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Originally Posted by pan6467
.......And so it goes and Host and RB's posts are perfect examples of what I started in this thread with..... instead of debating .... RB and Host all of a sudden turn the thread into "let's blame the Right and show economic injustice".
Great, but that wasn't the point I was trying to get across in saying I am trying to stay positive and I don't post because people here seem to want to stay negative and not work on finding middle ground.
On the other hand these 2 proved my point as to why it is utterly useless to try to post anything here............ They don't like the flow they change the subject to what they want and totally disregard what was being said.
(Not just Host and RB do this.)
Hence, the elitism on this board.... you play by THEIR rules and when THEY decide the topic isn't worthy instead of starting a new thread or just saying they have nothing more to say they bog the thread down, change topic and fuck anyone who might have been interested in what was being said.
Thanks for demonstrating the answer guys, I am not trying to attack you anymore than you tried to change the subject on me. And decided what I had to say and others who may have had something to say on a topic you obviously were bored of..... wasn't worthy of your respect.
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Originally Posted by roachboy
there's two questions crunched into each other in the last post i put up:
1. the particular functions of pan's mode of interaction in this place when it comes to structural problems and debate about them and
2. an outline of the type of problem in the actually existing world (whatever that means, really) that moderate-ness as processed through (1) would functionally exclude.
then a little rant got started and took on a life of its own.
anyway: i guess my position would come down to: the dominant political parties in the states both operate within ideological boxes that are geared around avoidance of structural problems.
the shared assumptions: capitalism is in itself rational. the parties differ on the extent of that rationality and on what needs to be done compensate for its shortcomings--but both believe that capitalism is in itself rational. click to read the rest.... click to show
because capitalism is in itself rational, then it follows that the united states, which is the belly of the beast, is in itself rational. problems that arise then are adjustment issues, not functions of problems with the underlying rationality itself. so problems that arise, and which cannot be avoided (avoidance being always plan a, it seems), therefore can be addressed by tacking on some extra element that will be charged with making the necessary adjustment.
but the assumption that the socio-economic order within the united states is necessarily rational because, somehow, it cannot be otherwise a priori is a shared assumption that cuts across party divisions.
obviously, when it comes to fashioning these extra adjustment mechanisms, reps and dems diverge: the right prefers a kind of voluntarism (discourse of the will--they LOVE it), the democrats a more socially-oriented response.
when it comes to educational policy, the right favors privatization, the democrats--well, what? they default into defending the existing system because, and ONLY because, when compared with the lunacy of the conservative educational philosophy, the status quo doesnt look so bad.
but think about it. the educational system is the primary mechanism of social reproduction--what it reproduces is the class system that is in place---but the american economic order has been fundamentally transformed since the late 1970s--and there is talk about adjustments, but no adjustments--time passes, the reorganization of the american socio-economic order accelerates, affecting sector after sector---and along with that the class profile being reproduced by the american educational system and the profile of the labor pool diverge more and more. think the disappearance of the american working class. think the much graver problems that result for the poor. the ideological order within which we operate would assign everyone either a place in the "middle class" or they disappear. the ideology under which we operate is geared around denial. it is a mechanism of denial.
addressing this process would require asking certain questions: does it make sense for the united states to simply allow its internal organization to be remolded by the reorganization of capitalism? does it make sense to assume that the logic of this remolding will simply be given by capitalism itself?
it appears that the right imagines this will happen, and in this the right is operating with an understanding of the relations between registers of a particular mode of production that is so crude that it would have made even stalin blush.
how exactly are markets rational? ....... |
pan, please reread the first part of roachboy's post.....I thought that he responded to you by trying to find out from you hwere you thought the "divide" between Americans actually and why it has to be so narrow, so limiting, so confining, soooooo "to the right".....I think he was challenging you to look at your own arguments "outside of the box"....to look at the indoctrination of the "student" by the American system of education/socialization, so that you might recognize that, on the whole, Americans are trained to live in a narrow little of view that is decidedly to the right of where world economic "dynamics" are continuing to move them towards. The vast majority of Americans are educated to believe in a "system" that is moving rapidly away from being
in their best interests......and that they are already much more "united" and in accord with a belief system that hasn't and won't benefit them.....
If he' s right, pan....what discussion can be aspired to, that will not be based on "everybody knows"......but are actually non-constructive assumptions as a foundation for what to do "to come together" to improve "things"....to improve "the system". Consensus building in a society that is rapidly becoming poorer and has less opportunities of the pre- 1970's variety....a consensus aimed at improving "our way of life".....may actually, pan....offer the potential for a way to block "real" improvement, if....."our way of life"...the socio economic political order that is the root of our "politics"......the two "right leaning" major party politics is the foundational "problem".
...hence the idea that "heated" debate is the outcome of the status quo, and what you regard as "division" is actually a mild form of disagreement, compared to the "fireworks" that must take place, if there is still to be a "middle" economic "class" in the US.....a country that is more and more resembling Manhattan, with only the "haves" and those there to serve them, inhabiting the place......
Do you think pan, that the US seems closer to a system that could spawn this
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http://www.coha.org/2006/10/10/pragm...south-america/
........"Among those in the ten South American countries polled, Peru registered the highest approval of the United States, with 71 percent having either a very good or good opinion of the U.S. The country with the lowest assessment was Argentina, with a mere 32 percent. The most anti-Bush governments, Bolivia and Venezuela, respectively had 50 percent and 41 percent of those polled answering either very good or good. When asked to rate leaders on a scale from 1 to 10, on which 10 was the best, South Americans gave Bush a score of 4.1, while Chávez received a 5.2 figure.".....
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....or this:
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http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/...ow/1759706.cms
......... To many Mexicans, who make Mr Slim richer with nearly every phone call or trip to the mall, his rise shows their businessmen can run world-class companies. He’s widely praised for turning Telmex - once notorious for taking months or years to install a phone line - into a modern, professional operation. But he also has kept phone rates high in a country where the minimum wage is about 50 cents an hour, and his success inspires anger among Mexicans who resent the concentration of wealth in the hands of the nation’s relatively tiny elite. “Why should we want a few people to hoard all the wealth, if the majority of Mexicans don’t have enough to eat and 30 million Mexicans live on less than 22 pesos ($2) a day?” thundered former leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
Now worth an estimated $49 billion, the 67-year-old Slim is the son of a Lebanese father who built a small family fortune from retailing. Mr Slim’s Telefonos de Mexico controls more than 90% of the nation’s fixed phone lines and made $15.9 billion in 2006; his America Movil controls about 70% of cell phone service in Mexico and made $21.6 billion. click here to read the rest... click to show Diners at Mr Slim’s ubiquitous Sanborns resta-urants can use Mr Slim’s wireless service to connect to Mr Slim’s internet provider and check their holdings through Mr Slim’s brokerage, part of Mr Slim’s Grupo Financiero Inbursa. Banking online, they can pay bills to Mr Slim’s car insurance company or credit cards for Mr Slim’s retail stores, among them Sears Mexico and the Mixup record store chain.
It’s an advantage that is not unusual in Mexico, where businesses from beer brewing to television to cement are concentrated in a few hands. As a result, Mexicans pay more than other, wealthier nations for services such as electricity, phones and bank fees. New President Felipe Calderon has promised to battle monopolistic practices, but past efforts to do that have been thwarted by Mexico’s entrenched elite. Mr Slim faces a potential challenge in the telecom sector from the Televisa network, which controls about 70% of Mexico’s broadcast market and is looking to extend its dominance in emerging communications systems that integrate telephone, television and internet transmissions. .......... |
Would libertarian majorities in Wash. DC, discourage the concentration of wealth of a Carlos Slim, or foster a tax system that would encourage a Buffet or a Gates to such high levels or philanthropy?
Would the wealth of Buffet or Gates or Carlos Slim, ever be concentrated in the hands of one person, in the first place, uder the Chavez style economic "reforms" so popular in South America?
The point pan, is that there is no "left" side in the US, there is basically only the side leaning much more heavily to the right than you may accept now.
So....there is really no "debate"...embracing US "style". present day "capitalism", which seems more closely akin to the even more rightist "corporatism", to me..... So the question is....what do you advocate us coming together to do.....to form a unified, even more right leaning, pro status quo agenda of continued indoctrination in our schools to support a system that is rotting out our economic security and our futures?
I believe that we need to challenge and, at this stage, brutally criticize the status quo and the current economic "system", and the two rightist "money parties....and I think disagreement will probably mirror the everyday world, and it won't be friendly....just as Chomsky would not be enthusiatically received here. Our system is broken, things must be shaken up.
It will be "in you face", as it is on Pelosi's lawn.....with a challenge from middle leaning folks who many would consider the "extreme left".....democrats against the continued war who see Pelosi as hindering withdrawal legislation, instead of leading it.
You can't seperate money and power from politics, pan....it is the "business" of taking, dividing, and distributing both....the process evokes emotions, even in a "capitalist" society. United right leaning Americans will result in things like the ISG and the 9/11 commission, when what we need for the benefit of the greater good, is a serious dialog about the pros and cons of the rationality of markets, or capitalism, and what we can learn that is helpful to the most of us, about the "work" and policies of Chavez and the leaders of Brazil and Bolivia, and ways to lessent the chances of other Carlos Slims and Bill Gates, without loosing the benefits to society of their vision, planning and execution.
I'm angry pan.....angry for radical change.....and fearing that it's already too late...hence the impatience, and the less than eager embrace of a "why can't we all just get along" movement....that stays in it's "to the right" sphere.
Most already do "get along", pan....and it's tendency is to blind as it binds...