centralized oversight

[Ian Livingston]

> OWS & Co. need to get out and see the world grow and change.

I don't know what you do, or have done, for a living, dear Alice, but
I am always entertained when people tell me I need to get out and see
the world. I have worked in states in every part of US except New
England and Hawaii (I incline to claustrophobia) and studied briefly
in Athens, Greece with a tour of Italy and Turkey; my work has been
almost exclusively that of the laboring class; I am mostly
self-educated from reading  and personal research; I have a pretty
fair memory still; and I've seen some dramatic changes in the world in
terms of technical progress, very little in terms of social progress,
and some spiritual regress as people have tried to revive the
forgotten religions, and obscure elements of the so-called great
religions, of the past to satisfy some longing they find unmet in
contemporary culture. The wages for labor have increased substantially
over the course of my working career, But, in terms of actual buying
power, those increases are more than offset by the inflation of the
cost of living. That inflation is the measurable part of the losses
the working class has sustained in the past 40 years (the time of my
working career). The relative wealth of the American working class is
a fiction imbibed only by dupes. The difference between the American
working poor and the working poor in any third world country is, in
practical terms, a matter of pennies per day.

As for progress in the political sphere, I cite here from Zinn's A
People's History of the United States a quote from your beloved Henry
Adams regarding the presidential campaigns of 1884:

"We are here plunged in politics funnier than words can express. Very
great issues are involved.... But the amusing thing is that no one
talks about real interests. By common consent they agree to let these
alone. We are afraid to discuss them. Instead of this the press is
engaged in a most amusing dispute whether  Mr. Cleveland had an
illegitimate child and did or did not live with more than one
mistress."

This came seven years after the labor-crushing year of 1877, yet it
has been the business as usual of every election in the course of my
lifetime (I was born just before Ike's second term). OWS has
effectively brought the issues into the public debate, drawing
organizations like MoveOn and Left Action into becoming effective
petitioners, yet Cain, regardless of his politics, is out of the race
for his alleged dalliances. Not a lot of real change, yet. But
political conservatives are nervous for a reason, and that reason is
precisely that large sectors of Americans formerly under the dragon's
trance of the American news media are seeing the source of the trouble
you call a bubble. The "bubble" that burst has gone some way toward
cleansing the doors of perception, and people are beginning to see the
world as it truly is. You can argue for docility, but I can't assume
you will get it. Now is verily the winter of our discontent, and I
doubt the spring will usher in contentment.

On Sun, Dec 4, 2011 at 3:18 AM, alice wellintown
<alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:

> forge an alliance with the poor and those who are dying for democracy,
> but first they need to change their view of the world, of people they
> think of as poor and in need of a bailout, of people they think of
> slave labor who will take their jobs as corporate global greed
> spreads. Democracy is not something the west owns and niether is
> wealth. But Americans, who think of the rest of the world as
> immigrants to their ideas, will need to get used to a world that is
> flatter and more democratic. Get used to it America. Get on a diet,
> loose some of that obesity that is bloating your people. Stop thinking
> of the world as your negro problem.
>
> http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/jessica_jackley_poverty_money_and_love.html



-- 
"Less than any man have I  excuse for prejudice; and I feel for all
creeds the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the
trust in reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments
of darkness groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates
than the simplest urchin in the streets." -- Will Durant