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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAlec Baldwin: Americans have been lied to
Obviously, weve been here before. The United States has been here before. The friction between democracy (or democracy as we like to think of it) and capitalism has often created agonising tensions and dramatic upheavals for America. Those spasms left us at least as demoralised as many Americans feel in the wake of the Edward Snowden-NSA revelations. The reality that the government is spying on Americans on a wholesale level, seemingly indiscriminately, doesnt really come as a surprise to many, given the assumed imperatives of the post- 9/11 security state. People seem more stricken by the fact that Barack Obama, who once vowed to close Guantanamo, has adopted CIA-NSA policies regarding domestic spying, as well as by government attempts to silence, even hunt down, the press.
Americans, in terms of their enthusiasm for defending their beloved democratic principles in the face of an ever more muscular assault on those principles by the state in the name of national security, are exhausted. If you are a boomer, like me, and have lived through the past five decades with any degree of political efficacy, you can draw a line from JFKs assassination to the subsequent escalation of the Vietnam war, on to 1968 with the murders of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, the Chicago Democratic Convention and Nixons resurrection; from there, to Kent State, the Pentagon Papers, Nixons re-election, Watergate, Nixons resignation, Fords pardon, Carters one term and out, the curious Iran hostage situation, Reagan (who brings back a degree of the charm and affability that died in Dallas), Iran Contra, Oliver North, Bush the First (as in first CIA director to become president), Iraq the First, Clinton kills welfare, Gingrich shuts down the Congress, Clintons impeachment, the 2000 election, Bush v Gore, Bush the Second, 9/11, Iraq the Second, Mission Accomplished, the Swift Boaters, Afghanistan, Gitmo, Assange, Manning, Snowden.
I have left out a good deal. There is, of course, a lot thats positive running through the American narrative during this time, but I think more bad than good. You look at all of this laid end to end and youd think the US might have had a nervous breakdown. I believe it actually did.
Americans are pretty basic. Generally speaking, they are a suit up and show up type of crowd. In spite of images of rampant obesity running throughout the country, gun laws that border on madness and our debt ceiling made of Swiss cheese, more Americans wake up every day to participate in an experience defined by work, sacrifice and moderate self-denial. They are workaholics who exercise, eat fairly well, drink in moderation and refrain from drugs and extramarital affairs while, perhaps, fantasising about either or both. They are devoted to family, friends, churches and social organisations. They are generous with their money as well as time. When disaster strikes, America is a good place to be.
But one thing that Americans fail at, miserably, is taking their government to task when that government has lied to them, defrauded them, covered up its crimes and otherwise blocked them from knowing essential truths. In political terms, Americans have a strong devotion to afflicting the afflicted and comforting the comfortable. They have a hard time contemplating any meaningful overhaul of the rules of their political system, preferring to say Please, sir, may I have another in the face of abuses of power. Americans, despite all of their claims to an exceptionalism among the nations of the world, have been lied to for so long about so many relevant topics, they have lost sight of what the truth is.
more
http://www.newstatesman.com/2013/10/americans-have-been-lied
LuvNewcastle
(16,855 posts)I disagree with one point, though. The government doesn't hide their actions and deceive us so much because there's information we can't handle. They do it because they're covering up all the illegal and immoral shit they do. They aren't protecting us; that's a misconception that a lot of people have and it's bullshit.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)LittleGirl
(8,291 posts)Ace Acme
(1,464 posts)And that's the great weakness of the essay IMHO. For rhetorical efectiveness and political correctness he declines to place the blame squarely where it lies: with the American people, who in a democracy are charged with the responsibility to right the wrongs and punish the crimes of their leaders--and who have shirked their responsibility these many decades.
People aren't stupid. They just pretend they are.
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)I think these makes the point
Ace Acme
(1,464 posts)When the feds organized a nationally coordinated and brutal assault on the Occupists that effectively broke the movement, the people should have stood with them in every city in the land. The people didn't do that. They allowed Occupy to be crushed. They deferred to their own cynicism, cowardice, and greed.
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)But that is ok.
History has a definite arc. And especially in nations that believe themselves exceptional and outside history.
Ace Acme
(1,464 posts)... has been an increased tolerance for neofascism, increased selfishness, a decline in civic engagement, increased despair and apathy. The pendulum will surely swing back some day, the question is when. We could of course have elected a People's Congress this year, in 2014, but I don't see any sign that's happening.
Maybe by 2016 people will be awake enough and engaged enough and disgusted enough that we will have real alternatives, but it's not going to happen until we face the reality of where we're at today without succumbing to the cynicism that the PtB seem determined to script for us.
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)It never has, it never will.
And I will say no more in heavy detail on this site on this. Suffice it to say, next time the streets call, I will be there, as I have in the past.
Ace Acme
(1,464 posts)And I was saying so when I pointed out that we're not going to elect a People's Congress this year.
But it's not sufficient to describe the situation. We also need to understand why normal politics is not where it's at, what might we do to change that, what are the prospects for succeeding at changing it, and what are the relative attractions of the alternatives.
I see the productive pursuits as mass direct action (when it actually attracts a crowd); educational efforts; subverting the prevailing iconography through satire, clever graphics and puppets/costumes; and sometimes runs for office.
Running for office can attract media attention, provides a nexus for educational and organizing efforts, and it gives one a license to post roadside signs during the election period that otherwise would not be tolerated.
It is important, when the streets call, to question whether you are engaging in organizing and promoting your ideas, or merely indulging in self-expression and adventurism.
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)It really is not.
But politics of the possible is where it is. That is not conventional.
And as to the streets calling. I am one of the idiots who help to document these things. When things get ugly it gets dangerous.
Awknid
(381 posts)polichick
(37,152 posts)Fortunately, more and more people know what's going on.
B Calm
(28,762 posts)is on Friday nights at 10pm
BootinUp
(47,179 posts)Because he comes out as a CT'er with a closed mind. I am still interested in his point of view. Why? Because I am not close minded.
Puzzledtraveller
(5,937 posts)zeemike
(18,998 posts)The change has been so slow moving we don't even realize just how much the average person lost...coming from a time before Reagan where one worker working 40 hours a week could support a family to now where it takes two and then some just to keep the bank from taking your home.
And yes it has been one lie after the other and we are expected to believe it.
But I would expect you will be jumped on and this declared a conspiracy theory and alerted on and the usual suspects will show up with ROFL guy...cause things like this must not be spoken of because as we all should know, the Emperor has a fine set of closes.
Dollface
(1,590 posts)JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)joeybee12
(56,177 posts)are bat-shit insane...
Spirochete
(5,264 posts)or just Stephen?
joeybee12
(56,177 posts)is pretty tea-baggy.
Spirochete
(5,264 posts)I know Adam Baldwin is, but he's not related.
joeybee12
(56,177 posts)I'll try to find it and send a link...
Dollface
(1,590 posts)Not to mention I could listen to his voice (Alec's not Tweety's) for hours.
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)polichick
(37,152 posts)"The efforts of Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden carry with them the possible risk of real harm to US forces and agents. But I believe that without a random appearance by the truth now and then, from whatever source, we learn nothing. We are thus doomed to remain on a course bound for not only threats to our own security from within, but a spiritual death as well. As long as we choose to remain in the dark we risk a further erosion of our true nature."
btw his new show is surprisingly good.
k&r
Zorra
(27,670 posts)"Sacred cows make the best burgers"
"In the nineteen-sixties, apartheid was driven out of America. Legal segregation Jim Crow ended. We didn't end racism, but we ended legal segregation. We ended the idea that you can send a million soldiers ten thousand miles away to fight in a war that people do not support. We ended the idea that women are second-class citizens. Now, it doesn't matter who sits in the Oval Office. But the big battles that were won in that period of civil war and strife you cannot reverse. We were young, we were reckless, arrogant, silly, headstrong ... and we were right! I regret nothing!"
"A modern revolutionary group heads for the television station, not the factory. It concentrates its energy on infiltrating and changing the image system."
"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists."
"The duty of a revolutionary is to make love, and that means staying alive, and free."
(^^Abbie Hoffman Quotes^^)
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)Zorra
(27,670 posts)when I saw it, right after I posted mine.
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)jon10
(46 posts)a prety decent review of the last 50 years
kinda scary
but the excerpts posted leave out all the specifics of the economic policies
CJCRANE
(18,184 posts)jon10
(46 posts)there is no power, without money
power is to get money, and money is to get power
jon10
(46 posts)migh have more credibility in his remarks about consumerism, if he didnt do commercials for credit cards
CJCRANE
(18,184 posts)says that America shouldn't be defined *only* by consumerism.
He is not explicitly against capitalism or consumerism.
jon10
(46 posts)and speaking a fine technicalities, i didnt say that lacking credibility means that what he said is wrong - one implies the other, but does not prove it
Buns_of_Fire
(17,191 posts)woo me with science
(32,139 posts)Thank you, Alec Baldwin.