CalvinBall wrote:chris matthews just said I forgot obama was black tonight. wtf dude.

Philly the Kid wrote:

dajafi wrote:I don't have time (or don't want to invest the time, I guess is the more honest way of putting it) to listen to PtK's stuff. But the question of "what is the trend line in your lifetime" is a pretty interesting one that doesn't have a simple answer. Just to very quickly list a very few of the bigger changes from when I was born in the early '70s, on the plus side you have:

--Enormous strides toward equality on race, gender, orientation
--Cleaner air and water
--Fall of communism and affirmation of liberal democratic governance model
--Unimaginably greater variety of cultural/entertainment options
--Partial reversal of previous trend toward writing off American cities as "ungovernable"

I won't list the cons, but to my first thought they all have to do with dysfunction in the political economy (e.g. stagnation in real wages for all but the most highly educated, even as overall economic output has skyrocketed; pervasive "corruption"--by which I mean that special interests seem more powerful than ever; unprecedented partisanship and gridlock; debasement of news media) and their consequences.

On the whole, is life better today than it was when I was born? Probably. Has the pace of progress slowed since I showed up, compared to the previous thirty years or so? Also probably. The question is whether we retain that self-correcting capacity. That's what I worry about.

I see it rather differently. I'm glad you at least took this piece up.

I'm a little older than you, and I can firmly say that the world I was born into, the foment, the hopefulness, and the progress -- has all turned another way starting with Reagan in 1980.

We are in a place now, where the media consolidation has never been more immense. People have to protest in "special fenced in zones" miles from the action. Civil liberties have been gutted. The Presidency especially under Bush (continued with fervor under OBama) has abused its executive branch powers. Corporate greed has reached new highs. Compare the average CEO salary in 1980 preReagan and the last 30 years since.

People are more distracted than ever with celebrity culture because of the 24-7 mass media machine. Communism (not real communism) fell and was briefly replaced with Drug Lords, and then really replaced with Terrorism. Fear and divisiveness. While there are more African American doctors in 2010 than in 1970, there are way more Black men in prison, way more prisons, way more in the military as an economic chance out and that ratio of people in the ghetto has not improved. The poor as just as poor, and just in the same proportions. The divide between top and bottom is wider. The general tone has moved way more to the right. The Right-wang ideologs have framed the dsicussion and moved us far to the right. Universities went from education to certification.

There is progress in the sense of technology advances. But we have moved backwards and we have less freedom in my opinion. There is more big brother than ever due to that technology. And our democracy is even more eroded.

Few grassroots movements can get a foothold. They are infiltrated, or discredited.

People feed on sound bytes of mis-information.

The two parties are just a struggle for power and emphasis, but they all feed at the same trough of big business. The Supreme Court has become radically conservative, and political. Roberts was appointed for one reason. Not to be a fair-minded judge who defends the law and constitution, but to make sure the Bush-Cheney agenda stays viable no matter who serves in the White House.

Things are far worse.Climate, pollution -- and because there is some education about certain things.. we're not much closer to a cure for cancer. We hacen't been back to the moon. People are still bigots and prejudiced and divided. There are less unions protecting workers. Much or manufacturing base has shrunk. We have had some of the worst recessions and financial crises.

We live in an era of sensationalism.

The majority of the food supply is toxic. Small farmers have been squeezed out. Patriot Act. I could go on and on.

If I could get off this planet, and go be a settler on some other planet with a band of egalitarian people - I'd do it in a heartbeat. We have more nukes.

In the 40 years since 1970, we have had massive murder of people all over the world. East Timor, Haiti, Rwanda, Chechnia, Kurds, Bosnians, Iraq was embargoed for 12 years before being invaded, pick a region. Secret agnecies have never been more armed with tech and weapons and more insidious.

We have a less educated populace.

By almost ever measure I've watched things get worse in my lifetime. Short of the advent of internet and home computers -- I see little progress overall.

It won't happen in my lifetime, but there will be an implosion. And man will either have a paradigm shift, or likely be massively reduced in numbers.

Whether back to Washington and Jefferson, or the Canegie Rockefeller, OSS -- I'm not idealizing the past. Lynchings in the south. It's been bad of course before -- but it's in many ways worse. The hypocrisy has never been more transparent.

CalvinBall wrote:this staged crowd is bizarre. they tried to get a bunch of every race and sex.

jeff2sf wrote:I had assumed kruker was talking about Obama.

jerseyhoya wrote:Big ups to whomever came up with the idea of having McDonnell speak in the legislative chamber in front of a live audience. I know it was weird and a little contrived, but less awful than previous versions.