George Carlin and the Truth on AAR last night

Anyone else here wish to admit that George has it figured out ?

He is the only person that has ever said to a mass audience what is felt to be the truth here at the moofhut.

He appears to say that except for a few hands full of people the rest of the world are just slaves that are kept in their places by religion and the facade of elections and democracy.

So vote all you want and if enough people make enough noise, some things like the right to vote for women, the civil rights bill and
some other concessions can be squeezed out of the people in power but it was never meant to do more than keep the rabble manageable.

so Two questions,

How many others feel they are just watching a tragic tale of slavery
with no real chance to influence the outcome ?

How many feel that it is better to be dead than live as a slave ?

Do not misunderstand, it is with envy and respect that any efforts
to bring down the ruleing class is observed but it is always also with tears flowing down the cheeks knowing that those valiant efforts are probably going to be fruitless.

Was Patrick Henry really serious back then,
was the situation also so hopeless and desparate ?
Did he really feel that death was better than life without freedom ?

Dear DUers your efforts are gallant but how many of you will feel like being part of the world after Nov. 2 if the ability to think a free and fair election took place is not so easily fostered by phrases such as "The dems ran a bad campaign" or "Nader cost the dems votes"
Personally it just does not seem likely that the last "election"
was close at all but if thinking that helps keep you from realizing you are a slave maybe it's a good thing.

which show was he on? :)

eom

before anybody jumps on me...look at our election ...2 bonesman running for pres and edwards who just came back from his first Bilderberg group meeting...coincidence?

it doesn't mean I have to sit there and accept the evil shrub cabal and VP FU.... we can do better.

But there is much truth to who runs this world....it's not commander bunnypants.

A friend and I were discussing Edward's Bilderberg trip yesterday. Actually, we were discussing it in the bigger picture and how it relates to who's running the world and how the status quo will continue...it'll just have a different face on it!

nothing is going to change.

I see people, even here on DU quite often, just not want to
accept how bad the situation really is. People want to make
excuses or find some reason to embrace their own slavery
because facing the cold hard facts.

I think he's right when he says that most of the world is kept in near slavery with religion and false democracy.

Where I disagree is in the perception that this powerful elite at the top has some sort of iron grip on anything. Power is a fragile thing, and the people at the top know it. They want to maintain the status quo, but they know they're nearly powerless in the face of popular movements.

When he strikes a nerve, it's a nerve that needs striking.

caveman days. If you're going to have a society, you can't be truely free. The only thing that will help is to kill about 6 billion people and then the survivors could choose to abandon our social structure and be free.

ya got 31 flavors of ice cream and two political parties.

Choice is an illusion.

Some people feel that because they did not get exactly what they wanted out of one or two elections that the whole world is a farce designed to prevent their eternal happiness.

You don't get what you want out of democracies, you get a compromise between what you want and what the majority wants, and what each person is willing to let the others have while still getting some of what they want. The less you want to compromise, the more everyone else is going to ignore what you want, and the more your going to run around whining that the fix is in and it's all a sham and we need a revolution to fix everything.

The world is complex, and what Carlin knows is absolutely best for everyone is probably anathema to others, and thus democracy is all about compromise, small concessions, slow changes, give and take. The reason there is only a set, narrow spectrum of options amongst the two main parties is because those options are the ones the majority, or at least a plurality, want. If the people wanted Nader, they'd vote for him. If the people wanted Reverend Moon, they would vote for his candidates. And then suddenly the two parties would move to those positions, and those would be our narrow choices.

And here's why. It's not about money. It's about power. Money only buys what power gives a person access to. Each party, each candidate, each commentator (including me and Carlin) only want the power to make everything the way they want it. Money is a means, and those who seek only money are manipulated by those who want power.

And power in America is easiest to get by making the most people happy. I'm not talking about whether our elections get fixed now and then, I'm talking about the whole scheme of things. If everyone gets sick of what we have now, they will change it. Most people like it. It feeds them, lets them hang out where they want, watch tv if they want, and just generally be. Sure, it fails a lot of people, and some of us do what we can to try to perfect the system, but it doesn't fail enough people to make the majority want to change it. As for slavery, that's silly. We are slaves to a system, maybe, but no system will make us anything else. In our system, we have the freedom to work where and how we want, within limits-- and even those limits are flexible. That's not slavery, that's just freedom in a real world.

Carlin doesn't want democracy, he wants dictatorship with him in control. He sees the problems well enough, but he doesn't get the solutions, so he's going to bring everyone else down to the level of his own disappointment. It's a great system, he should go suck a lemon.

We can win but not until you realize that these elections are farcical
and that those in power will always do everthing they can to maintain their death grip on global power, including murdering political opponents (which has been done time and again, MLK, JFK, etc.).

We are living on an enslaved planet because naive people want to
pretend that we live in a civilized world with the rule of law.
In reality, Law only applies to "little people" while those who are
in control, the same people for a very long time now, are above the
law.

We live in a world where might is the only true arbiter of power.
The rule of law is farcical.

which controls who remains in power.
Addictions to:
SUV's, trucks, cars, oil, & gas.
Drugs, alcohol, cigarettes.
Cell phones, computers, TV.
Religion.
Partisan groups.
Reproduction.
Mass hypnotic stimulation of any kind-like terror alerts, elections, sex scandals, murder trials.
Fabreeze and moist toilet paper.
We're all slaves to something.

Give up the dependencies and they become powerless.

However, when people don't want to be a part of this "system"
and begin to work to create an alternative, or as in the case
of indegenous peoples who have always had their own way of life,
they are systematically destroyed.

The powers that be cannot have alternative examples in existence.

And so defeatist. Why try to change anything because we can't change everything at once. Others than you are aware of the world, and choose differently. Unless you are advocating dictatorship, with you or Carlin in charge. The biggest defeats we've had have been because of perfectionists rejecting our chances for small advances, thus allowing our opponents to stay in charge.

is compromise?

Question 1: Is compromise really the best way?

There are "best solutions" out there (win/win and all that stuff). They may be hard to get to, they may be hard to even figure out, but they're there, and they're not the result of compromise but struggle in working out what is best for society as a whole.

Question 2: In either case, compromise or consensus, do you really think that the playing field is anywhere near level enough that everyone compromises? Or are a tiny elite compromising almost nothing, while the vast majority of the globe compromises almost everything?

Question 3: Can we ever get to a place where we can make best solutions until the whole world-view that "compromise" arises from is eliminated?

Compromise assumes that every person is fighting with everyone else to "get their's," rather than everyone working together to make sure that everyone get's theirs.

I don't want what Carlin wants. You want me to compromise with him? You want people to compromise, you just don't want to yourself.

^5

If we never had developed TV and radio and movies, we would have become a socialist country. America was indeed headed that way about 100 years ago. Then radio came along. And then TV. And then consolidation of urban newspapers came along.

Once the mass media political perspective supplanted front-porch, union hall, grange hall grassroots politics, then "top-down" political memes supplanted "bottom-up" political memes. And the world has never been the same since.

You see, the people will want whatever the top of the social hierarchy tells them to want, as long as their kids are doing OK. It doesn't really matter to them that they are being ripped off. It doesn't really matter to them that the social democracies in Europe are living a higher quality of life.

However, there are other dynamics that will soon be coming into play here. For one, there is South America. This is a land where the majority of the people are far more friendly to socialism. Also, the mass media propaganda machine is nowhere near as strong as it is here.

And then you have in the near future the very real possibility of cheap broadband via wireless. Combine that with cheap, small computers, and that may be the killer of the "top down" mass media propaganda machine worldwide. Because when you have most of the people downloading movies and TV shows off the P2P networks for free, then you have the opportunity for smalltime homebrew media moguls to make movies and TV shows that do not adhere to the establishment line on politics. Bottom up political memes will eb able to fight for dominance with top down political memes. Most people, when growing up given the choice of the two, will go where their best interests lie. As for the older people, who have been shaped by decades of top down memes, most of them will never change, and when they die, those neoliberal ideas will die....

Slowly, that will influence the mindset of Americans, and neoliberalism will die, along with corporate imperialism.

Gerry Spence's Give Me Liberty

Good book - similar message.

but I am also actively trying to change this condition.