May 25, 2011

A Rare Political Rant

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate. -Noam Chomsky



There are these insipid “polls” on top of Youtube today, doing a rather hack job of defining the spectrum of debate. You’ll note the people who want “free medicare” are elderly and black, the ones who want to be “free of debt” are white children. I’m guessing this is a Republican ad, since they always claim to be fiscally responsible, never mind that Clinton left office with a balanced budget and it was GWB and the Republican Party who bankrupted the country, ran up the deficit and printed money like there was no tomorrow, all the while defending us from “terra”.

Those of us who advocate for universal health care don’t actually think of it as “free”, we simply think of it as a better allocation of resources than say... Wall St. bailouts, endless wars, or never flagging support for Israel. But those items are never put on the table, are they? Not even by Democrats.

God, you'd think we'd figure this out by now. We need an immediate existential threat that can only be answered by universal health care - like the Zombie Apocalypse!

3 comments:

The Secret Sun said...

Very perceptive, Michael. Well done, sir.

Eleleth ר ק D said...

Clearly the Liber AL Democrats are on the side of the New Aeon, even though Crowley himself was a conservative. Where does that leave Rep(t)ublicans?

synchrobrarian said...

2 thumbs way up! succinct and to the point

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