Michael Parenti
He's passionate, compassionate, easy to understand and has a good sense of humor. Thought I'd start a thread with some videos of him for those who are interested in getting points to discuss with others offline. He's been on Democracy Now! and a number of other venues.
January-6-2012-Democracy and the Pathology of Wealth
= new reply since forum marked as read
"Class" is a concept that is strenuously avoided by both mainstream writers and many on the Left. When certain words are eliminated from public discourse, so are certain thoughts. Dissident ideas become all the more difficult to express when there are no words to express them. "Class" is usually dismissed as an outworn Marxist notion with no relevance to contemporary society. It is a five-letter word that is treated like a dirty four-letter one.
With the C-word out of the way, it is then easy to dispose of other politically unacceptable concepts such as class privilege, class power, class exploitation, class interest, and class struggle. These too are judged no longer relevant, if ever they were, in a society that supposedly consists of the fluid pluralistic interplay of diverse groups.
The Class Denial of Class
Those who occupy the higher circles of wealth and power are keenly aware of their own interests. While they sometimes seriously differ among themselves on specific issues, they exhibit an impressive cohesion when it comes to protecting the existing class system of corporate power, property, privilege, and profit.
At the same time, they are careful to discourage public awareness of the class power they wield. They avoid the C-word, especially when used in reference to themselves as in "owning class," "upper class," or "moneyed class." And they like it least when the politically active elements of the owning class are called the "ruling class."
The ruling class in this country has labored long to leave the impression that it does not exist, does not own the lion's share of just about everything, and does not exercise a vastly disproportionate influence over the affairs of the nation. Such precautions are themselves symptomatic of an acute awareness of class interests.
More more more at the link. So good. Thank you for the thread, freshwest.
I live in Silicon Valley, which is heavy with overbearingly wealthy people. People out here seem to consider them slightly upscale neighbors. They will bash on Mitt Romney, but ignore the fact that our deficit here in CA could be fixed with higher taxes on 85 people who certainly don't consider the rest of us their "neighbors". I guess it just takes a massive amount of cognitive dissonance to exist with the enforced income disparity in the US.
I could be wrong though. The proposed initiative The Millionaires tax had an approval rating up in the 60% range last I checked.
There are some latte liberals that can be henchmen for capitalism, so I can kind of sympathize with the rednecks. I had a boss who was a Kucininch fan who was one of the worst people I ever worked for. 
