The battle of fundamental ideologies cannot be averted

[phantom power]

It also reminds me of the recent Bill Nye debate with Ken Ham. The fight between the Enlightenment and religious fundamentalism is not about what the best way to understand the world is. It's whether the world ought to be understood at all.

No longer is the pretense that they would like to help the poor, but that fiscal prudence or differences between "us" and "them" stand in the way. It's not even about the best way to help people.

They're literally taking the stand that if you don't have a job, you don't deserve to eat. If you can't get a job, you didn't try hard enough or grovel for low enough wages. If your job doesn't pay you enough to eat, you should have gotten a better education. If you got a good education but your job doesn't pay you enough to eat, you should have gotten an education in a different field. If corporate profits are at record highs and the obscenely rich are better off than ever in the meantime, good for them--they clearly earned it.

That's a special kind of perverted and sick. Sick in the soul, sick in the heart, and sick in the mind.

But it also suggests another fundamental truth: this fight isn't about who has the better policies to help 99% of Americans. The fight is about whether the other 99% deserve help at all.

You can't come to a battle like this with a battalion of technocrats armed with white papers. This fight is one for the preachers, the philosophers, the orators and the visionaries. It's not about how best to deliver healthcare, it's whether people should have healthcare at all. It's not how best to feed people, it's whether people should even have food. It's about whether anyone deserves human dignity except for those who were lucky or devoid of basic human decency enough to climb to the top of the corporate food chain and sit there seeking ever more exorbitant rents on the masses below even as globalization and mechanization grind them into the dust.

Technocrats can make some minor improvements around the edges of this system assuming they can hold the levers of power often enough and long enough. But as we've seen, there's no guarantee they can do so, and no promise that the current system can be made to function on behalf of all the people even when they do.

But that's not what will make the big changes we need. That will require a full ideological engagement that condemns the shriveled wickedness of modern conservative ideology for what it is, while offering transformative, aspirational and innovative answers beyond what the technocrats can deliver.

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-battle-of-fundamental-ideologies.html

[villager]

1. Which speaks to the actual types of candidates the Democrats need to put forward...

...instead of the "corporate tinkerers" we've been hobbled with...

[CJCRANE]

2. Liberal people of religion need to step up to the plate

and make their voices heard.

Don't let the fundies monopolize the airwaves.

[mindwalker_i]

3. One political party is dedicated to making sure the haves

have it all. Republicans are turning those knobs to make sure that all the money, and all the power to do anything lie with those who already have most of the money and power. The idea, I believe, is to make sure that everyone else is desperate for whatever they can get, so they'll take that job at walmart for a dollar an hour without complaint.

This isn't good for the country or the world, but considerations like that aren't going to even enter into the equations of the Republicans. And to be brutally honest, there are too many Democrats that act this way too. As Warren said, Obama needs to stop nominating so many corpratists.

But the real, fundamental problem is that the 99% need to stop voting for Republicans (and corpratists).

[kairos12]

4. When the Black Helicopter crowd were yodeling about FEMA

camps their real purpose was to distract. The people behind the ideology of the one percent, who would deny basic services to anyone they judge not worthy, were busy erecting their own gated and locked communities. The sentries of these communities are slick Wall Street carnival barkers, bought off politicians, huckster preachers, and a corporate media dedicated to the gold plated one percent. This showdown of ideologies is a fight to the death that has consequences in terms of ideas, and even, real people's lives.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

5. I gotta check that blog

That was excellent

[BrotherIvan]

6. We need a new American Dream

We need someone to define a new vision for this country. Technocrats is an excellent term because they are playing the small game, fighting for the scraps leftover after the MIC has gorged itself. They play within the media spin game of diversion and good cop, bad cop.

They KNOW there is another way. We hear it in the speeches. They use populist rhetoric to buy more time and gloss over the rot of our system.

But we do need a fundamental shift. I do believe that is why Elizabeth Warren speaks to the heart of so many democrats. She has a vision of fairness and basic fundamentals of how this country should be that speaks to a very deep place in all of us.

But there must be a vision, a target to hit if you will. I started reading this article and dismissed it as being overly dramatic, but at the end I was convinced by the argument. YES, we need to agree on First Principles. We need to agree that citizens of this country have basic needs and what those are. There will always be disagreement on who should provide that, fed vs. states, no government at all. And that is where the convincing needs to be done. My European relatives/friends have a very ingrained idea of what they deserve: education, health care, well-paying jobs with liberal vacations. Austerity and downsizing has completely eroded our minds about what as individuals we deserve out of life. As if we are the worthless proles the corporations think we are. That they can yank our very livelihoods and play with our lives on any whim. That we can become homeless, jobless, unable to afford healthcare whenever the masters decide.

We need a new vision, a new goal for people to work toward. It used to be a house, a couple of kids, a car in the driveway and a pension. Upward mobility. Now what have we got? They lured us with the lives of the rich and famous and we bought into that lottery thinking, that the majority can live lives of fear and desperation so a few can win a lottery?