tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1212890428051515494.post6908087369010558103..comments2024-03-19T09:47:02.249-05:00Comments on Say What?: Are You a Finished Product?Kevin Gilmorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07689287179985777963noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1212890428051515494.post-29346760982075297622014-10-26T09:33:51.889-05:002014-10-26T09:33:51.889-05:00Brett, thanks for your comment.
I'd given Jo...Brett, thanks for your comment. <br /><br />I'd given John the link to the CommonDreams article about Reaganomics and asked for his thoughts about it. I also asked him what his understanding is for the reasons behind our country's economic collapse and the recession that followed. The typical right-wing talking point is that because of democratic policies banks were giving out loans to minorities who couldn't afford to pay them. End of discussion. I wanted to shed some light on that fallacy for him. He was also blaming Obama for ISIS/ISIL. <br /><br />I told him I'd like to touch on each of these individually and see if there was another way of looking at them other than the simple talking points he was working with. Like I said, I got nowhere.Kevin Gilmorehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07689287179985777963noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1212890428051515494.post-61581598266744886602014-10-26T07:07:34.252-05:002014-10-26T07:07:34.252-05:00Very well said, Kevin. I'd like to know more a...Very well said, Kevin. I'd like to know more about your conversation with your friend who deleted the thread. <br /><br />I have these conversations with people from time to time too, and I can't seem to break down any walls to get people to look at things a little different. It sounds like you must have hit a nerve with your friend, if he deleted the thread, so I would like to hear more. <br /><br />My wife and I lament the lack of historical perspective Americans have, and with that lack of perspective they can be easily swayed to repeat an almost identical blunder of the past. Jim Jefferies, the comedian from Australia, says it so brilliantly, as only someone outside of a culture can sometimes do. He says Americans are one of the poorest educated peoples of the First World, but ...we are number one in confidence! Sounds like a horrible mixture for a successful society.<br />With news media we have today, I see no way to improve the average person's historical horizon. We are, as Gore Vidal said, "The United States of Amnesia."<br /><br />Recently, I was re-watching Neil deGrasse Tyson's new "Cosmos," series and in Season 1 Episode 7, at just after 27 1/2 minutes into the episode they play an advertisement for Dutch Boy Paints, I think from the 50's, advocating the use of LEAD in children's toys and other household items. Dutch Boy Paint was originally the National Lead Company founded in 1907. They knew lead was poison, humans have known since the Greek and Roman dynasties, so there's no mistaking their desire to profit at the health of others. I bring it up as a history lesson which I feel parallels exactly what they are doing today with the climate dangers we all face. <br /><br />Like John Maynard Keyne said, " Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest men, for the nastiest or reasons, will somehow work for the benefit of us all."<br /><br />Knowing history could save a lot of future misery,...and lives.Brett Holzschuhhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13899379310906696480noreply@blogger.com