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Bush's Christmas Budget: Guns Over Butter

By Paul Street at Dec 24, 2004

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Tomorrow morning and afternoon, I expect, George and Laura and mom and fellow war criminal Dad and the twins and Jeb and the rest of the misbegotten hyper-aristocratic and necrophyilic Bush brood will open presents and enjoy a sumptous meal prepared for them by grateful servants. They will congratulate themselves on their spiritual rectitude, their spectacular and richly deserved wealth, and their forceful and moral policies. They will talk perhaps about Jesus and share their faith in the ultimate benevolence and God-ordained superiority of American decisions and the American Way of Life. Meanwhile the ghosts of hundreds of thousands of murdered Iraqis, including large numbers of noncombatants and children, will be swirling around their mansions, giving testimony to the squalid moral rot that eats away at the heart of America. Right in Washington D.C., home to the greatest urban inequality in the United States and some of the worst ghettoes in the nation, abject misery will be visible to those who care to look just a short cab ride away from the corridors of imperial power and homeland plutocracy. The situation of people living in these and other zones of concentrated city poverty has been significantly worsened by the regressive and imperial Bush agenda and its broad number of bipartisan enablers. It is my core and not particuarly original thesis that the pain on the periphery and the pain in the core are dialectically inseparable. Merry Christmas to "the Bush crime family." Here (below) are some draft paragraphs from the conclusion to a book I am writing on persistent educational race and class apartheid in the United States. Here I am pointing out that we have more than enough money to properly and fairly pay for public education in the United States. The problem is state priorities that privilege savage empire and inequality over broad social and democratic investment and the needs of those who are most disadvantaged. ... The richest and most powerful nation on earth, the United States does not even remotely lack the necessary material and financial resources to meet the Brown v. Board decision's promise of educational equity by funding schools fairly and adequately. We do not have to look far to determine where we might find the assets to properly serve children victimized by social and educational class and race apartheid in the post-Civil Rights era. As of 11:15 pm on December 21st, 2004, the National Priorities Project (NPP) reported, the George No Child Left Behind Bush administrations imperial war of choice in Iraq had cost more than $151 billion. With that same sum of money, the NPP calculated, the United States could have: enrolled 20,037, 391 US children in Head Start for one year; provided health insurance for one year to 90, 588, 264 children; built 1,362,157 public housing units; and hired 2,621, 749 additional public school teachers for one year. In Illinois, where Rayola Carwell attends a ghetto school where class sizes are too big to permit individual attention to students, the state's share of the war's cost could have paid for the building of 772 new elementary schools. The city of Chicago's share could have paid for the hiring of 27,284 additional teachers for one year. Meanwhile, we learned, federal funding for education fell far short of need. In 2004, NPP reported, Title 1 programs to improve teaching and learning for disproportionately minority at-risk (poor) children fell more than $7million short of need. Federal allotments to Improve Teacher Quality fell $245 million short and funding for 21st Century Community Learning Centers (for disadvantaged students and their families) fell $1 billion short. Such shortfalls are hardly surprising when we consider that the military eats up 29 cents of every federal tax dollars, compared to just 4 cents for education. They are even less surprising when we learn that the total costs of the Bush administrations harshly regressive tax cuts had reached $297 billion by 2004, equivalent to 2.6 percent of the national Gross Domestic Product. These cuts put government revenues at their lowest level as a share of the economy since 1950 and contribute to the dramatic shift from large projected budget surpluses as far as the eye can see, the mainstream Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) reports. By CBPPs calculations, just 8.9 percent of Bush's "middle-class tax-cuts" went to the middle 20 percent of American income earning households. The wealthiest 1 percent received 24 percent of the cuts. Each such household have received an average tax reduction of $34,992. Millionaire households, equivalent to 0.2 percent of all U.S. households, received 19.3 percent of the tax cuts so far. These households have received an average tax reduction of $123,592 . The average beginning teacher salary in the U.S. in 2003 was $29,564. In Rayolas state (Illinois), the average such salary was $34,522, just $470 less than the average tax cut enjoyed for far by the top 1 percent in what was already the industrialized worlds most unequal and wealth-top-heavy nation before Bush came into office. Things don't look good for federal funding for inner-city schools and communities in 2005. In a frosty front-page Christmas season WALL STREET JOURNAL article titled "Sharpening the Knife: Bush Vows to Halve Deficit, Targets Already Feel Squeezed," reporter Jackie Calmes notes that concerns about the spectacular scale of the US deficit will mean less money for education among others areas of public investment that rank far below the urgent imperatives of empire and inequality. According to New Hampshire Republican Senator Judd Gregg, the new Chairman of the U.S. Senate Budget Committee, "this cannot afford to be a guns and butter term. You've got to cut the butter. The butter apparently includes schools, contrary to the standard mainstream and bipartisan line that education is a critical weapon in the great economic war of nations. With guns or military spending growing," Calmes calmly explains, "the butter to be cut is likely to include some of the most visible areas of domestic spending, including the Medicaid health program, subsidies to Amtrak, agricultural research, and even some federal education programs." It doesn't help, Calmes notes, that "Bush has ruled out raising taxes and is widely expected to win an extension of his first-term income and tax-cuts, moves that will reduce revenue flowing into the Treasury, beyond his presidency. Moreover, both Mr. Bush and Congress are committed to changing the alternative minimum tax (AMI), a levy designed to prevent rich taxpayers avoiding taxes altogether. Fixing the AMI," Calmes says, "will cut projected tax revenues by hundreds of billions of dollars [funny how Calmes accepts the term fix for a proposal to abolish.one suspects much the same confusion in the Bushcons efforts to fix the public schools P.S.]. In seeking to cut revenues to pay for imperial war and regressive tax cuts, Calmes observes, about 85 percent of the federal budget is almost untouchable by public consensus [funny, I wasnt contacted about that, as a member of the public, P.S.] the remaining discretionary funds and the area Mr. Bush has targeted for shrinking include breast cancer research, aid to rural and inner-city schools, veterans medical care, weather forecasting, and park rangers [yes, you read that correctly: the list includes VETERANS MEDICAL CARE, p.s.]." Calmes observes that the amount of money paid by the federal government for interest on its national debt - $168 billion in annual payments, much of it to overseas holders of Treasury bonds is more than the government will spend on education, housing, transportation, science, space, and technology combined (Calmes, Wall Street Journal, December 21, 2001, A1). Turning to the state and local levels, policymakers looking for resources to pay for adequately and equitably funded schools should examine exploding incarceration budgets. Between 1980 and 2000, those budgets rose from a total nationwide cost of $6.4 billion to $51 billion (in inflation-adjusted dollars) as the nation embarked on a massive prison-constructing boom to warehouse nearly 2 million prisoners by the turn of the millennium. This is according to a Justice Policy Institute study that bears the interesting title "Cellblocks or Classrooms?" (August 2002). Nearly half the people behind bars in the world's leading incarceration state are African-American and most of the nations massive army of black prisoners and ex-prisoners are the products of highly disadvantaged communities and schools. By 2000, the JPI reported, there were nearly a third more African American men incarcerated than in higher education in the US. Roughly half the giant US prison and jail population has not completed high school or received a GED and dropouts are especially over-represented among the one in the three African-American male adults that are under one form of supervision (prison, probation or parole) by the criminal justice system. According to a widely advertised lament, progressive change in America is impossible because of the powerless and cash-strapped state. Government can't really do anything anymore, this complaint says, because it doesn't have the strength, the legitimacy, the money, and the wherewithal to carry out key objectives. Tell that to the nation's mass of prisoners and soldiers and the many victims of its glorious overseas campaigns. The lament is usefully broken down as myth when we ask whose objectives American government can and supposedly can't carry out. In the wealthiest nation on earth, the public sector lacks the money to properly fund education for all of the country's children. It lacks the resources to provide universal health coverage, leaving 42 million American without basic medical insurance. It can't match unemployment benefits to the numbers out of work. It lacks or claims to lack the money to provide meaningful rehabilitation and reentry services for its many millions of very disproportionately black prisoners and ex-prisoners, marked for life with a criminal record. The list of unmet civic and social needs goes on and on. Listen, however, to what our public sector can supposedly pay for. It can afford to spend trillions on Tax Cuts rewarding the top 1 percent in the thoroughly disingenuous name of "economic stimulus." It can spend more on the military than on all of America's possible "enemy" states combined many times over, providing massive subsidy to the high-tech corporate sector, including billions on weapons and "defense" systems that bear no meaningful relations to any real threat faced by the American people. It can afford hundreds of billions and perhaps more than a trillion dollars for an invasion and occupation of distant devastated nation that poses minimal risk to the US and even to its own neighbors. And of course, it can afford to incapacitate and incarcerate a greater share of its population than any nation in history and to spend hundreds of millions each year on various forms of corporate welfare and other routine public subsidies to "private" industry. The American public sector, in short, is weak and cash-strapped when it comes to social democracy for the people but its cup runs over in powerful ways when it comes to meeting the needs of wealth, racial disparity and empire. It's useful to keep that distinction in mind when we hear people like the powerful Republican tax cut maven and political strategist Grover Norquist say that their goal - and here I quote Norquist - is "is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub." When Norquist and his followers say they want to "starve the beast" of government, they target some parts of "government" for malnourishment a lot more energetically than others. They are most concerned to dismantle the parts of the public sector that serve the social and democratic needs of the non-affluent majority of the American populace. They want to de-fund what the late French sociologist Pierre Bordieu referred to as the left hand of the state, the programs and services that embody the victories one by past struggles for justice and equality. They want to reserve the right hand of the state, the parts that provide service and welfare to the privileged few and dole out punishment to the poor, from the budgetary axe. Their wishes are being met. Under the pressure of an imperial war on terror and a relentless, well-funded political and ideological campaign led in its most extreme forms by radically regressive and repressive Republicans like Norquist, Newt Gingrich, and Karl Rove, the public sector is being stripped of its positive social and democratic functions. It is increasingly reduced to its policing and repressive functions, which are expanding in ways that are more than merely coincidental to the assault on social supports and programs. It is criminalizing and thereby deepening social inequality and related social problems through self-fulfilling policies of racially disparate (racist) mass surveillance, arrest, and incarceration - a perfect homeland counterpart to its racially disparate (racist) militarization of global US empire and its attendant social, political, and economic problems. .... The Bushes are free to think Jesus would be ok with all of this, of course.

Comment On This Blog Post  See All Comments (23)

Person

Re: Bush's Christmas Budget: Guns Over Butter

By Cryofan, Cryofan at Dec 29, 2004 10:02 AM
Paul, thanks for the Stuart Ewen tip. I had never heard of him. I googled him and analyses of his work are intriguing. Here's an article by Christian Parenti describing one of Ewen's major theses: http://www.sfbg.com/lit/reviews/spin.html an excerpt: "The most sinister and consistent story in PR! is that of the National Association of Manufacturers and its endless efforts to quietly conquer "the public mind." NAM's efforts were modeled on the American government's World War I propaganda ministry, ....the Committee on Public Information..... Much of NAM's propaganda was indirect. Pro-corporate, anticollectivist themes were seamlessly woven into apparently neutral formats like news and entertainment. In all facets of NAM propaganda, one can see the contours of what today appears as "natural" common sense: government is bad, business is good and efficient; the individual is sacred, the collective suspect; and, above all, the "free market" is synonymous with democracy. ....these now unquestioned political assumptions were, and are, consciously produced at enormous expense and with tremendous care...." >>> Great stuff for a documentary script!

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Person

By Apocalypse, Unfolding at Dec 29, 2004 09:11 AM
Cryofan, on the one hand, your ideas are amusing, but, on the other hand, they are also seriously inspiring. And Paul and Bwong, I suspect that when Cryofan and I advocate left-wing "propaganda," we mean nothing other than exposing the mainstream public to the facts and analysis our media has been hiding.

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Person

Re: Bush's Christmas Budget: Guns Over Butter

By Cryofan, Cryofan at Dec 29, 2004 08:20 AM
CONTINUED: The main thing is that in an entertaining and cogent fashion, a hardcore leftist perspective on economics may someday is presented to a large part of America. I have NEVER seen such a thing on TV. Never! If we want America to move in a leftist direction with respect to economics, we simply MUST present these leftist economics ideas to American citizens. There is simply no way around that, is there? As for techno fetishism, I admit to being a technophile, but the mass media is the tool that has allowed CorpGovMedia to move America away from populist economics and into neoliberal territory. Either we come to grips with mass media communications, or we give up. Because person to person communication of political thought in this atomized urban-suburban society is not sufficient to meet the challenge.

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Person

Re: Bush's Christmas Budget: Guns Over Butter

By Cryofan, Cryofan at Dec 29, 2004 08:17 AM
Actually, people are already using p2p over broadband for entertainment: p2p traffic takes up about 30-50% or more of ALL internet traffic. I myself watch maybe one movie a night that I have obtained off of p2p (watched "pulp fiction" yesterday!) And as for just beaming chomsky interviews over the p2p, that is not at all what I meant of course. I said we should create a documentary based on or derived from writings of the leftist school of thought characterized by Chomsky, Zinn, et al., and by such writers as I cited an example of above. Such a documentary would have MANY sources, and interviews would be only a part of it. Much of it would consist of public domain or approved copyrighted stills and video of people, places, writings etc, related to the topic at hand. I am sure you have seen many historical documentaries, such as the Lewis and Clark documentary on PBS., or Ken Burns' Civil War doc. For example, a common documentary editing technique is to slowly pan over a picture of one or more persons and then pan over a document or writing related to that person while a voiceover or music plays.

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4101

Re: Bush's Christmas Budget: Guns Over Butter

By Servo, Tom at Dec 29, 2004 07:31 AM
3) we really do underestimate the power we have at the workplace and with our apolitical friends. most of my friends are latino immigrants, and they hate bush.they hate the war.they hate the rich.they hate the bosses.they hate the compANIES.and they are treated like garbage by the religious right and teh repubs and teh owning classes, who are members of *both* parties.now, here is teh *really* good news: many of them have chgildren who just turned voting age since 2000 or wilol before the next election, and every cycle the percentage of first generation children of illegal immigrants from latin america as part of total us elctorate will 8skyrocket*. the racism and classism of present day politics will earn a HUGE payback. the youngsters can't wait to vote to send the neo-fascists packing.

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4101

Re: Bush's Christmas Budget: Guns Over Butter

By Servo, Tom at Dec 29, 2004 07:22 AM
three random thoughts in response to paul's blog: 1) yes, paul, you were a much better professor at CoD than Blackhawk. But like the time at Blackhawk, you were teaching in a country at war (gulf War 1). I hoipe you sre still teaching now, you could gain a few confverts... actually, more than a few.... just my humble opinion. 2) fantastic... the term "The Bush Crime Family" (talk about Organized Crime) is an official part of the blog lexicon. feel free to use it at will. everyone has good points... some things work for some folks, some things work for others. we have to work in all areas of communication... written, spoken, visual.personal and mass communication.. and be active.

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Occupy_iowa_city_rally

Re: Bush's Christmas Budget: Guns Over Butter

By Street, Paul at Dec 29, 2004 00:38 AM
I agree with bwong's critique of cryofan's tendency towards communications techno-fetishism and with bwong's warning against left counter-behaviorism. Very good point about the structural advantage that gives capitalist/corporate propaganda extra legs and an unlevel playing field to defeat leftist agitprop scheming. bwong Lenin said the capitalists would sell the communists the rope to hang them with. Yes everything is for sale, even I suppose some aspects of left critique. An excellent and subtle historical study of the relationship between American capitlaism and American so-called counter-culture in the 1960s is Thomas Frank, The Conquest of Cool. For an earlier left study account of mass advertising culture and the corporate cultivation of psuedo-rebellion, see Stuart Ewing's still brilliant book Captains of Consciousness, a classic old New Left monograph. See also Herbert Marcuse, One Dimensional Man. But now I am perhaps being more boring than you accuse Chomsky of being on television.

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Person

Re: Bush's Christmas Budget: Guns Over Butter

By Gammon101, Bwong at Dec 28, 2004 20:05 PM
On a somewhat related note, even though I admire Chomsky and find his logic breath taking I have to say the man's boring on TV! Chomsky works well in print or in university lecture halls but I doubt that the mult-channel universe would be an appropiate medium. I saw Chomsky being interviewed on the CBC TV several times. The good professor didn't seem to be able to carry out a decent dialogue with the interviewers. Typically,he cut his interrogators off before they could finsih their questions and went on some long monologues which sound remarkably like one of his long essays. It is as if he was reading a script from his head. If you play chomsky 24/7 on TV. I garantee most people would tune out.

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Person

Re: Bush's Christmas Budget: Guns Over Butter

By Gammon101, Bwong at Dec 28, 2004 20:02 PM
Here you find a very intersting dynamics. The "anti-capitalist" is exploiting all the capitalist system has to offer and he uses all the techniques of a successful businessmen like a pro. On the other hand, the corporate media (at least some important outlets) does not mind giving Moore a soap box as long as they can make a buck. Someone says somewhere(Marx?) that a Capitalist is someone who would sell you the rope you hang him with as long as he can fetch a good price. I would add that the capitalist can turn that rope into a nice neck tie! One uncanny feature(and its strength) of the Capitalist system is its ability to embrace all contradictions and make a buck out of them in the end! The Che Guviere T shirts (likely made in sweat shops)symbolize this very well.People who want to fight it should keep this in mind.

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Person

Re: Bush's Christmas Budget: Guns Over Butter

By Gammon101, Bwong at Dec 28, 2004 19:55 PM
"Capitalist propaganda" works not just because it's accessible. More importantly, it is tied up with the real economical system at work. It has a structural advantage. People relate to things that are relevant to them. Their jobs, their bills, etc. I am quite amused by the Michael Moore phenonmenon. Eventhough this guy has something very unflattering to say about corporate America but he does get a lot of access, often courtesy of the same corporate entities he attacks. Comparing to Chomsky et al, Moore is not very sophisticated but he knows how to keep an audience interested , and being a master marketeer he knows how to package and sell his stuffs.

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Person

Re: Bush's Christmas Budget: Guns Over Butter

By Gammon101, Bwong at Dec 28, 2004 19:51 PM
I am more than a bit nervous about this idea of "counter propaganda". I think there is a faulty premise here, which is that the public is just a pasive receptor of whatever message "beamed to them". So if you somehow manage to bombard them with "progressive messages", you will be able to win them over. That sounds like brainwashing of the most vulgar kind.

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Person

Re: Bush's Christmas Budget: Guns Over Butter

By Gammon101, Bwong at Dec 28, 2004 19:49 PM
Cryofan, Sorry to rain on your parade. I think most people are likely to use the expand technology and enhanced medium for porn and trashy movies. I always find it somehwat whacky that folks claim they are "born again" by praying to the TV. With due respect, it seem you are advocting something of the sort here. You can beam Chomsky on TV all you like(Plenty of his work is already on the net) but this in itself does not garantee anyone would be interested.

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Person

Re: Bush's Christmas Budget: Guns Over Butter

By Cryofan, Cryofan at Dec 27, 2004 17:58 PM
CONTINUED: But as p2p networks mature with the expansion of cheap broadband, such a free-and-legal-to-share video documentary would take on a life of its own on the p2p networks. It would eventually become immortal! Passing from personal computer to personal computer, stored on hard drives around the world. As time goes on, its presence could become ubiquitous. You might then find it on a high percentage of hard drives on personal computers. Hard drives just keep getting fatter and cheaper. Yes, copyrighted works are illegal to share and can bring on lawsuits, but a good public domain video could find a home almost everywhere. 10 years from now it could have been seen by 100 million people--or more! If things go right. I have already started collecting public domain still images and video for such a project. Of course, I still need to obtain permissions for a lot of copyrighted material. But this is a multiyear project. Sorry for such a long rant......

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Person

Re: Bush's Christmas Budget: Guns Over Butter

By Cryofan, Cryofan at Dec 27, 2004 17:56 PM
CONTINUED: Imagine creating a video documentary incorporating sources such as Chomsky's works, Zinn's People's History, or one of the many many other ultra-progressives on the Net, such as Paul Street right here, or say, taking this concise little Chomskyan-influenced essay right here (it is sort of a semi-short hardcore Leftist history of neoliberalism/globalism/politics in America/the world) and wrapping it up into a copylefted video documentary. Then upload it gradually onto all the p2p networks, starting with bit torrents and client server sites. It would be hard to get an audience right now, because the p2p networks are still rudimentary. But a p2pvdn would be much more mature, with trust mechanisms and rating mechanisms in plac. CONTINUED BELOW

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Person

Re: Bush's Christmas Budget: Guns Over Butter

By Cryofan, Cryofan at Dec 27, 2004 17:54 PM
CONTINUED Now, the p2p networks we have now are crude, but they will evolve. Peer trust mechanisms and peer ratings/opinion mechanisms added to the software could improve them dramatically. The p2p networks have a lot of room to grow. A lot of improvement is possible! I see a future America 5 years from now where many if not most Americans get audio video from the Net, instead of from TV or cable or the video rental joints. This is what Steven Spielberg said about it on NBC's Today show: "I think that the Internet is going to effect the most profound change on the entertainment industries combined. And we're all gonna be tuning into the most popular Internet show in the world, which will be coming from some place in Des Moines." When Couric remarked, "Great, I'm gonna lose my job," Spielberg interjected, "We're all gonna lose our jobs. We're all gonna be on the Internet trying to find an audience." CONTINUED....

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Person

Re: Bush's Christmas Budget: Guns Over Butter

By Cryofan, Cryofan at Dec 27, 2004 17:50 PM
CONTINUED FROM ABOVE.... But more importantly, it makes possible a peer to peer (P2P) video distribution network (p2pvdn). Such a p2pvdn could be the channel through which CounterPropaganda might be distributed (or, if the word "propaganda" gets your knickers in a twist, substitute the word "education". It is really more of a counterculture-making thing, anyway, and it would take a long time.). Once a such a mature p2pvdn is established, radically different political viewpoints could be distributed, with virtually zero distribution costs. Of course, there would still be some creation costs, but with digital cameras getting cheaper and cheaper (I have one a cheap one myself -- $300). You can get a very good digital camera that produces quite professional results for $3000 now; in 5 years, it will be even less). Also, you can get video editing software for a few hundred dollars now; heck, even less. You can actually get it for free. I have downloaded free trial software and used it to edit video myself on my cheap home computer. So creation costs also move dramatically lower. CONTINUED BELOW....

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Person

Re: Bush's Christmas Budget: Guns Over Butter

By Cryofan, Cryofan at Dec 27, 2004 17:49 PM
Unfolding Apocalypse, you are correct, IMO: it is indeed fundamentally an Information War. We are propagandized from birth by a system evolved or bred (or perhaps manicured like a dwarf bonsai tree) for decades by the rich and powerful. Their main weapon is the mass media. Yes, as you point out, the educational system is also theirs. But technology may yet be our Deus Ex Machina savior: If technology obsoletes the current mass media infrastructure, we may have a chance of winning. Even now, ultra cheap broadband internet connections are available in some countries. Now, I am talking a FAT pipe--fiber to the house. If such a system reaches a critical mass in America, we may be talking a whole new ball game. Imagine if 75% of American households are hooked up to such a fat pipe. What would be the implications? For one, TV would be available over the internet. If this happens, the current primary distribution channels for video would be obsoleted, possibly. You could download video of your choosing from any site--or even from someone else's home computer. CONTINUED BELOW.....

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Person

Re: Bush's Christmas Budget: Guns Over Butter

By Fa521803, Lukocipedistas at Dec 27, 2004 14:43 PM
In order to fight the combined might of media, education and common usage, one could do worse than take a peek at tactics in blood and gore wars: If your opponent is big, strong, well-supplied and well organized, you avoid head-to-head collisions, but snap at the heels instead, and stay under the radar. You try to assist your opponent in falling over it's own feet. Has anyone got a serious analysis of guerilla warfare, that could be applied to media warfare? In any case, lacking serious media access, we mostly have our individual bodies and voices left to use as billboards and bull-horns. One thing the mediamachine can't win is the battle for truth. Everyday more lies become exposed, and the known lies become more exposed, than the day before. The dream that they present to us as reality looks as solid as brick, but it's fabric is flimsier than cigarette paper. The more the dream leaves reality behind, the harder it becomes to make it look real. History has a knack for pulling down the walls of dream castles. Every Empire in history has found this out the hard way. At the very least, we have some mighty allies on our side: truth and history.

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Person

Re: Bush's Christmas Budget: Guns Over Butter

By Apocalypse, Unfolding at Dec 27, 2004 05:37 AM
Ebogan, it is nice to hear you are optimistic about changing the political-economic landscape in our country, and therefore in the world. But I am curious, how? If you know of some methods or techniques that can turn the information war in our favor, please post it. And tell everyone you know. Unfortunately, I suspect you have thought very little about the magnitude of this problem. I may sound unusually pessimistic, but do you really believe that you and I and other activists can reach and inform and convince people faster than the media, entertainment industry, and educational system can indoctrinate them? Because if anyone here believes this, please give me a reason to share your belief.

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Person

Re: Bush's Christmas Budget: Guns Over Butter

By Apocalypse, Unfolding at Dec 27, 2004 01:14 AM
The amount of US tax dollars allocated to military spending and other forms of corporate subsidy are indeed mind blowing. I hesitate to say this, but I think if our entire population were made aware of our government's spending habits, there would be revolution overnight. However, I think the transition from an apolitical, culturally and socially unaware population into a mass of politicized and solidarity-seeking progressives will be extremely difficult. Afterall, it's more complex than just reaching out and informing and convincing the population. WE HAVE TO REACH OUT AND INFORM AND CONVINCE THE POPULATION MORE EFFECTIVELY THAN THE MASS MEDIA, ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY, AND EDUCATION SYSTEM ALL COMBINED. Do any of you sane znet readers believe this is possible? If so, can you please tell me why? I assume we all have our opinions on this matter - probably optimistic outlooks - if we frequent these blogs. Personally, I see no signs that activists can or will affect the spread of globalization/privatization/militarization. However, I'm pretty sure we can get the Allies out of Iraq if we organize well enough.

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Occupy_iowa_city_rally

Re: Bush's Christmas Budget: Guns Over Butter

By Street, Paul at Dec 26, 2004 21:57 PM
I would now give other perspectives, explaining as carefully as I could why I rejected them and what their strong and weak points were from my perspective. The second shift (forced on me by happy accident when I discovered at 6 p.m. one night that I'd left my notes at home) was from straight lecturing/telling to working off a few talking points and then discussing, encouraging input from all perspectives. Before these changes. I was just a leftist version of the old authoritarian pedagogy and it showed. People know a would-be brainwasher from a mile off and their response is out of Pink Floyd: "We don't need no education, we don't need no thought control, ...all in all you're just another brick in the wall" Video can be good but also has the downside of encouraging a spectator mentality on the part of the image consumers.

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Re: Bush's Christmas Budget: Guns Over Butter

By Street, Paul at Dec 26, 2004 21:57 PM
ebogan on the "laying out our critical perspective and letting them use their own critical faculties to decide" (I agree), the following may be relevant: as a peripatetic suburban history Instructor sometime during the mid 1990s I remember a welcome positive sea-change in student (mostly working adults in my case) response when I made two big shifts. The first shift was from presenting a sort of bitter Marxist and rather economistic know it-all story of the past (and by projection present and future) as told to (poured into) them by me (and my special authorities) to giving a radical-democratic interpretation of past and current events accompanied by the critical proviso: "don't take it from me...check it out yourself. This is MY OPINION, based on the following sources and values ..." ctd...

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Re: Bush's Christmas Budget: Guns Over Butter

By Cryofan, Cryofan at Dec 25, 2004 05:13 AM
Referring to your comments on taxation, I fear that the latte-sipping social-liberals who make up the bulk of the democratic party activists and donors are pretty much in line with the GOP when it comes to economic issues like progressive taxation. Yes, they may give lip service to the idea of progressive taxations and higher taxes in general, but they and the politicians they elect support progressive taxation only nominally. Most of them are yuppies and secretly prefer Bush's tax regimen. Refering to your new book, as for whether books will be able to sway America, and make them see that disadvantaged segment of America, I doubt it. IMO, you need to go with video. Video has far more power to politically brainwash, given years to work. I hear Micheal Moore's next film will take on the healthcare industry. I have seen a recent quote from him comparing our system unfavorably to that of other countries. Now, THAT could do some good. Using video to start comparing our social welfare system to that of other countries....

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