The Right Wing Scam

[pasithea]

A friend of mine linked me to this article earlier while we were discussing politics. It's rather interesting, definitely worth a read.

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2006/06/0081080


I can't comment on all of the events, of course, I don't have sufficient knowledge or research, though I have listened to a lot of news and radio from WWII period and I can confirm that some of the early stuff in this essay definitely matches what I've heard in old radio broadcasts, particularly in its tone and how it seems to be different from the actual historical accounts of what was going on.

Bush and his lot on the other hand are a bit to recent, fresh, and ugly for most of us to look at fairly. If you haven't seen their blatant lies you really haven't been paying attention.

Instead, I'm going to focus on my very early childhood and myths I heard as a young adult because they've always bothered me.

This thing about all the 'dirty hippies' spitting on returning soldiers. I've never bought it. My dad was in the military, actually just about every grown man I knew when I was a child had also been in Viet Nam. I grew up in a poor rural area where college wasn't as likely to be an option and that meant you were eligible for the draft.

I have to ask about this legend because if you stop and think about it for ten seconds, it doesn't really make any sense. Most of the soldiers sent to Vietnam didn't sign up of their own accord. They were drafted. They went off halfway around the world. They got shot at, and they returned, frightened and traumatized but most of them were still in their early 20s. The same age as the 'hippies'.

So think about this. Does it pass a logic test? If you accept that hippies were mostly into this whole love and peace thing, does it seem likely they're going to be spitting on their brothers, sisters, lovers, cousins, et al because the government sent them off to die in a jungle or are the mass majority going to be thankful they've returned, that they've got back a member of their family or a friend? Someone who has had to witness the horror of war first hand and likely wants no more of it.

Again, use a little logic here. Anyone that was really into the war was probably going to re-up not return first chance they got, right?

Now that's not to say it never happened at all. There will always be a few extremists in any movement who will make asses of themselves, but the hippy culture as a whole? ... None of the hippies I know would have or did (I've asked and they tend to get very upset about the ignorance of this myth and ask that you think about it as I have just asked)

It would be interesting to take a poll of Viet Nam vets and ask just how many of them were spat on personally. Not 'saw someone get spat on' not 'heard about', and I'm sorry National Guard guys, but if you were involved in a police action busting up a peace rally, that's a little bit different and doesn't count either. How many ACTUAL SOLDIERS who were ACTUALLY IN Vietnam got spat on at the airport by 'hippies' when they returned home? 5? Maybe 10? And how many different people spat on them? I bet, if this study were actually done, the numbers would be very very low on both counts.

Or we could just look at our current 'police actions' in Afghanistan and Iraq. People of liberals read my blog. "Everyone who thinks our soliders are babykillers and should be abused for their actions under Bush's regime, please raise your hand!"

Okay. And now everyone who wishes the people we know who are over there come home safe? *raises hand*


*sigh* Stuff like this is why I get so frustrated with the majority of the right wing. By 'majority', I mean the people who react to all the crap and lies spewed by people like Limbagh and Beck and react to it by following conservative agenda.

I don't think most of them are bad people per say, they're just the sort of people who are more comfortable when life runs according to scripts.

In the past, the scripts worked. You could do a hard days work and while you might not be rich, you could probably afford your own home and you'd have enough to eat and your kids could go to school. You had a social network of friends and a community you belonged to.

But most of those jobs are gone. Machines can do so much more and so much more efficiently than a person that a lot of manual labor is just silly and redundant, but what should have been a golden age for unskilled labor has become a nightmare. The companies that own the machines are not interested in the welfare of the workers. They're interested in padding their own margins and getting the most of the least amount of work. They aren't members of the community that their laborers work in and they don't suffer the effects of the poverty of their workers.

Centalized factories are more efficient than small shops, so the workers also must commute further to their jobs. Spend more time sitting in traffic, have more reliance on expensive items like cars and less personal time resulting in more eating out and buying other premade goods. TV and cars have segregated us, televangelism has put churches of every denomination on every corner and there aren't neighborhoods that are one faith or another anymore, it's all mixed which is great in the long run but in the short term, it's broken down the community even further.

All these people who want their life to run on scripts but don't realize that the play has been closed and there's no one specific they can blame it on because the reality is that the world has changed out from under them.

I feel bad for them and often wish I knew how to help them, but I don't want to live in a scripted world. I'm okay living in a dynamic world. I just wish I knew how to enabled them to figure out how to get by on their own.

Comments

[ff00ff.livejournal.com]

Dolchstoß is, like, my favorite German word ever since I first read this article in 2006. People come up to me, they come up and they say, "Schadenfreude," and I'm all, "Yeah, I knew that word before it was hip, I've moved on."

[cortezopossum.livejournal.com]

..it's all mixed which is great in the long run but in the short term, it's broken down the community even further.

I've seen this for a while, especially all the 'new' neighborhoods where houses are designed with garages pushed way out and their front doors hidden in some dark corner. Many don't even use their front doors anymore. Some have gotten to the point where if you ring their doorbell (or knock because their bell is broken) they'll open the garage door and meet you there. I've done flower delivery, I've done pizza delivery, I've done census work -- I've had to visit many strangers in person and I've seen this firsthand.

Neighborhoods are mixed but every house has become an isolated domain where nobody knows their next door neighbors.

Some corrections

[frith]

Big businesses run by people who live far away and don't give a shit is a trend that goes way, way back. The first and second Industrial Revolutions of the 17th and 18th centuries were all about transporting goods and machine driven manufacture, resulting in the migration of workers to urban centers and the construction of row housing. Towns like Sudbury and Aspestos were built to service mines. Prior to that there was feudalism and absentee landlords around the world.

With the new prosperity of the 1950's US, people in North America could suddenly afford luxury items like cars and radar ranges. That in turn drove the market for backyards, garages and suburbia. So, it is not centralized factories that are causing people to buy cars, it's the lure of suburbia and 'transportation freedom' that is causing people to buy cars. I work in a big, headless, oversexed farm with dozens of other workers. While some live within easy walking distance of work, many have moved so far away that the _only_ way they can get to work is by car. Why? Because they can. Insanity.

So, even if they work in a small enterprise employing one or two people full time (been there, done that), most people will still live so far away that walking to work would be impractical at best.

[pseudomanitou.livejournal.com]

The public is more united behind 'enemies' than they are around common causes of progress. Politicians know this, and use our fears to sell a message that they can keep us safe. But our fears are what bring us the most harm -- sometimes actually creating problems that then resemble our worst fears.

So... where do people find new communities? Hint: you're doing it now. But that kind of widespread community has its own problems too, as well as making 'problem causing communities' more wide spread instead of isolating them.

I find that breaking into problem communities and only living by example can bring people to question their own isolation. But you can't save most of them :P

Correction bandwagon...

[coffeedaiv.livejournal.com]

So, yah. Another thought kind of disagreeing with a point you bring forth.
-televangelism has put churches of every denomination on every corner -
Most churches (specifically, christian churches) are not evangelistic. Even the conservative ones. I mean, really, when was the last time you saw a Catholic on the streetcorner proclaiming that all who do not embrace Jesus and fear God will burn in hell for eternity? (note, I am not up to date on Catholic Dogma, so i am winging it a bit here). Or, for that matter, when was the last time the Lutherans came to your door to talk to you about God?
The thing is, that is not their style. They certainly _want_ everyone to agree with them and support their organization. But they do not evangelize, the way that ... well, Evangelical Christian Churches do; The point being, the evangelicals are a small and loud minority of the christian churches. Not necessarily the most conservative (and not all Christian organizations are particularly conservative; the Episcopal church is the obvious contrast, on a relative scale).
I am not Christian, have not been in a long time. My reasons are my own. But i do recognize that being Christian is a very very broad spectrum of Faith (as is Judaism, Islam, Buddhist and Pagan), so much so that lumping them all together as a singular unified organization is a bit wrong.
The thing is, the Evangelical branch of Christian Conservatives want you (and everyone) to believe they are much bigger and more powerful and more representative then they actually are. When you talk about a Right Wing Conspiracy, they are the ones you talk about.
At least, thats what i see.

Re: Correction bandwagon...

[centauress.livejournal.com]

I think she meant the system of tele-evangelism has created a system whereby people (even other religions) no longer create physical communities but scattered networks of homes and churches. You don't choose a neighborhood by color or creed or church, people can no longer discriminate on those. So tele-evangelism espoused using new systems of commercial spaces which have since been used by other faiths.

Catholic churches are now built like evangelist churches. The old stone edifices remain, but there are few who attend them - even though they're owned by the same religious organization.

[paka.livejournal.com]

Have more stuff to think over in this context. On the one hand...

"Naturally the common people don't want war: Neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

- Hermann Göring

I also wanted to point out http://pagesperso-orange.fr/chabrieres/texts/whywar.html - partly because of Einstein's comments about;

"How is it possible for this small clique to bend the will of the majority, who stand to lose and suffer by a state of war, to the service of their ambitions? An obvious answer to this question would seem to be that the minority, the ruling class at present, has the schools and press, usually the Church as well, under its thumb. This enables it to organize and sway the emotions of the masses, and makes its tool of them.

"Yet even this answer does not provide a complete solution. Another question arises from it: How is it that these devices succeed so well in rousing men to such wild enthusiasm, even to sacrifice their lives? Only one answer is possible. Because man has within him a lust for hatred and destruction. In normal times this passion exists in a latent state, it emerges only in unusual circumstances; but it is a comparatively easy task to call it into play and raise it to the power of a collective psychosis... Here I am thinking by no means only of the so-called uncultured masses. Experience proves that it is rather the so-called 'intelligentsia' that is most apt to yield to these disastrous collective suggestions, since the intellectual has no direct contact with life in the raw but encounters it in its easiest, synthetic form--upon the printed page."

... and, with the spread of media, and how very much that's impacted white and blue-collar workers, I think the average person falls much more into Einstein's description here of 'intelligensia.' I also think it's kind of interesting and amusing from the perspective of people being able to go nuts intellectualizing at each other far more easily these days; here were two of the greatest minds of their time, and they're basically having a "coffeeshop at 2AM/stoned in co-ops/etc" type of conversation. It doesn't make me want to go back in time somehow to mock them, it makes me want to go back in time somehow to hug them very tightly.

[paka.livejournal.com]

Additionally;

Judenzählung, this big census of the German Army during WWI, suggests to me that the whole Dochloßlegende thing was already well underway by the time of the Armistice. I think that example is also characteristic of some of what we've seen in the USA.