"Are Americans A Broken People?" Interesting story from AlterNet

[oldredfordette]

http://www.alternet.org/news/144529/..._of_oppression

Depressing little read, but true.

[maxx]

I was glad to see he included TV as one of the drugs of this nation. It is disconcerting to think of all the people, some pretty young, who are slaves to Big Pharma. And I think TV encourages certain assumptions, i.e., the good life = loads of technology, being pretty, funny and popular. It is also rife with crime stories which just create fears about other people. The message is you can't trust anyone.
And of course, there are loads of talking heads ready to justify your prejudices.

Beyond that, you only have to turn to the first six years of the Bush admin. and all the neocon crap they passed and did to realize how the average middle class person was pretty beaten down by it all.

[gibran]

We are bent but not broken...we open the doors everyday to voice our opinions and sometimes the hardest thing to do is to to do something...but as ripple in the pond..we ultimately owe it to ourselves to stand against oppression....

the absolutism of blind loyalty to a party, religion, or ideology leads ultimately to despair when they fail us...but in reality we fail ourselves for not voicing our outrage at the oppression imposed by those who claim they represent our values. We set our values...we set our agendas...a small ripple will ultimately reach like minded people...and when you take a stand..it will generally be met with Resistance and labels [[anti-this or that), but that's how they try to win...


yes we are bent...but not broken.

[Jimaz]

Resonates with Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine - The Rise Of Disaster Capitalism.

[Jimaz]

From the AlterNet article:

Can anything be done to turn this around?

When people get caught up in humiliating abuse syndromes, more truths about their oppressive humiliations don't set them free. What sets them free is morale.

What gives people morale? Encouragement. Small victories. Models of courageous behaviors. And anything that helps them break out of the vicious cycle of pain, shut down, immobilization, shame over immobilization, more pain, and more shut down.

The last people I would turn to for help in remobilizing a demoralized population are mental health professionals -- at least those who have not rebelled against their professional socialization. Much of the craft of relighting the pilot light requires talents that mental health professionals simply are not selected for nor are they trained in. Specifically, the talents required are a fearlessness around image, spontaneity, and definitely anti-authoritarianism. But these are not the traits that medical schools or graduate schools select for or encourage.

Mental health professionals' focus on symptoms and feelings often create patients who take themselves and their moods far too seriously. In contrast, people talented in the craft of maintaining morale resist this kind of self-absorption. For example, in the question-and-answer session that followed a Noam Chomsky talk [[reported in Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky, 2002), a somewhat demoralized man in the audience asked Chomsky if he too ever went through a phase of hopelessness. Chomsky responded, "Yeah, every evening . . ." If you want to feel hopeless, there are a lot of things you could feel hopeless about. If you want to sort of work out objectively what's the chance that the human species will survive for another century, probably not very high. But I mean, what's the point? . . . First of all, those predictions don't mean anything -- they're more just a reflection of your mood or your personality than anything else. And if you act on that assumption, then you're guaranteeing that'll happen. If you act on the assumption that things can change, well, maybe they will. Okay, the only rational choice, given those alternatives, is to forget pessimism."

A major component of the craft of maintaining morale is not taking the advertised reality too seriously. In the early 1960s, when the overwhelming majority in the U.S. supported military intervention in Vietnam, Chomsky was one of a minority of U.S. citizens actively opposing it. Looking back at this era, Chomsky reflected, "When I got involved in the anti-Vietnam War movement, it seemed to me impossible that we would ever have any effect. . . So looking back, I think my evaluation of the 'hope' was much too pessimistic: it was based on a complete misunderstanding. I was sort of believing what I read."

An elitist assumption is that people don't change because they are either ignorant of their problems or ignorant of solutions. Elitist "helpers" think they have done something useful by informing overweight people that they are obese and that they must reduce their caloric intake and increase exercise. An elitist who has never been broken by his or her circumstances does not know that people who have become demoralized do not need analyses and pontifications. Rather the immobilized need a shot of morale.

The effectiveness of small victories should not be underestimated. Sometimes a small victory seems much larger simply because of its rarity. A good example of such a victory begins at 2:32 [[specifically 4:10) in Freeway Ricky Ross - A Pawn in the CIA's Drug Game.

[1KielsonDrive]

"We are a great country in great decline".

[gibran]

we are a great country with some who want you to believe we can't turn it around unless you re-elect those whose values are masked in false patriotism and faith and whose anger towards others and greed help produce this division...while producing and protecting a mythical lifestyle that is on one hand conservative, but in reality class warfare...that appears liberal but is rigid...and with closer observation keep protecting the same status quo. we keep beating the drums of war against Iran, we have destroyed Iraq, and now we trun our backs on the peace becuase of a failed neocon world order..one can say that this doesn't effect mainstreet ...but it does...in our economy, our lack of a larger global market [[in helping develop a trade with third world countries) and in the body bags that come home whit thos ebrave men and women who should have never been placed in harms way unless we were directly attacked [[Afghanistan)...or had gone through all the ulternatives and had a real plan.


We should embrace moderates with both conservative and liberal values who are a blending their values for a fight for a just and fair society...for all equally.

[oladub]

I was glad to see he included TV as one of the drugs of this nation. It is disconcerting to think of all the people, some pretty young, who are slaves to Big Pharma. And I think TV encourages certain assumptions, i.e., the good life = loads of technology, being pretty, funny and popular. It is also rife with crime stories which just create fears about other people. The message is you can't trust anyone.
And of course, there are loads of talking heads ready to justify your prejudices.

Beyond that, you only have to turn to the first six years of the Bush admin. and all the neocon crap they passed and did to realize how the average middle class person was pretty beaten down by it all.

I wrote on another thread that the visual media and public schools shared much of the blame. [[ Note: My kids were sent to public schools except two of them attended a Catholic College in lieu of their senior year in high school) The author focuses on television as being a prime culprit and mentions schools. He knows that there is something wrong with the schools but can't quite put his finger on it and even mixes John Taylor Gotto together with John Dewey as school critics even though Gotto criticizes Dewey.

Mr Levine is right on the mark with his observation of corporatism being a dehabilitating factor although he, like you, doesn't follow the thought all the way through. For instance, he considers the skyrocketing costs of health care to be dehabilitiating and sees the need for reform but is blind to the corporatist interests, that is to say corporate and government interests, that made it so expensive in the first place. Mr Levine, to a lessor extent, is one of the people who have become so broken that truths of how they are being screwed do not "set them free" but instead further demoralizes them. Still, he has woken up and sees the outline of a problem.

I agree that Bush was a part of the problem with respect to the political part of this equation but so/are both Roosevelts, Clinton, and President Obama. Corporatism is a bigger factor than the R/D equation. Recent Presidents have often represented corporate interests above those of US citizens. How else to explain, NAFTA agreements, siding with illegal aliens against US workers and taxpayers, Bush's Wall Street bailout, and all the wars which Main Street never lobbied for.

The following 'lesson' dovetails into what Mr. Levine has to say with more of an economic and less of a psychological concern. I just came across the following explanation for how the economy and government relate. This explanation is not what we were taught in school. I have only listened to the first of this six part series so cannot speak for the next five lessons. He gets past the 'it's all Bush's or Obama's fault' model to explain our predicament and mentions the 'frustration' of Americans with their economic and political system.

Lesson 1 The Rise of Financial Empire [[9min 43sec)
http://csper.org/intro-video.html

[1KielsonDrive]

we are a great country with some who want you to believe we can't turn it around unless you re-elect those whose values are masked in false patriotism and faith and whose anger towards others and greed help produce this division...while producing and protecting a mythical lifestyle that is on one hand conservative, but in reality class warfare...that appears liberal but is rigid...and with closer observation keep protecting the same status quo. we keep beating the drums of war against Iran, we have destroyed Iraq, and now we trun our backs on the peace becuase of a failed neocon world order..one can say that this doesn't effect mainstreet ...but it does...in our economy, our lack of a larger global market [[in helping develop a trade with third world countries) and in the body bags that come home whit thos ebrave men and women who should have never been placed in harms way unless we were directly attacked [[Afghanistan)...or had gone through all the ulternatives and had a real plan.


We should embrace moderates with both conservative and liberal values who are a blending their values for a fight for a just and fair society...for all equally.

Great post, Gibran.

[oldredfordette]

I'm sorry, but I can't understand how being moderate can help us now. It's bold action that we need, radical action, and we need it now.

[Patrick]

I feel that it takes more than elections and polticians/poltical ideals to "turn around" this country or at least set it in some other direction. The great thing about America is its diversity, which breeds new and fresh ideas. China doesn't have our diversity nor does India. We are a fortunate bunch...we just dont know how well we have it compared to people living in a 3rd worls sitholes with human waste in the streets and all sorts of nasty things in their daily lives.

We have to understand what “oppression” means and that it can come from all directions and levels. You can be oppressed in your home life, social life, and workplace and even in the marketplace. We are slaves to our student loans, mortgages, the IRS, additive talk shows, the net and junk food. Are we self-oppressed? Can our actions also inflict damage that would hinder our self-interests?

[gibran]

I guess moderate to me is the old radical to some....Humanity to me is conservative...anarchy on the left ...like in Toronto is not helping... I believe we should always ask ourselves.... how does this law, action effect other people..

I will give you an example...our Supreme Court just ruled that "any support to a terrorist group can be punished severely such as peace building activities and voter education in Kurdistan etc...In Israel any person or even legislator who disagrees with the official government position or the IDF can be thrown out of the country [[aimed at the MP's of Arab decent-some democracy) or jailed in the case of Israeli's.... this slippery slop forces moderates to become the new radicals...so yes we need radicals....but not the ones that see the lack of humanity in the moderates.

[gibran]

here is a critic worth investigating: Huffington Post


A newly released video of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could add some additional strain to the sometimes tense relationship between him and President Obama.
In the video, which is from 2001, Netanyahu -- who reportedly did not know his speech was being recorded -- speaks frankly in Hebrew about relations with the Clinton White House and the peace process.
As noted in Haaretz, Netanyahu seems to boast of his knowledge of the US by saying, "I know what America is. America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction. They won't get in their way."
He also boasts of manipulating the U.S. in the ongoing peace process, as the Washington Post points out:


this is a major league issue...but this is a major league issue for our future.

[oldredfordette]

Toronto? You mean professional provocateurs making sure no dissent will happen in the presence of lawmakers? Gibran, I'm sorry but a moderate in these days is standing in the way of progress and helping the conservative.

[gibran]

if you mean the ones that burn cars and break windows...I guess I am mistaken ..if those were professionally hired I am wrong...I heard from a like minded friend in Toronto that there was destruction...and that as an old peace advocate she was shocked at the level of hulligans mixed in with the activists...so if that is what you mean I think there are competing groups...paid and unpaid mixing it up in these meetings and the victims are the real protesters...

Moderates don't support conservativism unless you mean the conservative value of do unto others as you would have one do unto you...that in it's true sense is liberal now but has been taught in a conservative manner...thats all I mean by that.

[oldredfordette]

The victims are usually the real protesters.

[GOAT]

Not even close. In fact the USA is still the worlds wealthiest nation in terms of assets. That is why the USa will still hold mostly all of the cards for the next 100 years.

China has little assets, hardly any resources and can only export from on side of the nation. They are then hemmed in by deserts to the north and west and mountains to the south.

I am not even factoring in the resilience of the open markets systems the USA has in place for their economy. It can change shape, be pulled apart and put back together relatively quickly. Nothing like it exists that is better.

IMO, these doomsday headlines and all of these people running around like the USA is done for are nothing but parasites trying to make a buck on fear.