A Facebook friend posted the following, which appeared on Dandelion Salad, a site I intend to explore as time permits. Bracing and sobering, this video about the cost of exercising one's right to free speech in the home of 'brave' and the land of the 'free' seems more relevant than ever:
Strange -- isn't it, Lorne -- how history keeps repeating itself?
ReplyDeleteIt is as if we are all trapped in some kind of recursive loop, Owen.
DeleteNeoliberalism, seamlessly blending capitalism, corporatism and the unquenchable pursuit of perpetual exponential growth, is driving us headlong into a massive wall. I've watched some, such as Roubini in an interview with, of all outfits, the Wall Street Journal, admit that many of the core principles espoused by Marx are turning out to be valid. He had an acute sense of the ultimate contradictions in the capitalist model.
ReplyDeleteOur dilemma, as I see it, is that neoliberalism won't quit until it destroys itself and a good many of us along the way. We have transferred so much sovereign power to this unaccountable, amorphous economic religion that we seem powerless to rein it in. Our politicians are toothless. No one wants the responsibility for putting it down. That's another way of saying there's nobody at the wheel.
As you have often pointed out in your blog, Mound, neoliberalism and the politicians, including our own, who serve it, have much to answer for; however, constantly emboldened by the obeisance of the the political class, its practitioners know there will be no accounting.
Delete.. thanks for that video.. though I found it oddly dispiriting while at the same time inspiring.. One excellent friend of mine often called me 'a rebel without a cause' .. another tells me 'nobody cares' in regard to resource extraction pollution and foreign ownership etc. That is dispiriting.. and hardly inspiring.. yet I find it stunning to confront this attitude among my closest friends. Perhaps they are invested in resource stocks ?
ReplyDeleteThere are so many challenges to our spirit these days, Sal. I think we all lose heart, but I guess the key is to always work to get it back.
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