The ongoing sell-out of Canada

When I said that "that category of Canucks can include library board members" Kenneth, I was attempting to show that "being unread" is not limited to TV watchers. Library board members in Cambridge are not widely read. In fact, they read very little outside of the usual fiction for escape.

How about you? I have quoted Susan Jacoby often over the last couple of years. In The AGe of American Unreason she shows that, indeed, reading habits have been changing very considerably over the postwar period...to the detriment of reason.  Al Gore, whom I've also quoted often from his The Assoult on Reason, also attempts to explain how vulnerable Americans are to distortion of thetruth (particularly in campaigns) .

"In the age of propaganda" writes Gore (the CBC program names it the Age of Persuasion)education itself can become suspect. When ideology is so often woven into the 'facts' that are delivered in fully formed and self-contained packages, people naturally begin to to develop some cynicism about what they are being told. When people are subjected to ubiquitous and unrelenting mass advertising, reason and ogic often begin to seem like they are no more than handmaidens for the sophisticated sales force. And now that these same techniques dominate the political messages sent by candidates to voters, the integrity of our democracy has been placed under the same cloud of suspicion."  You know, Ken..."yeah, that's just politics."

And as Robert Reich points out in Supercapitalism, "the same competitiion that has fueledsupercapitalism has spilled over into the political process. Large companies have hired platoons of lobbytists, lawyers, experts, and public relations specialists, and devoted more and more money to electoral campaigns (also Gore's message). The result has been to drown out voices and values of citizens. As all of this has transpired, the old institutions through which citizen values had been expressed in the Not Quite Golden Age - industry-wide labor unions, local citizen-based groups, 'corporate statesmen' (some of the good guys of old, no longer extant) responding to all stakeholders, and regulatory agencies - HAVE BEEN LARGELY BLOWN AWAY (my caps) by the gusts of supercapitalism.

If you have not read these explanations of what has happend to us over the last third of a century, then you're right up there with the Cambridge Library board, Ken.  And I know that Deer Hunting with Jesus also offends your sense of propriety, but that's where we've wound up, and I'm not going to go about pretending it hasn't happened. This is a place of relative freedom, thanks be to GAia, where on can say such things.

You haven't presented any evidence. You've just repeated what you've said before.

Discussions that have gone and are going nowhere are prime candidates for walking away from.

I made the mistake of mixing a substantive argument with one that is essentially a question of 'style'- tho thats not the right word.

The substantive discussion is endless. The question of 'style' still stands: your use of "the Great Unread" is frequently just a gratutitous toss in. You think its about getting people to face facts. Its just obnoxious.

There are two different things going on about the subtantive discssion. One is about the truncated social and political consciousness that limits discussions we can have. And when people are talking about why that is anything goes. One thing that is part of the mix is the nostalgia of intellectual elites for a bygone day and their role in it. That also plays a role in where people like Jacoby lay the problems.

Which is why I went into 'non-reading/textual dominant' forms of discourse, and pointed out that class and critical conciousness was [still is somewhat] very strong in the UK while rooted primarily in community-oral discourse, and without benefit of any alternative media, with people glued to the telly for culture, etc.

In your hands it is worse then in the hands of people like Jacoby. You make much more definitive points and come off like a just plain snob. Your use of the "Great Unread" is an expression of that. And the epitomy of arrogance is attributing disagreement to lack of understanding, unwillingness to read great texts/films, fogged by political correctness, or unwillingness to face facts.

You are on very thin ice saying I'm all about strategy and tactics. "without any concern for these dynamics" translates into not being willing to accept "your facts".

And you really have to stop couching your arguments in texts and authors YOU think people have to read before you can have a real discussion. If their arguments are that valuable, then you can express them without the crutch. Its not just that you can .... you must. It is only in a seminar or a book club [which is just an unpretentious word for a seminar] that you pick texts everyone will read as the basis for a discussion.

You are ignoring my point about having discussions that do not depend on referring to 'seminal works'.

This is a public space. I operate on the principle that if I can't express it without reference to things only some other people have read, then it probably isnt the point that I think it is.

I didn't by the way say I had not read Bageant, let alone refuse to do so. But now that you mention it, yes I will refuse to do so as a condition for someone paying attention to what I have to say.

I seem to "persistently choose seeing that as an objection to the content of what (I) have to say...refusing to face the facts."  I'll ponder on that, Ken, but in the meantime, may I say, you will come nowhere near "the facts" of those peoples' lives unless you rid yourself of the assumption that you can come to that understanding by pure thought or osmosis.

Pure thought and the MSM will lead you down the garden path every time, Ken.  If you don't know what the enemy is reading, you're just engaging in rhetorical exercises, heavily dependent on references to straw.

I would have thought that your speculations on "Union organizing in the U.S." proves the need for a substantive reference, like Reich.

The return of Tim Horton's head office to Canada was induced by lower tax rates. Any mention of that inducement, Fidel? :D 

Chocolates and coffee. It's a start I guess.

Oh my god George. Now I just think you need some kind of outside help.

You dug up something I said in another thread, let alone in an entirely different context and about a different topic, and throw it in here.

Not to mention its pretty clear that I'm talking off the top of my head about something for which there is clear empirical evidence one way or the other- unlike the discussion above where there is litteraly no end to establishing 'what the facts are'. This is a discussion forum George not a point scoring game. Crazy to bring that little fragment of discussion here, but taking a look at it... that was probably a discussion where people were tossing out there thoughts... it would have been very easy to correct me with a summary sentence taken from an actual reading of the trends.

Tell me what purpose is served Geroge by all the detailed textual reference, for a simple point that I was just wrong?

This is even worse than you repeatedly telling people- "How can what you say have any value since even after I told you how important it is you haven't seen Deer Hunter/read Bageant/read whoever?" while the tone is mild, and respectfiul on the surface, outside the seminar room that is intellectual bullying.

Maybe I've missed it happening, but I'm surprised no one has ever called you on it before. Hopefully its because on a personal basis it rolls off of people you do that to; and not because you intimidate them. But I'm sure that even if it doesn't intimidate people you have had exchanges with, it doesn't do wonders for encouraging lurkers to join in the discussion.

If I am openly shit upon, and the shitter walks away from the thread, I'm going to call them back somehow, Ken. Welcome.

I have been called on it before, Ken, but the caller did not leave me dangling, and we went toe to toe. I have not broken some Marquess of Queensbury rules, Ken, I've just used the only damned means available to keep you from a hit and run tactic. I don't believe that your position on union organizing is simply wrong. If you do not understand the means by which it was brought about, the revolution on the right - and Reich describes it very well - your position, if taken up by the unread, actually leads to a weakening of understanding, a counterproductive position (in the language of the old new left). 

Discussion also ended in the labour thread with the posting of the above excerpt that you find so offensive. Why? Reich is wrong? How? You deny the concept "Supercapitalism"?  WHY for chrissake?  It's all too important to our own understanding of our own political/economic situation. 

Buy cheap sell dear remains the simple modus operandi and with elites now paid bailouts to do it with, stripping the assets just got a whole lot easier.

May I quote from the holy of holies from Novembr of 2008 when it looked like we were entering a period of deep dung. The name, Chris Hedges.  The subject (so suspect hereabouts)  how many consumers/taxpayers are capable of understanding what is going on around them:America the Illiterate

By Chris Hedges

November 16, 2008 "Truthdig" -- - We live in two Americas. One America, now the minority, functions in a print-based, literate world. It can cope with complexity and has the intellectual tools to separate illusion from truth. The other America, which constitutes the majority, exists in a non-reality-based belief system. This America, dependent on skillfully manipulated images for information, has severed itself from the literate, print-based culture. It cannot differentiate between lies and truth. It is informed by simplistic, childish narratives and clichés. It is thrown into confusion by ambiguity, nuance and self-reflection. This divide, more than race, class or gender, more than rural or urban, believer or nonbeliever, red state or blue state, has split the country into radically distinct, unbridgeable and antagonistic entities.

There are over 42 million American adults, 20 percent of whom hold high school diplomas, who cannot read, as well as the 50 million who read at a fourth- or fifth-grade level. Nearly a third of the nation's population is illiterate or barely literate. And their numbers are growing by an estimated 2 million a year. But even those who are supposedly literate retreat in huge numbers into this image-based existence. A third of high school graduates, along with 42 percent of college graduates, never read a book after they finish school. Eighty percent of the families in the United States last year did not buy a book.

The illiterate rarely vote, and when they do vote they do so without the ability to make decisions based on textual information. American political campaigns, which have learned to speak in the comforting epistemology of images, eschew real ideas and policy for cheap slogans and reassuring personal narratives. Political propaganda now masquerades as ideology. Political campaigns have become an experience. They do not require cognitive or self-critical skills. They are designed to ignite pseudo-religious feelings of euphoria, empowerment and collective salvation. Campaigns that succeed are carefully constructed psychological instruments that manipulate fickle public moods, emotions and impulses, many of which are subliminal. They create a public ecstasy that annuls individuality and fosters a state of mindlessness. They thrust us into an eternal present. They cater to a nation that now lives in a state of permanent amnesia. It is style and story, not content or history or reality, which inform our politics and our lives. We prefer happy illusions. And it works because so much of the American electorate, including those who should know better, blindly cast ballots for slogans, smiles, the cheerful family tableaux, narratives and the perceived sincerity and the attractiveness of candidates. We confuse how we feel with knowledge.

The illiterate and semi-literate, once the campaigns are over, remain powerless. They still cannot protect their children from dysfunctional public schools. They still cannot understand predatory loan deals, the intricacies of mortgage papers, credit card agreements and equity lines of credit that drive them into foreclosures and bankruptcies. They still struggle with the most basic chores of daily life from reading instructions on medicine bottles to filling out bank forms, car loan documents and unemployment benefit and insurance papers. They watch helplessly and without comprehension as hundreds of thousands of jobs are shed. They are hostages to brands. Brands come with images and slogans. Images and slogans are all they understand. Many eat at fast food restaurants not only because it is cheap but because they can order from pictures rather than menus. And those who serve them, also semi-literate or illiterate, punch in orders on cash registers whose keys are marked with symbols and pictures. This is our brave new world.

Political leaders in our post-literate society no longer need to be competent, sincere or honest. They only need to appear to have these qualities. Most of all they need a story, a narrative. The reality of the narrative is irrelevant. It can be completely at odds with the facts. The consistency and emotional appeal of the story are paramount. The most essential skill in political theater and the consumer culture is artifice. Those who are best at artifice succeed. Those who have not mastered the art of artifice fail. In an age of images and entertainment, in an age of instant emotional gratification, we do not seek or want honesty. We ask to be indulged and entertained by clichés, stereotypes and mythic narratives that tell us we can be whomever we want to be, that we live in the greatest country on Earth, that we are endowed with superior moral and physical qualities and that our glorious future is preordained, either because of our attributes as Americans or because we are blessed by God or both.

The ability to magnify these simple and childish lies, to repeat them and have surrogates repeat them in endless loops of news cycles, gives these lies the aura of an uncontested truth. We are repeatedly fed words or phrases like yes we can, maverick, change, pro-life, hope or war on terror. It feels good not to think. All we have to do is visualize what we want, believe in ourselves and summon those hidden inner resources, whether divine or national, that make the world conform to our desires. Reality is never an impediment to our advancement.

The Princeton Review analyzed the transcripts of the Gore-Bush debates, the Clinton-Bush-Perot debates of 1992, the Kennedy-Nixon debates of 1960 and the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858. It reviewed these transcripts using a standard vocabulary test that indicates the minimum educational standard needed for a reader to grasp the text. During the 2000 debates, George W. Bush spoke at a sixth-grade level (6.7) and Al Gore at a seventh-grade level (7.6). In the 1992 debates, Bill Clinton spoke at a seventh-grade level (7.6), while George H.W. Bush spoke at a sixth-grade level (6.8), as did H. Ross Perot (6.3). In the debates between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, the candidates spoke in language used by 10th-graders. In the debates of Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas the scores were respectively 11.2 and 12.0. In short, today's political rhetoric is designed to be comprehensible to a 10-year-old child or an adult with a sixth-grade reading level. It is fitted to this level of comprehension because most Americans speak, think and are entertained at this level. This is why serious film and theater and other serious artistic expression, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins of American society. Voltaire was the most famous man of the 18th century. Today the most famous "person" is Mickey Mouse.

In our post-literate world, because ideas are inaccessible, there is a need for constant stimulus. News, political debate, theater, art and books are judged not on the power of their ideas but on their ability to entertain. Cultural products that force us to examine ourselves and our society are condemned as elitist and impenetrable. Hannah Arendt warned that the marketization of culture leads to its degradation, that this marketization creates a new celebrity class of intellectuals who, although well read and informed themselves, see their role in society as persuading the masses that "Hamlet" can be as entertaining as "The Lion King" and perhaps as educational. "Culture," she wrote, "is being destroyed in order to yield entertainment."

"There are many great authors of the past who have survived centuries of oblivion and neglect," Arendt wrote, "but it is still an open question whether they will be able to survive an entertaining version of what they have to say."

The change from a print-based to an image-based society has transformed our nation. Huge segments of our population, especially those who live in the embrace of the Christian right and the consumer culture, are completely unmoored from reality. They lack the capacity to search for truth and cope rationally with our mounting social and economic ills. They seek clarity, entertainment and order. They are willing to use force to impose this clarity on others, especially those who do not speak as they speak and think as they think. All the traditional tools of democracies, including dispassionate scientific and historical truth, facts, news and rational debate, are useless instruments in a world that lacks the capacity to use them.

As we descend into a devastating economic crisis, one that Barack Obama cannot halt, there will be tens of millions of Americans who will be ruthlessly thrust aside. As their houses are foreclosed, as their jobs are lost, as they are forced to declare bankruptcy and watch their communities collapse, they will retreat even further into irrational fantasy. They will be led toward glittering and self-destructive illusions by our modern Pied Pipers-our corporate advertisers, our charlatan preachers, our television news celebrities, our self-help gurus, our entertainment industry and our political demagogues-who will offer increasingly absurd forms of escapism.

The core values of our open society, the ability to think for oneself, to draw independent conclusions, to express dissent when judgment and common sense indicate something is wrong, to be self-critical, to challenge authority, to understand historical facts, to separate truth from lies, to advocate for change and to acknowledge that there are other views, different ways of being, that are morally and socially acceptable, are dying. Obama used hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign funds to appeal to and manipulate this illiteracy and irrationalism to his advantage, but these forces will prove to be his most deadly nemesis once they collide with the awful reality that awaits us.

George you are really speaking of the "Colbert Nation" on one hand, and the evangelical dispensationalists on the other.

...there is something going on in that Evangelical element, and I think that they are being taught that fascism is communism, in some way shape or form, as  my relatives of that persuaassion who attend the deep south Evangelical churches as snow birds have been talking about   "communism would work, if people were not greedy", however when you get down to it, and start asking them what their perceptions are, really they are not talking communism, but fascism.

But thank you for your last long missive, was a clearly focused expose of the thought terminating cliches  used by so many, and accepted by even more.

The white collar world has in most cases clearly slammed the door on the blue collar producers in society,  by thinking they are smarter, better, and superior, and are thus the shepards or stewards of the actual working masses. Really what they have done is thrown the other workers of the world under the bus  with the destination sign "EGO GAINED HERE" and have chosen that route, as opposed to a solidarity route of equity for all  workers.

When challenged on their ego trip, they start espousing negatives against the challenger like; intimidation, resentment, jealousy, and other such nonsensical rhetoric, as all it means is they want to protect what they believe is their status achieved. And they will protect each other's asses in order to do so, while stabbing each other in the back in the next breath for "societal/career advancement".

"Colbert Nation" rather than the Great Unread?  Would that perhaps gain me dispensation to speak to the problem, remind?    I'll hafta try it.

fidel: ..."they seem to be managing fairly well with pulling the wool over everyone's eyes same as before, only different."

It is that difference that we are after, Fidel.  Our interests are shifting . We have more at stake. There's less altruism, more me-ism abroad. That is what's being played to.    No?

Ontario May Sell Stakes in Assets, Toronto Star Says

Let's sell off the money-makers to rich friends of the Liberal government of Ontario so that the Liberal government of Ontario can look a little better if only on paper by next election. It's all about Dalton McGuilty and the Liberals. Our fiscal Frankensteins are at it again in Ottawa and Toronto.

So what happens when a company ignores every commitment made to our foreign investment review board, and locks out its Canadian workers for months on end to try to bust their union?

This government backs them up with a cool billion.