where's the solution?-----rant

[stillcool]

Sometimes it's a good idea to step back...away from the rhetoric and emotional reactions, and realize just what is going on. We've known for quite a while the path we are on would lead to Iran. We've also known how little power we have to change direction. In order to find a solution I believe it is important to fully grasp the problem.
We as a people have been hood-winked for a very long time. The inherited wealth in this country have always been in charge whether it be behind the scenes or in public positions. These inheritors are a sect of society closed off to the masses. These are the 2%, that are firmly seated at the top. The familial ties that bind have spread out through marriage, generations, and new industry. Through their assets, they invest in every industry that offers a return. In order to avoid unnecessary losses due to taxes they constantly reinvest their earnings, and their wealth continues to grow. They sit on boards of a panoply of corporate industries of which they own a significant amount of stock. The names and faces are no longer obvious or important, because it is their long entangled roots through institutions, not any single interest that wields power.
The intertwining of government and industry has solidified in such a way as to make the two indistinguishable. And here, I believe we are not alone. Our country has borders, but those with the power to make decisions do not. They are invested and rooted globally. Their interests and ours have not, nor have they ever been compatible. Every step made to enrich or further the health of society has come with a price tag. Health, transportation, construction, R & D, education, insurance, defense, tax-free foundations professing societal aid-- across the board where money is exchanged this concentrated top tier of society gets a cut, or benefits.
Every action has intent. What would happen if this sect of society and the industries that support them were threatened by competing forces? Why is it that in every geographical area of conflict, there lies un-tapped resources?
Our government may be speckled with good, thoughtful, intelligent people interested in the public welfare, but they are dwarfed by the ruling class and their multi-national interests. Blaming the American people may feel good, but does not properly reflect where the problem lies.
Many people are under the impression that the American people stopped the Vietnam war through protests. While I don't doubt that public opinion had some influence, the return of my family members left me with a sense of an exhausted goal. As if every last bit of energy had been spent. Where do you think the solution lies? There are countries that have gotten out from under this control, but their governments were only propped up by this power. Ours is rooted with it. Any of this make sense?

[The2ndWheel]

1. There is no solution

Other than to undo every process that has led to whatever this is that we've labeled 2007. That would include time, agriculture, mass production, language, specialization, communication, transportation, anything large scale. Since none of that will happen, at least voluntarily, we're stuck with what we have. Other than attempting to fix the problems by increasing the complexity of the problems within a single bubble, which is how we got here.

The problem is that we want everything, even the things that contridict themselves(sort of like the Bible). We want growth, but we also want regulation. We want to turn the planet into a machine that satisfies our ever demand, but we also want a habitat. We want everything that religion said we could have, and we want science to make it possible.

The main problem is that we think there is an ultimate solution. The same way we're searching for a theory of everything. We want the cake, we want to eat it, then throw it back up, put it back in the box, and then sell it for 9 times its value.

[stillcool]

2. that last line is a keeper...

:thumbsup: somehow, I think that the 'spectacle' we converse in is false from the get-go....and the load of crap fed to the masses, just like the wealth at the top, grows and multiplys with each generation

[Sir Jeffrey]

3. Makes sense to me...here is my take

"We've known for quite a while the path we are on would lead to Iran. We've also known how little power we have to change direction."

Democracy is only a tagline for another system to control. The elites do what they want. Always have. Americans are notoriously self-reliant and independent so the elite of this country have always tried to ensure that the vast majority of Americans will continue to be stupid, uninformed, xenophobic, me-firsters. This ensures that they will not vote, or will vote for a candidate the media tells them to vote for (the candidates approved by the elites).

However, with that being said, the last election presented a major problem for the more rational elites in both parties. The very system they established to maintain their control has now bit them in the ass.

The ISG was supposed to be the means by which the American Govt would return to serving the rational elites. They were supposed to wrest away control of the reins of govt from our psychotic president and his neo-conservative Israel-firsters. They do not want to see the American economy collapse from $8 a gallon gas prices once we attack Iran, but the neocons could care less.

So now we have in effect the first truly anti-American pro-Israel president in history. And now, even with the guy that led the fight to put Bush in office in 2000 getting stabbed in the back, the elites are now feeling just like the rest of us: depressed, angry, feeling helpless and scrambling for an answer.

The problem is that the answer to the problem is no quick fix, and that is why the elites are scared.

The solution to this problem lies where it always has in the past: education. When you look at the great revolutions throughout history, the masses generally had little to no opinion because their lives never changed all that much. They still lived in poverty, worked slave wages, ate the worst food, lived in the slums, etc. The revolutions were always lead by elements of the middle and upper middle classes who were sick of being sh-t on by the elites.

Ensuring as many as possible make it to the middle class will change things. Why is that so? Because a huge percent of the middle class comes from the lower class. Rarely if ever do you see an elite fall into the middle class (but when you do it makes the nightly news). Someone who remembers what it was like to be poor will often be more compassionate and willing to vote against what the elites want than someone born into privilege.

This explains why both parties do not seem to care if the cost of attending college now is crippling when compared to how it was when the baby boomers were attending. This is why they cut taxes for themselves and force their children and grandchildren to pay off the debt. This is why a million other "screw the poor" things are done in the name of us all...because the elites scrambled up the ladder a long time ago and do not give a damn about us.

Please stick with me on this.

When I was in college, I learned something that I do not think was supposed to be taught to us. I found my department divided into a conservative and liberal grouping of profs. You had to take classes with both groups in order to get and idea of how the other side perceives issues. What I found was that the conservative profs had a very superficial understanding of issues, relied on misleading and faulty statistical analyses to prove their points, and often took unverifiable or disproveable points of view on most issues. If they were ever proven wrong about an issue, like the Iraq War being a cakewalk, they simply point to other problems and blame those things as the reason they can be perceived as wrong. The cakewalk claim thus is unable to be disproven and they continue on brainwashing other students.

Then after watching the "neo-culpa" a few months back, I realized that this is what they do everywhere. The elite educators exist to brainwash the "good intelligent govt workers" you discussed into accepting their flawed worldview. They reward them for being brainwashed with degrees from Harvard, Yale, and Princeton and funnel them into the govt jobs you and I could not get.

This is why, in my opinion, the elites in this country have been able to stay in power for so long. In what would normally be considered an educated liberal middle class that would lead the masses to real change, we have an ever-expanding educated elite that serves the interests of the elite only.

This also explains why the system cannot be changed anytime soon. The elites created this system to ensure that their power could be maintained. Bush can now be viewed as an anti-American establishment president...just that now he is serving Israel.

And you are right about the end of Vietnam. The elites did not give a damn what the people thought. When the protests ramped up we got Nixon and his "secret plan".

So what to do about Iran right now? Really, as individuals we cannot do very much. We elected Democratic majorities to represent us. There is no rational basis to attack Iran right now. There is no exit strategy. There is no mission there that achieves American objectives. There is no evidence Iran is doing anything beyond peaceful enrichment.

The Democrats have to stand up and fight for us. Hopefully, the media will get behind the idea of impeachment. I doubt it though.

[stillcool]

4. thank you for your thoughtful reply

I guess one solution might lie in the rising competition of other societies un-willing to tow the line.

[Sir Jeffrey]

5. Exactly...

which is why Venezuela and Iran are considered to be such grave threats. They do not threaten American lives. They threaten American business interests and American global hegemony. Those countries offer compromise and mutually beneficial trade in the face of all out war.

Venezeula gives our poor citizens cheap/free oil and gas even AFTER we sponsored a coup to overthrow their democratically elected leader.

Iran is STILL willing to negotiate with us even after we imposed the Shah on them. All we have to do is treat them as equals at the bargaining table. We cannot even do that. We've grown too big for our britches (as my gma would say) and we are about to be taken down a few pegs...like all bullies are eventually.

[Karenina]

6. Great posts, Sir Jeffrey!

:thumbsup:

[Bluerthanblue]

7. it took years to get to where we are... it will

take time to get to a better place. But that shouldn't stop us from taking the steps we can towards a better way, or at least AWAY from the wrong way.

Baby steps. We as a people- the American society especially are VERY impatient.

We want what we want, when we want it, which is usually yesterday.

This nation has been in a real slide away from democracy and into imperialism and a society of haves and have nots since the industrial revolution.

The American people aren't content. We haven't been content for a long time. The consumerism and excesses of everything from food, to things, to money, to control is a vain attempt to fill a yearning that is not being met.

I believe this change is a long time coming. I also believe that if it doesn't come, - if we can't break out of this stranglehold that has oppressed us, we won't survive anyway. And then the 'rulers' will have to struggle for themselves.

we have a choice to make- to give in- or to stand up and be counted. Right now, today, I'm plannin on standing as best i can.

:hug: Together we are formidable. :hug: