Workers of the World Unite (& Glenn Beck)

[Goldstein1984]

I was just watching a little video of Glenn Beck on Huffington Post. Beck is rambling on in his inimitable way about Andy Stern, Barack Obama, unions, and the slogan "Workers of the world unite!" I'll put the link at the bottom, but it's difficult to watch without being ashamed to be in the same species as Beck, let along the same nation and culture.

What confounds me is that Beck condemns a concept as fundamentally sound as workers uniting on a large scale to protect their interests. Imagine the power we would have over government and corporations (TPTB) if workers had the organization and will to unite and refuse to show up for work or spend money on a specific day. Which is why it will never happen. Corporations and their political puppets are opposed to workers having power. They control the system, so they make sure the system doesn't give power to workers. It really is that simple as long as workers defer to a system designed to keep them in their proper place.

And this is why we'll never see the change we desire. The Few controls the system than controls the Many. The Many lack the organization and the will to confront the Few, to challenge the system.

We fear for our jobs. We fear for our security. We fear for our children's futures. We fear the sacrifice that comes in any struggle for liberty. We share in a collective case of Stockholm Syndrome in which we embrace our captors. We fear change, so we get none.

Video: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/31/roger-ailes-on-this-week_n_443555.html

[Pyrzqxgl]

1. If an IWW type General Strike occured, it'd last about 15 minutes.

[Goldstein1984]

2. What do you think would result?

[Goldstein1984]

6. Here's what I think

A general strike would last as long as an organized and determined people would make sure it lasted.

Right now, we're a nation of sheople pacified with entertainment, cheap goods, antidepressants, illusions of change, and fear.

So, there will be no general strike, which was the point of my OP, and we will continue to have the government/system we have. That's what we collectively tolerate, that's what we collectively deserve.

[laughingliberal]

3. It's absolutely necessary for the survival of the ruling class that the peasants never unite

I'm pretty sure we would never have had a middle class in this country in the first place if not for unions. Those things the PTB fight the hardest against are where we learn what they fear the most. Unions are at the top of their list which tells me that a strong labor movement would do the most damage to the current power structures.

[Goldstein1984]

4. Howard Zinn made a good case that the Middle Class

was invented by the Founders to insulate them from the masses of the poor without property. Thus, military officers and civil authorities are paid Middle Class wages to give them a vested interest in the status quo.

I came to the conclusion long ago that nothing is going to change as long as we work within the system. We need widespread cultural and economic revolt.

"Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy, it is absolutely essential to it." ~ Howard Zinn

[laughingliberal]

5. That's a good point

Had not thought of that. Now that you mention it, though, it does seem the fact that many are holding on to the illusion of middle class status right now is probably the reason we have not seen major revolting, yet.

[Goldstein1984]

8. It isn't the illusion of middle class status

It's the delusion of middle class status.

We have the system we collectively deserve because it's the system we collectively tolerate.

We the Sheople of the United States...

[SpiralHawk]

7. "More tax cuts for republicon fatcat cronies" - Glenn Chickenhawk Beck (R)

[Goldstein1984]

9. Do you feel the trickledown yet?

The fact that Beck has such a following, and that people who can evidently read aren't by virtue of that simple fact educated enough not to buy his BS, makes me think that signs whould be posted at US polling places that say,

"Abandon hope all ye who enter here."

[Yurovsky]

10. I felt the trickledown...

and I looked up and it was Glenn Beck urinating on me from the balcony of his penthouse.

[Goldstein1984]

11. Get used to it

As long as the penthouses remain, so does the trickledown.

Of course, there is always the American Dream that we will advance socially and have the chance to piss on those we once pissed with.

I had a conversation some time ago. Here was a guy, with no special talents or abilities, but he was fortunate to have had and taken advantage of an opportunity. Now, he's completely forgotten where he came from; he has no clue how easily he could go back there; he's convinced that his "success" (Measured in his ability to buy a big truck and a large flat screen TV) is purely of this own doing and that the less fortunate are not less fortunate, they are less worthy.

This is the scum that is the enemy.

[Yurovsky]

12. Most will get their comeuppance...

that's why the present economic turmoil has me torn. While I certainly can empathize with those who've lost their jobs, savings, homes, or health insurance during the current depression, I have ZERO sympathy for the blood sucking speculators who ran real estate prices through the roof (ever watch "Flip This House" on A&E?), then got caught with their pants down when the mortgage banking industry melted down. I was in my doctor's office about a year ago, and some guy was whining about how he and his son had 6 properties on Palm Beach and couldn't sell a one of them...

Sorry, cry me a f*ing river, especially when there are folks in south Florida who don't have a place to call home. I'm sure the guy I overheard shared the same sense of entitlement that the guy in your post obviously feels. Kind of hard to feel sorry for people like that when they actually get a taste of what millions of other Americans deal with EVERY DAY (in good times & bad).