Anniversary

[joanna bujes]

At 01:48 PM 09/19/2002 -0400, Yoshie wrote:
>The empire narrows the range of acceptable discourse and impoverishes
>the culture of the working class, with the result that, while
>information may be "out there," available for those who seek it, it
>just doesn't occur to most denizens of the empire to even look for
>it.  Why should it occur to American workers to seek out statistics
>of comparative wages, benefits, social programs, working hours, etc.
>of OECD nations, for instance, when they are daily told by the mass
>media that America is the greatest nation on earth, American workers
>have it best, etc., etc.?  More importantly, those who manage to
>discover such information and try to share it with others get
>penalized socially: propose a national health care, and you'll find
>yourself branded as a socialist in favor of forced collectivization,
>eager to deprive individuals of their freedom of choice, etc.  The
>hegemony of the ruling class ideas is stronger here than anywhere
>else.

Right on Yoshie. But, also, you leave out that access to information does 
not translate into the comprehension of that information. There's 
interpretation that needs to happen and many people in this country simply 
do not have the skills to make these interpretations. For example, many 
people think they are poor because they are stupid or lacking in some way, 
and absolutely everything they are exposed to in the mass media reinforces 
that feeling. Sometimes they go to school to learn and often, everything 
they are taught in school also reinforces that feeling.

Joanna