You know you are a Philistine when...

[anaxarchos]

You know you are a Philistine (and a complete tool of the ruling class) when you think that voters - the great mass of people - are stupid (ignorant, apathetic, uninformed, uninterested, "vote against their own interests", etc.) AND at the same time, you think that politics are the same as electoral politics. If people are stupid, then politics consists primarily of education, organization, and mobilization. The essence of mass politics, electoral or otherwise, must be to counteract those forces which work against the political consciousness of working people... starting with a clear understanding of what those forces are.

If you think that is too difficult, then you don't believe in either the people or in democracy. Your soul bleeds for some shit that never existed or for a product of your own fevered imagination. If the people cannot organize themselves, there can be no democracy. Conversely, if you face a circumstance where that seems impossible - despite the existence of "democracy" - then it ain't no kinda democracy. That sets out the task.

If you find your Philistine self constantly sucked into elections for political tendencies who you only marginally support or from fear of the victory of those who are "even worse", if you are doing the best you can with a "stupid electorate", a lying media, or corrupt political parties, and if your political efforts have no correlation whatever to what you actually believe, haven't you proven the case for those you want to call apathetic and uninterested?

Who is it who is really "stupid"?

[anaxarchos]

You know you are a Philistine when you are constantly bedeviled by conspiracies, cabals, sell-outs, disappointments, human nature and corruptions of all types.

Oh, those things certainly exist. More, they are ever-present. But when those deviations on what you take to be the norm are the dominant forms of what you face, in every segment of society, on every issue, in every case, for decades at a time... then those things which you claim to hate ARE the norm. They are what is called "the System".

If you find yourself, decade after decade, "fighting" to eliminate those impurities from the system, then you are most certainly a Philistine.

You might as well set yourself the task of removing the water from the ocean.

[Kid of the Black Hole]

But when those variations on what you take to be the norm are the dominant forms of what you face, in every segment of society, on every issue, in every case, for decades at a time... then those things which you claim to hate ARE the norm.

Tiny nitpick (I think) but do you mean "deviations from the norm" rather than "variations"?

[anaxarchos]

Tiny nitpick (I think) but do you mean "deviations from the norm" rather than "variations"?

Ha... you know you are a... when you fix grammar, etc.

Thanks, fixed.

[anaxarchos]

You know you are a Philistine when you insist on attaching an adjective to the word "Capitalism", as in "Crony Capitalism", "Financial Capitalism", "Disaster Capitalism", "Shock Capitalism", "Unregulated Capitalism", Private-Equity Capitalism, or that old standby, "Greedy Capitalism". It is Capitalism, pure and simple, and there can be no confusion. What we see is what it is.

Perhaps there was slightly more justification for this jive two decades ago. Today, there is no possibility of a debate. The End of Ideology has itself ended. Instead of bringing "stability" to the world, capitalism has brought depression and fragmentation. Instead of bringing democracy and prosperity to the world, it has wrecked local societies where they hung on by a fingernail. No extended criticism is needed because criticism itself - social, political, and economic - has become a criticism of capitalism.

It has been this way for a long time. In the 19th century, capitalism was that which ripped small holders from the land, chained children to machinery, and pushed entire populations, on threat of extinction, across the surface of the earth. In the first part of the 20th century, Capitalism was synonymous with War and Fascism. Imperialism? Colonialism? Famine? Genocide? All the faces of Capitalism...

They told you that Capitalism changed? They lied.

If you hang your hat on reforming Capitalism, believe that your "freedoms" depend on the continuation of Capitalism, or think that Capitalism is "still preferable to everything else", all it means is that your turn hasn't come yet...

...and you know that you are a Philistine.

[Dhalgren]

If you hang your hat on reforming Capitalism, believe that your "freedoms" depend on the continuation of Capitalism, or think that Capitalism is "still preferable to everything else", all it means is that your turn hasn't come yet...

This is the kind of thing you get from the "enlighten" folks. I hear this shit all the time. Not from regular working folks who I work with every day, but from those who are somehow "elevated", by their "educations". Makes me sick.

[Kid of the Black Hole]

Ha... you know you are a... when you fix grammar, etc.

Thanks, fixed.

Haha, yes I know what I am. I only made the suggestion because it took me a couple takes to realize what the sentence was doing.

[blindpig]

You know you are a Philistine when you refuse to peel that old "Kucinich for President" sticker off your bumper.

[Dhalgren]

You know you are a Philistine when you refuse to peel that old "Kucinich for President" sticker off your bumper.

Or you put it there in the first place...

[blindpig]

You know you are a Philistine when you support the President because you hope that he will 'turn to the left' after being re-elected.

[Dhalgren]

You know you are a philistine when Republicans = fascists.

[blindpig]

You know you are a philistine when Republicans = fascists.

Do ya mean if ya wrote something like this?

What does this history have to do with what is going on today—or with the issue of affirmative action? The broad left of which we are a part, all segments of the labor movement, are gearing up for a crucial election in which the Republican Right is seeking to regain the presidency and strengthen its power in Congress. We are all in the thicket of the forest, striking at Romney’s and Ryan’s lies, phoning and walking as human truth squads against the National Republican Party.

http://www.thebellforum.com/showthread.php?t=83073

It might be fair to ask where are the 'human truth squads' striking at the Democrat's lies, lies which the Republicans will not call them on because they are so much like their's.

[brother cakes]

you might be a philistine... if you think access to information is democracy's historical mission.

[Kid of the Black Hole]

It might be fair to ask where are the 'human truth squads' striking at the Democrat's lies, lies which the Republicans will not call them on because they are so much like their's.

A friend showed me a Michelle Malkin column reacting (how very fitting) to the sparring over Big Bird. She pointed out that Seasame Street is a hot commercial property with or without public funding and that Big Bird himself is a corporate political entity. All I could think was that the true believers will surely fall over backwards trying to "refute".

The truth is that people's fondness for Seasame Street is not directly tied to government funding but rather an actual belief in the charter when it talks about reaching families of all means and not only those who can afford it. They wanna force the Seasame CEO to make his bones in the private sector? I'm sure no one cares about that. I'm sure not many people would miss Elmo being a mouthpiece for Democrat initiatives either. It is also quite likely that most people are aware that the money saved promises to be inconsequential on the scale we are talking about.

But what everybody knows above all else is that this isn't about taking the money or politics out of children's TV. Its actually a canned hunt for a bunch of pols who figure even yellow bird meat probably still tastes like chicken. Of course, the Dem alternative amounts to sticking BB in the zoo and trotting him out every so often for publicity value (and maybe campaign stops if Bill Clinton is too busy)

[Kid of the Black Hole]

you might be a philistine... if you think access to information is democracy's historical mission.

thats a good one

[blindpig]

They gotta eat the bird cause Obama don't give'm no beef. There is a good reason for the Republicans to hate Obama but it is only mentioned behind closed doors, they have no real policy disagreements with him. He's a bloody handed warmonger, he kisses bank ass, he protected the worst polluter in history, what's there for them not to like? So they gotta nitpick, make up shit, try to flog the Libyan consulate(so-called) thing to life and dog-whistle their racist minions. Dunno if Mitt can flank to the left again, even though they'll do anything to win I don't know if he can do it again without bursting out laughing. They got nothing and Obama is their leader, he's just got the wrong letter behind his name.

[blindpig]

And then there is this:

http://www.thebellforum.com/showthread.php?t=83086

Not a dime's worth of difference.

[blindpig]

You know you're a Philistine if you think Obama scored a slam dunk on the 'Libya' question.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021565669

Please correct me if I'm wrong but I recall various contradictory statements coming from the Administration and State in the immediate aftermath. Yes, Obama said that but his flaks also said different things in the same window. Seems like the moderator might have mentioned that instead of just slamming Mitt to the floor. Whose side was she on?

[blindpig]

The Old Man concerning philistines:

It is true that the old world belongs to the philistine. But one should not treat the latter as a bugbear from which to recoil in fear. On the contrary, we ought to keep an eye on him. It is worth while to study this lord of the world.

He is lord of the world, of course, only because he fills it with his society as maggots do a corpse. Therefore the society of these lords needs no more than a number of slaves, and the owners of these slaves do not need to be free. Although, as being owners of land and people, they are called lords, in the sense of being pre-eminent, for all that they are no less philistines than their servants.

As for human beings, that would imply thinking beings, free men, republicans. The philistines do not want to be either of these. What then remains for them to be and to desire?

What they want is to live and reproduce themselves (and no one, says Goethe, achieves anything more), and that the animal also wants; at most a German politician would add: Man, however, knows that he wants this, and the German is so prudent as not to want anything more.

The self-confidence of the human being, freedom, has first of all to be aroused again in the hearts of these people. Only this feeling, which vanished from the world with the Greeks, and under Christianity disappeared into the blue mist of the heavens, can again transform society into a community of human beings united for their highest aims, into a democratic state.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx...ters/43_05.htm

[Dhalgren]

The self-confidence of the human being, freedom, has first of all to be aroused again in the hearts of these people. Only this feeling, which vanished from the world with the Greeks, and under Christianity disappeared into the blue mist of the heavens, can again transform society into a community of human beings united for their highest aims, into a democratic state.

How could anyone, philistine or no, argue with that?