Well, we went and viewed Syriana this afternoon...

[ret5hd]

Before anything else: EXCELLENT movie. Down to earth excellent. A must see by those interested in contempory geopolitics and those that wonder of their and their country's place in the world.

Now, my personal feelings and observations, which may be meaningless and boring:

I have felt this way for a long time...but this movie drove these ideas home and brought them to to the front of my mind.

We, the citizens of the u.s., are children. Much as a domesticated kitten or puppy or calf or piglet never matures (psychologically) into a full-grown cat or dog or bovine or porcine, willing and able to fend for itself, we never mature into full adults. We are pampered, spoiled, obnoxious brats. (At least dogs and cats aren't generally obnoxious.) We don't know where our food comes from...we just accept that it is there, and truth be told we don't want to know. We don't question our herders...we just go. Most of the time we don't even have the intelligence to resent. We walk through the turnstiles and punch our time-clocks within the proscribed time limits. We are overweight and out of shape.

Maybe, as an employed blue collar worker, i am too far removed from the realities of the poor and working poor of this country to see reality of my country, but i have and still do view many people of the 3rd world as having a much clearer view of the world's realities than we do.

Not that that helps them overcome their difficulties any better than we do...but at least they are aware of from which direction their difficulties flow.

We will now return to your regularly scheduled programming.

[babylonsister]

1. I haven't seen the movie, but I have observations of my own.

I know you know people are starving in America. The issue of whether they know where their food came from is moot.
As for the third world countries, I'm somewhat familiar with one of them. The people I know don't think they're disadvantaged, they just have never been taught what to miss, or have been taught what to cherish. They are happy with a good meal, good weather, a paycheck. Life could be very simple and beautiful without all the supposed perks we Americans have that just complicates our lives.
KISS=Keep it simple, stupid. Not you, but it's not a bad acronym to live by.

[Zensea]

2. Speak for yourself

I've seen many dark spaces in my life, looked the beast square in the face and I'm no child & I am a U.S. citizen.

Midway on our life's journey, I found myself
In dark woods, the right road lost. To tell
About those woods is hard -- so tangled and
rough
And savage that thinking of it now, I feel
The old fear stirring....

[ret5hd]

3. yes, i know there are exceptions amongst us...

and i don't really mean this (the OP) to be disparaging of anyone...just an observation of things in general.

[Zensea]

4. understood

:toast:

[mermaid]

5. Disagree

The people of the 3rd World are as repressed by their own governments of tinpot dictators as they are by America. The sultans, the princes, the ayatollahs, the mullahs...all live in opulence, in thier palaces, surrounde by silks and gold, because they, too, exploit the riches of their own people. And cooperate with the American exploiters, too. They know what side of the bread the butter is on.

BUT, they have to channel the anger of their oppressed people into something...a steam-pressure-release valve, as it were...they need to channel and direct that anger at some target other than themselves, so that THEIR lifestyles, positions of power, power structure, and hierarchy are not disturbed...hence the teaching of America as being the sole source of all their troubles, and the fact that they are poor and living in squalor. Hence the teaching of America being The Great Satan. Exploiters though we may be, we are assisted in that exploitation by the ayatollahs, the mullahs, the sulans and princes. HENCE, the control and manipulation of our media by those in power...you control the information people receive, and you can thus control what they know, and therefore, their reactions to it. why else do you think the right wing so ardently desires to control the media...all of it? They want to control what information we get. false information = false results.

For a while, Saddam was "on the reservation" as they say. But then he wanted more...and left the reservation. Iraq is all about an object lesson to the rest of the Middle East rulers...this is what happens to you if you leave the reservation.

How many times in the eighties did we hear that Saddam "is a son-of-a-bitch...BUT he's OUR son-of-a-bitch!" At a time, so, too, was Osama OUR son-of-a-bitch...we financed him because he fought against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. When he ceased to be useful to us, we abandoned him, and he turned on us. when Saddam left the reservation, by going after Kuwait...we turned on him.

Kaddafi is all of a sudden our buddy now, because he got rid of his nukes (at least, supposedly) and he came onto the reservation, and agreed to play by our rules. Remember, anyone, when Khaddafi was the son-of-a-bitch we wanted to take out? remember the eighties? Remember how pissed we were at France for not letting us fly over their airspace in going after Khaddafi, forcing us to fly an extra 6,500 air-miles??

Fact is...American exploitation of the 3rd World could not happen without the cooperation of those tinpot dictators, who are propped up and allowed to live in opulence, because they stay on the reservation? Remember when Iraq was our friend against Iran, because Iran had been taken over by The Ayatollah Khomeini?

My point is that the residents of the 3rd World are only aware of ONE ASPECT of which direction their difficulties flow. They are not allowed to know that their own leaders cooperate in secret with their obvious oppressors, The Great Satan, America. It is useful to be able to direct the attention...and the anger...of the populace at enemies of your own choosing. Leaders have done it for centuries. Not just the United States.

And not just national leaders. Look at folks like Pat Robertson, for example, leading his flock by the nose, pointing their attention and their anger at enemies of Pat's choosing. And Robertson isn't the only one, either...he's just as good an example as any other...I coulda used Sekulow, Wildmon, Phelps, O'Reilly, Savage, or Limbaugh as an example, too. It is the same concept.

It is called scapegoating. You drag a scapegoat in front of your people, and then direct their attention at the scapegoat, and hope that they follow it, and expend their anger on THAT...rather than who should be the REAL targets of their outrage! Hell, even Bush does it with his favorite new boogeymen, the terrorists, the terror alert code, all the Number Two's we've caught over the past few years since 9/11...

WAKE THE FUCK UP, FOLKS!! Wake up America! They are doing the same to us. We are being manipulated, and our attention and anger is being misdirected.

[Tigress DEM]

6. When I was a child I thought as a child...

Until it hits you, it's easy to be uninformed about some particular issue.

We in America had a belief that as long as we went and voted, made noise when our politicians ignored the will of the people and stood up for the rights of the oppressed, we were doing our job.

Problem has become there is SO MUCH CORRUPTION and a major part of that corruption was COVER UP, so we didn't know HOW BAD it was getting UNTIL it was SO BAD, it's nearly unbearable.

I have my "magical thinking" days when I just hope that what we are doing is enough, because it keeps me moving and doing what needs to be done. The way kids adapt to the unmanageable.

Other days I just want to curl up and die. This is me feeling old and feeling I've tried EVERYTHING but they will STILL WIN.

Some days I DON'T WANT TO KNOW. It isn't always, but there are times when in self defense, I have to go out and do something that isn't bent around the struggle. Look at something beautiful, make dinner and remind the cats that the flower box is NOT for their personal use.