Saturday, November 14, 2009
Mincing Words and Meaning...“for socialism.”
In periods of socialist advance one finds the paradox of non-advance in virtually all matters of daily existence. The poor remain poor, the poorest rise to subsistence with an illusion of further advance that never comes. The rest of society (except a leftist party/political clique') are dragged down to subsistence. Thus begins a celebration of stasis, pats on the back for losses of freedom, and profusions of propaganda telling all that everything would come to an end if individual volition would be permitted to once more flourish.
During the cold war, capitalists and socialists argued the superiority of their respective systems based on technical and material advances. The USSR laid claim to the invention of every concept it could lie about or steal from the free world's markets and free innovators.
After socialism's dramatic fall almost twenty years ago, the communists/“progressives” realized they could maintain the great debate for enslavement by merely changing the argument. Their perpetually recurring empty store shelves and rationed food supplies could now be seen as good things...to strive for!
So it is now that the smoothest polemic vehicle of socialists into minds and economies is environmentalism. “Sustainable development” is the sophisticated catch phrase of the day as a means to drag us all back several decades (if not to the stone age – as North Korea seems to be directing itself toward).
This of course doesn't mean that environmentalism is, in itself, a bad thing or that producing more environmentally friendly products are somehow insidious. The point is that the essential goodness of maintaining a clean environment has been hijacked by an ideology that ultimately could care less about civil rights, equality, the environment, or any of the other issues that have been used as gimmicks to vent rage against “the system” so as to create a more powerful, centralized, and authoritarian system.
If one views recurring themes by AP, Reuters, The New York Times, et al., we can read that we make less money than our parents and things are infinitely worse for all of us (this, aside from the current recession) yet, mom and dad didn't have computers, laptops, cell phones, sci-fi style gadgetry in their cars, and dolby sound at the latest mega-flick. Of course, to whining socialists, all these new developments don't mean we're better off...no. “We're all really miserable” (and just don't know it) because capitalism unhindered by the loving hand of the state, keeps raising the standard of living. That's the new argument for socialism! If you don't share the angst, anger, and depression over our leisure and wealth that the average artsy looser obsesses upon, than you just “can't see behind the veil.”
The former Soviet Union and its spawn claimed to make great progress and advance in technology and material benefit. Now that most commune-states have fallen from their imposed illusionary greatness, progress and advance themselves are seen as the new enemy of “socialist man (sic).”
...Cell phones, wide screen TV, and a laptop...or, an environmentally friendly North Korean style prison state? Those are your supposed choices. Oh, maybe they'll allow you to get by with a few pop entertainments, but the market driven diversity and creativity has got to go if we're “going to save the planet” and keeping one's wealth, well, that would be out of the question. Amazingly, great portions of humanity will continue to strive for the dream of “heaven on earth” that never manifests, and trash a dream that takes us as close as we could ever hope in a real world.
...lemmings...
