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MASS_DISAPPOINTMENT

                                            July 16, 2012


Quoting Scialabba, from                        SCIALABBA
"The Sealed Envelope":

   "... the masses have fairly consistently disappointed
   their well-wishers, including me.  Savage enthusiasm
   for the First World War among the supposedly gentle
   and kindly English people astonished and permanently
   embittered Russell, Shaw, and Lawrence.  Wittgenstein
   renounced his wealth and his career in order to teach
   children in rural Austria, only to conclude that
   peasants and children alike were as vile as Cambridge
   dons.  The failure of the European proletariat to
   become a revolutionary subject hurt Gramsci, Lukacs,
   and Adorno into magnificent Marxist poetry.  The
   American electorate's embrace of Ronald Regan and
   George Bush-- unaffected by almost daily news reports
   of procurement waste and fraud, failure to enforce
   environmental, occupational-safety, and
   consumer-protection regulations, the Executive
   Branch's continual usurpation of Congressional
   prerogative, the appointment of young and
   inexperienced and indeologically congenial judges, and
   plenty of straight forward sleaze-- has all but broken
   my own heart."



   "... what to make of the typical great gulf between the
   people's vision, or lack of vision, and our own."



       And this is one aspect of the
       old problem of egalitarianism
       vs elitism: None of us have
       anything better in mind than          For Scilabba, Utopia must be
       democracy, and yet The People         voluntarily chosen by all, but
       are so astoundingly, obviously        the idea that the general run
       dumb...                               of humanity is ever going to be
                                             capable of this wisdom seems
                                             like a slim hope.



       It's fashionable these days to       CITIZEN_SLACK
       make excuses for them-- they're
       not exactly stupid, just busy
       and distracted, everyone is
       struggling to get along, raise
       families, etc.  You can't                      Almost half of them
       expect them to be policy                       vote for some of the
       experts or some such.                          worst political
                                                      candidates the modern
           I'm afraid that smells                     world has developed.
           of public relations to                     Current poling shows
           me.  Honestly, don't                       them ready to hand over
           you know in your heart                     the Senate to the
           that the great American                    Republicans... But
           Majority are pretty                        hasn't the GOP been
           damn stupid?  To quote                     doing enough damage
           "American Splendor":                       just abusing the
           "Average is dumb."                         filibuster?  How can
                                                      you *not know* what's
           And I have my doubts that                  been going on?
           the dumb are so dumb they
           don't know it.


                                     UNDERTHINK


                                                     (September 11, 2012)


This is the real conundrum,
the sort of thing I have            DEATH_OF_THE_REPUBLIC
trouble with in bleak moments,
of which I have many:

    Aren't they all too damn stupid?
    Not just mis-informed, not just               DEGENERATE_TRIANGLE
    ignorant, not just distracted,
    but willfully dumb-- running from
    anything that might wake them           (sleep runners?)
    up, turning down any opportunity
    to confront a hard problem.

      "We the people", but these are
      not my people-- how am I supposed
      to work with them?  If these are the
      raw materials, what kind of world
      are we ever going to build with them?




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