We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Saturday, August 21, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Saturday, August 21, 2021

  • More Americans now say government should take steps to restrict false information online than in 2018 by Amy Mitchell and Mason Walker from Pew Research Center. My reaction: I'm not surprised by the finding of Pew that about 1/2 of Americans believe that censorship is okay. If fact I think it is too low from my observations of people in my area of southern Minnesota. It is a measure of the gullibility or the susceptibility of Americans to ongoing fear propaganda. However, I also think this gullibility has peaked, and its all downhill for the fear propagandists from now on. This observation is not based on data, but my own gut-feeling.
  • Twitter Enables People To Censor EACH OTHER!! featuring Jimmy Dore of the Jimmy Dore Show with Ron Placone interjecting comments (via his YouTube channel--11:01m) reporting and commenting on the latest Tweeter change. My reaction: Dore and Placone use "liberals" in the contemporary sense--meaning propaganda centered around the first 10 amendments of the Bill of Rights amendments of the US Constitution in order to get the existing states to pass the new constitution designed by the slave-owning Founding Fathers which they proceeded to ignore. This meaning is in contrast to the classical meaning, as advocated by the early capitalists in Europe and America, that was a rationale for capitalist ideology. The term "liberal" is still used today by various serious people, but it is often used by agents of propaganda to confuse people when they mean capitalism because the use of the term "liberal" (or its derivatives like "neoliberal") is nicer sounding than capitalism (or some other word--imperialism for example).
In liberal theory, news journalism is a check and balance on the ruling class, but in practice institutions and presses that once held power to account have become part of unaccountable power, and only tough reform and a revolution in the political economy of news can reverse the damage.
 
We entertain the illusion of bipartisanship in the media when both left and right media, both broadsheet and tabloid, are subsumed under the management of cartel conglomerates that dictate op-ed policy and therein modulate the national psyche. 
 
All such "checks" were dispensed with as media corporations became owned and concentrated in a few capitalist hands.
  • Pollinators, the 4 Biggest Threats They Face, and Why You Should Care by Jayne Rising from The Organic Prepper. My reaction: Nothing more illustrates the conflict between capitalism and the web of nature than reports of the decline of pollinators. Agricultural capitalists, like any other capitalists, are in search of short-term profits and thus spray their crops with pesticides--they don't care if they're hazardous for pollinators or humans--in order to produce more and enjoy more profits (and, in some instances, more power to influence and reduce government regulations).
at