The Brothers Karamazov

"Actually, people sometimes talk about man's 'bestial' cruelty, but that is being terribly unjust and offensive to the beasts..."
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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Monday, July 4, 2011

Are We Just Happy Campers or Tickled to Death?

Anticipating Disney, IMax, Nascar and Reality TV by decades, a very perceptive New England wife and mother observed the following:

"Wherever there is a class that is to be made content to be plundered of its rights, there is an abundance of fiddling and dancing, and amusements, public and private, are in great requisition. It may also be set down, I think, as a general axiom, that people feel the need of amusements less and less, precisely in proportion as they have solid reasons for being happy."
...Harriet Beecher Stowe. 'Oldtown Folks' 1869

But in America today our rights are not being plundered as much as they are dribbled away or signed away, almost daily. Every Presidential diktat and Court decision seemingly adulterates or reverses values which were hard earned and once considered sacred by dint of having been fought and bled for in the past. The ceaseless erosion of our "unique in all the world" tenet is scarcely noticed by Americans who are in a relentless quest for diversion at any cost.

The latter is provided us pell-mell by a media so enamored of fame,power and earnings that it is wed to the establishment and daily utter hosannas. A wholly corporatist amalgam that echoes resoundingly from on high. Every new arrival in modern communications is sooner or later co-opted by government decree or corporate fiat. When done in this fashion over generations, it becomes a snap to go to war without permission; cast half the population into penury and spy on fellow citizens at will, without raising a whimper.

While the nineteenth century to us may be quaint and stodgy seeming, and fiddling and dancing seem tame amusements; the analogy is apt. Mrs. Stowe's general axiom regarding the search for amusement taking the place of happiness is O so telling in our world. What would that brilliant, perceptive Yankee author make of Prozac, Viagra, 3-D and Brazilian Body Waxing our, somewhat less than solid, attempts at being happy? Or would she understand intuitively that one manifestation of unhappiness does, indeed, lead to increasingly bizarre others?
Would she then, with wisdom and kindness, offer her sympathy and hope we would soon see the true cost of rights plundered and liberty in default?

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Quoth the Raving

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Veni,Vedi,Vici

Julius Caesar



Veni,Vedi,Vici...Sidi ( I stuck around )

Uncle Sam


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....Zero Gravitas


Quoth the Raving


All I know, all any of us know, is what we're told.

...Zero Gravitas

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Quoth the Raving

If it walks like a depression, talks like a depression, and looks like a depression; it's a recovery.

...Zero Gravitas

Nice paint job

Nice paint job
Watch your step!

Quoth the Raving


WHY IS THAT?
Full scale War in Korea; we called it a Police Action
Police Action in Iraq; we call it a War.

...Zero Gravitas

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Gene Pool?

Gene Pool?
by failblog.org

Quoth the Raving


Ecology is an impending Black Swan quagmire therefore incorporation is anathema to Economists.

...Zero Gravitas

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Quoth the Raving


An incoming US President who does not immediately resign his office after having received eyes-only briefings of what's really going on is hopelessly co-opted or delusional.
....Zero Gravitas

Quoth the Raving

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We are now a nation of middlemen. What becomes of us if the center cannot hold?

....Zero Gravitas
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Quoth the Raving

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Why not use some of the red ink to make things Green?

....Zero Gravitas
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"Ashes to Ashes"

"Ashes to Ashes"
Whoa!