Why I loathe Joe and Jane public

[Room101]

I see an American populace that responds to emotions and instinctively resists reason. We have a Joe and Jane public that would have trouble distinguishing from a TV guide and our out of style Constitution. A bewildered herd( Lippmans term) that is more outraged at the sight of a burning American flag, than our Government consciously eroding our Constitution.

A public with apathy soaked minds more concerned with the exchange of Celebrity body fluids then the exchange of Tax burdens. The National Enquirer is the leading selling newspaper in America, and our mainstream press has morphed into people magazine. Countless families watching TV in living rooms doing anything but living, if not fragmented and wedged apart from there family members by there own TV as they work diligently on there staring skills.


How much time does the average proud to be an American citizen put in each day, listening reading and arguing about what their illusionary public servants do or don’t do that directly effect their lives, and future lives of their children? It seems 5 minutes is a high average. Why talk about such relative things when Barry Bounds is up at bat with a full count in the 9th inning, or Justin Timberland is dating what’s her tits? In this current culture of manufactured fear and warped notions of patriotism being proud has become a substitute to critical thinking and reason. Such distractions when exceeded in moderation lull its victims into willful ignorance and the politician’s best friend apathy.

This War was not about “Weapons of Mass destruction” or falsely perceived links to 911, it was about pride. People of Middle Eastern descent attacked us, and the “proud to be Americans”, “God bless American’s” and “United we kill” people just wanted to kill anyone who is of Middle Eastern descent. So they can feel like a winner again, how fucking sick. Pause for throwing up………..

Every night countless parents give into their laziness passing their kids off to the TV at bedtime, as if it had a hand in conceiving them. How we have grown to love our servitude, generation after generation.

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[tom_paine]

5. Perhaps the Old American character is buried somewhere

As opposed to the bootlicking New Imperial Subjects of Amerika.

[jrthin]

2. Would love to disagree with you,

but can't.

[RichM]

3. You capture a lot of the awful truth in this short little essay...

Sad... true... :shrug:

[elfwitch]

4. Have to agree..

And this is one of the many things that keeps me up nights. I have often thought that ignorance must truely be bliss. The uninformaed are not troubled by the horrors of the world because they simply do not know enough about the world to identify them. The more you learn about the world and the way it really works, I feel, the more paranoid and disappointed you become.

[quaker bill]

7. Have you met the ignorant?

I work with the public. I can tell you that there is no bliss there.

[Unforgiven]

10. True

You're not alone in that train of thought.

[Silverhair]

6. Joe & Jane vote.

By showing this type of loathing for Joe & Jane you help ensure that they will vote for the Reps. Rush, only temporarily off air, loves to take posts and threads like this one and read them on air as being typical of progressive thought.

[Room101]

8. Silverhair - Hold your horses Cowboy .....

I have heard Republicans and it might even have been Rush, who said the "American people are stupid". You are missing the point this post won't reach Joe and Jane public. "Rush, only temporarily off air, loves to take posts and threads like this one and read them on air as being typical of progressive thought". I know we were just this close to winning them over, then I came along and dropped the ball on the one-yard line with this truthful indictment.

You silly rabbit, my post was not meant to insight diversnary politics (i.e.) attacking the poster, it was meant to give a birds eye view of the people who will decide the election in 2004. Knowing that, Boldness is in order to obtain Joe and Jane’s attention. The question I was hoping would arise is how is this Boldness going to be packaged and delivered to Joe and Jane public.

[Ardee]

14. hold your own horses

Denigrating the public, however much truth there might be in your analysis, and then justifying it by saying that they will never read your insults makes little sense to me. That such an attitude will leak through any message you attempt to deliver seems obvious.

Far better that a message ring with truth and clarity than it be manipulated in an assumption of the intellect or attention span of the listener. This sort of thinking is ,imo, part and parcel with politics by polls, sincerity is more important than your thread suggests. I firmly believe that such insincerity and superiority cannot be hidden, dilutes and makes ineffective any agenda and actually turns upon the messenger in the end.

[Resistance Is Futile]

9. Avoiding the truth

America (and with it the world) is in such a mess at the moment because too many people will not speak the truth for fear of causing offense. It is the truth that the average members of the public are mind numbingly ignorant--and in many cases proud of their ignorance. Not mentioning the problem out of fear of backlash will not make it go away. Rather than sweeping it under the rug, public ignorance must be brought to the forefront and solutions must be developed.

[Bandit]

25. Most Americans will agree with this post I believe and therefore not be

offended one bit. They will not of course believe it applies to them because they are ummm not the ignorant ones the post is describing. Most Americans are aware of America's shortcomings they just don't see how to make it better. Education has been the liberal battle cry for three decades and it seems to be getting worse. Maybe they should try something new and the Republicans are right in there plugging for their tough love and rewarding good teachers while punishing bad teachers. It all sounds so good to the un-educated. We need to highlight some of our successes or we are history.

[sendero]

11. It is ....

... human nature to become complacent in the face of comfort.

That comfort, IMHO, is about to be shattered utterly as our country slips into an economic abyss rivaling the Great Depression.

While it will be awful, nothing short of a catastrphe will pull Americans out of their stupor. I think Karma is about to provide such a situation, within a few years at most.

So, there is a dual nature to everything.

[Headshaker]

12. The world sees a giant pig pen

When it comes to the balance between desirable and undesirable human traits, the American psyche is skewed towards fear, greed, and sloth. We need more courage, compassion and wisdom.






P.S. don't hold your breath

[newyawker99]

13. Hi Headshaker!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[0007]

15. btt

*

[truth2power]

16. I've said this for a long time.

I think it's futile to try to get the average American to see the reality of what's happening. It's not about truth or fact. It's about belief and emotion. Most Americans have no critical thinking ability anymore, and thanks to the extremist Right's efforts in destroying our public education system, that is not likely to change in our lifetimes.

[dwckabal]

17. If you had asked me two years ago

I would have disagreed with your essay. About 6 months ago I finished David McCullough's wonderful biography of John Adams, and I found myself in surprising agreement with much of what John Adams believed. I fully understand what Adams so long ago was trying to say.

The proposition that the people are the best keepers of their own liberties is not true. They are the worst conceivable, they are no keepers at all; they can neither judge, act, think, or will, as a political body.

Unfortunately, this was the kind of sentiment that led to him being labelled as a "King Adams", etc. Fortunately, his journal entry in 1772 is probably more applicable today:

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.

While John Adams didn't have reality TV to deal with, there was certainly enough drama in his time to keep such a show going for years. I think that today, people feel that finding out the truth is just too much work. After all, if some talking head I agree with says something it must be true--they wouldn't lie, would they?

[JNelson6563]

18. That is like hating a cult member

who has been raised in a cult and believes in its teachings.

In order to remedy things like this one must go a step deeper. How did the Aemrican people become so apathetic, shallow and self-centered? It didn't happen overnight but it has been intentional and methodical.

To undo it, to break the spell will take a long time and sustained, massive effort.

Julie

[SpaceCatMeetsMars]

19. Kick

:kick:

[Mari333]

20. Well, go through any supermarket line

It pays off to keep the masses illiterate, semi literate, and feed them sound bytes as "news". The United States of Amnesia, as Gore Vidal calls it. When I worked at the job I was at, (til WalMart shut down our store), I was amazed when I entered the "breakroom" and saw nothing but Nat'l Enquirer strewn about.
I dragged in any number of copies of National Geographic, and left them there . Not too many people picked them up.
Remember..Time magazine is written at 9th grade level reading.
As for Rushbo or any of his ilk condemning the left for being too literate and intellectual...
My dad was a railroad engineer who read Shakespeare and Twain to us...we WERE a poor family and we STILL managed to read and write and pursue ideas.
I never attended Yale, we were too poor...but Ill bet you a dime to a dollar I have read more books then the Chimpster and his ilk..
In fact, Ill bet the bank on it. He probably thinks Voltaire is the name of an automobile.

[Ripley]

22. HAH! Good one Mari!

My Voltaire is the safest automobile on the road!

Plato was a fun toy for me as a child!

I know what meditation is, I self-meditated for years!

I personally think fundamentalism in religion has crept into the school boards and board rooms of America in the last 20 years and has changed our society for the worst. Critical, individual thought is not praised. Teamwork (brown nosing) and groupthink have made it easy for people to just imitate others.

I'll never forget when I worked for an auto manufacturer and some doofus I worked with learned the new buzzword "paradigm." He used it all of the time and in the most inappropriate ways. He is now the norm.

[Mari333]

27. I was so UNenamored with the school here

I asked my sons if they wanted to homeschool eventually, with tutors. They said yes, and they took a couple classes at the high school, but had tutors at home..I was lucky enough to hand pick a couple of great guys to tutor them. Why? Because there was nothing at the school here that was academically intriquing...it was bland, rote, boring and understaffed.
Not a lick of independent thought was praised. You mirrored the (usually not very bright) teacher, or you were considered a troublemaker.
Well, its a GOP county. They like their young people to wear jackboots and march.

[Brewman_Jax]

29. Bread and Circuses

Juvenal was right when he coined the term, derisively, to describe offerings, such as benefits or entertainments, intended to placate discontent or distract attention from a policy or situation. So are you.

[SpaceCatMeetsMars]

30. If you go to a flea market or used bookstore and look at the type

of paperbacks they sold during the forties and fifties, say, it's very interesting. You will always see lots of pulp fiction books, mysteries and romances, of course. But they also printed tons of better literature paperback books for the casual reader.

I go all the time to the swap shop at my local garbage dump and get old classics. People back then bought paperback editions of books about Thomas Jefferson, the Constitution, Lincoln, history, poetry, literature and so on.

You look now at what's in the drugstore, supermarket, airport, etc and there is nothing like that.

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

21. Talk to your therapist about your "loathing" issues

fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.

:)

[Polemonium]

24. so you fear nothing, are angry about nothing...

I am pleased at your enlightenment. I have felt angry about many things political, and indeed afraid that the state of the world is worsening. This hasn't led to hate though, at least not for me. In fact it motivates me to talk to people, ask questions, protest, and work for change. Without it I may very well get further sucked into many of the frivolous traps of western society, many of which I rather enjoy.

[Mairead]

23. Joe and Jane Public will be fine once they start getting good information

They're not dopes, they're not creeps. They've simply been marinated in disinformation and propaganda til they're stiff with it. Let them get a chance to wash that crap off and out of their systems, they'll do fine.

Jefferson knew that. We should know it too.

[Armstead]

26. To change things, you don't start off by "loathing" people

While there is much truth in the body of your post, your self-righteousness blinds you to actually helping to solve anything. If you really want to change people's minds about things, I'd suggest you first step off that high horse and develop your own sense of empathy.

First there IS NO Joe and Jane Public. We are a nation of hundreds of millions of individuals -- some who are loathesome, some who are admirable and the vast majority a mixed bag.

Also, you have to look at WHY people feel so disengaged. That is a larger social/political/economic question. Many people DO care, but they feel so small and helpless it's easier to just let it go when things bother them outside of their control.

Also the media and politics have been taken over by those with an agenda -- both commercial and political. It takes work to get beyoind the curtain, and most people are so busy with their own survival that they haven't the time or energy to seek out different sources of informatin.

[IrateCitizen]

28. I cringe every time I see a thread like this...

... because it makes me realize that many among us who decry the "ignorance" of the American public are displaying the same kind of shortsightedness for which they assign blame. Blaming the "ignorant masses" for the sad state of things is, I believe, even WORSE than when all the RWers blame all of the shortcomings of American society on "libruls".

The "ignorance" that you detest so much among the masses is far from blissful. In fact, many out there have retreated into this "ignorance" because they are so dissatisfied with everything else in their lives.

People are working longer hours, spending more time commuting to and from work stuck in traffic, living away from their extended families (a natural support network), living in communities where neighbors hardly know each other, and spending less and less time with their families -- and your solution is to blame them for their ignorance?

I've got news for you -- these forces have been at work for quite some time. They started with the mass movement from cities to the suburbs, the buying up of mass transit in cities by the oil and auto industries and subsequent dismantlement, the introduction of "sprawl" as a growth model that meant that people HAD to have a car to go distances less than a mile, the upshoot in housing costs, and so on.

People out there are searching for meaning in their lives, plain and simple. People have become increasingly cynical, and live in a society that only reinforces that feeling. To blame them for all of this is just plain foolish. It's like blaming the average line grunt for why we're now mired in Iraq.

Perhaps if you'd spend a little more time looking for what you, even as one person, can do to help SOLVE these problems, rather than assigning blame, you might just come to realize that those "ignorant masses" you so detest are really searching for many of the same things that you are out of life -- just a sense of community and meaning.

For an excellent work on this phenomenon, I would suggest you read The Politics of Meaning by Michael Lerner. Another good book is Affluenza by John DeGraff, et. al.