Normalcy? Democracy?
I found this story over at the Daily Kos. Concerning Nader voters and Nader’s suggestion that he might run for president Kos writes:
I’ve tried to encourage a truce between Democrats and Nader voters in the interest of ousting Bush and returning this nation to some measure of normalcy…
Screw him. Let him run if he wants. It’s a Democracy. But every vote for Nader can’t be anything more than a vote for Bush. Anyone who thinks otherwise is deluded, and will get no respect for enabling our nation’s systematic destruction by the Bush cabal.
I wonder, what is this normalcy he speaks of? What does that mean? Further to the left on the political spectrum? He also states that this nation is a democracy. Not true. It’s way past the time that we should be talking about what this nation really is. It’s past the time that we continue the American Revolution that started over 200 years ago and create a real democracy. We don’t need normalcy, we need a true, participatory democracy.
06/30/2003
Survivor
I hate 99.9% of all television “programing”. I use the television to watch rented movies or the Simpsons. Apparently the latest best idea is a whole slew of reality shows. Yuck. Do we really need this kind of negative drama? Isn’t the world ugly enough without it? I was browsing around today and ended up looking at a site of mine which is no longer updated and found this. Written by a fellow MeDiA Co-oper, Morgan, and originally printed in a little community publication called The Village Idiot. Thought it was definitely worth a post here.
Morgan writes:
I must now recount my frustration that boiled during the first season of Survivor-the new t.v. show that “captured real people, thrown out into the wild-away from their families, away from life as they new it-to the bare minimum-forced to fight-to work together-to SURVIVE, and the toughest, most level headed SURVIVOR would receive $1,000,000”…
Does anything sound a bit odd here? To me, the hollywood aesthetic has taken a few steps too far into their dehumanizing “virtual universality”, and the consumers have sunken a few levels deeper into the blind, degrading, dehumanizing, exploitative pop culture of the day… it is sick, and to my demise the show was so successful, so adored, so widely accepted, that after it was all over the participants got to do McDonlads commercials and write all-access biographies… and, better yet-the producers were asked to do it all again…
The word survivor is defined: one who remains alive, or existent there’s this lady, a mother of 4, she’s just overcome an addiction to crack, she’s working harder than anyone could imagine to pull herself back together, and then-just last week-she receives the results to some blood tests she had done… she’s HIV+… but, you see, she doesn’t give up-she’s fighting-she’s smiling in the face of a world gone sour. She can’t return home to some middle class life now that her “survival” test is over… no, she will not be able to fight for the $1,000,000 prize…and she sure as hell doesn’t need a group of hollywood t.v. producers to set up some obstacles so that her struggles seem real-no, no she doesn’t, because what she receives instead is an onslaught of fingers pointed-she’s an outcast-an outlet for the worlds blame-and this happens, and it is real-everyday! But still-our proud america, it needs to view harmless entertainment to pass the time… Read more…
06/30/2003
Radical Blogs
A couple weeks ago I discovered the Mad Prophet Blog.
I’ve also been reading Matthew Cheney’s Occasional Subversion. On the subject of the conservatives and privilege Matthew has an excellent comment on an article posted by Steve Gilliard at Daily Kos.
Steve writes:
The whole lot of them, Coulter, Scarborough, O’Reilly. What are they afraid of? What can happen to them if the world doesn’t go their way? Nothing. Coulter has a Cornell degree for God’s sake. O’Reilly did graduate work at Harvard. What are they afraid of? They’ve made it and no one is seeking to take anything from them. Yet, they cower in fear like scared rabbits, jabbering as some new threat, defending the indefensible.
Matthew responds:
I doubt they are afraid for themselves – what they’re trying to protect is the continuation of their privilege. The world they want is one inhabited by people like themselves, and they are terrified that such a world may be coming to an end. They know they are untouchable. It’s their children and their friends' children they worry about. They are desperate to protect their lineage, to shore up the walls of privilege for people like themselves so that the future is controlled by their little group.
I think Matthew’s on target here. Actually, this is something that needs to be talked about far more than it is and it does not surprise me one bit that it’s an anarchist who shines a spotlight on the subject. Power. Privilege. Social, political, and economic hierarchy. Our society is based on many layers of hierarchy, different relationships of domination, and a society which is so structured cannot be truly democratic. Structured inequity requires a lack of democracy because it is, simply, not fair. If people were truly in control of their destiny they would not create policies which contributed to their own subjugation. Such a system as ours is maintained by manipulating public discussion away from this fundamental reality as well as creating the perception that democracy is in place.