I fear the cold war has ruined political thought and discourse. The
distance between what America is and what she imagines herself to be is
so vast that discussion has become impossible. And is this a forum for
the discussion of Pirsig's philosophy or is this the Rush Limbaugh show?
Fairness is evil? Ghandi is evil? The free market is the same as human
freedom? What?! I think its incorrect and inappropriate to use Pirsig to
justify right-wing platitudes and cliches. Pirsig is not some anti-tax
crank or school voucher advocate, he's a metaphysician. Please refrain
from turning the guy into a bumper sticker. (I suppose the next post
will say Pirsig is a pro-life gun nut militia member.)
Horse is quite right to point out the true state of affairs in the
world. There is no free market. The whole thing is just a cover story so
that taxpayer dollars can go to corporations instead of to the
taxpayers. The collusion between govt and biz is not that well hidden.
The question is, are we going to have a rational, out in the open
distribution of the national wealth or do we allow it all to happen
behind closed doors without the knowledge or consent of the taxpayers?
Sustaining our so called "free market" only ensures that the process of
government remains short sighted, cruel and irrational.
Hitler, Stalin, blah, blah, blah.. If socialism is inherently tyranical
and authoritarian, Canada is the evil empire. (Best human rights record
on Earth.)
Public schools suck because they are based on industrial materialism,
not because they're socialistic. That's the thing about cold warriors,
both sides think the other is amoral and materialistic, and they're both
right. The USA and the former Soviet Union are evil twins, both
defending their version of amoral industrial materialism. Our schools
are based on this model too. Students are arranged into rows like parts
on an assembly line. Individuals are reduced to interchanable cogs in
the social machine. Like so many aspects of Western culture, its a
soul-murdering process. (Hitler and Ford were pen pals. They were both
thugs, bigots and right-wingers and admired each other greatly.)
The Columbine shootings hit pretty close to home. My wife is a teacher
and we live pretty close by. She talked about it with her class full of
poor Hispanic kids and every one of them had a story about a friend or
relative who was killed with a gun. But hey, they're brown kids, so
their tragedies don't make the news. Eric Harris so so hard pressed to
find minority kids to kill that he just ended up killing one little
black kid and a bunch of brunettes. The Columbine shootings occured in a
very affluent, white, conservative, christian community by the neo-Nazi
son of a retired air force officer and Newt Gingrich blames it on 35
years of Liberalism. Go figure.
David B.
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