Why Are Americans Passive as Millions Lose Their Homes, Jobs, Families and the American Dream?

[marmar]

via AlterNet:



Tikkun / By Harriet Fraad

Why Are Americans Passive as Millions Lose Their Homes, Jobs, Families and the American Dream?
Society-wide depression has struck America. Why it's happened and what we can do about it.

February 2, 2010 |


An unnatural economic and psychological disaster has struck America. Five contributors, each interacting with and shaping the others, have devastated the American moral, economic, psychological, and social landscape. Each is fed by related streams, but each contributes its own force to the disaster. The American dream in which each generation surpassed the previous generation in real wages has all but disappeared, along with dreams of an intact family, a steady job, a home, and an honest supportive community.

This article looks at each of five collaborators in the crisis in order to answer the following questions:

How did this happen? What forces are responsible?

Why are Americans passive as millions lose their homes, their jobs, their families, their hopes of justice, and the American dream? ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/media/145481/why_are_americans_passive_as_millions_lose_their_homes%2C_jobs%2C_families_and_the_american_dream

[dkf]

1. What are the alternatives? Mobs?

Hcr is unpopular but they still want to pass it. They don't care what we think.

[Paranoid Pessimist]

19. If people were to attempt hitting the streets, we'd be

grabbed up, shoved into camps (they're already set up), the most spirited would be summarily executed, the rest would be put to work Auschwitz style.

[surrealAmerican]

24. Boy, is your username ever appropriate!

[midnight]

2. The story from the media is, people who spent more money

than they had are not careful enough. Had they been better savers, used their cars for twenty years, and if they were frugal with their money in a host of other ways, they would not be in these terrible conditions. That is until the, curtain is drawn back, and a little sunlight is provided. Then it looks like the average American was working around the clock trying to put food on the family..... However, that act is harder and harder to accomplish when wages don't go up, but food, transportation, education, and health care prices go through the roof. Sometimes an illness bankrupts the family. Now the story goes that those who speak up are whiny liberals who need to get a real perspective on "reality", or how they feel sorry for those who speak out against this injustice because we are so angry, or how we need to be more PATIENT.... THAT ONE IS MY FAVORITE-BE PATIENT. When the reality of what it means to subsidize the banks is revealed, that need for us to be patient, will be looked back at as the craziest response to this outrages betrayal of the American consumer.

[cutlassmama]

26. you got it. the media has been sent to lull the sheep.

[aaronbav]

3. K&R

[liberal N proud]

4. Americans are passive because they have been pacified

by the TV and the talking heads.

The M$M media wants to know why people are passive? :rofl:

[winyanstaz]

17. also the drinking water is full of flouride.....

already KNOWN to cause passive behavior.

[emilyg]

18. I wish it was Valium.

;)

[Robb]

32. Bullshit.

It's a communist plot. Everybody knows that.

[stray cat]

5. Because a temper tantrum and strikes don't create jobs?

[Bluenorthwest]

9. Strikes gave you a five day work week

an 8 hour day and safety in the workplace. You are free to give up those things. You did nothing to earn them, after all, and seem to think they are rights you were born with due to your genetic make up or something. Not the case. Earned by others, shared with you.

[stray cat]

6. Each American should create a good paying job with benefits for someone else!

[ChairmanAgnostic]

7. F.E.A.R.

that sums it up.

[formercia]

31. When you're one paycheck from being permanently on the street

Debt can be a crushing disincentive to speak out. The boys lured us into debt. They promised us the 'American Dream' and that times would always be better, then they pulled the rug out from under us. They now control us via debt and propaganda.

[WhiteTara]

8. shock doctrine politics keeps

people mute and thankful it isn't them yet.

[GoCubsGo]

14. Yes, and add in a little...

..."I got mine..." mentality to that mix. From what I have seen, there is quite a bit of spewing of Ayn Randian "You are in your mess through your own bad choices" out there, too. See: mortgage and credit card crises. Many people aren't "thankful" it isn't them. They're smug that it isn't them, because they think it's because of their own doing, rather than other circumstances.

[flyarm]

16. alot of generalizations here..many of us that don't have the "problems " are worried about those

that do..and many of us who haven't lost jobs keep writing and calling congress and demanding jobs for those who have lost them..but a good way to alienate those who work for others to have jobs and equal access to health care and good incomes..is to bash them at each and every turn!

Stop pitting one American against another..I have wealthy friends who have huge businesses..that have not taken salary for over a year..so they do not have to lay off employees..They have changed their entire lifestyle to keep people working..generalizations suit no one! ( oh and several of them are Republicans!)
My best friends Husband has done everything he can in a dismal economy with little business coming in..to keep all of his employees ( over 300 of them) employed, and insured. He works his ass off to keep all his employees..and keep their insurance. He has not taken a dime salary for well over a year, and his family has sacrificed their lifestyle to do so.

Not everyone and not every wealthy person nor every business owner has fucked their employees.

The generalization piss many people off that do give a damn and work hard for those less fortunate, or in financial distress.

[izquierdista]

10. Why couldn't Lenin rally the serfs?

Well yes, he could and did, but only after they had been ground up by a World War and taken to the edge of starvation. It seems Americans will stay passive, at least as long as the obesity epidemic lasts.

[happyslug]

12. And even then Lenin failed as to the peasants

Lenin power was in the urban centers, his chief left wing alternatives (the Socialist-Revolutionary Party) had the Peasants. This can best be see when Russia had its election in 1918, as promised by Lenin, the Socialist-Revolutionary Party won with 52% of the seats (With 57% of the vote), but Lenin did win Petrograd (The name St Petersburg was using during WWI)then ignored the election). The results of the Election was ignored by Lenin and his party. Please note the Radical Left wing of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party joined the Bolsheviks before the above election, but broke with it over the peace treaty with Germany. This later if often referred to as the "Left Socialist-Revolutionary Party" as opposed to the rest of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party (Which had won 52% of the seats in the 1918 Election)


http://web.grinnell.edu/individuals/kaiser/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Constituent_Assembly

More on the Socialist-Revolutionary Party:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist-Revolutionary_Party

My point is Lenin NEVER was able to rally the Peasants, he OPPOSED land reform (Buying into the then prevalent theory even in the US, that larger farms run by corporation was the wave of the Future, thus Lenin opposed land reform i.e. giving land to the peasants. Lenin thus opposed land reform, but he did NOT do anything to undo the land reforms done by the peasants themselves during the Revolution OR the Kulaks system the Czars had implemented. Lenin wanted the goods from the Peasants (Which he took by force to feed his supporters in the cities) but did NOTHING else when it came to who owned and how land was farmed in Russia. Russia had to wait for Stalin before anyone would take what land the peasants had away from the peasants.

Just comments that the peasants did NOT support Lenin till it was clear he had defeated all the other left wing groups (Including the peasant preferred Socialist-Revolutionary Party. Only then did the peasants back the Bolsheviks and in many ways reluctantly (i.e. better then the right wingers who advocated the same things as the Bolsheviks as to land reform, i.e. a reversal of what land reforms had occurred BUT the right wing plan to undo land reform also included that they would be NO consideration of the peasants living on those lands unlike the Bolsheviks who claim the land reform they were advocating would benefit and have input from the peasants).

More on the Kulaks:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kulak

[izquierdista]

13. Point well taken

But America has no peasants working the land. They are all industrial serfs, "owned" by the corporation that issues their paycheck. They will remain compliant until large numbers have been pushed beyond the breaking point, to the edge of starvation.

[Hestia]

11. or could it be that the American Dream is just that? As George Carlin said,

you have to be asleep to believe it. People have/are finding out that the Dream doesn't include them, just the top 1%, who then media blast us that if we buy their products, we can be Just Like Them!

[tom_paine]

15. Short answer: the most advanced propaganda network in human history

sprinkled with just enough Plausible Deniability to keep the Serfs confused, and believe you me it doesn't take much, as the Bushies have shown again and again.

This is driven by MASSIVE advances in the sciences of manipulation of people in large groups. Psychology, statitsics, advertising, PR, all work together in ways the Soviets and Nazis could not conceive of, but would undoubtedly be envious of.

And all of it tailor-made for the modern era of Americccan Empire.

Sure, it's scary and some very VERY bad things are likely to come from the Americccan Aristocracy once we Plebs and Proles start to feel real pain, but it is such a juggernaut and shows no signs of letting up. Rather all of the Media Hologram that passes for reality seems to be growing ever-stronger and more entrenched.

[GliderGuider]

21. And as I keep saying, the Powell Memo is one of the toxic roots of this poison tree.

The Powell Memo

In 1971, Lewis F. Powell, then a corporate lawyer and member of the boards of 11 corporations, wrote a memo to his friend Eugene Sydnor, Jr., the Director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The memorandum was dated August 23, 1971, two months prior to Powell's nomination by President Nixon to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Powell Memo did not become available to the public until long after his confirmation to the Court. It was leaked to Jack Anderson, a liberal syndicated columnist, who stirred interest in the document when he cited it as reason to doubt Powell's legal objectivity. Anderson cautioned that Powell "might use his position on the Supreme Court to put his ideas into practice...in behalf of business interests."

Though Powell's memo was not the sole influence, the Chamber and corporate activists took his advice to heart and began building a powerful array of institutions designed to shift public attitudes and beliefs over the course of years and decades. The memo influenced or inspired the creation of the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, the Cato Institute, Citizens for a Sound Economy, Accuracy in Academe, and other powerful organizations. Their long-term focus began paying off handsomely in the 1980s, in coordination with the Reagan Administration's "hands-off business" philosophy.

Most notable about these institutions was their focus on education, shifting values, and movement-building - a focus we share, though usually with contrasting goals. One of our great frustrations is that "progressive" foundations and funders have failed to learn from the success of these corporate institutions and decline to fund the Democracy Movement that we and a number of similarly-focused organizations are attempting to build. Instead, they overwhelmingly focus on damage control, band-aids and short-term results which provide little hope of the systemic change we so desperately need to reverse the trend of growing corporate dominance.

[tom_paine]

22. It all hides in plain sight, doesn't it?

Fitting, for an information (and misinformation/disinformation) saturated age.

[GliderGuider]

23. And once you do see it,

The comprehension of the depth of its penetration into our culture can be paralyzing. They have been more fiendish than we realize.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

20. People THOUGHT they were doing something by voting for Obama

but for the most part, they don't know history, especially labor history, so they're at a loss for what to do.

In addition, most Americans these days life in suburbs or exurb, which are a right-wing politician's dream landscape. (If you ever want to raise the ire of right-wingers, try suggesting that the exurban life is physically and emotionally unhealthy) People live in their cars when they're not in their houses or at work, work like dogs to pay for their two or three cars, and have mostly chain stores and restaurants to choose from.

Such environments are isolating. Everyone's on their own little treadmill. The megachurches and the school sports teams provide the only semblance of community.

I'm convinced that the megachurches are funded under-the-table by right-wingers, because they spring up out of nothing almost overnight. No mainstream church that has just been founded would be able to afford a lavish campus right at the start.

Anyway, unlike the middle and working classes of Europe, most Americans have little contact with their neighbors, no community gathering places, no central place to rally. If you live in the typical American exurb, where do you rally? If you're the typical American exurbanite, you're probably scared to go into most parts of your central city and wouldn't want to rally with those dark-skinned people anyway.

I've noticed, for instance, that it's incredibly easy to call out a huge demonstration in Portland, because it has ONE downtown, easily reachable by public transit. Thirty thousand? No problem! The Twin Cities, with a much greater population, has trouble scaring up more than about 2,000 at a time, and that's on a really, really good day. More often they get 500, and there's no place where the whole area will have to be aware of them.

[raccoon]

27. Great post.

You might consider starting a thread about this.

[northofdenali]

25. The ONLY people in my area who have any money at all

are the Army kids recently returned from Iraq. Bonuses.

Everyone else is caught in the crap. We're going to lose our house; I was laid off a week before Christmas and at 55 won't have an easy time finding a new job; our heating fuel prices are at over $3 a gallon and our utilities have tripled in the last year.

So what are we supposed to do?

Filing bankruptcy? Good luck if your don't have the $1500 to pay the lawyer up front. If I had $1500, I'd buy groceries, which we're also very short on. We've sold everything of value except the only car we own, and that's a necessity, not a luxury, in a town with no bus service except in the core area.

So what are we supposed to do?

[classysassy]

28. Fox news and hate radio

the new KKK,the racist are using a new tactic,they have removed their robes for three piece suits and female business suits.The physical lynching has been replaced by verbal lynchings.Fox and their henchmen posing as newcasters reach more people than the KKK ever could,Rush and his fellow hatemongers are attacking our ears 24/7,they are using an old tactic that work almost everytime,tell the same lie over and over until they get traction(the lie),most americans are too busy trying to make ends meet to think critically.If you listen to their message,it is the same old lie.

[tomm2thumbs]

29. prior to the Great Depression....

according to what I have found, economic downturns were referred to as "panics". In 1929, Hoover wanted to calm the people by saying that the U.S. Wasn't in a "panic", it was just in a "depression".

Maybe you just need to bring the word PANIC back to get people to hit the streets.

[Larkspur]

30. I think David Sirota is correct when he says that Progressive groups

that could organize protests are right now stuck in the Rahm Emmanual "veal pen". The White House under Rahm has threatened progressive groups with organizing against ConservaDems, who are more of a problem than the Republicans right now. As long as these Progressive groups restrain themselves under threats from the White House, than there won't be organized protests.

When FDR was President, the Progressive groups were more independent of the White House, but not today or at least not right now. That could change as the White House's pro-corporate agenda is hurting ordinary Americans and extending the suffering of ordinary Americans from corporate greed.