The greatest offense against our society these days is not any one law or a particular assault on our freedoms. Rather, it is the persistent, insidious effort by those who shape our culture to reduce the American citizenry to idiots. From corporate advertisers to political sermonizers, from boards of education to the entertainment programmers, their goal is idiocy. By “idiots,”… return to article
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Reader Comments (31)Page 1 of 1 pagesHightower’s written a powerful book, one that not only offers valid criticism but also provides possible solutions and a resouce guide as an appendix.
Posted by Jake on Sep 3, 2003 at 5:07 PM Heard your stirring oration on WBAI 99.5 FM, New York, Jim. To see your article above here in inthesetimes.com, where I’ve been trying to express some of the spirit of you so eloquently encapsulated here...in the the ongoing Michael Moore commentary part of this website truly lifts my heart. For in that place one can distinguish without equivocation the mindset and cowardice you refer to by the quick perusal of the demented, idiotic twaddle therein blatantly displayed in all it’s shameful ignomy. I haven’t read your book yet but I’m intuitively certain it’s revelations will no doubt be in full agreement with the views about the diseased nature of our society, especially beginning with the Kennedy assassination. So you probaby understand from your own experience just how unwelcome my continual verbal and written disquisitions are to most of the people who fall into the category you so concisely portrayed above. Thanks for the lesson in Greek. The key word in it’s definition is, “ignore-ance”, for to ignore is a conscious and wilful act in the face of truth in anyone who is well aware of the difference. Personally, I’d rather try to enlighten someone who is congenitally stupid because usually his mind is a tabula rasa, ergo there is hope he will come to his senses. An ignorant man is but a bigot of life, an ostrich, so to speak who actually forces himself to believe that, “Ignore-ance is bliss.
Posted by Dom Mastroserio on Sep 3, 2003 at 8:01 PM Hightower always inspires, agitates, and reminds me that all politics is
local; saving the world while
ignoring local lawmakers, and local issues, is common among college students, who could work to elect
a student to their city or county legislature (as Yale elects 2-3 students to the New Haven city council)--but it’s a lot more fun
to talk about impeaching Bush
etc.At Syracuse U. in 1985,
after students voted and gave a
winning plurality and upset victory to elect NY State Sen. Nancy Larraine Hoffmann, (who won by
238 votes) the local
Onondaga Board of Elections banned SU students from voting from dorms and off-campus apts. until 1992, when Clinton ran for President.But in the re-districting following
the 1990 census, and again in 2000, the SU student-voters were gerrymandered and split between
varous city/county/state districts, making it impossible for SU students
to have any impact on one seat in any election, as was the case in 1982-85.
Indeed, in the Bush v Gore race,
only 101 SU students voted in the
predominately student precinct
of dorms that once cast 1,200 votes
in elections.
(I had organied and chaired the
voter registration and Get Out the Vote drive in 1982-85 at SU that saw large vote turnouts from dorms,
and off-campus.)
Austin G. Paulnack, coordinator
The Accountability Project,
Syracuse
Posted by Austin Paulnack on Sep 3, 2003 at 8:25 PM The “Is this a private fight...” saying is not “Old Irish”. I wish you lot would knock off the hokey Celtic rustic charm schtick. Jeez.
Posted by Jim Maxwell on Sep 3, 2003 at 9:46 PM Exactly. We won’t believe what the Corporate Overlords of the Brave New World Order has in store for all the “consumptives” its now creating, in our schools, our “media,” our sham government.
Its way past time to WAKE UP AMERICA!
(but don’t hold your breath..., there’s more of them than uth)
Posted by Ryokan on Sep 3, 2003 at 11:51 PM I absolutely agree with Mr. Hightower. Brain washing is exercised in all levels. You have to spend hours in front of your TV set and consider yourself lucky if you find an articulate or intelligent conversation. Children don’t play anymore., either they have to participate in games organized by adults with the only goal of winning or exhibit before their mates a vast collection of tramp looking Barbies if they are girls or video games if they are boys. No initiative, no fantasy, no discovery. Playing is perhaps the most important activity for a child because it helps him or her understand the importance of sharing, listening to what the others have to say and find your own limits so that playing can be possible. As for schools and colleges, “multiple-choice” has ended with the need to express your own ideas and enrich your language capabilities.
Once a month I go to a second-hand book shop in search of something to read. Most of the books there have been left behind by American travellers and I can hardly find one or two books worth reading, the rest is rubbish. As for news, tjey are an insult to any analytical mind. I also feel there is a patent shrinking of the mind not only in the USA but in all the countries under their influence. Somebody is doing an excellent job at manufacturing slaves for this perverse system.
Posted by Maria L. Etchart on Sep 4, 2003 at 1:49 PM Great peice. However it also has to be done on a personal level.’
Every time you use your “Visa”, watch your “Plasma TV”, and
buy the latest “gizmo” you are caving into the system.We need to leave our “Gated” commuities, read some books, take
a walk in the woods as well.Getting involved is more than going to meatings and signing petitions. It is
also making, sometimes, uncomfortable and inconvenient
choices in ones own life for the better
of all.
Posted by chris on Sep 4, 2003 at 6:09 PM Maria, good points. I’d like to add, children should also be allowed to scrape their knees, dig in the dirt, build a bicycle ramp and sometimes get in the occassional fight. It teaches them to get along and resolve differences.
Posted by neil on Sep 4, 2003 at 11:36 PM Write on! As usual the real truth rings loud and clear. Now if we could only get everyone to read articles like this we would get the country back from the elites. And I don’t mean any one political philosophy of elites, rather the elites who think “the business of America is business.”
Posted by Chris Stevens on Sep 5, 2003 at 10:41 AM I enjoyed this story very much and it is so true. There is such an effort to make and keep the citizens of the USA stupid and ignorant. That way we’ll buy stuff, keep quiet, and if we are out of work(like me) well we should just accept our lot in life; we should just admire the well off and try to become one. Of course it is very hard in our society to get out of poverty but very easy to fall into it. I try to be involved but it is so hard to start anything or to find like thinkers in such a small, rural southern area. I am looking to move once I get enough money. I want to work to elect a democrat for the White House-a progressive democrat. Non around here.
Thanks for such a good read!!
Mary E. Schachtschneider
Posted by Mary E. Schachtschneider on Sep 5, 2003 at 1:08 PM Great ideas, good examples, solid ideals, keep writing and speaking Jim Hightower, I’m with you 100%.
Posted by Chuck Burkhardt on Sep 5, 2003 at 3:30 PM It is amazing to me how many of the people in our society don’t see this.
In florida Jan 1st they are forcing all sole proprieters to Incorporate
which will give them access to all of our private information.
They (the government) say they want corporate accountability,how about the government . They don’t know where trillions of dollars have gone..I’m a man not a corporation.
Posted by jeffrey mcmurphy on Sep 6, 2003 at 4:29 AM Who the hell do these bastard ventriloquist-dolls-for-corporations think they are? The whole stinking hypocritical, murderous, sneering, grasping, fundamentalism-warped, humanity-despising bunch of weasels in lions’ skin, chicken hawk cowardly fools, and lackeys that wormed their leprosy-souled asses into positions of power need to be brought before a tribunal of the countless homeless and unemployed and be tried for treason, (since a jury of their peers became extinct a few million eons ago). And all these sycophantic ostensible citizens of a so-called democracy...do they actually believe that these scavengers and their mainstream media mouthpeices actually care about them, their welfare, their ever-more desperate lives, or what kind of future all of this insanity will mean for their children? Do any of you out there reading this article believe what you’re told rather than what you actually live and see around you with your own two eyes? Can’t you understand you’re being bled from every orifice in your body and soul? Dubbya just asked Congress for another sixty billion dollars for the black hole of Iraq. Didn’t he pompously proclaim that the war was won on May 1st? While thousands of G.I.s are in hospitals he goes to parties to raise funds for a possible actual election victory and you all nod your heads like those puppet dogs in back of old beat up cars! What the hell is the matter with everybody? Don’t you understand that these mentally diseased marauders think they can wage a nuclear war, bring about End Times, yet live in their bunkers so they can get out in enough time to behold the Second Coming? And do you really believe that if Jesus came back that he’d place them all on his right hand in heaven for having annihilated the World? Wake Up Now! There may be no tomorrow! Hightower for President!
Posted by Dom Mastroserio on Sep 6, 2003 at 5:50 PM Why am I acting surprised, why does Jim Hightower, a man of integrity, if my intuitive feelers are correct, and they usually are-why does he bother to try enlightening people who really like being told what to do, who love having some authoritarian shithead condescend to throw them some crumbs just for the thrill of having genuflected and begged for something that was theirs to begin with? Why...the question people like me ask when they know but refuse to accept the rotten truth about my fellow Terrians. Laziness. Self-contempt. Fear of failure due to speaking one’s true mind. Damn if I can understand what allows people to believe that if some other mortal has obscene wealth, exalted degrees from elite institutions, has fame, lineage, expertise, eloquence, power, position, connections, etc., etc., ad nauseam...that somehow they are worthier, more truthful, more altruistic, more knowledgeable, honest to a fault, understands better than everyone else what’s good or bad for everyone else and must be heeded because, well, because...well, who am I anyway-a nobody...and even if I see it’s night out and they tell me it’s day...well...they must be right and I must be wrong. Is this it? Yeah, it is. I know you. You’re everywhere and always have been. And you won’t research comparative history. And you won’t do anything other than what the mannikins on the news are telling you you should. Are you the same bunch that cry and groan and are filled with envy about the fact that so very few live lives of contemptuous magnificence while you and the majority like you, including people such as myself, can barely make ends meet despite having two jobs each, you and your wife? See what comes of being a good slave and letting them lead you by the nose? But you indeed like it though you won’t admit it. You like having Tsars and Fehurers, and Generalissimos, and Duces and Chairmen Stalins and Maos. Life is so much easier that way. Or is it? They loathe you all and can’t wait to annihilate you. They always have and always will. That’s what comes of your complacency. Your children will become cannon fodder and you will become a refugee or if you’re lucky, you’ll be a victim of the next genocide. Oh well, at least we had a chance to break the history-long spell humanity’s been under here in the USA. Now it may be lost forever because you are what you are and have always been and will always be-the living dead.
Posted by Dom Mastroserio on Sep 6, 2003 at 8:27 PM Dom, my thought for white collar crime punishment is to make these people work two jobs to make ends meet for the rest of their lives. Make them see what people go through and then maybe they might get what alcoholics call “a moment of clarity” though it’s doubtful. Wave those fancy new toys in front of their kids faces while they’re scratching to make the rent.
Posted by neil on Sep 6, 2003 at 9:36 PM “ People have job they hate, to earn money for the purpose to by things they don`t need”! Fight Club, Hollywood Blockbuster........
how ironic :-)))))))).
I sit down on the end of the world and enjoy the party from far away, keep fighting and allways remember:
as a germen i have to say, even Adolf Hitler was DEMOCRATIC ELECTED LEADER!!!!! Beware...........
Posted by Mike on Sep 7, 2003 at 5:54 AM I’m in complete accord. I put a lot of time into forwarding such email where I think it could be effective.
Posted by Annette Bork on Sep 7, 2003 at 2:24 PM Inspiring! How can I find a local organization to work with?
Posted by Joan on Sep 7, 2003 at 2:35 PM As long as we support the breakdown of moral values, anti-God stuff, pro-gay rights, and all things that would make our forefathers turn over in their graves, then this country will continue its trip to being a nation full of idiots. Third world countries love not having their population educated, then they have more control over them as well keep them enslaved.
Posted by Mario on Sep 7, 2003 at 3:12 PM Funny. I imagine that those things which would cause our forefathers the most distress about this nation include, among others: demonization of individuals different from ourselves, unrestrained greed, perpetuation of fear and violence, and nationalistic arrogance. Moreover, I imagine the love of our Creator goes far beyond our limited borders and flows quite liberally to, what some still dogmatically coin as, third world countries. Of course, we are all entitled to our own personal perspective of our world.
Posted by Just Me on Sep 7, 2003 at 4:24 PM Mario,
Our forefathers owned slaves, how moral was that? They also kept women down and weren’t exactly Christians.
But, they had the foresight to see that establishing a national religion wouldn’t have allowed the freedom this country is supposed to be about.
Like Just Me said, a loving God loves all unconditionally.
Posted by neil on Sep 7, 2003 at 5:01 PM How are ya, Neil from Boise...glad to see you’re still in the thick of these ongoing cybernetic tugs of war between, “real”, people. I remember you to be passionate and intense about basic human dignity and for seeing reality as it truly is, calling a spade a spade, etc. I’m glad you seem to realize just how the self-aggrandizing, crapulous cheap-mesmeric propaganda that’s being drumed into so many silly-putty-like minds by a corporate media who have been given the right to consciously prevaricate by our increasingly insane judiciary is ripping the country apart for the big buck. It was bad enough when law enforcement interrogators were given the same carte blanche, when advertizers, (corporate bushwhackers), were given free rein to twist the oatmeal-brained ones with distortions...but when the, Fourth Estate, the press, an institution whose raison d’etre is to scrutinize, criticize, investigate, ask embarassing questions of the powerful and influential and to then inform the citizenry of any and all mal and misfeasance thereto pertaining...is sanctioned to lie-then what the hell good are they, how trustworthy can their pronuncimentos be if they’ve abrogated their primary responsibility...to tell the truth no matter how ugly it may be, and not about boudoir shenanagins, but what matters most in everyone’s daily lives? And, yes, it all dovetails neatly into what Jim Hightower here is so clearly expressing. But in the end, as he so succinctly and shame-inducingly put it...We, the people have to wake up to all of this collusion of de-democratization by dint of the megabuck. Well, on to the next story...hope to read ya there, Neil.
Posted by Dom on Sep 7, 2003 at 6:39 PM I quote this article=
The Greek word ģidiotesī referred to people who were so self-involved they focused on their own life and were ignorant and uncaring about the common good.
A small town in Texas wants it’s village idiot back- Lets all help them get him back in November 2004.
This time Florida and the nation will count all the ballots correctly without HELP of the “idiots friends”
Posted by Kathy Evilsizer on Oct 2, 2003 at 4:57 PM All good advice for the local village idiot except please explain what “democracy” is being referenced here? Is it the one in the same spoken of in our constitution or maybe in our bill of “rights;” or the one railed against by our forefathers? No? Then it must be referring to the one in the 10 square miles called D.C. which is the only democracy I know of on these shores. I believe the rest of this great land is a representative REPUBLIC, constitutional in nature. Until we came under the thumb of our “caretakers,” this term was never used by any informed person and perhaps even the uninformed. Please quit mis-(or “mal")informing people. We need more enlightenment not mis-guidance.
JCB
Posted by James BArton on Oct 21, 2003 at 6:39 AM Well, Mr. Barton...a Floridian...touting the legitimacy of the REPUBLIC. (if I understand you..) Good grief. The Republic can only be legitimate with a FAIR & IMPARTIAL method of choosing our REPRESENTATION !! (voting)get it?????? “republic for sale” is NOT my idea of democracy - (EVERY citizen having their RIGHT to vote protected!)
Posted by Amolibri on Oct 30, 2003 at 12:00 PM yes to all the grassroots opportunities. And, Hightower didn’t mention participating in Democratic party Presidential politics. Dennis Kucinich is a courageous candidate, whose grassroots campaign gives us an opportunity to show that there’s a progressive movement that can vote for real changes.
Who does Hightower like in the Democratic primary race? My guess is he agrees w/ Studs Terkel, Pete Seeger, Ani di Franco, and Barbara Ehrenreich: Kucinich for President. Just imagine how great it would feel to have a real advocate of peace and economic justice in the White House....
Posted by Will Fudeman on Dec 9, 2003 at 1:33 PM Brought to you by the author of;
‘ Thieves in High Places ‘.
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