While I do not disaree with your characterizations in general, I offer that there are assumptions being made here that are not necessaily inimical to change.

Let’s start with the end: “Fully 29 percent of Americans under 25 said they didn’t pay attention to news.” You note this as though it marks the beginning of the end. It’s classic. No 25 year old pays much attention to the news. When their parents were 25, they weren’t paying much attention to the news either. When these 25 year olds reach the current age of there parents they will be paying more attention, too, because then, like the prior generation, they will be in the thick of the “battle.”

“the good people are hearded [sic] by law and taxes they dont fight against.” Just because the don’t pick up shotguns and storm the bastille does not mean that many of them do not oppose such oppression. That’s the reason there is such a thing as a black market, for example; it is opposition to tax and regulation codes. Likewise anytime even a bureaucrat looks to circumvent a regulation to accomplish a given task, they, too, are providing opposition.

Bureaucracies and regulations are static, life is dynamic and, like water running in a creek, some of it always finds its way around the rocks. That is why preference cascades occur.

And sometimes there is decisive, active opposition, not simply the passive opposition I refer to above. I am especially heartened by the rise of Tea Party candidates and the fact that numerous establishment politicians (both Dem and Repub) were replaced by new blood in 2010. I am equally heartened by the rise of the Bobby Jindles, the Nicki Haleys, the Allen Wests, the Mia Loves and the Paul Ryans as they begin to take a place in the influential political world.

Your cautions to us are not without cause or justification. You look at the past as lessons for us in the future. I submit, however, that you look at the old fruit on the tree and say it’s past it’s prime, the tree is no longer productive. This is true, but I offer that it is limited. It sees the old tree and the old fruit but fails to recognize the buds of the new fruit.

I see the new fruit and say let’s nourish it because it will take time. We didn’t get here overnight and we will not solve the problem in a single election cycle, probably not even in a single generation.

The battle is engaged, however. That is the first step to winning the war and that, itself, gives me great hope.

It doesn’t work the way you think it doesn’t work…

And that’s as short and sweet as i can put it.

but i will address one part…

because the bulk of this enemy is simply not that smart or as clever as artfldgr gives them credit for.

what credit do i give them? the bulk of the enemy are herded like sheep or animals by playing with their whips and carrots legally available to them and by shaping mass opinion and moving rules around.

the good people are hearded by law and taxes they dont fight against… the poor and not to bright are hearded by different programs giving them different things in exchange for votes and the insinuation of more later. each group set against the one scape goat are all being told that scapegoat did this (a la germany), and its even confirmed (in their minds) given legal restrictions on programs (how can it be law).

its an army of eager people. who dont know where the boat is really going. but they like their three squares and a cot, and the captain keeps telling them its a nice place.

they cant work out whether that place is going to be nice, or whether the concept solution will work. a vast majority of them dont even know whats going on news wise…

Maybe the worst news of all in the poll is that younger Americans are not the news consumers that their parents are. Fully 29 percent of Americans under 25 said they didn’t pay attention to news.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/cnn-newspapers-hammered-as-americans-turn-to-mobile-news/article/2509299

Also, I read the Frankl book you quote shortly after it was written. I am quite familiar with it, studied it, wrote a paper dealing with it, and owned it for many years.

Again, I am requesting that you stop just assuming things about what people know and don’t know. It would be much better if you would just offer the information that you want to talk about, without adding all the assumptions about people’s prior knowledge or lack thereof.

I keep seeing this theme, that the MSM is preventing Romney from getting his story out, but there’s more to it than that.
I’m just not buying that the MSM is entirely to blame. Americans have access to more information and sources than any time in history, and yet a simple survey of people on the street will prove a large percentage of us don’t know much about anything. If they were truly tuned into the MSM, as dispicable as it is, they would know our ambassador in Libya was assassinated. But I’ve seen recent interviews of ardent Obama supporters who clearly aren’t even aware of the event.
You cannot believe the MSM or liberal professors are to blame for left leaning Americans, while so them are abysmally ignorant about nearly everything — their ignorance is breathtakingly broad when it comes to politics or goverment.
The 911 assassination is a good example — it WAS covered, and was pretty hard to miss unless you actively avoided watching the news. But there are a shocking number of people who haven’t a clue it happened.
And I truly believe there are far more people who tune ALL of it out than those who are swayed by the talking heads.
Long before there was television, there was socialism, and jealosy, and bloody communist revolutions. I don’t know what the printed media was saying before the Russian revolution, but the revolution itself and those who came out on top were sadistic and vindictive to the formerly well off, and utterly and tyrranical to anyone who opposed them. Fairness and the good of society had nothing to do with it, and this tendency for people to feel entitled to other people’s property and labor, to give into envy, to blame others for their problems, transcends modern media and cultures. IMHO, it’s an attitude or instinct, of the most basic kind, that a lot of people have, and how they got it isn’t all that important. The fact that so many have been able to justify it to themselves as “fairness”, is in itself telling about the minds of those who embrace it.

Do some of “them” know this? I’m sure they do. Are ALL of “them” part and parcel of this same coordinated conspiracy? I’ll bet they’re not. Why? because the bulk of this enemy is simply not that smart or as clever as artfldgr gives them credit for.

Now one may respond it doesn’t matter. A coordinated conspiracy or a comedy of errors, if the results are the same who cares about the process? I, OTH, believe very strongly in the resilience of the American people. When called upon to do the correct thing, we usually respond correctly; I offer that you will see exactly that on Nov 7th when election results are known for certain. Remember, “God watches over fools, drunks, and the United States of America”.

Now, some people (artfldgr among them) may respond that this is meaningless because we will have a Republican “boob” in the White House instead of a Democrat “boob.” I disagree with that, too. I confess to having voted for Ross Perot in 1992 because I believed that a grounded businessman in the White House would serve this country well. Romney provideds that same breath of fresh air; not a career politician, but a successful career businessman who became a politician.

Will he be the be all–end all? No of course not.

Will he, with the stroke of a pen abolish the Dept. of Education and severly restrict the EPA? I only wish.

Will he begin a successful trend to rebuild this economy, improve the GDP and at least begin to deal with the deficit and national debt? I’d expect nothing less from a successful businessman if only because his response to an inside look at everything going on will be something like “How can anyone run a business this way and expect it to succeed?”

I’ll be more than happy with that as our first step on this new journey.

Between the huts in the camp lay pure filth, and the more one worked to clear it away,
the more one had to come in contact with it. It was a favourite practice to detail a new arrival to a
work group whose job was to clean the latrines and remove the sewage. If, as usually happened,
some of the excrement splashed into his face during its transport over bumpy fields, any sign of
disgust by the prisoner or any attempt to wipe off the filth would only be punished with a blow from
a Capo. And thus the mortification of normal reactions was hastened.

just remember that the people who make plans, know this stuff… and so know what they can do, what can be gotten away from, and what you will endure if your forced to and CANT FIGHT BACK…

if you are disgusted with what they do, and you show it, their capo will wack you.
And so, the mortification… and so you wont fight against it. will you?

the prisoner who had passed into the second stage of his psychological reactions did not avert
his eyes any more. By then his feelings were blunted, and he watched unmoved.

yes, once injustice is normalized… we will just sit there and watch as affirmative action and such cheats people. we are too numb to fight.. we don’t want to get waked by the capo… who wants to fight their own mates (other than women)? We don’t stick up for the victims… any more than someone in a camp could… who gives those poor men who lose life, career, and so on, for the good of women, society, and the future a reward? Then again, you don’t reward someone for what your entitled to take, do you? You don’t even thank them or pay them, compensate them, etc.

Apathy, the blunting of the emotions and the feeling that one could not care any more, were the symptoms arising during the second stage of the prisoner’s psychological reactions, and which
eventually made him insensitive to daily and hourly beatings. By means of this insensibility the
prisoner soon surrounded himself with a very necessary protective shell.

-=-=-=-=-=-

Apathy, the main symptom of the second phase, was a necessary mechanism of self-defence. Reality
dimmed, and all efforts and all emotions were cantered on one task: preserving one’s own life and
that of the other fellow.

-=-=-=-=-=-

It can be readily understood that such a state of strain, coupled with the constant necessity of
concentrating on the task of staying alive, forced the prisoner’s inner life down to a primitive level.
Several of my colleagues in camp who were trained in psychoanalysis often spoke of a “regression”
in the camp inmate–a retreat to a more primitive form of mental life. His wishes and desires
became obvious in his dreams.

you can see similar in our lives in our society… these repressions and rules not based in biology or sense, and subject us to what we don’t want… do the same thing, but not so acutely as we are not starved while its practiced on us, and its not as brutal, but it is as unending and sure, as any opposition, the capo wacks you.

VAE VICTUS

But my mind clung to my wife’s image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look was then more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise. A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth –that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way–an honourable way– in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfilment. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, “The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation
of an infinite glory.”

and what if ideology takes that away before the bad this time, rather than after?

NEO Sometimes I think that people get used to almost anything.

And so… as neo wakes up a bit more every day as it’s a process not a switch, she starts to say the same things as others who woke up and knew.

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, Dostoevsky, Viktor E. Frankl

Man’s Search for Meaning
AN INTRODUCTION TO LOGOTHERAPY
Viktor E. Frankl
http://drmichaelharris.com/_mgmt_share/Man%27sSearchforMeaning.pdf

this so you know where he was…

There were many similar surprises in store for new arrivals. The medical men among us learned first of all: “Textbooks tell lies!” Somewhere it is said that man cannot exist without sleep for more than a stated number of hours. Quite wrong! I had been convinced that there were certain things I just could not do: I could not sleep without this or I could not live with that or the other. The first night in Auschwitz we slept in beds which were constructed in tiers. On each tier (measuring about six-and-ahalf to eight feet) slept nine men, directly on the boards. Two blankets were shared by each nine men. We could, of course, lie only on our sides, crowded and huddled against each other, which had some advantages because of the bitter cold. Though it was forbidden to take shoes up to the bunks, some people did use them secretly as pillows in spite of the fact that they were caked with mud. Otherwise one’s head had to rest on the crook of an almost dislocated arm. And yet sleep came and brought oblivion and relief from pain for a few hours.

I would like to mention a few similar surprises on how much we could endure: we were unable to clean our teeth, and yet, in spite of that and a severe vitamin deficiency, we had healthier gums than ever before. We had to wear the same shirts for half a year, until they had lost all appearance of being shirts. For days we were unable to wash, even partially, because of frozen water-pipes, and yet the sores and abrasions on hands which were dirty from work in the soil did not suppurate (that is, unless there was frostbite). Or for instance, a light sleeper, who used to be disturbed by the slightest noise in the next room, now found himself lying pressed against a comrade who snored loudly a few inches from his ear and yet slept quite soundly through the noise.

this is what he learned… (next paragraph on the page)

If someone now asked of us the truth of Dostoevsky’s statement that flatly defines man as a being who can get used to anything, we would reply, “Yes, a man can get used to anything, but do not ask us how.” But our psychological investigations have not taken us that far yet; neither had we
prisoners reached that point. We were still in the first phase of our psychological reactions.

If one can get used to that, can a society get used to something that at the individual level seems great, but in the aggregate means destruction? It would be very hard for the individuals benefiting to sacrifice that, for the good of the whole. No? now what if they were told that the individual level false benefit WAS good for the whole?

How could you stop something like that?

Does liberation from biological requirements seem good for the individual taught that it is?
Can they see the decline, destruction, genocide, etc… that comes from it?
Are they too selfish to give up free rubbers to save society?
Are they too selfish to give up some gew gaws and such,
to insure there are children to carry on tomorrow tomorrow?

Nah… you can get used to anything, even poison…

Ever notice how much insecticide people like to purposefully ingest and pay for to get in concentrated form?

Nicotine – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotine

By the late 17th century, it was used not only for smoking but also as an insecticide. After World War II, over 2,500 tons of nicotine insecticide (waste from the tobacco industry) were used worldwide, but by the 1980s the use of nicotine insecticide had declined below 200 tons. This was due to the availability of other insecticides that are cheaper and less harmful to mammals.

Now… do you think we can get rid of the social equivalent? I don’t, because I don’t see anyone with any desire to actually take up the full discussion, the full damage, the ticks and tocks and any analysis that is not endlessly debated as a form of critical theory.

After all, to debate, use rhetoric, logic, analysis, and facts… that’s critical thinking
To debate as if all ideas are the same value, not compete so there are no winners, and endlessly talk with no resolution… that’s critical theory a Marxist means of getting everyone to spin their wheels but think or believe they are doing a productive job. (never asking why work was so entertaining).

“There are things which must cause you to lose your reason or you have none to lose.” – Lessing

An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behaviour. Even
we psychiatrists expect the reactions of a man to an abnormal situation, such as being committed to
an asylum, to be abnormal in proportion to the degree of his normality. The reaction of a man to his
admission to a concentration camp also represents an abnormal state of mind, but judged
objectively it is a normal and, as will be shown later, typical reaction to the given circumstances.
These reactions, as I have described them, began to change in a few days. The prisoner passed from
the first to the second phase; the phase of relative apathy, in which he achieved a kind of emotional
death.

Why is everyone so fat? For the same reason soviets were so drunk…

Why does everyone want to bathe in some form of entertainment pleasure like a rat pressing a lever and not with some sense of balance and limits so that its actually enjoyable, and not a motion act that is habit and unfulfilling (and so one hits the lever again)

Because they are acting normal in abnormal situations in which they think the situation is normal, and so rather than change it, they try to cope with it. As they have no will to change a situation, they find normal… [it becomes more understandable if you apply this to the khmer rouge children murderers of the killing fields, and then see it’s the same thing for those here except not machine guns and fields, but courts and living rooms]

This much:

(Here’s the money quote):

A large majority of likely voters [79%] believes all Americans should pay some federal income tax — even if it is as little as one percent of what they make.

Read more:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/09/27/fox-news-poll-7-percent-say-all-americans-should-pay-income-taxes/

So, economically speaking (since this is a thread about the economy) just what does this say about the American experience and American’s tolerance for fellow citizens perpetually on the dole?

Just because we are not hearing about high gasoline prices and rising food prices in the Obamedia does not mean that people aren’t taking notice.

It’s interesting that the economy is still not the main headline in mainstream media. It’s always what some politician said by accident, what they are eating that day or some murder in California or dog lost in Colorado.

Thanks for keeping the issue of the economy on the Internet.