-----Original Message----- From: Mario Goveia > Americans, who refuse to even carpool or subjugate > their independence to public transportation, will > not put up with some nameless, faceless bureaucrat > putting them on a waiting list or deciding what pain > medication they can take or what test or procedure > they cannot have.
RESPONSE: Which Americans are these?? Those that are losing their jobs, houses, cars faster than the spurious emails coming from the above author?? 7 million lost jobs in the past 18 months?? [1] 2.3 million US homeowners faced foreclosure on their properties in 2008. Close to 2.5 million properties for sale at www.foreclosure.com It appears we have an author here who is deeply rooted in fantasy and unable and/or unwilling to separate illusion from truth. Sounds like a die-hard fan of McMahon's WWE. > We have a saying in America, "You get what you pay for." > The best never comes cheap, and the best does not involve > waiting in line for a medical procedure or test when your > life may be in jeopardy, or suffering excruciating pain > because some government bureaucrat says so. RESPONSE: Which America is this?? Reality check!! If you ain't got a job, how do you pay for essentials let alone medical procedures?? The above quote from the author reminds me of Sheldon Wolin's "Inverted Totalitarianism" [2]. Pulitzer Prize winner, Christopher Hedges elucidates it well too in his new book, "Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle" [3]. An interview transcript can be found at [4]. "And he argues that we live in a system that he calls inverted totalitarianism. The classical totalitarianism, in classical totalitarianism, like fascism or communism, economics is always subordinate to politics. But in inverted totalitarianism, politics is subordinate to economics. And with a rise of the consumer society, with the commodification of everything, including human beings and natural resources, you have built into it a form, an inevitable form of self annihilation. Because nothing has intrinsic value when society is no longer recognized as sacred. You exhaust everything for their, for its ability to make money. No matter how much human misery you create, no matter how much you go, how far you go to destroy the ecosystem that is sustaining the human species. And that with the rise of celebrity culture, of consumer culture, and on federate capitalism, you get what Benjamin Demott has called, I think quite correctly, junk politics." How many trillions down and how long will it take to recover them, if at all?? Everybody loves the good times however we are presented with dimpled xenophobia on a daily basis, 4 times each day, Monday thru Friday from the above author, better known as the voice of distorting the truth and the source of endless gratuituous comments. - B References: [1] http://data.bls.gov/PDQ/servlet/SurveyOutputServlet?data_tool=latest_numbers&series_id=CES0000000001&output_view=net_1mth [2] http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8606.html [3] http://www.amazon.com/Empire-Illusion-Literacy-Triumph-Spectacle/dp/1568584377 [4] http://www.thomhartmann.com/2009/07/30/transcript-chris-hedges-empire-of-illusion-21-july-2009/
