Having been an interested and frequently involved observer for about four and one half years, I firmly believe both left and right on OPP sense the same thing about the other. As a result, both see each as serving a purpose of exposing what "i***ts" they are...and, "how ignorant of the issues they are." That, however, is the purpose of this forum, to espouse views from all sides/angles. It makes for interesting, entertaining, aggravating, frustrating and even amusing exchanges. Draining or eliminating opposing views prevents OPP from becoming just an echo chamber of those simply parroting the same partisan/ideological rhetoric.

So, in essence, EE, we agree.

It was so much simpler when with the Old Testament God, all it wanted was blood. Bloody sacrifices. Burnt blood. Burnt flesh. Sitting right up there two and a half miles above the Earth on the other side of the firmament, the smell of burning meat put it in a good mood, without fail.

Blood guilt, blood feuds, blood calls to blood. Smiting and plundering, raiding and smiting some more, plotting and planning and spilling of blood, oh and sacrificing live animals for sure. Blood of bulls and goats won't satisfy forever. Gotta have a human sacrifice!#!!......

Wash them all in my Blood, MAKE THEM EAT MY FLESH AND DRINK MY B L O O D .....

What is it with all the BLOOD? Its a little creepy and off putting, once you think about it, is all....

Right, the god's super dick move.

Only through its grace, can one receive the gift of discernment to understand what to believe and to believe what you then understand because you can't understand what to believe unless you are called by its grace to that saving knowlege and understanding of what to believe so you can understand what you're supposed to believe. So you can believe it.

If I'm unable to understand it, it is immoral to punish me for not understanding it. And if I can't understand it because it put a curse on my spirit to prevent my understanding til I say the magic words, then that is a dick move. No way around it.

"Taming The Bewildered Herd"

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"Taming The Bewildered Herd"
by Noam Chomsky

"Walter Lippmann, was the Dean of American journalists, a major foreign and domestic policy critic and a major theorist of liberal democracy. Lippmann was involved in propaganda commissions and recognized their achivements. He argued that what he called a "revolution in the art of democracy," could be used to"manufacture consent," that is, to bring about agreement on the part of the public for things that they didn't want by the new techniques of propaganda. He also thought that this was a good idea, in fact necessary. It was necessary because, as he put it, "the common interests elude public opinion entirely" and can only be understood and managed by a specialized class of responsible men who are smart enough to figure things out. This theory asserts that only a small elite, the intellectual community that the Deweyites were talking about, can understand the common interests, what all of us care about, and that these things "elude the general public." This is a view that goes back hundreds of years. It's also a typical Leninist view. In fact, it has very close resemblance to the Leninist conception that a vanguard of revolutionary intellectuals take state power, using popular revolutions as the force that brings them to state power, and then drive the stupid masses towards a future that they're too dumb and incompetent to envision themselves.

The liberal democratic theory and Marxism-Leninism are very close in their common ideological assumptions. I think that's one reason why people have found it so easy over the years to drift from one position to another without any particular sense of change. It's just a matter of assessing where power is. Maybe there will be a popular revolution, and that will put us into state power; or maybe there won't be, in which case we'll just work for the people with real power: the business community. But we'll do the same thing: We'll drive the stupid masses towards a world that they're too dumb to understand for themselves.

Lippmann backed this up by a pretty elaborated theory of progressive democracy. He argued that in a properly functioning democracy there are classes of citizens. There is first of all the class of citizens who have to take some active role in running general affairs. That's the specialized class. They are the people who analyze, execute, make decisions, and run things in the political, economic, and ideological systems. That's a small percentage of the population. Naturally, anyone who puts these ideas forth is always part of that small group, and they're talking about what to do about those others. Those others, who are out of the small group, the big majority of the population, they are what Lippmann called "the bewildered herd." We have to protect ourselves from the trampling and rage of the bewildered herd. Now there are two functions in a democracy:

1. The specialized class, the responsible men, carry out the executive function, which means they do the thinking and planning and understand the noam chomsky common interests.

2. The bewildered herd, and they have a function in democracy too. Their function in a democracy is to be spectators, not participants in action. But they have more of a function than that, because it's a democracy.

Occasionally they are allowed to lend their weight to one or another member of the specialized class. In other words, they're allowed to say, "We want you to be our leader" or "We want you to be our leader." That's because it's a democracy and not a totalitarian state. That's called an e******n. But once they've lent their weight to one or another member of the specialized class they're supposed to sink back and become spectators of action, but not participants. That's a properly functioning democracy. And there's a logic behind it. There's even a kind of compelling moral principle behind it. The compelling moral principle is that the mass of the public is just too stupid to be able to understand things. If they try to participate in managing their own affairs, they're just going to cause trouble. Therefore it would be immoral and improper to permit them to do this.

We have to tame the bewildered herd, not allow the bewildered herd to rage and trample and destroy things. It's pretty much the same logic that says that it would be improper to let a three-year-old run across the street. You don't give a three-year-old that kind of freedom because the three-year-old doesn't know how to handle that freedom. Correspondingly, you don't allow the bewildered herd to become participants in action. They'll just cause trouble. So we need something to tame the bewildered herd, and that something is this new revolution in the art of democracy: the manufacture of consent.

The media, the schools, and popular culture have to be divided. For the political class and the decision maker shave to give them some tolerable sense of reality, although they also have to instill the proper beliefs. Just remember, there is an unstated premise here. The unstated premise- and even the responsible men have to disguise this from themselves- has to do with the question of how they get into the position where they have the authority to make decisions. The way they do that, of course, is by serving people with real power. The people with real power are the ones who own the society, which is a pretty narrow group. If the specialized class can come along and say, I can serve your interests, then they'll be part of the executive group. You've got to keep that quiet. That means they have to have instilled in them the beliefs and doctrines that will serve the interests of private power. Unless they can master that sk**l, they're not part of the specialized class.

So we have one kind of educational system directed to responsible men, the specialized class. They have to be deeply indoctrinated in the values and interests of private power and the state-corporate nexus that represents it. If they can get through that, then they can be part of the specialized class. The rest of the bewildered herd just has to be basically distracted. Turn their attention to something else. Keep them out of trouble. Make sure that they remain at most spectators."

-Noam Chomsky, (Excerpt: "Media Control: The Role of Media in Contemporary Politics," New York, Seven Stories Press, 2002. Image: -Maxell Audio Cassette Advertisement, 1979).
- http://violetplanet.blogspot.com/

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Any comments on Chomsky's sour view of our Society? Are we all s***es to a Plutocracy and our representatives simply paid, whore, psycopaths? Is he correct that our nation is one gigantic, lemon, melange of sheep, goats and flock owners?

Ah, now you're getting into a question that I do feel competent to answer. A 'life long welfare recipient' applies for, is approved and claims payments from government, with no reciprocal t***sfer of useful product or service. Essentially, a 'life long welfare recipient' takes without giving, for life.

A 'life long dividend recipient', on the other hand, receives payments commensurate with an ownership stake in a business venture, typically as a disbursement in proportion to the number of shares owned. This is generally calculated either on a quarterly or yearly basis and is taxed as income. The return on investment is subject to market forces and has the potential to exceed nominal bank interest under certain circumstances depending on numerous factors, many of which the investor has no control over. A good investment decision has the ability to pay in multiples of initial investment, a bad investment has the potential to revert to an inherent value of zero, resulting in a total loss of investment capital.

In simple terms, a 'life long welfare recipient' spends his/her life dependent on government, forcing others to pay for his/her existence, whereas a 'life long dividend recipient' works and saves, eventually taking on the risk of an investment in one or more business enterprises, letting the market judge the wisdom of the investment and paying him dividends accordingly. A dividend recipient does not expect a handout from anyone and most definitely does not leverage government force to finance his/her existence. The dividend is the share of the profits bought and paid for with the initial investment amount.

Going slightly off subject; government may well take the taxes paid by the 'lifelong dividend recipient' and give it to the 'lifelong welfare recipient', significantly reducing the value of the investor's payments received. It is probable that the businessman would prefer to employ the welfare recipient and pay wages for work performed, but, well, government and all....