The World’s Already Changed
Republicans have the luxury of pointing out that under their watch, the world’s already changed -- for the better, while the Democrats, like so many Rip van Winkles, slept through it all, and awoke to continue with their demand that the world needed to change, and they would be the leaders in bringing that promise about.
But if they had been paying attention, they would be aware that all the changes they were now promising, had already come to pass -- but with that realization, they couldn’t be the leaders anymore, the progressive vanguard of the wonderful world to come -- if they were now the last to know that all those things they were advocating, had already come to pass.
That is the curious state of politics at this present time -- that while the world has changed immeasurably in the last forty years, the worldview of the Democrat/liberal/”progressives,” have not. They are still living with the memories and programming of the 1960s -- championing the causes of “civil rights,” getting out of the war (in Vietnam), and that they, the most progressive members of society, should be our leaders -- in a world in which everyone could be their own leader, and think for themselves; it was no longer necessary for a group of self-appointed technocrats to decide for everybody else what everybody should do and be doing -- because they alone knew better, what was best for all.
That’s how the world had changed -- but a few refused to acknowledge it. They were called Democrats -- and were calling themselves, “progressives.” Many had grown up and were educated (conditioned) in the 60s, and didn’t grow and evolve beyond that initial indoctrination. In their fantasies, they were still the swashbuckling rebels against the homogenization of those times -- and never changed though they grew older.
In previous times, that was the expected pattern, that once stamped in adolescence, people did not change, or learn anything substantially new in the remainder of their lives. They just grew older -- without re-examining, re-vitalizing, re-creating their lives and world view to accommodate all the changes since they were formally and systematically indoctrinated in the ways of the world.
We still see this resistance in the lives of those vowed never to learn how to use a computer or a cell phone -- no matter how long they live, no matter how much life will revolve around these new tools. That is just the most obvious manifestation of the new voluntary retardation -- for surely, that is what it is, like those who cannot learn the adaptations successfully the first time.
Yet many others, while ostensibly adapting the new technologies, still use them with the mindset of a previous generation and consciousness. Since most are familiar with the culture of the mass media, that culture is probably our best record of those changes -- in which the playing field has been leveled to invite full participation from and for everybody. Yet the old icons are still insisting, “It is I who am important. I hold the microphone and editor’s pen. I am the progressive leader. The world is, what I say it is.”
The rest of the world just passes them by.
posted by Mike Hu @ 12:44 PM
7 comments
7 Comments:
Sadly, this story is being repeated in “old media” offices all across the country. Omniscient self-importance is not what it used to be. Will this put a crimp in their ambitions to be the next Dan Rather?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1651004/posts
The 74-year-old man with the Mets cap pulled far down on his forehead slid into a booth at a diner on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and ordered a glass of milk without so much as turning a head — so quietly, in fact, that it was hard to believe it was Dan Rather.
In place of the swagger that had served him so well throughout his 44-year career at CBS News was an obvious sadness that his tenure at the network was ticking down to an inglorious end. Mr. Rather complained that since stepping down as anchor of the " CBS Evening News" last year, in the aftermath of a reporting scandal, he had been ill used as a correspondent on "60 Minutes" and had been given virtually nothing at all to do for the previous six weeks.
Among the places he had sought solace, he said on a recent afternoon, was in "Good Night, and Good Luck," George Clooney's homage to Edward R. Murrow and the CBS News of old, a film that Mr. Rather said he had seen five times in theaters, most recently alone.
Mr. Rather's contract with CBS, and "60 Minutes," is not scheduled to expire until late November. But he said yesterday that he and the network were close to an agreement that would end his tenure early, and that he was seriously mulling a new venture that, at least initially, relatively few viewers would be able to see: he would develop and be the host of a weekly interview program on a high-definition television channel known as HDNet.
The offer, he said, had come directly from Mark Cuban, the unbridled owner of the NBA's
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
All we can hear now from the "old" media now, is the Prozac talking.
People at the Hawaii Republican Headquarters, often look at me as a candidate for leadership in the traditional pattern -- which I assure them I am not. But there are certain things I can say, do and be -- that even the governor, the party chairman, and no other functionary can -- just by the fact that I am the free floating private citizen who can stand alone in articulating a unique perspective, and am fearlessly competent in doing so.
Yesterday for example, I was down at the NAACP gathering at the Kapiolani Bandstand, of which another voter registrar heading out for another assignment was taken aback by saying, “You’re not going to get a lot of Republican voters out there,” to which I replied, “You never know who is out there. And you have to make some inroads rather than just conceding a whole segment of the population because of stereotypes and generalizations.”
After personally asking everyone within 100 yards of that event, I finally settled down to check my blood pressure for the multiple time one can do so at such events, and discovered that the leader of the Black Nurses Association was one of the most perceptive and articulate “Republicans,” in this state, who really thought he ought to get in touch with the Republican Party because he was the great defender in our community against these stereotypes and thought Governor Lingle was “awesome,” at their recent banquet.
And although I have been carrying around those Lingle-Aiona cards for months without finding the right opportunity to distribute any, finally, somebody had said, “I wish I had one.”
The upshot of the NAACP event was that it was sparsely attended mostly by military and their dependents in Hawaii -- rather than being overtly political, without any tirades by Jesse Jackson or Neil Abercrombie against the war or his proposal to reinstitute the draft.
In fact, the only person running for office I ran into, was Noah Hough and his family. Noah is running for 1st District U.S. Congress against Neil Abercrombie.
We discussed how the newspapers don't like to give him more exposure than they absolutely have to. A thoughtful letter to the editor in the Star-Bulletin on Saturday did not identify him as a candidate for the US Congress, nor did George Berish's hit piece on Governor Lingle identify him as an opponent in the primary election.
In all fairness, credit would have given those letters greater context, meaning and purpose. Otherwise, it is another attempt by the newspaper editors to distort the news and communications to their own agenda -- as we have so long suffered in Hawaii.
It's time for liberation; start your computers!
Winning is overemphasized and overrated as a measure of what we do in life. Far more important is just the doing of anything -- whether we are rewarded for it by others or not, because doing is the reward we give to ourselves -- that we are capable and worthy of such expressions.
So I recommend that anybody who really wants to -- should run for office, write, paint, play, teach and learn -- and that is everyone's entitlement, and not what they demand from others to fulfill for them.
http://freedomkeys.com/ar-ageofenvy.htm
"... in the much more virulent cases of hatred, masked as envy ... the creature ... does not desire the value: it desires the value's destruction."
excerpt from
"The Age of Envy"
by Ayn Rand
(first published in THE OBJECTIVIST, July-August 1971,
and re-published as a chapter in
RETURN OF THE PRIMITIVE: THE ANTI-INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION ):
Superficially, the motive of those who hate the good is taken to be envy. A dictionary definition of envy is: "1. a sense of discontent or jealousy with regard to another's advantages, success, possessions, etc. 2. desire for an advantaged position possessed by another." (The Random House Dictionary, 1968.) The same dictionary adds the following elucidation: "To envy is to feel resentful because someone else possesses or has achieved what one wishes oneself to possess or to have achieved."
This covers a great many emotional responses, which come from different motives. In a certain sense, the second definition is the opposite of the first, and the more innocent of the two.
For example, if a poor man experiences a moment's envy of another man's wealth, the feeling may mean nothing more than a momentary concretization of his desire for wealth; the feeling is not directed against that particular rich person and is concerned with the wealth, not the person. The feeling, in effect, may amount to: "I wish I had an income or a house, or a car, or an overcoat) like his." The result of this feeling may be an added incentive for the man to improve his financial condition.
The feeling is less innocent, if it amounts to: "I want this man's car (or overcoat, or diamond shirt studs, or industrial establishment)." The result is a criminal.
But these are still human beings, in various stages of immorality, compared to the inhuman object whose feeling is: "I hate this man because he is wealthy and I am not."
Envy is part of this creature's feeling, but only the superficial, semirespectable part; it is the tip of an iceberg showing nothing worse than ice, but with the submerged part consisting of a compost of rotting living matter. The envy, in this case, is semirespectable because it seems to imply a desire for material possessions, which is a human being's desire. But, deep down, the creature has no such desire: it does not want to be rich, it wants the human being to be poor.
This is particularly clear in the much more virulent cases of hatred, masked as envy, for those who possess personal values or virtues: hatred of a man (or a woman) because he (or she) is beautiful or intelligent or successful or honest or happy. In these cases, the creature has no desire and makes no effort to improve its appearance, to develop or to use its intelligence, to struggle for success, to practice honesty, to be happy (nothing can make it happy). It knows that the disfigurement or the mental collapse or the failure or the immorality or the misery of its victim would not endow it with his or her value. It does not desire the value: it desires the value's destruction.
"They do not want to own your fortune, they want you to lose it; they do not want to succeed, they want you to fail; they do not want to live, they want you to die; they desire nothing, they hate existence ..."(Atlas Shrugged.)
http://freedomkeys.com/blogs.htm
http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/nathantabor/2006/06/19/201852.html
Attack of the Bloggers
Jun 19, 2006
by Nathan Tabor
There was a time in America when the most effective way for the average Joe to make his voice heard in the political process was in the confines of the voting booth. Once in a while—if he were lucky—he might even get a letter to the editor published in the local newspaper. But, other than that, it was unlikely that politicians would pay much attention to what he had to say—especially if he lived somewhere between the liberal Coasts—the great American fly-over zone.
But the Internet has changed everything. Joe Six-Pack can now hook up his computer and his DSL account and blog away his nights. And the entire world can see his thoughts and e-mail comments back to him.
As a result, political nobodies from nowhere are now emerging on the national Cyberspace stage, opining on everything from the war in Iraq to, well, the strength of other blogs.
Blogs represent the voice of the people—often against the most powerful elements in our society—so they do represent a kind of high-tech democracy in action.
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