(no subject)

[arethinn]

http://elf.dreamwidth.org/480755.html

Take our country forward

A lot of activist rhetoric talks about "taking our country back"--from the bankers, from the warmongers, from the straight-white-Christian-male oppressors who benefit from patterns of kyriarchy and discrimination, and so create subtle (and sometimes, not so subtle) laws to reinforce those habits on all levels.
...we're supposed to gloss over the oppressions, overt and covert, of those eras, and presume that, if we All Get Our Act Together, we will be able to give *everyone* all the privileges that the ruling classes of those times had.
Well, one, we can't, and two, we don't want to. One, the privileges of the wealthy-and-powerful of those eras were all built on oppressions.
...There is no "back" that has what we need. We need to look to our history to find all the *good* things, and figure out which of them can be worked into our future.
...If we're going to have a government "of the people, by the people, for the people," we need to take our country forward until we have it.

This is probably beyond the normal limit of a fair-use quote but I hope elf doesn't mind. Dude, just go read it.

Comments

[laughinglotus]

*smiles* witty and wise

[dionysusdevotee.livejournal.com]

Good call. Its essentially TPTB moving the "Overton window", a form of mind control. "Taking our country back" is an extremely seductive concept because it creates nostalgia. Its also extremely seductive to "them" because it suggests a range of outcomes, all of which they have dealth with, many of which either never existed, or can never return. "Take our country back so we can do something that has never been done before" is almost oxymoronic, its certainly counter-intuitive.

The founders knew that infinite regression was not progress, and that the constitution wasn't going to survive as written in perpetuity. Thats why they called for periodic constitutional conventions. I always think about this when people say "its broken, time for a revolution". Err... "How about we try reading the directions before we decide its broken, it works on Christmas"

Periodic revolution, “at least once every 20 years,” was “a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.”

[dionysusdevotee.livejournal.com]

Maybe Its morning and I'm a little slow, I didnt get that was a link...

I wish I could comment without having to sign up for a whle new social platform to follow...

Its worth remembering that many of the founders meant it when they said "freedom and justice for all". Some still wanted slavery, and it was "compromise with them, or face the rapidly encroaching British navy without half the countries support" Goes back to that constitutional convention idea.

The guy writing this doesn't seem to understand that the rich don't care about money. I wish more people in the peasant (formerly known as middle) class understood this. I spend a good deal of time listening to investors. They don't care about money. They care about wealth. Wealth does not equal money. TPTB are perfectly content to destroy the value of money to consolidate control over real wealth. As they are preparing to do, and have done many times in the past. The more people get this before the next big bust, the less of a disaster it will be.

"Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce." - President James A. Garfield (who got a nasty lead headache shortly afterward)

[arethinn]

I wish I could comment without having to sign up for a whle new social platform to follow...

You can. Dreamwidth (like Livejournal) supports OpenID commenting. Just pick the "OpenID" radio button when you comment and put in dionysusdevotee.livejournal.com as the "identity URL". (In fact an OpenID profile already exists for you on DW because one is created when someone imports a journal that has comments from you - http://www.dreamwidth.org/profile?userid=276546&t=I. You can even log in as that account and confirm an email address to get reply notifications.)

Or you can just leave an anonymous comment, since it appears elf has that turned on (just screened).

The guy writing this

She's female. (Interestingly, she's posted in the past about the curious phenomenon of people tending to assume she's male, in the absence of cues like gender-loaded pictures in user icons.)

[dionysusdevotee.livejournal.com]

Oh Neat!