> It's interesting how much misreading - deliberate?- there has been of
> Chomsky's "imcomparably more civilized" comment and of anyone who agreed
> with it.
I don't understand this, are you replying to a specific post, this general sweep of 'no one' implied this or that without a specific reference leaves me bewidered. I'm a working class member of the general population by the way.
DH: You've said the country is more civilized than it was 40 years ago. What do you mean by that?
did Doug say "certain segments of the country" ? is country an inclusive or exclusive term ? Isn't country 'the Place' as a whole ?
NC: Incomparably more civilized. Things we take for granted now didn't exist 40 years ago
did our hero say "wait a minute doug, I don't mean the whole country, just bits of it" ? No, he dived in enthusiastically 'incomparably more civilised', not just bloody good show, top effort but yesterday does not compare to how civilised we are today, if you thought we were civilised forty years ago, well, that is _nothing_ compared to how civilised we are today!
.
Ah the qualifier !
:But among the general population, it's correct to say
that the level of civilization is much higher things that would have
seemed perfectly appropriate then are outlandish now
the general population !
I guess that's why 'There has been a dramatic increase in the construction
of state and federal prisons in the United States, from 592 in 1974 to 1,023
in 2000'
'It is worth repeating that there are more young Black men between the ages
of 20 and 29 in prison than in college today. (Justice Policy Institute,
2002)
More and more states are removing the right of an ex-con to vote, the
greatest increase to the prison population has been in _non violent_ drug
offenders. The purging of votes in Florida ,now an example for future voting
fraud.
the United States has the highest prison population in the world
686/100,000, the rate in Canada is 102/100,000,
mexico 156/100,000
Feminism, you can go out to work and earn less, the use of illegal immigrant
child minders has certainly freed up our mothers to go to work but who minds
the child minders kids.
Actually I'm getting pretty fucking angry now .
> Inequality between different educational cohorts has hugely increased. The
labor force participation rate, 78.4 percent for college graduates in
December 2003, is 63.8 percent for high school graduates without college,
and a mere 44.6 percent for those without a high school diploma.
real wages for the working poor have plummeted where they haven't stagnated.
Quote from LBO 'Note that the decline in real earnings - which ran with
little interruption from 1973 through 1995 - was unprecedented in U.S.
history
Go and live like a worker for a few years, get up at five in the morning to
get the bus to work for less than minimum wage, where a sick day is classed
as unauthorised absence, termination is at will.
Incomparably more civilised ? Protest ? how many of these people have the
time to protest ? to go to the library and read a book or newspaper ? Where
the fuck is this guy Chomsky's head. The general population has been
subdued, beaten into submission, struggling to make ends meet. Get into
difficulties, can't pay off your credit card, penalties and usurous
interest, oh yes, incomparably more civilised, we must have been knuckle
dragging feotus eaters in the fifties.
but hey, we can watch programs about gays on the television now, what a great leap forward.
so you protested Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, big fucking deal, in case you didn't notice, the same people involved in those atrocities are still running the government, what did your protest do !!!!! As far as I can see allowing you to protest is the government's safety valve, let's you think your doing something, and you can think up ways to deal with the police brutality, a distraction whilst the government gets on with doing what the hell it wants. The general population isn't civilised it's fucking domesticated, and the left intellectuals are the house n-words.
> I'd urge anyone else planning to make any more comments on the "civilized"
> thread to re-read the passage in the Chomsky interview first.
>
include yourself
> To clarify:
>
> 1) No one - Chomsky or anybody on the list - implied the war was
civilized.
so what's your point ? I said that any nation incomparably more civilised than forty years ago wouldn't have waged such a war. To attack another nation that has been decimated by sanctions and has an innefective defense is less than uncivilised , it's criminal. The people of this country supported the war, the general population that is incomparably more civilised !
>
> 2) No one implied the US or its government was civilized enough, or as
> civilized as we'd like it to be.
so what's your point !?
>
> 3) No one said the US was "the most civilized nation" or more civilized
than
> other nations. The contention was that the US was more civilized than it
had
> been in the *past.*
if 'no one' said it what is your point ?
>
> 4) It is kind of OBVIOUS that neither Noam Chomsky nor anyone who posts
> regularly to a left listserv would agree with points 1-3. It's also kind
of
> obvious that NC does not hold some racist idea of what a civilization is.
I can only comment on 'incomparably more civilised' and this god of yours
has his head up his ass.
>
> 5) Chomsky - and those of us inclined to agree with him - never said
> progress was automatic or inevitable. His point was that social movements
in
> this country had had some success in improving the place.
for a very limited and priveleged few.
>
> Finally, I think it's actually an crucial question, how the US is both
more
> civilized than it used to be, and how it is not, because the question is
> really about how has the left succeeded, and how have we failed. We have
> failed to create a world in which workers and citizens have more power
than
> capital - quite the reverse, because capital is in fact more powerful than
> it used to be. The working class has gotten much weaker. In that sense,
the
> US is much less civilized and more profoundly barbaric than 40 years ago.
> That's something I and many (perhaps most) people on this list spend much
> of our time trying to figure out how to change.
you know full well that standing outside the system throwing rocks is not
going to bring it down and that is what you are doing with your protest and
pamphlets. We need people within the sytem , the system needs to be bent to
our will.
>
> But in the ways that Chomsky and others were talking about -- the position
> of women,
you have the vote and lower pay, attitudes to domestic abuse are changing
but basically the position of the woman has deteriorated as along with the
general population.
>tolerance for sexual diversity,
once again in the general population lauded by Chomsky toleration has changed little, Will and Grace is a comedy.
> less Jim Crow-type racism,
crock of shit, we've exchanged lynching for incarceration, 1 in 4 African Americans will serve prison time.with unemployment rates greater than the general population things are not getting better. You can point to a few success stories but they are the exception.
>more
> awareness of human rights, more people more easily mobilized to fight for
> social justice and protest the government,
where exactly are these hordes ?
> the way parents (especially
> fathers) relate to their kids,
when more children under the age of eighteen live with their mother only, with a very very small percentage living with the father only, than live with two parents I find your statement lacks credibility. Unless of course we are reffering to white middle class fathers, but then fewer of them fall foul of the penal system.
> That took lot of work, and the people
> responsible deserve a lot of credit. Those things are not easily
dismissed,
> and they affect the everyday existence of almost everybody who lives in
the
> US. If we didn't have such victories to point to, to show that social
> movements do change things, why would we join them?
it's called pissing on fires.as Chum Chomsky says " They haven't carried out institutional change, but they've changed the culture and the moral level of the society very significantly.
which I can agree with but it only takes one election to roll back advances.
>Better to accept the way
> things are and help individuals (volunteer in soup kitchens) or get on
> America's good side (become as obscenely rich as possible).
>
Clem Attlee worked with the poor as a young man, it was this experience that
drove him to government and develop the welfare state, just think of his
accomplishment if he had decided to protest the condition of the poor
instead of trying to physically change it. You can take the outdated model
of revolt and wait for the singular looney to lead you , stand around in the
cold and protest, or get inside government and change from within.
Gary? ride si sapis