[lbo-talk] Re: Wojtek and America

[Dennis Perrin]

> Joanna, Dennis, et al.:
>
> The solutions that you mention, emigration or talking to jingoists at
> parties are utterly individualistic.  I tried both and learned that
> people are the same every way you go, in the sense that they are
> creatures of habit and opportunity they do what they and other hve been
> doing and they chgange their routines if they see an easy opportunity.
> You see that in Europe, the US, and elsewhere.  What is different,
> though, is social institutions that control individual behavior . . .


> . . . You can
> change people by changing their environement - but it will not happen
> here, at least not during our life time.  The only semi-radical reform
> this country experienced, the New Deal, has been dismantlend and
> reversed.  That tells volumes about the chances for any progressive
> social changes.


> Wojtek

Perhaps -- but a lot has changed in my lifetime, and you cannot have
institutional change without people altering or revising their outlooks,
which has happened and continues to happen. This isn't done overnight,
obviously, and it's achieved in a variety of ways, including one-on-one
encounters with jingoists at parties. Nine out of ten of them will probably
slip back into their comfortable mindset after exposure to something
radically different, but there will always be one, maybe more, who sees it's
not as frightening as Rush, O'Reilly and the others have led him or her to
believe, and that they have a stake in it. I've seen this personally. I know
it's there.

DP