[Peace-discuss] My quest for personal identity

[C G Estabrook]

Ron, you needn’t worry. The brilliant US political system - obviously the best in the world (indeed, the only good one in the world) - provides a solution to your difficulty. There are two political organizations - traditions, really - and you’re free to choose been them. You can be a Republican or a Democrat, and each offers a complete list of lodgments for your votes. 

Whichever you choose, you can be confident that you join serious and wise people with the good of the whole country - and the world (which they run) - in mind.  The other party of course in controlled by self-seeking poltroons who will bring us all to ruin, if given power. 

Of course there are always subversives and ‘gatekeepers’ like Noam Chomsky, who say things like, "The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.”

But they can be disregarded, because the Other Party is so dangerous. —CGE


> On Nov 4, 2018, at 9:33 PM, Szoke, Ron via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
> 
> Help! I’m not sure what to believe or to do, & who to vote for, because I’m uncertain which tribe I belong to.  But it occurred to me that surely the brilliant, all-knowing pundits on this site can help me with my identity crisis.  
> (1) Am I one of “the People”?  (Are you? How do you know?)  Who has the right to decide this?  And on what basis? 
> (2) Am I a member of the “Working Class”?
> Poor me, I was born on a dark & stormy night in a cabin in the deepest woods of central Illinois.  Both my parents were educated only thru the 8th grade. We were sharecropping farmers throughout my childhood. We never could afford to have any dental work done.  I milked cows before & after school every day while in high school. I still have dirt under my fingernails & a red neck due to sunburn from field work (cultivating corn, loading & stacking bales of hay on a wagon pulled behind an IH twine-tie baler — over 1,000 bales one day).  I went to a third-rate college, the cheapest one available at the time.  I was drafted for two years in the US Army, serving at Fort Carson CO, Aberdeen Proving Ground MD, & Fort Myer VA, rising from the lowest enlisted rank to the next-lowest (PFC?).  
> So am I not in fact clearly & obviously an oppressed victim of society, capitalism, wage slavery, class bias and middle-class morality? 
> Or am I ineligible to be a member pf the WC because of my bad attitude, disingenuous statements, erroneous opinions & obvious lack of wisdom & virtue, such as true, authentic members of the WC are said to have?   Unless, of course, they have been misled & victimized by FAKE NEWS & the vicious lies & nonsense of the Deep State conspiracy of the American Political Elite (APE) which controls the Mainstream Media (MSM), etc. 
> I’m looking forward to deliverance & enlightenment from this site’s resident arbiters of TRUTH and REALITY when they pronounce upon the real issue, the real question, & the real reason for my perplexity.  
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Peace-discuss mailing list
> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss