patrick.net

If Jesus may come at any minute, then the unfairness making the middle class and the poor give their money to the rich doesn't matter. So fundamentalist Christianity has a bad effect on society in that way. "Faith" also helps practice the supression of critical thought. Makes it a virtue to stop thinking and stop asking questions!

But nonetheless, I think there is an old populist strain of thought in the US that could be revived. There is some intersection between the anger of the Tea Party and the anger of OWS.

Maybe it just has to be clearly defined. Though there are highly paid PR firms that know psychology very well, and work incessantly to divide and rule. There were reports of how they were paid to spin OWS in the media as lazy, smelly, irresponsible indebted hippies, and it worked. Some of that spin stuck, and helped discredit OWS.

I don't want to debate the pros/cons of either "culture." That's been vigorously debated in other threads.

I just want people to wake up and realize that we're returning to a de-facto aristocracy/plutocracy. Abortion and gay marriage aren't going to matter much if we're all slaves toiling for the benefit of a permanent ruling class.

Thank you for all of your efforts in waking me up to this issue!

I first stumbled on Patrick.net during the housing crash and bailouts. That's when I realized something was fundamentally wrong with the country.

You're right, I was immediately getting sucked in to the differences.

OK, what we need is a common vision of the future, one where we're not merely slaves to the plutocracy.

But how do you define a vision like that?

I like Germany as an economic and social model, but just saying "Germany" is not very inspiring.

That's a good question. I suppose trying to find common ground...any common ground between the "two sides."

Maybe this cartoon illustrates some common ground?

And this one: