Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree
Revenge of the Nerds:
Are Americans Being Brainwashed Into Mass Servitude?
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| THE GOP HAS A VESTED INTEREST IN KEEPING AMERICANS MISERABLE, ANGRY, AND UNEMPLOYED |
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But last week I had occasion to spend a night in a motel, and for lack of anything else to do, I decided to turn on the television and let it lull me to sleep. That decision not only confirmed why I stopped watching it in the first place, but much more. After not watching it for a year, its aggressive propagandizing was not only much more apparent to me, but its blatant and heavy-handed approach to controlling the public’s collective mind was all but oppressive.
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The problem - and danger of television - is that it lulls the mind into a hypnotic state and then presents ideas and concepts as though it goes without saying that they’re valid. That causes the public to accept the most ridiculous and dysfunctional propositions as valid without the scrutiny of critical evaluation.
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One of the most destructive propositions that television promotes in this manner is the concept that brawn is superior to brains. How many times have you watched movies or television shows that portray the dumb and clueless jock as superior to the "nerdy" intellectual? These shows will show a jock who can’t chew gum and tie his shoes at the same time as a handsome, sharp dressing, and confident lady’s man, while portraying the most intelligent student in the school as disheveled, awkward, and a turn-off to women. In short, they routinely profile intelligence and the pursuit of knowledge as a dysfunctional condition to be avoided at all costs.
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That is the exact opposite of the message that we should be sending our young people. So it’s no wonder that America is rapidly sliding downhill. The fact is, just because an individual is intelligent, that doesn’t mean that he or she is either awkward, nerdy, or, socially dysfunctional. One simply has to look at many of the elegant denizens of Wall Street or Madison Avenue to recognize the fallacy of that portrayal - in fact, many of the struttin’, jock-strap-wearing "lady’s men" from high school are now the chauffeurs, flunkies, and "gofers" of these so-called nerds.
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But perhaps that’s why many of the rich and accomplished have so little sympathy for middle-class America - they remember how they were treated in high school and college while they were trying to lay down their foundation for success. Many were looked down upon and treated as outcasts, so now, it’s payback time - and we’ve made that payback extremely easy to accomplish.
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When many of us should have been hard at work laying down our own foundation to become competent individuals, we were so busy trying to be popular, and living vicariously through the exploits of our favorite celebrities and sports heroes, that we never learned to think. Instead of learning HOW to think, we were taught WHAT to think. As a result, we’ve become so thoroughly programmed in group-think that we’re now mired in a cesspool of intellectual dysfunction. That accounts for why we routinely hear, and never question, comments like, "President Obama is a socialist - he’s engaged in a socialist plot to provide my family with healthcare." Many Americans have been so brainwashed with respect to the "isms" that they fail to recognize the stupidity of such a statement.
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The scheme to convince the American people that jobs are created by the rich was conceived during the Reagan administration by USC economist, Art Laffer. His name is quite appropriate, because the rich have been falling out laughing all the way to the bank every since. Even many Republicans were absolutely shocked when the American people fell for such a transparent scam. George Bush Sr. called it "voodoo economics," because the scam was, literally, predicated on the assumption that the American people were so gullible, undereducated, and dumb, that they could reintroduce Santa Claus back into our lives - and the amazing part was, it worked.
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That was an eye-opener for the corporate community and their political cronies. The mere fact that they could get America to embrace a concept as ridiculously self-defeating as "trickle-down economics" clearly demonstrated to them that they could get the American people to embrace ANYTHING, as long as they could convince us that it would hurt a targeted group that they could conditioned us to hate, the concept was repeated often enough, and it was wrapped in the appropriate patriotic vestments. That’s why every time you turn on your television set you’re served up the virtual equivalent of "The Night Before Christmas" - even though Christmas Day has been eluding us for the past 35 years now. The reality is, jobs are created by a vibrant and healthy middle class who has the money to purchase goods and services. Thus, it doesn’t matter how much money we give Gucci, he will never hire anyone to produce handbags if he’s forced to try to sell them in a homeless shelter - and for good reason - because no one would have the money to purchase the product that he’s produced - and essentially, that’s what we’ve allowed America to become, a homeless shelter.
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So when we turn our money over to the rich, they’re not going to use it to create jobs and re-circulate that wealth; they’re going to let that money draw interest, and dust, in offshore accounts. We’ll never see that money again. That’s why the top 5% of the nation controls 83% of the nation’s wealth, while the bottom 80% of Americans only control 7% of the wealth, and the gap is widening with every day that passes. So consider what happens when the 7% of the wealth that’s controlled by the middle class becomes only 3%, or even 1%. At that point, for all intent and purposes, we’ll be slaves. The only difference is, we’ll have to provide our own housing and maintenance, and therein lies the corporate whip. .
So if there’s a moral to this story, it’s that the American poor and middle class need to wake up, begin to educate ourselves, and stop allowing corporate interests and their political cronies to keep us fighting among ourselves. It’s way past time for us to recognize that we’re no longer engaged in a race or ethnic war; we’re now in the middle of a class war, and we’re losing badly.
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Now, that isn’t to say that racism and bigotry is a thing of the past; on the contrary, it’s still being used to great effect. But there’s a major difference in its character. Today, bigotry is no longer the war itself. Racism and other forms of bigotry have now become a TOOL of war. It’s being used to keep the poor and middle class divided, because as long as they can keep the masses at one another’s throats, the people will never come together to defend their mutual interests.
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Another important distinction of a class war is the fact that we can no longer assume that because a person is of the same race or ethnic group, that they’re on same side. That fact should have been made abundantly clear to White America during, and subsequent to, the 2008 Wall Street calamity. It wasn’t just Black people who lost their homes and jobs, and they’re not just sending the jobs of women and gays overseas, the corporatists are targeting ALL of poor and middle class America. Be you Black, White, Asian, or Eskimo, if you’re not independently wealthy - and comfortably so - you’re the new "nigger" on the block.
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That point was driven home in graphic detail during the recent school board election in Los Angeles, when two Black politicians (Alex Johnson, and his mentor and boss, Mark Ridley-Thomas) mounted a highly financed campaign (funded by charter school interests) that brutally slandered Dr. George McKenna, a nationally recognized and respected educator who was portrayed by Denzel Washington in the movie, "The George McKenna Story." Even though Johnson and Ridley-Thomas are Black, just like Dr. McKenna, they weren’t concerned about the interests of the Black and minority community, their alliance was with the corporatist agenda.
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And again, the same is true of White corporatists. They don’t care any more about poor and middle class White people than they do Black people, women, or gays. This is true of corporate feudalists of every stripe. All these people care about is subjugating the poor and middle class to big business - period..
So the next time you turn on your television set, or allow yourself to be swept away by any component of the mass media, keep in mind who’s tailoring the message being propagated. Because chances are, that message was specifically designed - or at the very least, promoted - to cloud your mind (and the minds of your children) with nonsense that undermines your way of life - all "isms" notwithstanding.
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Eric L. Wattree
Http://wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.comCitizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)
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Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.