RIP George Carlin

[IlyaKEightSix]

The irreverent comedian passed away this weekend.

My god, he was funny as hell.

And something I also just found out today:

HE WAS MR. CONDUCTOR ON SHINING TIME STATION!

I loved that show when I was little, with the cheeky trains and their cute faces >_<!

Anyhoo, RIP George Carlin. You will be immortalized on youtube and dearly missed.

 

[bigbadwolf]

Carlin - The Real Owners Of America

Carlin - The Real Owners Of America

"The real owners are the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians, they're an irrelevancy. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the statehouses, the city halls. They've got the judges in their back pockets. And they own all the big media companies, so that they control just about all of the news and information you hear. They've got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying &shy;to get what they want. Well, we know what they want; they want more for themselves and less for everybody else."

"But I'll tell you what they don't want. They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them. That's against their interests. They don't want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they're getting f***** by a system that threw them overboard 30 f****** years ago.

"You know what they want? Obedient workers &shy; people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork but just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And, now, they're coming for your Social Security. They want your f****** retirement money. They want it back, so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They'll get it. They'll get it all, sooner or later, because they own this f****** place. It's a big club, and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club."

"This country is finished."

Amen.

 

[IlyaKEightSix]

Carlin - The Real Owners Of America



Amen.

I believe Michael Douglas put it better a little bit quicker.

"Listen pal, either you are on the inside...or you are on the outside."

No wonder every single young person like me wants to get to Wall Street. We don't take anything for granted. We want the big bucks, we want the education, and we want it ASAP so we can run our lives, not the big corporations.

So long as you don't lose your soul in the process and become a part of the monster itself.

 

[bigbadwolf]

No wonder every single young person like me wants to get to Wall Street. We don't take anything for granted. We want the big bucks, we want the education, and we want it ASAP so we can run our lives, not the big corporations.

So long as you don't lose your soul in the process and become a part of the monster itself.

That's the way the powers-that-be want you to think: that there are individual solutions to collective problems. That as long as you can amass your heap of cash (never mind the long odds against it), you'll be all right, and bugger the rest. Bridges and roads collapsing because of lack of infrastructure investment? Buy your own chopper. Public schools crud? Send your progeny to an elite private academy. Toxic air outside? Buy an air filtration plant for yourself. Streets unsafe? Buy a state-of-the-art home security system that'll electrocute any invaders.

And as long as people subscribe to the idea of individual salvation (and bugger civil society), they don't band together to find collective solutions to collective problems -- which is exactly the way the ruling elite wants it.

 

[IlyaKEightSix]

The way I see it is this: there is nobody that is responsible for me but me. There is nobody that will achieve me my dreams but me. I am the one in charge of me, and nobody else. I am the only one who can change what I do and where I go.

It's not so much "bugger the rest", but "I can only help me"

 

[bigbadwolf]

The way I see it is this: there is nobody that is responsible for me but me. There is nobody that will achieve me my dreams but me. I am the one in charge of me, and nobody else. I am the only one who can change what I do and where I go.

It's not so much "bugger the rest", but "I can only help me"

You are responsible for yourself today in the sense that in the USA you will not find any institutional structures to support you in your endeavors or assist you if you have any problems financial, health, or otherwise (other than self-serving for-profit ones). And this is because the social contract is in shreds. But because the dice are loaded, the playing field isn't level, it doesn't mean you have the instruments to help yourself, to change your circumstances. Or it might require taking on onerous debt burdens and the concomitant risk in what is a buyer's job market. A ruling elite that hogs the lion's share of wealth and income tells everyone else they have to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, because -- by golly! -- this is the land of opportunity. And because media discourse is monopolised by the same gang, no other point of view ever gets heard.

One example of the impoverished nature of debate is the price of gasoline -- $4 a gallon nd climbing. The debate is never why the country hasn't had an energy policy since Carter, or why many cities don't have adequate (often any) mass transit facilities because of the influence of the automobile lobby over several decades. An recent interesting article is here. The same goes for just about every other social or environmental problem in the US. Instead, the populace is told: you're responsible individually for what afflicts you. Just make your first billion and --voila! -- you personally will have not have these problems anymore.