On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 9:05 AM, John Gulick <john_gulick at hotmail.com>wrote:
>
> DH:
>
> >The "hard right" doesn't have to do all that much work to get this
> reaction.
> >Hatred of big gov is pretty instinctive American common sense.
>
> I agree entirely. That's why all this talk (not here) about the innocent
> public
> being putty in the hands of the healthco p.r. joints is so much hokum. But
> still,
> the think tanks and talking heads do pour some specific content into the
> generic
> anti-guv form.
>
Perhaps sadly, I am more of a mind that the non-innocent American public simply doesn't know its own mind... they're opposed to big government except for big military, big infrastructure, (most of) big science and big regulation/services they like and haven't a clue that this is the case... nor that the rest of the stuff they think is naturally provided them by "the free market" only exists, or is desirable, because of gov't standards/intervention...
At the same time, you are absolutely correct, there's only a little need for devious, conspiratorial and manipulative healthco pr because the foundation for this inability to begin to accurately understand their own conditions of life is laid early and layered often... my students' minds explode (and many then feel completely helpless) - and more than half of them close harder (rather than risk actually critically engaging their worlds/lives - when they are shown, without calling them names, all the stuff they like predicated on things they know they don't like...
In short, to me, its worse than conspiratorial healthco pr...