Click here to support the Daily Grail for as little as $US1 per month on Patreon

News Briefs 25-08-2008

Better run faster — Dystopia is gaining on us!

Quote of the Day:

Democracy is about the conditions that make it possible for ordinary people to better their lives by becoming political beings and by making power responsive to their hopes and needs.

No working man or ordinary farmer or shopkeeper helped to write the Constitution.

The American political system was not born a democracy, but born with a bias against democracy. It was constructed by those who were either skeptical about democracy or hostile to it. Democratic advance proved to be slow, uphill, forever incomplete. The republic existed for three-quarters of a century before formal slavery was ended; another hundred years before black Americans were assured of their voting rights. Only in the twentieth century were women guaranteed the vote and trade unions the right to bargain collectively. In none of these instances has victory been complete: women still lack full equality, racism persists, and the destruction of the remnants of trade unions remains a goal of corporate strategies. Far from being innate, democracy in America has gone against the grain, against the very forms by which the political and economic power of the country has been and continues to be ordered.

Sheldon S. Wolin, in Democracy, Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism (Amazon US & UK). For more, see Chalmers Johnson’s review.

  1. The global super-elite
    [quote][…]Above all, the new elite runs counter to human nature in its indifference to nationhood.

    The super-rich might not care about national loyalties, but most ordinary citizens do, as the joy over the Olympics proves.

    Contrary to what globalist sophisticates might think, there is nothing unedifying or crude about patriotism. The need for a sense of belonging is one of the most natural of all human impulses. And it is a noble sentiment, signifying a concern for one’s fellow countrymen and women.

    Vague talk about global citizenship can never be a substitute for genuine patriotism. In the end, the triumph of the superclass will only destroy our freedom, our democracy and our very identity.[/quote]

    Hmm, I’m no a member of the super-elite, and I’m pretty sure I never will be, but I’m also not the finest example of what a “patriot” should be. I do not think my country is better than others just because I happened to have been born in it; and if my country were to do something that I found wrong or reprehensible, I would be the first to point it out.

    Yeah, I felt joy when I saw my flag waving twice during the Olympic games; I feel a thrill (conditioned I suppose) when I hear and sing my National anthem, too.

    But I think that for me, the flag and the anthem no longer represent a specific Nation or a State the way it was meant in the XIXth century. For me it represents a cultural bonding between people who share some peculiar idiosincrasies, like a love for certain music or certain foods. That’s why people who move to other countries seeking a better future might still hang their native flag or some other cultural symbol on their new homes, to remind them who they are and where they come from.

    Maybe some people see this as a threat, to have this ever-mixing population of different creeds and skin colors, who might not be too eager to fight and die if ordered to defend the “national soverignity”. But maybe that will be a good thing, since all the nations will have blood bonds with each other.

    In the end I do believe a World government is inevitable. But there is a right way to do it (A state where all cultures, religions and peoples have a vote and a way to defend their rights), and a wrong way (a “generic” consumer culture driven by greed and economic factors, where citizens will be nothing but mere costumers).

    The choice is ours.

    RPJ, member of the TDG Nation 😉

    —–
    It’s not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me…
    It’s all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!

    Red Pill Junkie

    1. what joy?
      Now most of you know that I am a moderate supporter of moderate capitalism. But the Olympics are just crass advertising. For useless entertainment, and for whatever country hosts the games.

      Synchronized diving? Puleaze.

      Horses on performance enhancing drugs ?

      Why on earth should I take this stuff seriously?

      —-
      It is not how fast you go
      it is when you get there.

      1. Well…
        For me the two gold medals won by the Mexican olympic team means more about individual accomplishment and overcoming A LOT of hardships in their lives of these athletes.

        Like this girl, María del Rosario Espinoza, who tells that her family sometimes didn’t have enough money to eat when she was little. Her parents had to organize a neighborhood fair to collect enough funds for the Beijing trip to see her compete (that’s right, the Mexican Olympic Committee is so corrupt and stingy than they couldn’t afford to send the parents of an athlete that had already won several international titles). Despite all that, these people become champions, and I still find that inspiring. ALTIUS, CITIUS, FORTIUS and all that s**t 😉

        Yes, there’s a lot of hipocrisy in the Olympic games and the Soccer World Cup; a lot of money in advertising. But you can still see some glimpse of the wonders of the human potential. I suppose these events could be seen as nothing more but boosting national pride on trivial shenanigans; but they can also remind us there are better ways to compete than wars.

        —–
        It’s not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me…
        It’s all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!

        Red Pill Junkie

  2. The evil genius of XP Antivirus
    I can’t count how many service calls I’ve made in the last few weeks to remove this little masterpiece. Since that article was written, they’ve made it even tougher to clean out. AVG is good but hasn’t been able to keep up with the frequent changes the evildoers make.

    The last one I cleaned required a fully updated AVG, MalwareBytes, VundoFix and SmitFraudFix before I got all of it removed, and then I spent 30 minutes repairing all of the registry hacks it had done, such as hide the C: drive from Explorer, disable regedit, disable Control Panel, etc.

    Just a warning, make sure your anti-everything is up to date and don’t click on anything you don’t absolutely have to.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Mobile menu - fractal