Perdido 03

Perdido 03

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

The American Dream

As George Carlin said, they call it a dream because you've got to be asleep to believe it:

Esquire: "There are some truths so hard to face, so ugly and so at odds with how we imagine the world should be, that nobody can accept them. Here's one: It is obvious that a class system has arrived in America -- a recent study of the thirty-four countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that only Italy and Great Britain have less social mobility. But nobody wants to admit: If your daddy was rich, you're gonna stay rich, and if your daddy was poor, you're gonna stay poor. Every instinct in the American gut, every institution, every national symbol, runs on the idea that anybody can make it; the only limits are your own limits. Which is an amazing idea, a gift to the world -- just no longer true. Culturally, and in their daily lives, Americans continue to glide through a ghostly land of opportunity they can't bear to tell themselves isn't real. It's the most dangerous lie the country tells itself."

George Carlin also said that bullshit is the glue that keeps this country together.

That statement becomes more and more true these days.

7 comments:

  1. Bullshit makes the world go around . . .

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  2. I just wish that all those dummies watching Fox News would wake up and figure out that they are being royally screwed.

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  3. I dunno - I was watching MSNBC last night for the first time in two years and all I heard from Ed Schultz and Rachel Maddow was Obama shillery - esp. from Schultz and his guests. If I didn't know any better and got all my news from those two shows, I would think President Obama is a liberal who cares about working and middle class people instead of the corporatist he actually is.

    I have to be honest - these days, the craziness on the right bothers me less than the shillery on the left. I EXPECT the craziness on the right - but I also EXPECT so-called liberals and prgoressives on the left to criticize and oppose ANYBODY who promotes wingnutty policies like torture, Endless War, bank bailouts without any accountability for the banksters, etc. But so many on the left yawn when Obama engages in these policies or finds ways to make sure that the Bushies who engaged in these policies get away with them.

    See this latest post from Glenn Greenwald for further reading:

    http://www.salon.com/2011/12/28/snapshots_of_washingtons_essence/singleton/

    and here:

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/dec/27/vote-obama-centrist-republican

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  4. Yup...CNBC is no better than FOX-same blind, dumb propoganda mill.

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