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Sunday, October 16, 2011

What we have here is an "Effete ruling class at odds with itself"

The Occupation movement illustrates the disconnect between 99% of the American people and the Talking TeeVee Pundit Heads. The media has spent the last three years providing the get away car while the the 1% hijacked our democracy. Para quoting Jesse Jackson Seniors remarks at the dedication of the Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial this morning, there are a some people who are willing to sink the ship just to destroy the Captain. What we have developed is an Effete ruling class at odds with itself.
So in the midst of an uproarious campaign season and foolishness beyond compare we are spending precious moments tweeting and twitting about whose religion is the best and most meaningful and deserves the most respect, as if this made the slightest difference in the big political picture. The idea that religion is a primary reason people decide whom to elect rather than an individual judgment individuals make about how to conduct their lives is so absurd it is remarkable anyone would attempt to justify a religious preference rather than old-fashioned common sense and logic. Unfortunately logic and common sense are in dangerously short supply these days so we are forced to get by on whatever belief systems and scraps of information come our way, unreliable as they may be.


What we have here is a media that tells us what they want us to know instead of what we need to know.
The Mormon Church discriminated against Black people and promoted segregation in the church for over 130 years. Black people were not allowed in the priesthood and were not permitted to enter certain Mormon Temples from 1848 to 1978. Darrick Evenson, a former Mormon Missionary and developer of the Black Mormon website, observes that “[f]or 130 years the Mormon Church taught that Negroes were the cursed and inferior children of Cain. This ‘Curse of Cain Doctrine’ was presented as ‘a doctrine of the Church’ from the days of Brigham Young in the late 1840s until June 8th 1978, when the Mormon Church ended the Priesthood-ban and allowed black Mormons into Mormon Temples and the Mormon priesthood (which all Mormon males hold).”


What we have here is a media who used to protect us from being lied to by our elected officials instead of helping them lie to us.
Compare their message to the Tea Party which favors “smaller government.” Sounds great, doesn’t it? It’s only two words and it fits on a car bumper many times over. The problem: how exactly do Tea Partiers suppose we reduce our government? Are they willing to pave their own roads? Educate their own kids? Extinguish their own fires?

Although the average Tea Party member may be armed to the teeth and willing to surrender the local police force to save a couple hundred bucks a year in taxes, that is of little comfort to me as a New Yorker whose greatest instrument for self defense was designed to cut steaks into more manageable bites.

Why, then, does media characterize the Tea Partiers as a legitimate political movement, yet trivialize Occupy Wall Street as “a bunch of hippies with bongo drums and no real point?”Why does sudden Republican primary leader Herman Cain feel completely justified in saying the reason these people don’t have jobs is, ostensibly, because they are lazy?


This is why the Occupation will not be televised.

2 comments:

Mack Lyons said...

It's more of a classic "rural vs. urban" struggle: the Tea Swillers are largely from rural or suburban areas (small towns, unincorporated areas, etc.), where it wouldn't be unusual to see a community form their own patrols instead of relying on local or county constables, since living out in the middle of bumfuck would mean some rather long response times. They spout off the "doing things for yourself" line because there aren't too many services around to begin with. Or they grew up without too many services and think they can do without once more if need be.

The urban cities are another story -- and they would go to hell in a handbasket if those services weren't there. But the Tea Swillers aren't too concerned about the big cities since they don't live there, by far and large. Those small towns and unincorporated communities are all the reference they have. In short: what works in a small town won't work in a large city, but try telling these folks that.

Meanwhile, the media's encouraging comparisons to the protests of the 1960s, causing the oldsters to have flashbacks of hippies being hosed down, tear gassed and dragged off by police dogs. Conservatives have grasped on to this as the best way of discrediting the OWS movement.

Redeye said...

Good points Mack, I never thought about the rural vs urban aspect. Another point to consider is the racial aspect, poor whites live in rural areas and poor blacks live in urban areas.

Meanwhile you have the media driven stereotypes of lazy black folks living in urban areas on welfare because they want the government to take care of them.

The media is trying real hard to discredit the OWS movement the same way they legitimized the Teabagger movement.

The power of the press.