Hi Miriam and all,
I will concur that President John F. Kennedy was fashioned in the
mold of the cold warrior and he never made any secret of our need to be
strong enough to be a deterrent to aggressors. That policy of Mutually
Assured Destruction did not reduce the potential for total destruction, but
it did keep the albeit uneasy peace. More importantly in my view is the
fact that JFK's Peace Corps and his perhaps too tentative, but nevertheless
commitment to assuring the civil rights of Blacks in particular were
positive steps towards a better world and more importantly pointed in the
direction of where the world needed to get to. Perfect? No. Worthwhile?
Definitely.
Charlie Crawford.
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Miriam Vieni
Sent: 30 June 2015 22:14
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: The Lonely American
Charlie,
I was rather young and naive when Kennedy was elected President. I certainly
didn't know as much about what was actually happening politically as I
should have. I had just finished social work school, and was working and
involved in social activities. And I wasn't able to read stuff the way we
are now. With diminishing partial vision, I certainly didn't have access to
all the articles, to newspapers, etc. But Kennedy was the first youthful
President we'd had in my lifetime. He was handsome and charming, and he
could give a rousing speech. However, as naive as I was, I knew that he was
a warrior in the cold war, not a man of peace. While he talked about the
Peace Corps and about the rights of agricultural workers, he was very much a
tool of the military industrial complex. He was trying to get rid of Castro
which was pure insanity because Castro's government was a blessing after the
one which preceded it in Cuba. He got us involved more fully in Vietnam. He
was following up on the policies of the previous administration, the
Eisenhower administration which was Republican. This is like Obama who,
whatever he said in 2008, followed up on the policies of the previous
administration, the Bush administration, which was Republican. My rule of
thumb is that the Republican administrations make things demonstrably worse
and then the Democratic administrations continue what the Republicans were
doing.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Charles Crawford
Sent: Tuesday, June 30, 2015 6:43 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: The Lonely American
Hi Miriam, Carl, and all,
This is an interesting topic. I was listening to the inaugural
speech of President Kennedy earlier today and he spoke precisely of the need
for us to use the technology we have for good and not for destruction.
Maybe he was as much a servant of the Military Industrial Complex as you are
assigning to Obama, but somehow I don't think so. The ideals he and Obama
as well have articulated are real and meaningful, and yes, it is
heartbreaking that they somehow get lost in the mix. Why?
Charlie.
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Miriam Vieni
Sent: 29 June 2015 12:51
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: The Lonely American
We're in a bind. We have all this technology which, theoretically is neutral
and can be used for the good of humankind. But it seems like in a majority
of cases, it is used with malevolent purposes in mind. Put the technology in
the hands of people and just watch what people choose to do with it. But
aside from corporate greed, it does seem as if there is something in the
nature of the technology, coupled with the fact that we are living in a
mass, bureaucratic society, that militates against direct human contact.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Monday, June 29, 2015 11:32 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] The Lonely American
The other day I was talking to one of my grandson's and, well, I was talking
toward my grandson while he was facing me, texting to one friend or another.
"Isolated?" he said, "I'm not isolated. I got Face Book and I'm Liked by
dozens of friends."
"But don't you miss going to the game, or hitting the surf, or joining the
boys for a hand ball game after work?"
"Well, I actually work out of my apartment these days, and my legs don't
hold me up on the surf board anymore. Gosh Gramps, I am turning
35 this July, you know."
My grandson does not feel isolated. He has a world of close friends.
As close as his iPad.
Now I'm not going to suggest that the development of all these electronic
gadgets was some well planned Corporate Capitalistic plot, but if their goal
was to isolate our youth, and then give them the sense of being connected
electronically, and then taking control of that media and controlling them
with Corporate Empire propaganda, they couldn't have done a better job.
Chris Hedges hits another home run with this article. Isolate and dominate.
But always leave them believing that they are connected.
And they are. They are connected to the big Teat of the Empire.
Carl Jarvis
On 6/29/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
tawdry, the cruel and the deadening cult of the self.
The Lonely American
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_lonely_american_20150628/
Posted on Jun 28, 2015
By Chris Hedges
Sandy Johal uses a selfie stick to take a picture of herself in New
Yorks Times Square in January. (Seth Wenig / AP) Michael P. Printup,
president of Watkins Glen International, one of the countrys largest
racetracks, stood with a group of about a dozen race fans at 8:30 a.m.
Saturday. Next to him were boxes of free doughnuts and coffee.
A line of men with towels, who had spent the night in nearby RV
campers, pop-up campers and tents, stood patiently outside the door to
a shower room.
A light drizzle, one that would turn into a torrential downpour and
lead to the races being canceled in the afternoon, coated the group,
all middle-aged or older white men. They were discussing, amid the
high-pitched whine of cars practicing on the 3.4-mile, 11-turn circuit
racetrack, the aging demographic of race fans and the inability to
lure a new generation to the sport.
Maybe if you installed chargers for phones around the track they
would come, suggested one gray-haired man.
But it is not just sporting events. Public lectures, church services,
labor unions, Veterans of Foreign Wars halls, Masonic halls, Rotary
clubs, the Knights of Columbus, the Lions Club, Grange Hall meetings,
the League of Women Voters, Daughters of the American Revolution,
local historical societies, town halls, bowling leagues, bridge clubs,
movie theater attendance (at a 20-year low), advocacy groups such as
the NAACP and professional and amateur theatrical and musical
performances cater to a dwindling and graying population. No one is
coming through the door to take the place of the old members. A
generation has fallen down the rabbit hole of electronic
hallucinationswith images often dominated by violence and
pornography. They have become, in the words of the philosopher Hannah
Arendt, atomized, sucked alone into systems of information and
entertainment that cater to Americas prurient fascination with the
The entrapment in a world of nonstop electronic sounds and images,themselves.
begun with the phonograph and radio, advanced by cinema and television
and perfected by video games, the Internet and hand-held devices, is
making it impossible to build relationships and structures that are
vital for civic engagement and resistance to corporate power. We have
been transformed into commodities. The steady decline of the white
male heaven that is NASCARwhich has stopped publishing the falling
attendance at its tracks and at some speedways has begun to tear down
bleachersis ominous. It is the symbol of a captive society.
We dont see the youth coming in, Printup said. The millennial, the
younger adults 18 to 35, is our target. We spend millions of dollars a
year to target that group. But its hard. Look around. Whos the
youngest person here? Thats our problem. Every sport from the NFL to
NHL is struggling with the 18 to 35 demographic. They call them weird.
They call them difficult.
They only want to look at their computers.
Printups parent company, the International Speedway Corp. (ISC), has
invested significant sums to reach this demographic with little to
show for it.
We have a digital firm that represents nearly all our tracks in the ISC,
he went on, noting that Watkins Glen, which drew about 16,000 fans
this past weekend, is one of the few exceptions to the decline in
numbers. The digital platform is about the only way you can get to
them. We target them.
We buy lists. We hire an agency that tracks their Web and Internet
interactions. If they bring up racing, we want to be there. When a kid
Googles Ferrariracingsports car we are one of the top 10 lists. We
pay for that. It is not cheap. Thats how you have got to get these
kids. But its not working the way it should.
Robert D. Putnam pointed out the decline of independent civic
engagement, or what he called our social capital, in his book
Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. He
noted that our severance from local communal and civic groups brought
with it not only loneliness and alienation, but also a dangerous and
passive reliance on the state.
Totalitarian societies, including our own, inundate the public with a
steady stream of propaganda accompanied by mindless entertainment.
They seek to destroy independent organizations. In Nazi Germany the
state provided millions of cheap, state-subsidized radios and then
dominated the airwaves with its propaganda. Radio receivers were
mounted in public locations in Stalins Soviet Union; and citizens,
especially illiterate peasants, were required to gather to listen to
the state-controlled news and the dictators speeches. These
totalitarian states also banned civic organizations that were not
under the iron control of the party.
The corporate state is no different, although unlike past totalitarian
systems it permits dissent in the form of print and does not ban
fading civic and community groups. It has won the battle against
literacy. The seductiveness of the image lures most Americans away
from the print-based world of ideas. The fascination with the image
swallows the time and energy required to attend and maintain communal
organizations. If no one reads, why censor books? Let Noam Chomsky
publish as much as he wants. Just keep his voice off the airwaves. If
no one attends community meetings, group events or organizations, why
prohibit them? Let them be held in near-empty rooms and left uncovered
by the press until they are shuttered.
The object of a totalitarian state is to keep its citizens locked
within the parameters of official propaganda and permanently isolated.
Propaganda and isolation make it difficult for an individual to
express or carry out dissent. Official opinions, little more than
digestible slogans and clichés, are crafted and disseminated by public
relations specialists on behalf of the power elite. They are repeated
endlessly over the airwaves until the public unconsciously ingests
them. And the isolated public in a totalitarian society is unable to
connect its personal experience of despair, anxiety, fear, frustration
and economic insecurity to the structures that create these
conditions. The isolated citizen is left feeling that his or her
personal misfortune is an exception. The portrayal of society by
systems of state propagandacontent, respectful of authority, just,
economically secure and freeis mistaken for reality.
Totalitarian propaganda, accompanied by isolation, or what Arendt
called atomization, makes it possible for a population not to
believe in anything visible, in the reality of their own experience;
they do not trust their eyes and ears but only their imaginations,
which may be caught by anything that is at once universal and
consistent in itself. This propaganda, Arendt went on, gave the
masses of atomized, undefinable, unstable and futile individuals a
means of self-definition and identification.
Corporate propaganda saturates the public, especially a generation
wedded to new technology, with these lies. Its power, however, comes
from the meticulous study of the moods, prejudices, whims and desires
of the public, to manipulate the masses in their own language and
emotions. Konrad Heiden made this point when he examined fascist
propaganda in Nazi Germany, noting that propaganda must detect the
murmur of the public and translate it into intelligible utterance and
convincing action.
The true aim of political propaganda is not to influence, but to
study, the masses, Heiden wrote. The speaker is in constant
communication with the masses; he hears an echo, and senses the inner
vibration. Heiden, forced to flee Nazi Germany, went on: When a
resonance issues from the depths of the substance, the masses have
given him the pitch; he knows in what terms he must finally address
them. Rather than a means of directing the mass mind, propaganda is a
technique for riding with the masses. It is not a machine to make wind
but a sail to catch the wind.
Dissent will only be possible when we break the dark spell of
corporate propaganda and the isolation that accompanies it. We must
free ourselves from corporate tyranny, which means refusing to invest
our emotional and intellectual energy in electronic images. We must
build what the Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin called voluntary
associations for study and teaching, for industry, commerce, science,
art, literature, exploitation, resistance to exploitation, amusement,
serious work, gratification and self-denial.
We know well the means by which this association of the lord, priest,
merchant, judge, soldier, and king founded its domination, Kropotkin
wrote.
It was by the annihilation of all free unions: of village
communities, guilds, trades unions, fraternities, and medieval cities.
It was by confiscating the land of the communes and the riches of the
guilds; it was by the absolute and ferocious prohibition of all kinds
of free agreement between men; it was by massacre, the wheel, the
gibbet, the sword, and the fire that Church and State established
their domination, and that they succeeded henceforth to reign over an
incoherent agglomeration of subjects, who had no direct union more
among
Corporate propaganda has become so potent that many Americans areaddicted.
We must leave our isolated rooms. We must shut out these images. Wedominate our future.
must connect with those around us. It is only the communal that will
save us. It is only the communal that will allow us to build a
movement to resist. And it is only the communal that will sustain us
through mutual aid as climate change and economic collapse
increasingly
tawdry, the cruel and the deadening cult of the self.
http://www.truthdig.com/ http://www.truthdig.com/ The Lonely
American
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_lonely_american_20150628/
Posted on Jun 28, 2015
By Chris Hedges
Sandy Johal uses a selfie stick to take a picture of herself in New
Yorks Times Square in January. (Seth Wenig / AP) Michael P. Printup,
president of Watkins Glen International, one of the countrys largest
racetracks, stood with a group of about a dozen race fans at 8:30 a.m.
Saturday. Next to him were boxes of free doughnuts and coffee.
A line of men with towels, who had spent the night in nearby RV
campers, pop-up campers and tents, stood patiently outside the door to
a shower room.
A light drizzle, one that would turn into a torrential downpour and
lead to the races being canceled in the afternoon, coated the group,
all middle-aged or older white men. They were discussing, amid the
high-pitched whine of cars practicing on the 3.4-mile, 11-turn circuit
racetrack, the aging demographic of race fans and the inability to
lure a new generation to the sport.
Maybe if you installed chargers for phones around the track they
would come, suggested one gray-haired man.
But it is not just sporting events. Public lectures, church services,
labor unions, Veterans of Foreign Wars halls, Masonic halls, Rotary
clubs, the Knights of Columbus, the Lions Club, Grange Hall meetings,
the League of Women Voters, Daughters of the American Revolution,
local historical societies, town halls, bowling leagues, bridge clubs,
movie theater attendance (at a 20-year low), advocacy groups such as
the NAACP and professional and amateur theatrical and musical
performances cater to a dwindling and graying population. No one is
coming through the door to take the place of the old members. A
generation has fallen down the rabbit hole of electronic
hallucinationswith images often dominated by violence and
pornography. They have become, in the words of the philosopher Hannah
Arendt, atomized, sucked alone into systems of information and
entertainment that cater to Americas prurient fascination with the
The entrapment in a world of nonstop electronic sounds and images,themselves.
begun with the phonograph and radio, advanced by cinema and television
and perfected by video games, the Internet and hand-held devices, is
making it impossible to build relationships and structures that are
vital for civic engagement and resistance to corporate power. We have
been transformed into commodities. The steady decline of the white
male heaven that is NASCARwhich has stopped publishing the falling
attendance at its tracks and at some speedways has begun to tear down
bleachersis ominous. It is the symbol of a captive society.
We dont see the youth coming in, Printup said. The millennial, the
younger adults 18 to 35, is our target. We spend millions of dollars a
year to target that group. But its hard. Look around. Whos the
youngest person here? Thats our problem. Every sport from the NFL to
NHL is struggling with the 18 to 35 demographic. They call them weird.
They call them difficult.
They only want to look at their computers.
Printups parent company, the International Speedway Corp. (ISC), has
invested significant sums to reach this demographic with little to
show for it.
We have a digital firm that represents nearly all our tracks in the ISC,
he went on, noting that Watkins Glen, which drew about 16,000 fans
this past weekend, is one of the few exceptions to the decline in
numbers. The digital platform is about the only way you can get to
them. We target them.
We buy lists. We hire an agency that tracks their Web and Internet
interactions. If they bring up racing, we want to be there. When a kid
Googles Ferrariracingsports car we are one of the top 10 lists. We
pay for that. It is not cheap. Thats how you have got to get these
kids. But its not working the way it should.
Robert D. Putnam pointed out the decline of independent civic
engagement, or what he called our social capital, in his book
Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. He
noted that our severance from local communal and civic groups brought
with it not only loneliness and alienation, but also a dangerous and
passive reliance on the state.
Totalitarian societies, including our own, inundate the public with a
steady stream of propaganda accompanied by mindless entertainment.
They seek to destroy independent organizations. In Nazi Germany the
state provided millions of cheap, state-subsidized radios and then
dominated the airwaves with its propaganda. Radio receivers were
mounted in public locations in Stalins Soviet Union; and citizens,
especially illiterate peasants, were required to gather to listen to
the state-controlled news and the dictators speeches. These
totalitarian states also banned civic organizations that were not
under the iron control of the party.
The corporate state is no different, although unlike past totalitarian
systems it permits dissent in the form of print and does not ban
fading civic and community groups. It has won the battle against
literacy. The seductiveness of the image lures most Americans away
from the print-based world of ideas. The fascination with the image
swallows the time and energy required to attend and maintain communal
organizations. If no one reads, why censor books? Let Noam Chomsky
publish as much as he wants. Just keep his voice off the airwaves. If
no one attends community meetings, group events or organizations, why
prohibit them? Let them be held in near-empty rooms and left uncovered
by the press until they are shuttered.
The object of a totalitarian state is to keep its citizens locked
within the parameters of official propaganda and permanently isolated.
Propaganda and isolation make it difficult for an individual to
express or carry out dissent. Official opinions, little more than
digestible slogans and clichés, are crafted and disseminated by public
relations specialists on behalf of the power elite. They are repeated
endlessly over the airwaves until the public unconsciously ingests
them. And the isolated public in a totalitarian society is unable to
connect its personal experience of despair, anxiety, fear, frustration
and economic insecurity to the structures that create these
conditions. The isolated citizen is left feeling that his or her
personal misfortune is an exception. The portrayal of society by
systems of state propagandacontent, respectful of authority, just,
economically secure and freeis mistaken for reality.
Totalitarian propaganda, accompanied by isolation, or what Arendt
called atomization, makes it possible for a population not to
believe in anything visible, in the reality of their own experience;
they do not trust their eyes and ears but only their imaginations,
which may be caught by anything that is at once universal and
consistent in itself. This propaganda, Arendt went on, gave the
masses of atomized, undefinable, unstable and futile individuals a
means of self-definition and identification.
Corporate propaganda saturates the public, especially a generation
wedded to new technology, with these lies. Its power, however, comes
from the meticulous study of the moods, prejudices, whims and desires
of the public, to manipulate the masses in their own language and
emotions. Konrad Heiden made this point when he examined fascist
propaganda in Nazi Germany, noting that propaganda must detect the
murmur of the public and translate it into intelligible utterance and
convincing action.
The true aim of political propaganda is not to influence, but to
study, the masses, Heiden wrote. The speaker is in constant
communication with the masses; he hears an echo, and senses the inner
vibration. Heiden, forced to flee Nazi Germany, went on: When a
resonance issues from the depths of the substance, the masses have
given him the pitch; he knows in what terms he must finally address
them. Rather than a means of directing the mass mind, propaganda is a
technique for riding with the masses. It is not a machine to make wind
but a sail to catch the wind.
Dissent will only be possible when we break the dark spell of
corporate propaganda and the isolation that accompanies it. We must
free ourselves from corporate tyranny, which means refusing to invest
our emotional and intellectual energy in electronic images. We must
build what the Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin called voluntary
associations for study and teaching, for industry, commerce, science,
art, literature, exploitation, resistance to exploitation, amusement,
serious work, gratification and self-denial.
We know well the means by which this association of the lord, priest,
merchant, judge, soldier, and king founded its domination, Kropotkin
wrote.
It was by the annihilation of all free unions: of village
communities, guilds, trades unions, fraternities, and medieval cities.
It was by confiscating the land of the communes and the riches of the
guilds; it was by the absolute and ferocious prohibition of all kinds
of free agreement between men; it was by massacre, the wheel, the
gibbet, the sword, and the fire that Church and State established
their domination, and that they succeeded henceforth to reign over an
incoherent agglomeration of subjects, who had no direct union more
among
Corporate propaganda has become so potent that many Americans areaddicted.
We must leave our isolated rooms. We must shut out these images. Wedominate our future.
must connect with those around us. It is only the communal that will
save us. It is only the communal that will allow us to build a
movement to resist. And it is only the communal that will sustain us
through mutual aid as climate change and economic collapse
increasingly
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