Societal values, what are those? — a hint from William Rivers Pitt

10 May 2019

Caveat — am I calling foxes?

Willful ignorance characterizes American thinking. The United States' propagandized sheep futilely mill around in competing blocks of angry vacuity.

For all their vehemence, there is a stunning lack of cogence in virtually anything that any large group of Americans — or their leaders — have to say.

Is there a fix?

Consider — by way of stage-preparation — John W. Whitehead's perspective

He wrote, accurately I think, that:

What characterizes American government today is not so much dysfunctional politics as it is ruthlessly contrived governance carried out behind the entertaining, distracting and disingenuous curtain of political theater.

Week after week, the script changes (Donald Trump’s Tweets, Congress’ hearings on Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, the military’s endless war drums, the ever-widening field of candidates for the 2020 presidential race, etc.) with each new script following on the heels of the last, never any let-up, never any relief from the constant melodrama.

The players come and go, the protagonists and antagonists trade places, and the audience members are quick to forget past mistakes and move on to the next spectacle.

Yet behind the footlights, those who really run the show are putting into place policies which erode our freedoms and undermine our attempts at contributing to the workings of our government, leaving us none the wiser and bereft of any opportunity to voice our discontent or engage in any kind of discourse until it’s too late.

It’s the oldest con game in the books, the magician’s sleight of hand that keeps you focused on the shell game in front of you while your wallet is being picked clean by ruffians in your midst.

Consider also — a logjam-busting proposition from William Rivers Pitt

What Pitts says goes to two main elements of what is wrong with the United States:

If a sick person can be healed but isn’t, if a hungry person can be fed but isn’t, if a homeless person can be sheltered but isn’t, and if the only reason they remain sick, hungry and homeless is the profit motive of the system, that system is broken.

If tens of millions of people hear about the booming economy and see none of its benefits, that system is broken.

Pitts' is a statement about human social values.

And he implicitly poses an accompanying invitation to think societal things through.

Contrast Pitts' concise clarity to — the obfuscating BS that characterizes Daily America

Based on massive amounts of historical evidence, it is clear that the United States has no genuinely "social" values. Community doesn't really figure anywhere into our system. We are (most essentially) about dog eat dog.

Being this way — and in spite of our supposed "Christian" emphasis on "family values" — we also avoid thinking about the implications and future ramifications of virtually anything at all.

In short, we are (arguably) a nasty-minded, selfish, brutish population of predominantly easily manipulated dopes.

Otherwise, how do we explain where we are today?

With that so harshly said . . .

I do look forward to hearing or seeing an intelligent argument that supports traditional American "national character" as being morally or ethically worthy.

It is notable — from my perspective (and probably Pitts' and Whitehead's)— that no one has ever managed a persuasive explanation along those lines — that simultaneously takes into account the voluminous historical evidence against it.

Ergo, that is what I mean by a population predominantly comprised of "dopes".

If one cannot (or will not) go to the core of a societal issue, one is (by definition) either a fool or self-enslaved.

The moral? — Prepare the guillotines?

I suppose one top tier question is whether rabble rousing — here necessarily performed (from a statistical perspective) among a population comprised of at least one-half dopes — can ever be ethically justified.

It is admittedly difficult to keep hormonally reactive airheads anchored in ethical behavior of any kind. Witness the French Revolution.

Thus, our Plutocracy of Oligarchs routinely say that rabble-rousing is unethical on its face. Particularly so (from their wealthy perspective), given that violence of the necessary revolutionary magnitude would have those same Fat Cats waiting nervously in lose-one's-head carts.

On the other side of this supposedly "moral" argument, one probably has to admit that there is nothing — other than convenient self-acclamation — that distinguishes the worth of an Oligarch from that of a Dope (or the Dope's child).

For that reason alone, an unemotional rationalist might decide — just for fun — that We the Rabble should rise.

Let chips (or chops) fall where they may?

PeteFree.com

Societal values, what are those? — a hint from William Rivers Pitt