I don't think an afternoon off is a vacation, loquitur, but it sounds like you would benefit from an afternoon nap.
Zinn describes the challenge facing the majority of us:
["If those in charge of our society - politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television - can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves."
[Howard Zinn, historian and author]
Glenn Greenwald gives us examples. The inequality is obvious. Who has the means to "get this done"? Who owns the bully pulpit that is the corporate media? Is it a coincidence that the "Op"...the feminizing and "reduction to ridiculous" of almost every democratic candidate keeps happening, keeps being the major theme, in every campaign since Adlai Stevenson?
Clipped from the Greenwald opinion piece below:
Quote:
...Here, "Principle X" = the Right's notion that our elections should be decided based on petty personality-based themes -- euphemistically known as, justified and glorified as, "character issues." <h5>Decrying that principle while simultaneously subjecting the Right to it</h5> is not "hypocritical" or "contradictory" but, instead, is a means -- the only means -- for undermining it. ...
....By all rights, John McCain -- leading proponent of one of the most unpopular wars ever and tied at the hip to one of the most unpopular administrations in modern American history -- <h3>should be 20 points behind in the polls, at least. But he isn't. He is typically tied or even sometimes ahead. Why? Because the Cult of Personality constructed around him -- just as was true for George Bush -- remains largely unchallenged, while the right-wing/media monster demolishes the personality and character of the Democratic candidates. .....</h3>
Only in Media World could an individual who grew up in a poor and/or single-parent home with purely self-made accomplishments (Obama, John Edwards) be an out-of-touch "elitist" while individuals who live in extravagant wealth earned by others (George W. Bush, McCain) be Regular Folk in touch with heartland lifestyles and values. As Atrios noted today, even Howie Kurtz <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100587.html/">understands the bizarre spectacle </a> of watching coddled media stars decree who is an "elitist" and who is in touch with Common Values:....
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Quote:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwa...gah/index.html
Wednesday April 16, 2008 10:03 EDT
...We are a nation in or on the verge of an extreme recession, with growing economic insecurities, mired in an endless and savage occupation that is consuming our scarce resources and eroding almost completely every aspect of our national strength. We have been ruled for the last many years by a political faction that has embraced truly radical theories that have fundamentally transformed the type of government we have and the type of country we are.
But as we select the next President, what are the stories that are dominating our political discourse? The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza provided the answer just this week:
Critical mass has been reached. "Bitter" and "cling" will forever be tied to Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) in the same way that "Tuzla" and "the laugh" will always evoke Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) when a political junkie thinks of the 2008 Democratic race.
And the "bitter" drama merely replaced the "elitist-because-he-can't-bowl" storyline in the spotlight. As I noted the other day, this is just an exercise in reflexively filling in the gaps in the insipid personality-based script -- authored by the Right and amplified by their media partners -- that dominates every one of our elections, regardless of who the candidates are or what they do.
John Kerry's defining trait was that he windsurfed in effete tights. Al Gore's was that he invented the Internet, claimed credit for Love Story, and wore earth colors because Naomi Wolf told him to. Michael Dukakis' was that he looked like a geeky loser in a helmet and didn't seem to show enough manly rage when asked in a debate about a hypothetical case where his wife was raped and killed.
One of the prime propagators of this cliched and petty chatter, Maureen Dowd, wrote yet another column today re-hashing these same themes:.....
<h5>Behind closed doors in San Francisco, elitism’s epicenter, Barack Obama showed his elitism....</h5>
So Barack Obama now takes his place on the ignoble path tread by every other Democratic candidate before him: as an effete, elitist, out-of-touch loser -- just like Mike Dukakis and John Kerry, and just like Al Gore and (when she was leading in the polls) Hillary Clinton. Conversely, the GOP leaders are stalwart and amiable though heroic Men of the People.
Given that dynamic, Democrats have two choices and only two choices: (1) allow the Right to wield these themes unchallenged, in a one-sided manner, or (2) engage them just as aggressively and directly in order to neutralize the advantage they confer. The point is that having our elections decided primarily on substantive issues isn't an option, precisely because the Right and the shallow, slothful media ensure that petty personality controversies predominate. The only choice is to engage them or to ignore them, thereby allowing them to rage unchallenged....
...UPDATE: Oddly, a <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/04/16/elitism/index.html">CNN article today</a> actually summarizes these matters quite accurately:
Sen. Barack Obama is saddled with a potentially toxic image problem -- that he has an elitist attitude. . . .Branding a rival elitist is not new in politics. <h5>Republicans for years have successfully labeled Democratic presidential candidates as the liberal elite.</h5> Portraying their rivals as latte-sipping, sushi-eating insiders, Republicans have connected with some voters by arguing they understand the values important to the everyday person. .....
<h5>It's a small irony of this "out of touch" debate that upper-echelon journalists with wardrobe allowances or kids in fancy private schools get to pose as the folks who are in touch with the great American working class.</h5>
But that's how these themes work and what makes them so toxic. Aside from being painfully petty, they bear no relation to reality. After all, <h5>George Bush and Dick Cheney were the swaggering, strong, courageous, protective warriors and Vietnam-volunteering John Kerry and Al Gore were the weak-kneed, subversive, soft, effete, Chamberlain-like appeasers.</h5> The right-wing script is deployed regardless of the candidates and their true attributes.
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Loquitur, do you see anything that Greenwald gets wrong, in your opinon? Can you defend or feel any confidence in a "system" that has resorted to maintaining the status quo....keeping the political power, the best that money can buy, as close to where it currently is, as is possible?
Can you see how someone with a skeptical and rejectionist view, can be as critical of it as some of us here are? What is it? Why do you defend this pathetic maipulation that results in a "self controlling" society making such absurd election choices, with so little REAL media coverage, or individual discussion of the issues that matter?
Can you consider that the repression is a psy-ops affair, one that only concentration of wealth and power, of the level we in the US "enjoy", can pull off? Are we hobbled by. or blessed with a media extravaganza that reliably makes one side look ridiculous to ensure that there is no actual examination of the "manly men" endorsed and promoted by that same media?
Can you consider that the whole "schtick" about "liberal media bias" is a smokescreen? Who does the media make out as ridiculous and "girly"? Who does it anoint with a swagger...a "leadership" image?
Reagan and George W. Bush are the most telling products of these psy-ops, and they are also the evidence of how fragile and shallow, what you and so many others so stalwartly defend really is....a political-economic system that is ridiculous!