Thank you, Joe Bageant, for explaining so precisely why I can’t get through to my otherwise highly intelligent daughter (who lives in Washington, D.C.) that Obama is no different than Bush, just more of an eloquent speaker and that by changing the newspaper on the bottom of the bird cage is not going to create any “change” for the better. She literally threaten to break off all future communications with me if I ever talk about any politically inclined subject again and that the only thing she was interested of hearing from me was about how I was doing, in other words, gossip about myself.

Being a political and human rights activist since the early 1970s, I realized and know that “politics” is not separate from everyday life, that it deeply affects each and every one of us on a daily basis. But I find that my daughter has been so brainwashed by TV and the other social conditions that Joe speaks about, (that) she has become incapable of seeing the larger picture and just what IS really on … so much for a college Masters degree.

My son, on the other hand, who was subjectively diagnosed with ADD by the school system, didn’t finish high school (GEDed), has no college degree, can create a computer from scratch, and works as a mechanic on cars’ engines, has his eyes wide open about this society. I can talk freely about politics, the social conditions, the poisoning of our environment, about the Bilderburg group and where our country is going without censorship by him. In fact, he interrupts me and continues on down the same line, throwing in his own observations and conclusions which are astonishingly “out of the cage” and visionary for someone so connected to the internet and cyber game playing with his friends.

Am I missing something here?

Hello, Deborah and Publina: I love an open debate, but I have had to accept that my intensity is just too much for some personalities. Even when I explain that the outcome I’m seeking via debate is that NEW INSIGHTS will occur. I like my mind to change–expand. It’s about discovering–not about being right or wrong. Thinking is never static.

The purpose of dialog is not agreement. It’s a process…it’s a flow in discovering… without classifying or judging myself or another.

Right on, Joe ! We consumers are producers too, because we create the profits for all manufacturing, energy and service industries. Every day we keep the system of surplus value going by our own actions so that the economy is dependent on public spending. That is the vicious circle in which everyone is caught because humans are territorial and need to constantly feather their nests. Take a toy away from a child and it will bang you. Our souls are in our toys, whether it is a television set, a computer or a car and thus we neglect to see the other people around us, because they just form part of the background for our play with toys. No wonder that our reality is derived from the make believe of toys, from the simulacra that we play with, the talking doll as the television set, the child’s piano as our computer and the child’s wagon as our car. Do we grow up? Of course not as long as we can play along and not be confronted with the real reality of life and of other persons behind all the Christmas presents we give ourselves all year long. Sleep, perchance to dream is the lack of consciousness we all desperately cling to, hoping to avoid the nightmares that are buried deep below, waiting to explode….