Going Postal
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Flaser
OCD Hentai Collector
You're a SLAVE, you just don't see it yet!
Going Postal
Mark's artiles on the Exiled.
"Ames takes a systematic look at the scores of rage killings in our public schools and workplaces that have taken place over the past 25 years. He claims that instead of being the work of psychopaths, they were carried out by ordinary people who had suffered repeated humiliation, bullying and inhumane conditions that find their origins in the "Reagan Revolution." Looking through a carefully researched historical lens, Ames recasts these rage killings as failed slave rebellions."-source article
"Why did it all start in that point in time, in the mid-1980s? Why did these shootings start then, and not in the 1970s or 1960s? What changed?
It wasn’t as though guns suddenly became legalized in the 80s, or that movies just started to get violent. No, what changed was the Reagan Revolution, and the massive transfer of wealth from the majority of America’s workforce up to the tiny plutocrat class. Reaganomics changed the corporate culture, and since we spend most of our lives working, it means our lives were changed–our lives were literally transferred into the offshore bank accounts and Aspen cabins of our bosses’ bosses. For the rich to get richer, they had to destroy the old corporate culture which emphasized a mutually beneficial relationship between company and employee, thereby limiting how obscenely rich they could get, and put in its place an ideology which dictated that companies only exist to enrich the executives and major shareholders. Workers could **** off and die if they didn’t like it. So from 1981 on, companies squeezed workers of their “unlimited juice” (in the words of GE’s former CEO “Neutron” Jack Welch, nicknamed that for his firing of 120,000 GE workers while he took in hundreds of millions of dollars in personal bonuses), firing them en masse and stripping more benefits from them whenever the executives and shareholders wanted to drive up their quarterly earnings a few cents. This kind of treatment pushed people to the brink. While the executives’ lives got better and better, the average American middle-class worker’s wages stagnated, their benefits were slashed, and their work hours soared. The rich got so rich that they even left the rich behind to create a new super-rich class of their own, creating what the New York Times called the “hyper-rich”"-source article
Going Postal
If Ward Cleaver were alive today, he'd rarely be home to see his wife and children; and when home, he'd an impossible crank, always getting called on the cellphone or buzzed on the Blackberry. The stress from seeing his health insurance get slashed would only be overshadowed by the fear caused by another round of white-collar downsizing and vicious memos from the senior executives implying that more fat way yet to be cut from the the company payrolls. Mr. Cleaver would work weekends and forego vacations, and likely vote Republican, forced to choose between the hypertension medicine and the blood-thinner pills since he can't afford both, not under the new corporate HMO plan... His anger and stress would push him into cursing Canada for being a hotbed of anti-American liberalism while at the same time he'd agonize over whether to order his medicines from their cheap online pharmacies. He'd have no time for imparting little moral lessons. "Not now, leave me alone," he'd grumble, washing down the last of his Cumadins with low-carb non-alcoholic beer while watching The O'Reilly Factor through clenched teeth. His wife June would be stuck at the three-day merchandising conference at Holiday Inn in Temple - if they weren't divorced by now - while the Beaver would be standing in front of his bedroom dresser mirror in his long black trenchcoat, clutching his homemade pipebombs, plotting revenge on Eddie Haskell and all other kids who call him "gay" and "*****" and make his life a living Hell.
Mark's artiles on the Exiled.
"Ames takes a systematic look at the scores of rage killings in our public schools and workplaces that have taken place over the past 25 years. He claims that instead of being the work of psychopaths, they were carried out by ordinary people who had suffered repeated humiliation, bullying and inhumane conditions that find their origins in the "Reagan Revolution." Looking through a carefully researched historical lens, Ames recasts these rage killings as failed slave rebellions."-source article
"Why did it all start in that point in time, in the mid-1980s? Why did these shootings start then, and not in the 1970s or 1960s? What changed?
It wasn’t as though guns suddenly became legalized in the 80s, or that movies just started to get violent. No, what changed was the Reagan Revolution, and the massive transfer of wealth from the majority of America’s workforce up to the tiny plutocrat class. Reaganomics changed the corporate culture, and since we spend most of our lives working, it means our lives were changed–our lives were literally transferred into the offshore bank accounts and Aspen cabins of our bosses’ bosses. For the rich to get richer, they had to destroy the old corporate culture which emphasized a mutually beneficial relationship between company and employee, thereby limiting how obscenely rich they could get, and put in its place an ideology which dictated that companies only exist to enrich the executives and major shareholders. Workers could **** off and die if they didn’t like it. So from 1981 on, companies squeezed workers of their “unlimited juice” (in the words of GE’s former CEO “Neutron” Jack Welch, nicknamed that for his firing of 120,000 GE workers while he took in hundreds of millions of dollars in personal bonuses), firing them en masse and stripping more benefits from them whenever the executives and shareholders wanted to drive up their quarterly earnings a few cents. This kind of treatment pushed people to the brink. While the executives’ lives got better and better, the average American middle-class worker’s wages stagnated, their benefits were slashed, and their work hours soared. The rich got so rich that they even left the rich behind to create a new super-rich class of their own, creating what the New York Times called the “hyper-rich”"-source article
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Flaser
OCD Hentai Collector
This was written by a user of the Forum Hard Light Productions. I copies his post here since I've found it well though out and enlightening:
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=68841.msg1360849#msg1360849
So the rich are like Keyser Soze, the greatest trick they've ever played is convincing the masses that class structure doesn't exist?
Nothing so conspiracy-like. Unlike countries like Britain, the United States has never had a true class system in the sense of inherited social hierarchy. Instead, the myth of the American Dream propagated long beyond the days when it was actually possible. During the early settlement of the 13 colonies, it was indeed possible and not entirely uncommon for someone to come from abroad and greatly increase their standard of living. However, this was a result of two things: (1) a large, unclaimed land mass, and (2) decentralized governing structures. With the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the subsequent creation of the United States, government began the long process of increasing centralization and expansion of territorial interest. This pushed new immigrants further and further into the interior of the continent, and many of them did not have the financial resources to push inland. The American Dream is only possible through freely available property space and promotion of agriculture.
What is commonly known as the American Dream today - rags to riches stories of people who work hard and get ahead - is a complete myth. Hard work alone does not escalate social status (though it can elevate income level) and eventually even the hardest worker may hit a social ceiling, at which point further income growth becomes exponentially more difficult. This is because part of increasing wealth is having it in the first place in order to make the social contacts with banks, industry, etc. There are exceptions; every now and then you run across someone who has totally changed their social status level, but this is an anomaly rather than the rule.
However, because of the mythos concerning rags-to-riches stories in the United States, it is convenient to maintain the idea of the American Dream despite the fact that it is a rare anomaly because it gives the lower classes hope and reduces discontent. This is actually the reason why the only Western country to endure a Marxist-based revolution was Russia, and also why it failed so spectacularly (aside: Karl Marx was an absolutely brilliant guy who would have hated everything that Communism has become). In Russia, the elite structure did not have a mythos to contain popular unrest at social disparity, and it result in a revolution (that made things worse). Marx actually predicted the countries likely to switch to a communist system were Britain and Germany, and the entire premise of communism was based on the assumption that the country would be industrialized. Instead, however, Britain and Germany evolved the "middle class," a class structure which was entirely unheard of prior to the late 1850s.
The middle class in the United States is actually the result of that American Dream mythos we were talking about. Poor people do not live with the hope of entering the upper classes (the 2% of the population that controls 80% of the wealth in a Western nation), but rather they aspire to the middle class. Middle-class folks, on the other hand, aspire to a sub-divide frequently referred to as the Upper-middle class (typically this encompasses the income bracket of $300,000 to $5000000 gross family income). The class system in the United States is entrenched based on finances, rather than influence, but there is also a social component that is derived from it and creates an invisible ceiling on upward mobility.
The more the rich consolidate their wealth, the more legal influence is directed toward the maintenance of it. This also serves to produce limits on upward mobility and increase income disparity in all social classes except the upper class, as any legal tools that benefit the maintenance of wealth tend to be to the detriment of wealth accumulation (through no intent, it just tends to work out that way). So it's not a case of the rich sitting down together and scheming how to keep the masses poor, but rather an attempt to keep themselves rich. However, the American Dream myth continues to be propagated to reduce social upheaval. This last year is truly the closest we've come to revealing the truth wealth disparity in Western nations as the finances of the upper classes were exposed when financial institutions collapsed. You will, however, note how quickly the outrage over corporate bonuses has diminished and been swept out of the spotlight, and how no real revision to these practices has occurred.
Like I said, the strongest predictor of your income level is the income level of your parents. Class mobility is exceedingly rare, despite the fact that the American Dream myth is pervasive.
Incidentally, I should mention that, politically-speaking, my beliefs are virtually neutral on a left-right political scale, but skewed heavily towards libertarian principles. I'm a student of sociology, so I'm quite familiar with the writings of Mill, Marx, Durkheim, Foucault, Adam Smith, and others. Don't make the mistake of thinking that I'm some "Liberal" (as the term has become demeaning in the United States) hack that ideologically believes in nothing but socialism. Individual responsibility in society should be paramount, but the reality is that individuals are responsible for very little when it comes to their social status. Anecdotes of bankruptcy actually support that, as we are all conditioned to aspire outside our actual means.
The problem with self-proclaimed "conservatives" today is that the majority don't actually understand what conservativism versus liberalism is. Politically, I vote Conservative; ideologically, I associate with liberalism - as did virtually all of the founding fathers of the United States. People get all wrapped up in political ideology and then tack emotions to the idea of the Unites States as the great capitalist republic, but the truth is that the founding fathers weren't even capitalists in the modern sense of the word; Washington, Franklin, and Jefferson were fellows of the great liberal thinkers, and actually incorporated their ideals into the US Constitution. The zealous ideals of modern conservatism are actually what a lot of them stood squarely against.
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=68841.msg1360849#msg1360849
MP-Ryan wrote...
So the rich are like Keyser Soze, the greatest trick they've ever played is convincing the masses that class structure doesn't exist?
Nothing so conspiracy-like. Unlike countries like Britain, the United States has never had a true class system in the sense of inherited social hierarchy. Instead, the myth of the American Dream propagated long beyond the days when it was actually possible. During the early settlement of the 13 colonies, it was indeed possible and not entirely uncommon for someone to come from abroad and greatly increase their standard of living. However, this was a result of two things: (1) a large, unclaimed land mass, and (2) decentralized governing structures. With the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the subsequent creation of the United States, government began the long process of increasing centralization and expansion of territorial interest. This pushed new immigrants further and further into the interior of the continent, and many of them did not have the financial resources to push inland. The American Dream is only possible through freely available property space and promotion of agriculture.
What is commonly known as the American Dream today - rags to riches stories of people who work hard and get ahead - is a complete myth. Hard work alone does not escalate social status (though it can elevate income level) and eventually even the hardest worker may hit a social ceiling, at which point further income growth becomes exponentially more difficult. This is because part of increasing wealth is having it in the first place in order to make the social contacts with banks, industry, etc. There are exceptions; every now and then you run across someone who has totally changed their social status level, but this is an anomaly rather than the rule.
However, because of the mythos concerning rags-to-riches stories in the United States, it is convenient to maintain the idea of the American Dream despite the fact that it is a rare anomaly because it gives the lower classes hope and reduces discontent. This is actually the reason why the only Western country to endure a Marxist-based revolution was Russia, and also why it failed so spectacularly (aside: Karl Marx was an absolutely brilliant guy who would have hated everything that Communism has become). In Russia, the elite structure did not have a mythos to contain popular unrest at social disparity, and it result in a revolution (that made things worse). Marx actually predicted the countries likely to switch to a communist system were Britain and Germany, and the entire premise of communism was based on the assumption that the country would be industrialized. Instead, however, Britain and Germany evolved the "middle class," a class structure which was entirely unheard of prior to the late 1850s.
The middle class in the United States is actually the result of that American Dream mythos we were talking about. Poor people do not live with the hope of entering the upper classes (the 2% of the population that controls 80% of the wealth in a Western nation), but rather they aspire to the middle class. Middle-class folks, on the other hand, aspire to a sub-divide frequently referred to as the Upper-middle class (typically this encompasses the income bracket of $300,000 to $5000000 gross family income). The class system in the United States is entrenched based on finances, rather than influence, but there is also a social component that is derived from it and creates an invisible ceiling on upward mobility.
The more the rich consolidate their wealth, the more legal influence is directed toward the maintenance of it. This also serves to produce limits on upward mobility and increase income disparity in all social classes except the upper class, as any legal tools that benefit the maintenance of wealth tend to be to the detriment of wealth accumulation (through no intent, it just tends to work out that way). So it's not a case of the rich sitting down together and scheming how to keep the masses poor, but rather an attempt to keep themselves rich. However, the American Dream myth continues to be propagated to reduce social upheaval. This last year is truly the closest we've come to revealing the truth wealth disparity in Western nations as the finances of the upper classes were exposed when financial institutions collapsed. You will, however, note how quickly the outrage over corporate bonuses has diminished and been swept out of the spotlight, and how no real revision to these practices has occurred.
Like I said, the strongest predictor of your income level is the income level of your parents. Class mobility is exceedingly rare, despite the fact that the American Dream myth is pervasive.
Incidentally, I should mention that, politically-speaking, my beliefs are virtually neutral on a left-right political scale, but skewed heavily towards libertarian principles. I'm a student of sociology, so I'm quite familiar with the writings of Mill, Marx, Durkheim, Foucault, Adam Smith, and others. Don't make the mistake of thinking that I'm some "Liberal" (as the term has become demeaning in the United States) hack that ideologically believes in nothing but socialism. Individual responsibility in society should be paramount, but the reality is that individuals are responsible for very little when it comes to their social status. Anecdotes of bankruptcy actually support that, as we are all conditioned to aspire outside our actual means.
The problem with self-proclaimed "conservatives" today is that the majority don't actually understand what conservativism versus liberalism is. Politically, I vote Conservative; ideologically, I associate with liberalism - as did virtually all of the founding fathers of the United States. People get all wrapped up in political ideology and then tack emotions to the idea of the Unites States as the great capitalist republic, but the truth is that the founding fathers weren't even capitalists in the modern sense of the word; Washington, Franklin, and Jefferson were fellows of the great liberal thinkers, and actually incorporated their ideals into the US Constitution. The zealous ideals of modern conservatism are actually what a lot of them stood squarely against.
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What are you trying to do? Are you trying to enlighten morons? You need to sum that up or people will just go "TL;DR".
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ShaggyJebus wrote...
Wasn't there a thread identical to this a couple of months ago? Why repeat it?You act like time stays still.
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Flaser
OCD Hentai Collector
ShaggyJebus wrote...
Wasn't there a thread identical to this a couple of months ago? Why repeat it?It's the same thread bumped. I just added some new stuff.
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Flaser wrote...
ShaggyJebus wrote...
Wasn't there a thread identical to this a couple of months ago? Why repeat it?It's the same thread bumped. I just added some new stuff.
Actually, I was talking about this.
The content in the opening post is almost identical, with just a few differences. I guess I can see why you remade it though. It can be hard to find old posts with the Google search.