Quite a few of those who read history. But as for politics, politics is the theory and practice of determining whose will will prevail in a community. Since humans are highly social animals -- it's not a choice -- they form communities of various degrees of cohesion and intimacy, and then they have to make collective choices. There are various methods for doing this and considerable debate as to which are the best. Most human beings cannot avoid this problem; the alternative is living as a hermit and most people don't want to do that. Therefore they must deal with politics.
That's PMC pietist shit, the middle-class myth of the state as they wish it had happened. The middle class needs people, especially their subordinates, to believe that subordination is natural and that they should feel wrong if they don't feel the need to serve the middle class whims.
The reality is far more varied and more complicated than liberal humbug, and very often involves no personification of the whole cosmos, no "total master" of the kind that idiot Anglos can't seem to get their tongues off of. Read more Graeber.
The greatest lie ever told in America is that the slaves were freed. Juneteenth my ass. Slavery never ended, it was simply rebranded as jobs. Slave/master became employer/employee, lender/debtor, landlord/renter, oligarch/sheeple. But in a system in which the foundational myth, cosmology, and religion are all based on a dominator god and his dominated creatures, what can we expect?
You could check out Gnosticism, or certain flavors thereof. You don't get a better #1 god, but because you assume he's more or less evil or at least a fuckup, you're not disappointed by the cruelty and indifference of world, And revolt against #1 doesn't require struggling with angels and devils; just by doing small kindnesses and being polite to poor people you call all the machinery of the gods into question as the crock it is.
I’ve always resisted labels, even after reading Elaine Pagels’ “Gnostic Gospels” back in ’81. Since then I've tried to suppress my inner heretic. But, given the current state of the world, that's now impossible.
Every time reference is made to the Founding Fathers, someone has to interject the old distraction-brainwash of slavery.
So what they had slaves. That was the way things were then.
What's important is what the F. Fathers did, which includes the constitution, which was not good. The constitution was, as I understand it, a complicated means of attaining, by gradual methods, the eventual enslavement of the people.
Quite a few of those who read history. But as for politics, politics is the theory and practice of determining whose will will prevail in a community. Since humans are highly social animals -- it's not a choice -- they form communities of various degrees of cohesion and intimacy, and then they have to make collective choices. There are various methods for doing this and considerable debate as to which are the best. Most human beings cannot avoid this problem; the alternative is living as a hermit and most people don't want to do that. Therefore they must deal with politics.
That's PMC pietist shit, the middle-class myth of the state as they wish it had happened. The middle class needs people, especially their subordinates, to believe that subordination is natural and that they should feel wrong if they don't feel the need to serve the middle class whims.
The reality is far more varied and more complicated than liberal humbug, and very often involves no personification of the whole cosmos, no "total master" of the kind that idiot Anglos can't seem to get their tongues off of. Read more Graeber.
https://davidgraeber.org/papers/culture-as-creative-refusal/
I don't know what this refers to.
Agreed. I think that the Founding Fathers had the right idea, though, when they tried to arrange things to minimise central government.
And yet they kept slaves, with all that that implies.
The greatest lie ever told in America is that the slaves were freed. Juneteenth my ass. Slavery never ended, it was simply rebranded as jobs. Slave/master became employer/employee, lender/debtor, landlord/renter, oligarch/sheeple. But in a system in which the foundational myth, cosmology, and religion are all based on a dominator god and his dominated creatures, what can we expect?
You could check out Gnosticism, or certain flavors thereof. You don't get a better #1 god, but because you assume he's more or less evil or at least a fuckup, you're not disappointed by the cruelty and indifference of world, And revolt against #1 doesn't require struggling with angels and devils; just by doing small kindnesses and being polite to poor people you call all the machinery of the gods into question as the crock it is.
I’ve always resisted labels, even after reading Elaine Pagels’ “Gnostic Gospels” back in ’81. Since then I've tried to suppress my inner heretic. But, given the current state of the world, that's now impossible.
Gnostic? I’ve heard it takes one to know one.
Every time reference is made to the Founding Fathers, someone has to interject the old distraction-brainwash of slavery.
So what they had slaves. That was the way things were then.
What's important is what the F. Fathers did, which includes the constitution, which was not good. The constitution was, as I understand it, a complicated means of attaining, by gradual methods, the eventual enslavement of the people.
The proof in in the current pudding.
Since the slaves can't speak, I must quote Dr. Samuel Johnson: "How is it we hear the loudest yelps for liberty from the drivers of negroes?"
A curious paradox.