As "another old phart," I see a problem in this article, which occurs right before "the pitch":
Quote:
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The marketing version of the American Dream was a complete contradiction to the countrys original American dream, which had the pursuit of happiness as its alchemical goalpersonal freedom, social responsibility, and the common good. But the 1950s convolution that still holds America and much of the world in its grip is excessive consumerism. So excessive consumerism became the definition of happiness.
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Ask a Cherokee Indian
(say ...) what America's "original dream" was. Or, ask the son of a "sharecropper." Ask the grandson or great-grandson of an African slave. Or, simply ask any agricultural "guest worker"
(sic) today. (His ancestry is Mexican, not African, but his prison is the same.) Ask anyone who works in a carpet-factory today, who knows perfectly well that he is
kept in constant fear of the "Federales" because he
is purposely denied legal immigration status.
Or, striking a little-bit closer to home, now: ask any Indian head-of-household
today(!) who is here on an H-1B
non-immigrant visa ... or, God forbid, the "indentured servitude re-born" hell-hole that is L-1. Ask him what he thinks about living in a sleeping-bag, along with 16 other young men similarly situated, in a two-bedroom apartment in Nashville, Tennessee
(I personally witnessed this ...). He had no car, no mobility, no freedom, and no future. But he
did have an IT job within walking distance.
The core problem with this article is that, in the end, it looks
much too fondly, and much too nostalgically, at "the other side of the fence." It also relies far too much on "fingering a bugaboo," in this case "Mr. Edward Bernays."
A
far better view on things ... one that is certainly more historically accurate ... is to realize that "change, when it finally comes, is always
forced" ...
(No, no, no ...
not by "force of arms."
Les Miserables should have taught us that ...)
... but, "
forced, nonetheless." FDR said it well when he quipped:
"I agree with you. Now, make me do it."
Are you, "finally, at long long last,"
mad enough? Mad enough, not only to refuse to continue to accept the "reality" that has been foisted upon you by people who
(as it will turn out ...) merely were "punch-drunk on Rumpelstiltskin's Dream,"
but also to hammer out something better?
If you aren't, then Father Time is about to do it: the current crop of "movers and shakers" are, whether they like it or not,
"f*ckin old." None of them have much sand left in their hourglass. They're gonna be vanishing from the world's stage as we hold pompous funerals for them, one by one by one. We'd better be shouldering our responsibilities now, because, one way or another, this "Grand Political Experiment, fashioned in the late 18th Century,"
will live on ... without them, and
with us.
(Koff...koff..wheeze... ahh hell, not quite yet... koff...) Alas, "with the
rest of you..."
