mj article

Paul Henry Rosenberg rad at gte.net
Sat Sep 5 09:31:12 PDT 1998


Max Sawicky wrote:


> >
> > Not to mention that fact that most suffragettes were Prohibitionists as
> > well. It seems that many men went home and beat their wives after a good
> > night out with the boys. How come we don't hear more about this now? Have
> > we really gotten rid of spousal abuse? Alcoholism?
>
> These last are discussed quite a bit, including
> research efforts, on the FEMECON-L and WELFAREM-L
> mailing lists.

Quite a while ago, Barbara Ehrenreich made the point that women at the time didn't have the option of mounting a campaign again the institution marriage from a position of the moral high ground, even though that was the root cause of their suffering.

She used that example from the past to illuminate popular support for the war on drugs -- what's really got people trapped, she argued, is compulsory consumerism, the addiction to which is CENTRAL ENGINE of the whole system. It's certainly not okay to question consumerism in general, but the powerlessness of that position serves to fuel the passion of mass support for the drug war, which affords them the moral high ground that can't command if they attack compulsory consumerism as a whole.

-- Paul Rosenberg Reason and Democracy rad at gte.net

"Let's put the information BACK into the information age!"



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