“[*Chapter 16 text begins:*] In the last sixty years, Americans have experienced unprecedented changes in their lives, their lifestyles, in what it means to be alive & human in America in these times.”
“Rarely have societies experienced this kind of change. What is even more astounding is the way the changes send us shooting dramatically in one way & then in the other direction.”
“I said that social change that’s either reinforced or carried forward, or even initiated, by something like music or something that affects your feelings, can be greater & longer lasting.”
“I mentioned these emotional influences reach more deeply into people bc feelings exist at a deeper level of the brain undergirding words, thought, or even reason.
“Finally, keep in mind this is titled the rise & *fall* of “obvious truths.””
“So I’m gonna start looking over what has transpired so far. I said at the beginning there was a title, one that pointed to the power & grandeur of these social movements.”
“I wrote at the time that if the title’s claim—casting ordinary folks, along with revolutionary art, as the instigators of grand movements...the people of the Sixties & the music of bands like the Beatles, e.g.—sounds silly or trite to you…”
“…[if ordinary folks & revolutionary art as instigators of grand movements sounds silly or trite to you] that you are operating out of social prejudices we all carry from childhood, like most people do, particularly around status.”
“For example, we assume artists & musicians can’t affect anything. They more often arise from non-affluent beginnings; we have the term, *starving artist*, for example. Their power in society is considered to be as minimal as their finances.”
“Yet, this is not true—that is what I’m getting at. For, has the power of people been created with money, solely? Well, I think there’s a tendency to think it has.”
“The Beatles affected us in such a great way that we were changed forever, & society’s traditional momentum in a direction benefiting its moneyed royalty was stopped & even reversed.”
“Their music & that of those like them changed the world in terms of the way we saw peace. The way we saw love. The way we saw drugs. The way we saw tolerance of other people...the way we looked at other people.”
“…we do have these preconceptions about status & money that affects what we think is more important or powerful. It affects what we think of as “real” & “real world” vs what is considered silly or superfluous...“flaky”...“kumbaya.””
“I was talking earlier about how, these days, it seems only people w money have power. Everybody knows that & assumes it can only be that way. This is so bc many people today have not had the experience of seeing it being different from that.”
“It was a grand & sweeping movement because people got a chance, for the first time in a long time, to see that ordinary folks getting together could effect massive change...without the power of gobs of money.”
“We can recall how [Obama’s] campaign was largely done over Internet & w small contributions. Ppl could feel again,some for the first time,they had the power in thr passion & numbers to throw off the shackles of the Filthy Rich. Unbelievable.”
“*Creating an America That Is Not: Stolen Elections, Complacent Electorate*
“Obama’s success was astounding, yet look what it took! Remember what had to happen b4 a Democrat, Obama,& the first African-American ever, could win the presidency.”
“[Obama’s victory] only came about after a long time of national suffering, disgrace, war, loss of life, incompetence, cronyism, scandal, atrocity, erosion of rights, squandering of money, tragedy, & more.”
“All that, & much more, treason, was repeated when Trump got into office & was allowed his time as the bull in the china shop during the 4 years before Biden was put into the presidency to fix his mess.”
“Even putting aside the intimidation of Black voters in Florida & similar unfair & illegal practices perpetrated by Republicans, we still have the fact that Bush was *given* the presidency by a decision of the Supreme Court.”
“Our history records how vote counting was stopped before the outcome could be determined; the Supreme Court decided on a winner, Bush; & subsequently the vote tally came out that Gore had actually *won* the presidency!”
“The facts of Bush’s 2nd election are less well known; in fact they are more assiduously covered up. Still,in the vote tally against Kerry in the presidential election of 2004 it should not have even been close...but for more obscure reasons.”
“There is plenty of documented public evidence that the electronic voting machines were fixed, making the outcome fraudulent. The machines were owned by Diebold Corporation, a firm solidly in the Republican camp.”
“The head of the [Diebold] company actually promised the Republicans, before the election, he was going to get Bush elected. I mean, seriously. Isn’t that pretty much an admission the voting machines were going to be fixed?”
“It was confirmed, to some extent even *prior* to the election, that even a person walking by with an iPhone or something similar could hack into these electronic voting machines & change the votes.”
“That is, if they had the correct access information. & the only ones who had that & therefore could decide the vote tally were the Diebold Corporation in league with the Republicans. Is it any wonder Bush “won”?”
“Now, is this not the kind of thing that in the past would have brought ppl out into the streets? The complacency of Americans around that time—the 1st decade of the Millennium—was noted by Helen Caldicott, famed nuclear activist & physician.”
“In 2011, [Helen Caldicott] compared our apathy in the face of dire happenings—such as Fukushima—to the parents who respond emotionless when she has to tell them their child has leukemia. She says, “Get mad. Get emotional.””
““It’s time you took your country back…. Use your bodies like they did in Wisconsin. Do a Tahrir Square here. Take back New York. Take back the Congress. Invade the Congress! Those people belong to you.”
“They are your representatives, & you are their leaders. But you’ve got to have some guts! & stop being so goddamn polite all the time! & don’t need approval. Step up to the plate….”
“So the 2 things of relevance in this example of the stolen 2004 election are that in previous times this would have brought people out into the streets, would have caused people to rise up in outrage against authority when it was found out.”
“This information on the 2004 stolen presidential election *did* come out; entire popular books were written describing how & that it was done. It came out in the broadcast media as well.”
“It is unlikely that you know that, however. That can only be because it wasn’t told enough in the media, that it was downplayed in the media, covered up,or the media directed your attention away from it. & that is the problem I’m getting at.”
“Even with a responsible media you have to have a citizenry that is open to this kind of information & able & willing to process it & draw conclusions from it. That is what I will be addressing now.”
“We all have irrational ideas magnifying the power of our oppressors, telling us to obey, to not question, to go along with that which others would have of us but which is not in our own interest & in fact brings suffering into our lives.”
“You have leisure time in which to do more than survive, to actually re-create, re-new yourself, & to grow in wisdom so you are not so blinkered by the blinders of the comfortable ignorance of grade-school propaganda…”
“…& other early conditionings, prejudices. So society benefits both through your productivity but also through the fact that you have leisure time to become a wiser social actor. You have this leisure time…
“So some things might occur to us that were different than what we originally thought...than our preconceived notions; we might actually change our mind about things if we thought about them.”
“I am not saying that was what everybody did all the time or anything like that. I am saying it could happen, & it happened more. So I’m saying a lot has changed.”
“Well, you don’t think we have less leisure time? If you are much younger than me, you probably don’t know. But I am old enough to know that I have never seen Americans so busy...so busy & so preoccupied.”
“Backing up, so imagine you or somebody like you is saying, “Ah, naw naw naw, musicians, ordinary folks, they can’t do anything; they’re not politicians, they’re not powerful, they’re not rich!””
“Okay? But this person or you may not have had occasion to actually pause your life...to step back from the twenty-four hour climbing down the ladder of your todo list to success. Y’know?
“Busy, busy all the time is now *required* for survival concerns. There was a time in which you might be really motivated...you’d see people that were really striving...trying hard to be a big success or something. But it wasn’t *required*.”
“*Forms Fill Up Free Time...“Fax It Over, I’ll Look at It”*
“There is also the increased paper load, the mountains of red tape, which is also filling up the supposed “free time” of the average American. Man! What the hell is with that!?”
“Now they can blame it on computers; they can say it’s because we have more information & they can store larger amounts of it electronically, & they can put more....”
“Aw, c’mon; it’s people deciding that you have to fill things out & that you have to get & give more & more & more & more information, this is a lot of time!”
“Did you ever buy a house? You sign that Sisyphean hill of documents? I can only just imagine the day when there was just a deed, signed over. I’m not *that* old.”
“So, with exorbitantly more paperwork, there’s less time for thought, less time to think. We’re busy, & we’re nervous. Why? We’ve got a lot of red tape, we’ve got a lot of things to do. We’re under stress….”
“And part of that paperwork...probably the *worst* part, if you’re like me, is due to the complex & contradictory tax codes. Part of the leisure time lost disappears into the black hole around tax forms.”
“Seriously, I am old enough to have seen taxes get more contradictory & complex over the years. In fact the tax codes are rather convoluted abominations twisting themselves to benefit corporate special interest,..”
“…with little or no rationale even presented to explain why these special interests should be benefited. & this sort of corporate special interest input into tax codes has just exploded over the years.”
“In previous times, such things as benefits to any special interest were usually presented to the legislature, & the public, in a particular way to justify them.”
“You can just imagine like, in some kind of bargaining session in Congress, they would say, “Well, if we provide a break here, that’ll result in benefits over in this sector....””
“Or they might say, “... & it benefits our economy as a whole, which will….” & they might add a few elements into the equation before the inevitable, “It’ll benefit the average American or be a boon to our society as a whole.””
“Yet over time, even this linking to common good was not necessary, so tax codes got exceedingly more convoluted & hopelessly contradictory, essentially lacking any reason. We all know that.”
“It’s a dead document, which would never, ever be able to be brought back to rational health, so riddled with myriad kinds of cancers which are special interest convolutions of its elements so that it would be impossible to excise them all.”
“You have probably all heard the story. You call up the tax adviser, you have a question about how to fill something out...how to do something. & you’ll ask one person & they’ll tell you one thing;”
“& then you call back & you get a different person & they’ll tell you something entirely different; then if you call again, somebody else will tell you something again...all different. Well, this is crazy-making.”
“And that crazy-making takes up your time; & it makes you worry more...and, well, it works itself into your time to ponder things, especially important things.”
“So, the tax code is hopelessly brain dead,& everyone knows it. Any former link to fairness, reasonableness, or coherency has been severed; it has become a coffin into which anything can be thrown & in which any corporate wish can be granted.”
I guarantee you. If Democrats don't win MASSIVELY the Ukraine war will not be limited there but we will be fighting Putin here, in a civil war, when the party that's working for him, Republicans, get power.
[*Chapter 17 text begins:*] “With corporations firmly backing Republicans, the Democrats in every election that I can recall—especially in the presidential elections—always were way underfunded.”
“*The Money Changing Everything—The Planting of Lies*
“Meanwhile the GOP is consistently overfunded because the Rich-publicans are carrying the wishes of those corporations into the board rooms of Congress along w their huge amounts of money.”
[*Quotes/highlights:*] “It’s just natural that if you don’t hear anything to counter something, you’re going to believe that the only thing being said is the truth.
“& that certainly has increased over time...through the years.” []
“[*Chapter 15 text begins:*] “The Rise & Fall of ‘Obvious Truths’” discusses the history of the American Republicans’ incredibly disciplined, relentlessly persistent, & amazingly cohesive, seemingly coordinated fifty-year campaign…”
“We delve more deeply into the Class War that has been behind the Culture War as laid out in Parts 1, 2, & 3. We see the 50-year invisible “family” revealed—the “community” that surrounded all Americans & affected every aspect of their lives..”
[*Quotes/highlights:*] “…what happened to our country? We were supposed to be a country that valued human life, for example, but is now valuing contract law over that.” []