished, the
state no longer has a reason to continue to exist. The state
apparatus can then be transformed into an administrator of things
rather than people. That is, there will still have to be some kind
of coordination to get products produced. Factory committees will
still have to meet to make plans for how they will produce products
and then there will still have to be an organized way to distribute
the products. So imagine people working together to do all of this.
On a small scale imagine a barn raising. That is a practice from
agrarian cultures that refers to a barn needing to be built and so
everyone in the community comes together and build a barn without
expectation of remuneration other than that the next time they need
a barn to be built the community will come together an build that
one too. Imagine a family that cooperates to bring in a household
income and to do the housework. The members of that family are
working for themselves, but not as individuals for their own
personal needs. They are working for the collective good of the
family including themselves as individuals. That is communism.
Instead of being against human nature as it is so often accused of,
it is human nature. If you look around you then you will see that
mutual cooperation for mutual benefit is one of the most prominent
parts of human nature. I am sure that you have cooperated with others many
times throughout your lifetime in ways that benefited yourself and the
others too. Just imagine that on a large scale and with no one forcing you
to do it and you can imagine communism.
___
Sam Harris
“Tell a devout Christian that his wife is cheating on him, or that
frozen yogurt can make a man invisible, and he is likely to require
as much evidence as anyone else, and to be persuaded only to the
extent that you give it. Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed
was written by an invisible deity who will punish him with fire for
eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible claim about the
universe, and he seems to require no evidence what so ever.”
― Sam Harris,
On 2/19/2020 9:34 PM, miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
The problem is that most people are not using these words as
precisely as you are. Well, that's the first problem. You have a
very sharp mind.
You
read a lot and you use the abstract concepts that you read about,
in order to understand the world. And I'm sure that there are other
people who do that also. But the majority of us don't. I talked
about the kind of world I'd like to see. I was describing my values
and I was talking about how I would like life to be for people. I
was not talking about which system I thought would be best to
arrive at my goal because honestly, I don't know which system would
be best and that's why I don't like labels. My feeling is that
human beings, with all their fallibility, their need for power,
their fears, the individual psychology that drives them, will most
probably mess up any system we adopt.
The idea of the public owning the means of production sounds
benign, but it depends on what that word, "public" means or I
guess, how this is actually put into practice. Does it mean an
authoritarian state or does it mean that workers own their
workplaces and run them democratically.
Somehow, it seems like bureaucracies inevitably become rigid ,
unresponsive, and self perpetuating. I don't think that this would
be different under socialism than it is under capitalism. But never
having had first hand experience with socialism, I don't know.
About Communism, you said:
Communism is the situation in which the state itself has been
abolished.
That is, the state has turned from an apparatus that administers
people into an apparatus that administers things, things like commodities.
I honestly don't understand what that would look like in real life.
I guess it's too abstract for my brain, but I would appreciate it
if you could give me an example of what that might be like.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Roger Loran
Bailey (Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Wednesday, February 19, 2020 9:06 PM
To: miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: The Escalating Class War Against
Bernie Sanders
Label is another name for noun. It is a part of speech and it is a
major part of speech. It lets you know what you are talking about.
You can say I walked across and picked up and took. But it makes a
lot more sense to say I walked across the floor and picked up a
coffee cup and took a sip of coffee. If you reject labels you
cannot form a coherent sentence. In stead of saying that you feel
uncomfortable with labels try learning what they mean and then it
will be a lot easier to discuss things. Now, I do not mean
communism when I say socialism. If I meant communism I would say
communism. Lenin described socialism as the lowest form of
communism, but it is low enough that the two can be easily
distinguished. Socialism is a form of state. It is the situation in
which the means of production is under the ownership and democratic
control of the public. If someone advocates this situation then he
or she is a socialist. If a person does not advocate that then no
matter how much he or she calls him or herself a socialist he or
she is not a socialist. Socialism simply is not regulated
capitalism. Even the outright capitalists accept some amount of
regulation by their state.
Otherwise their profit system would collapse in the extreme
competition that would result without any restraint. If a
capitalist who is consumed with making profit accepts some
regulation so as to not be eaten alive by his or her competition
then that does not make that capitalist a socialist. Socialism is
simply not any government regulation or program that happens to
exist. If you use socialism that way then you render the word
socialism completely meaningless. Communism, on the other hand, is
the situation in which the state itself has been abolished. That
is, the state has turned from an apparatus that administers people
into an apparatus that administers things, things like commodities.
If you would just drop your aversion to labels you would know that
and you would not have to get the impression that I am talking
about anything when I use a word like socialism. You would simply
know what I am talking about. And I do not use words to give
impressions anyway. I use words to communicate and I use words to
communicate specific ideas.
___
Sam Harris
“Tell a devout Christian that his wife is cheating on him, or that
frozen yogurt can make a man invisible, and he is likely to require
as much evidence as anyone else, and to be persuaded only to the
extent that you give it. Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed
was written by an invisible deity who will punish him with fire for
eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible claim about the
universe, and he seems to require no evidence what so ever.”
― Sam Harris,
On 2/19/2020 9:16 AM, miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
I do have a lot of problems with all these labels, capitalism,
socialism, communism. I guess I don't care what you call it so
long as everyone has a comfortable home, good nutrition, good
complete health care, access to as much education as that person
wants, and an opportunity to work if he or she is willing and
able. I think that the world should be run for the welfare of
people, not for profit, and I think that there should be a ceiling
on the income that any individual family should have. But I'm not
bound to a particular political philosophy. I don't care how we
get there. I believe that you are advocating communism when you
use the word "socialist", but I'm not sure and it doesn't matter a
whole lot. I do know that when a lot of other people use the word,
"socialism, they mean a variety of things by it.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: Roger Loran Bailey <rogerbailey81@xxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, February 18, 2020 11:28 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [blind-democracy] Re: The Escalating Class War
Against Bernie Sanders
It remains that the Scandinavian countries are capitalist and no
social democrat government in those countries have made a move to
abolish capitalism. If you think you can just regulate capitalism
into being nice capitalism you are a pretty poor socialist.
___
Sam Harris
“Tell a devout Christian that his wife is cheating on him, or that
frozen yogurt can make a man invisible, and he is likely to
require as much evidence as anyone else, and to be persuaded only
to the extent that you give it. Tell him that the book he keeps by
his bed was written by an invisible deity who will punish him with
fire for eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible claim
about the universe, and he seems to require no evidence what so
ever.”
― Sam Harris,
On 2/18/2020 9:35 PM, miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
There is really a difference between how the Scandanavian
countries function and the way the US does. It has to do with the
fact that citizens of those countries pay a much higher tax rate
and the money which those taxes raise, are used to provide many
benefits to families that Americans don't have. Universal medical
care, child care, paid family leave, a lot of vacation time, all
sorts of things that make life easier for working people. That's
the kind of thing that the Democratic Socialists here, or
whatever label you choose to assign to them want. In the US, the
term, "liberal", has come to mean progressive social values, as
opposed to conservative social values like being anti choice or
anti gay. It isn't a derogatory term. It's just that it doesn't
necessarily mean that the people whom you call liberal,
understand the enormous exploitation of working people and the
incredible inequality. However, people who are working for
positive change, understand that you don't get it by dividing
people. You get it by showing them what they have in common and
helping them find ways to work together to reach goals. Calling
people "liberals" as a derogatory term, or "deplorables" or "the
uneducated masses" separates them.
It's
the kind of thing that Trump does, only he uses other words.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Roger Loran
Bailey (Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Tuesday, February 18, 2020 9:15 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; Bob Hachey (Redacted sender
bhachey for DMARC) <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: The Escalating Class War Against
Bernie Sanders
I think your BC professors were referring to the social
democrats, not socialism. It is really hard to distinguish
between a liberal and a social democrat. So they may as well just
say liberalism instead of socialism.
___
Sam Harris
“Tell a devout Christian that his wife is cheating on him, or
that frozen yogurt can make a man invisible, and he is likely to
require as much evidence as anyone else, and to be persuaded only
to the extent that you give it. Tell him that the book he keeps
by his bed was written by an invisible deity who will punish him
with fire for eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible
claim about the universe, and he seems to require no evidence
what so ever.”
― Sam Harris,
On 2/18/2020 8:00 PM, Bob Hachey (Redacted sender bhachey for
DMARC)
wrote:
Hi Miriam,
Good article here. The more negative I see on Bernie, the more
likely I am to vote for him in the primary despite my fears that
he may not be electable. And, seems to me that more of the
negativity on Bernie now comes from the left rather than the
right. What a mess and a farce as well.
IF someone wants to argue that Bernie's policy positions may not
be supported by the majority of Americans I can live with that
as a possibly reasonable argument. What I hate most is the tired
old rant that "He's a socialist" and how awful that is. Also,
many trot out the lazy definition of socialism that appears on
dictionary.com which says socialism promotes ownership or
regulation of the means of production.
I was taught that it is communism that promotes ownership of the
means of production. Socialism promotes the regulation, not
ownership of the means of production according to my BC professors.
Bob Hachey
Bob Hachey
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of ;
miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Tuesday, February 18, 2020 3:16 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] The Escalating Class War Against
Bernie Sanders
The Escalating Class War Against Bernie Sanders By Norman
Solomon, Reader Supported News
18 February 20
More than ever, Bernie Sanders is public enemy number one for
power elites that thrive on economic injustice. The Bernie 2020
campaign is a direct threat to the undemocratic leverage that
extremely wealthy individuals and huge corporations constantly
exert on the political process. No wonder we're now seeing so
much anti-Bernie rage from leading corporate Democrats - eagerly
amplified by corporate media.
In American politics, hell hath no fury like corporate power
scorned.
Flagrant media biases against Sanders are routine in a wide
range of mainstream outlets. (The media watch group FAIR has
long documented the problem, illuminated by one piece after
another after another after another just this month.) In sharp
contrast, positivity toward Sanders in mass media spheres is scarce.
The pattern is enmeshed with the corporatism that the Sanders
campaign seeks to replace with genuine democracy - disempowering
great wealth and corporate heft while empowering everyday people
to participate in a truly democratic process.
Big media are continually amplifying the voices of well-paid
reporters and pundits whose jobs involve acceptance of corporate
power, including the prerogatives of corporate owners and sponsors.
And, in news coverage of politics, there's an inexhaustible
supply of former Democratic officeholders and appointees who've
been lucratively feeding from corporate troughs as lobbyists,
consultants and PR operatives. Their corporate ties usually go
unmentioned.
An important media headquarters for hostility toward the Sanders
campaign is MSNBC, owned by Comcast - a notoriously anti-labor
and anti-consumer corporation. "People need to remember," I
pointed out on Democracy Now! last week, "that if you, for
instance, don't trust Comcast, why would you trust a network that is
owned by Comcast?
These are class interests being worked out where the top strata
of ownership and investors hires the CEO, hires the managing
editors, hires the reporters. And so, what we're seeing, and not
to be rhetorical about it, but we really are seeing a class war
underway."
Routinely, the talking heads and go-to sources for mainline news
outlets are far removed from the economic pressures besetting so
many Americans. And so, media professionals with the most clout
and largest megaphones are quite distant from the Sanders base.
Voting patterns in the New Hampshire primary reflected whose
economic interests the Sanders campaign is promising to serve.
With
10 active candidates on the Democratic ballot, Sanders "won 4 in
10 of voters with household incomes under $50,000 and nearly 3
in 10 with incomes between
$50,00 and $99,000," The Washington Post reported.
Meanwhile, a trio of researchers associated with the Institute
for New Economic Thinking - Thomas Ferguson, Jie Chen and Paul
Jorgensen
- found that "the higher the town's income, the fewer votes cast"
for
Sanders.
"Lower income towns in New Hampshire voted heavily for Sanders;
richer towns did the opposite."
The researchers saw in the data "further dramatic evidence of a
point we have made before: that the Democratic Party is now
sharply divided by social class."
It's a reality with media implications that are hidden in plain
sight.
The often-vitriolic and sometimes preposterous attacks on
Sanders via powerful national media outlets are almost always
coming from affluent or outright wealthy people. Meanwhile,
low-income Americans have virtually zero access to the TV
studios (other than providing after-hours janitorial services).
With very few exceptions, the loudest voices to be heard from
mass media are coming from individuals with wealth far above the
financial vicinity of average Americans. Virtually none of the
most widely read, seen and heard journalists are on the low end
of the nation's extreme income inequality.
Viewed in that light - and keeping in mind that corporate
ownership and advertising dominate mainstream media - it
shouldn't be surprising that few prominent journalists have much
good to say about a presidential campaign fiercely aligned with
the working class.
"If there is going to be class warfare in this country," Bernie
Sanders told the Iowa AFL-CIO convention last summer, "it's time
that the working class of this country won that war and not just
the corporate elite."
To the corporate elite, goals like that are unacceptable.
