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prole

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Everything posted by prole

  1. prole

    Idiocracy

    Relying on a tissue-thin argument that “we’re just giving people what they want” is simply ludicrous. That the “masses” generate demand is true, but only when you define demand in the abstract. No one is born with an innate desire for nascar, kiwi-flavored tequila, blackberrys, oxygenated bottled water, lip implants, or truck nutz. The market is not meeting needs and human beings are not growing new ones. To suggest that people are demanding the vast array of rubbish on the market obfuscates the very real and very huge apparatus (billions of dollars) devoted to marketing, advertising, R&D, media synergistics etc. that represents a majority of the intellectual production in this country. The notion that people “just want these things” is pure faith-based nonsense and suggests a much grimmer view of human nature than I would ever put forth. That the educational, cultural, and spiritual potentialities of working class people cannot and should not be nurtured by working people represents a retreat from humanism and enlightenment values.
  2. prole

    Idiocracy

    The excellent Joseph Shumpeter quote above speaks to this directly and is worth quoting at length: The discontentment can be somewhat managed by gutting the "liberal arts", replacing them with technocratic/management education, lowering the life expectations of those who stubbornly refuse to fit the mold, and pump Soma into the recalcitrant.
  3. prole

    Idiocracy

    There is nothing particularly, exceptionally American about what you're saying. No shiny nickel for you. Oh, and I don't think you have to convince anyone here of the benefits of widespread light-bulb use. You already covered that in your monograph on meat refrigeration. Capitalism turned the corner quite long ago from the manufacture of goods to meet human needs toward manufacturing desires for unnecessary, wasteful, mindless crap.
  4. prole

    Hope & Change

    Good lord, what's he got on his feet?!
  5. prole

    Idiocracy

    Spoken like a true technocrat. The rather grim dystopia of managers, cubicle dwellers, and other assorted lever-pullers the quote conjures speaks perfectly to an institution and a culture that has left any of humanity's higher aspirations behind, and replaced them with the single, dull calculus of the cash-nexus. Art majors lament.
  6. prole

    Idiocracy

    His ear is decidedly elven.
  7. prole

    Idiocracy

    Did you mean German Chancellor, Angela Merkel? Please play again.
  8. prole

    Idiocracy

    Jazz is a good one but it was invented when my grandfather was a child and reached its height during his young adulthood. Does it still count?
  9. prole

    Idiocracy

    Gotta play by the rules.
  10. prole

    Idiocracy

    No shiny nickel for you.
  11. prole

    Idiocracy

    Really, I'm having a hard time finding much of anything redeeming about this country at all right now. What passes for politics is pure rubbish, the "culture" is in the toilet, and people are getting meaner and dumber. And they're armed to the teeth to boot. We've got "random" suicide attacks in public places by disturbed young men at least twice a month. People are retreating deeper into virtual experiences, gated subdivisions, celebrity trainwreck, bling, Botox, high on tha Chronic, the blood of Jesus, or prescription antidepressants. Total fucking waste. But, I'm open to debate. I'll give you flagwavers or anyone else a bright shiny nickel if you can tell me what's so great, so exceptional, about this country right now without resorting to an argument based on some variation of "it's better than living in a gulag". Game on.
  12. prole

    Idiocracy

    I'm guessing you're voting for the five-year option? Don't worry, I'll still be able to write to you.
  13. prole

    Idiocracy

    I'm beginning to seriously consider emigration. Sorry Obama. Coming across things like this on an almost daily basis is making the decision easier.
  14. prole

    Cartoon Protest

    Nah, functionalism of this sort is pretty lame and grossly inaccurate. If you wanna talk the relation between class struggle and "bourgeois freedoms", I'd be more interested in the European working-class movements that wrested those rights from and in spite of the ruling elite. Assigning the "capitalist elite" a progressive historical agency it doesn't deserve is your gig, Jay.
  15. prole

    Berkeley Police

    Those police have been denied their rights. We must stand up for them. Where's your ACLU now, huh?
  16. prole

    Communism

    Yep. Your point?
  17. prole

    Communism

    Reverse optimization of the asset allocation problem. Perfection. Whoa! Stop the presses again. Are you telling me that the business and ruling classes will attempt to preserve their wealth during periods of economic crisis and use state power to do so? Like, OMFG. And workers will support it to keep their jobs? Huh, I guess no one's willing to commit social suicide for the free-market utopian jihad except the economists. Oh wait...
  18. prole

    For the P brothers

    SUICIDE ATTACKS ON THE RISE IN US
  19. Don't worry, our "defense" is just as bloated as ever. It's the opportunity costs that are killing us.
  20. No idea, I'm not a Communist. I can only imaging they're pouring red paint on the globe in a very sinister manner, letting black people rape white women, poisoning the water supply, and patting each other on the back for their complete takeover of American academia, the media, the ACLU, PETA, and the Democratic Party.
  21. Won't Fuckabee have to be chosen to bring back all the evangelicals flocking to Obama? Article here.
  22. prole

    Wa State Caucus

    Now I'm ill.
  23. Hmmm.
  24. 1. Only part of the discussion at hand has been concerned with suicide bombings. Are poverty and desperation behind honor killings, forced marriage, etc? 2. If we transition from the general and abstract to the real and concrete and look at who is actually engaging in what, how well does the notion that all people of all cultures who encounter a particular set of hardships are equally likely to respond with suicide bombings - irrespective of their religion or culture? And how true is it that those who do engage in this act have necessarily been driven to do so by either material hardships or extremes of political repression that have no analogue anywhere else in the globe or throughout history? Does the intensity and distribution of suicide violence correlate perfectly with either poverty or repression? If not - how do you explain this? How well does the existence of suicide terrorists who were neither poor, nor uneducated, nor subject to political repression fit into this scheme? How tough are things for the immigrants in Denmark who were plotting to murder the cartoonist compared to, say, the hundreds of thousands of desperately poor, HIV-infected people living in a Sowetto slum? I'm willing to concede that as repression and deprivation increase, so does desperation - and a certain amount of violence grows out of that. It's not the Brazilian street-kids or Haitan boat-people that are detonating themselves in discos, though, is it? Why do you think this is the case? The Koran is actually like a time-release Tylenol capsule, that was designed by Muhammed to release thousands of tiny suicide bombers in the late 20th and early 21st century. No wait, Islam is like a disease, and when enough people catch it, they start blowing themselves up. No wait, Western civilization and Islam are like matter and anti-matter. No wait...
  25. Nice bit of verbal gymnasturbation there. The only thing I can't understand is why you passed up the opportunity to use the word "onano" in a sentence.
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