centralized oversight

[alice wellintown]

Did not know that P-Listers were members of OWS & Co. and I assumed,
and I  should not have assumed, I know, but I did, that we were just
talking about these things in the news, and not about P-Listers. From
what I've seen and read, my comments about OWS & Co. are as valid as
anything else I've read here or elsewhere. Most is mere speculation
and editorial.
So, my advice is not for you or anyone else here, but for the OWS&Co.
kids who are, in my opinion, suffering from too much education and not
enough experience.



On Sun, Dec 4, 2011 at 5:34 PM, Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 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