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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forumswhy is there no outcry in america ... Robert Reich piece
when i was a teen i postulated that the powers that be held on to their power because we underlings were tossed a bone with meat on it. now there is no meat on the bone and like what mr. reich wrote, change will come. right now there is still a bone so maybe it will be reform. if they take away the bone in the future it will be revolution. you'd think that the powers are smart enough to not allow it to come to that.
First, the working class is paralyzed with fear it will lose the jobs and wages it already has.
In prior decades students were a major force for social change. They played an active role in the Civil Rights movement, the Free Speech movement, and against the Vietnam War.
http://robertreich.org/post/74519195381
Liberalynn
(7,549 posts)#3 but then there are still people like Elizabeth, Bernie and Kirsten still out there fighting so I say it is not time to give up yet.
flamingdem
(39,308 posts)The changes in the 60s and 70s were started with small groups and certain strong leaders.
While Reich is generous in not blaming students I feel disappointed that there's not a stronger movement of students pushing for change. Yes they can do that and live at their parents homes. Yes they can do that while paying back debt. A leader is a leader, a visionary is a visionary, an idealist is an idealist, even in difficult circumstances. I think the issue is that we live in a culture of distraction where conformity rules.
MichaelSoE
(1,576 posts)i asked her ... "why aren't more students up in arms about what's going on?" (this was at the time when occupy was going on)
and she told me that many are afraid to protest because of the new terrorist laws and home land security.
i do not know if that holds much credence with "many of them" but it was a point she made.
occupy certainly raised awareness but the way they got crushed was definitely a concerted effort on the part of home land security and i can see why people might be fearful. years ago you might get locked up for demonstrating but now they could really do some serious harm.
flamingdem
(39,308 posts)Look at Mandela, or MLK or the women going to jail over breaking into the nuclear facility all who knew there would be consequences.
People are conformists these days. I think people are okay with minor advances while the bigger picture remains unchanged.
It's not worth it, or the "right" person/s has not appeared on the scene yet. When they do, when it is, it will likely be too late -- for the middle class/poor in the USA and for the environment.
Everyone knows this, but no one sticks their neck out.
daleanime
(17,796 posts)it will get cut off.
If anything is to change it will require almost universal agreement. That's why our future is so bleak.
L0oniX
(31,493 posts)Brigid
(17,621 posts)That any society is about ten meals from anarchy.
Brigid
(17,621 posts)I do posit a giant conspiracy. TPTB knew what they were doing.
Tuesday Afternoon
(56,912 posts)The calm before the storm.
Just a Feeling. How it Feels to Me ...
RadiationTherapy
(5,818 posts)Brigid
(17,621 posts)Solly Mack
(90,758 posts)Tierra_y_Libertad
(50,414 posts)Thomas Paine
AAO
(3,300 posts)Most people are asleep. Mainly because they are tired from working 3 jobs.
RufusTFirefly
(8,812 posts)AAO
(3,300 posts)I was too lazy to look for a direct quote. Thanks for doing that!
Ezlivin
(8,153 posts)I cannot recommend "They Thought They Were Free" by Milton Mayer enough.
In the last chapter he addresses the question of why the German people did not rise up against the Nazi's. Here are some excerpts:
But Then It Was Too Late
"What no one seemed to notice," said a colleague of mine, a philologist, "was the ever widening gap, after 1933,between the government and the people. Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with, here in Germany. And it became always wider. You know it doesn't make people close to their government to be told that this is a people's government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian defense, or even to vote. All this has little, really nothing to do with knowing one is governing.
What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if he people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.
"This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.
Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had. There was no need to. Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about - we were decent people - and b]kept us so busy with continuous changes and "crises" and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the "national enemies", without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us. Unconsciously, I suppose, we were grateful. Who wants to think?
"To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it - please try to believe me - unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, "regretted," that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these "little measures" that no "patriotic German" could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.
"You see," my colleague went on, "one doesn't see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for the one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don't want to act, or even to talk, alone; you don't want to "go out of your way to make trouble." Why not? - Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.
"Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, "everyone is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there will be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps, there is not even this. In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to you colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, "It's not so bad" or "You're seeing things" or "You're an alarmist."
"And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can't prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don't know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.
"But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Informal groups become smaller; attendance drops off in little organizations, and the organizations themselves wither. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.
"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That's the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and the smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in "43" had come immediately after the "German Firm" stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in "33". But of course this isn't the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.
"Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven't done ( for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember those early meetings of your department in the university when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small matter, a matter of hiring this man or that, and you hired this one rather than that. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair.
...
"Once the war began," my colleague continued, "resistance, protest, criticism, complaint, all carried with them a multiplied likelihood of the greatest punishment. Mere lack of enthusiasm, or failure to show it in public, was "defeatism." You assumed that there were lists of those who would be "dealt with" later, after the victory. Goebbels was very clever here, too. He continually promised a "victory orgy" to "take care of" those who thought that their "treasonable attitude" had escaped notice. And he meant it; that was not just propaganda. And that was enough to put an end to all uncertainty.
"Once the war began, the government could do anything "necessary" to win it; so it was with the "final solution" of the Jewish problem, which the Nazis always talked about but never dared undertake, not even the Nazis, until war and its "necessities" gave them the knowledge that they could get away with it. The people abroad who thought that war against Hitler would help the Jews were wrong. And the people in Germany who, once the war had begun, still thought of complaining, protesting, resisting, were betting on Germany's losing the war. It was a long bet. Not many made it."
Read the book. Seriously. We are behaving just as the Germans did before Hitler had complete control.
Jerry442
(1,265 posts)...but there isn't. A country can get there by taking a few small steps at a time. We've taken more than a few steps in that direction and the number of people insisting we turn back and walk the other way is very small.
rwsanders
(2,594 posts)Jerry442
(1,265 posts)They believe in the America that was and cannot see that that America is going away. Look on the (more or less) bright side. Most of these people are not young and won't be around forever.
Brigid
(17,621 posts)The young have no personal experience with a democracy that actually works. All the know is this dangerous situation we have now. It can't help but seem normal to many of them.
seveneyes
(4,631 posts)Robert Reich is a millionaire, as are many of those who talk the walk. Thousands of government and public employees make six figures or more and many have millions in the bank. They can not know the minds of us that make meager sums and just enough to get by in life.
They talk while we work.
RufusTFirefly
(8,812 posts)lumberjack_jeff
(33,224 posts)So the experiment is repeated over and over again.
How far can we dial back the feed pellets before the rats resort to cannibalism? That was cool! Let's do it again!
Brigid
(17,621 posts)That eventually it just might occur to these particular rats to turn on the experimenters.
Skidmore
(37,364 posts)He has yet to step up and own his role in that mess. I don't consider him an honest proponent of change--just an opportunist.
RufusTFirefly
(8,812 posts)For all his labor sensibilities and social conscience, Reich is essentially a believer in the myth of the free market. I strongly disagree with him on that but feel that we must build bridges with those who are pursuing many of the same goals but from a different direction. I hope that ultimately Reich will come around, see the light, and concede that NAFTA was not only wrong but deeply destructive.
Crewleader
(17,005 posts)Bettie
(16,058 posts)Ended up devolving quickly into a 'people live beyond their means, poor people are poor because they deserve it' thread.
Makes me sad.
SoCalDem
(103,856 posts)progressoid
(49,929 posts)OwnedByCats
(805 posts)about how to take over a free country. I wish I could remember what it was called. Change must be slow, you can't bring about massive change overnight or else you risk the citizens starting a revolution. You must mess up their economy (for the 99% of course) you must mess up their health care, you must unarm it's citizens, distract them with frivolity, slowly strip their rights away - in aid of protection against a foreign enemy. This wouldn't be about Obama or Bush and Clinton before him. It would be a shadow government who operates under the radar.
I'm not a big conspiracy believer generally, but I'd be lying if I said I'm not a little nervous about our country after having read what I did.