http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/61955/
By the way, Alternet is pretty much one of the only site where you can find this clip anymore...
"The real owners are the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians, they're an irrelevancy. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the statehouses, the city halls. They've got the judges in their back pockets. And they own all the big media companies, so that they control just about all of the news and information you hear. They've got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying  lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want; they want more for themselves and less for everybody else."
"But I'll tell you what they don't want. They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them. That's against their interests. They don't want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they're getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago.
"You know what they want? Obedient workers  people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork but just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And, now, they're coming for your Social Security. They want your fucking retirement money. They want it back, so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They'll get it. They'll get it all, sooner or later, because they own this fucking place. It's a big club, and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club."
"This country is finished."
George Carlin- "Owners Of This Country"
hhhh my god! He is hysterical. The sad part is it smacks of truth:)
ReplyDeleteBy Rae Ann McNeilly 04/09/2009 at 12:40:33 PM (PDT)
Zol, George Carlin, rest his soul, was rather famous for being a pain in the bum. Even on a good day, the majority of his views would qualify as being extremely left leaning, and to some extent almost paranoid.
ReplyDeleteI can laugh with you on this, but frankly find the views off kilter, and perhaps more entertaining than factual.
Hey Thomas, I agree with you that this is entertaining, but I would totally have to disagree with you about how it's not factual. Paranoia? There's good reason. He's spot on everything he talks about...from the failing education system that intentionally dumbs down society, to the corporate/government controlled media, to the real people in power that make all the important decisions. You're from Denmark, so I don't know how much you know about our school system here, but it's laughable. My parents are of Hungarian decent (I'm first generation) and they would seriously laugh at my history books. Winners write history! Period! The older I get, the more I notice that some of the history I learned here is fabricated BS that makes us look good. As I'm sure you know, kids in most civilized countries in Europe, on the average know more at a certain age than kids do here. They set the bar so much higher in school. I lived in Europe for 7 years and traveled all around the world, so I have a basis of comparison.
ReplyDeleteI wonder why we're not taught finance in our high schools here..That should be the most important subject. If we were taught how accruing interest works and the dangers of being irresponsible with your credit card or home equity line--in other words, if the American public was fiscally smart... how would of this financial meltdown been different? Would the banks profit so much if people were more educated financially? I don't think so..In this kind of crazed, banker run consumer society, that wouldn't work.
You know as well as I do that for the most part in Europe, mostly Central Europe, people don't have credit cards. Many people don't have mortgages. They buy things when they have the money and when they don't, they don't. Is that because of the education system? I'm not sure, but maybe...
You got to admit, there is some truth to what he talks about. There should be more comics out there like him and Bill Hicks, who have the balls to say what they say and be funny at the same time. I can see how people look at him like a nut, but I think even though he's trying to make us laugh, he's also planting the seed and trying to make us think. Which is very healthy for society. Boooooya!
They should teach philosophy in school and not finance. Or a subject called 'Philosophy of money' which would have an epistemological difference to the subject of economics. Maybe the current monetary system would be called into question then and not just the current interest rate.
ReplyDeleteAnother perspective:
ReplyDeleteThough public schools in America are not as good as schools in other parts of the world from middle school through high school, the universities are good. This brings the education of Americans back up to standard. In short, it is a wash. Elementary is about the same, middle/high school is bad here, and college is good.
My data comes from a friend/coworker from India who went to a prestigious colledge that was so competitive she basically had to do her first 2 years of college in high school to test high enough to be considered. She ranked 200 out of about 250 thousand.
There are many aspects to a subject as complicated as education, and its complexity is multiplied when comparing schools around the world.
There are many answers, and we are able to spin the data to suite our needs. Objectivity would be well served, here.
You're right on the money about the Universities here, they are very good...we get tons of foreigners coming here for their advanced schooling. Here is where the problem lies though.
ReplyDeleteFact: Around 50% of kids in high school do not graduate. If they don't graduate, how are they going to go to college? Ok, they can wake up and get a GED and then go, but what are the odds of that happening? I'm only guessing here, but usually these kids either get involved in crime and get institutionalized or they get some BS job a some fast food establishment and procreate. Why is it always the dumb people that pop out kids like there's no tomorrow? That's irrelevant, but the point of my ranting is that if we don't fix the foundation of the problem, then it will just fall like a house of cards...and before we know it (as Green Day says) we're gonna be an idiot America.