Originally posted by: BigDH01
Originally posted by: Taejin
Originally posted by: Butterbean
Just put what Obama says on one side (it will look like a lot of ther things he already said no doubt - he talk about "founding promise..new fairness..take care of folks.. protecting our childrens future" etc.
Then put the things he actually does on one side.
Then read Alisnky, Antonio Gramsci, Fabian Socialists and you'll see how to sort out the wide distinctions between the two. Your head will stop hurting (if your stiill sane).
You are clueless.
Butterbean's a special and dangerous kind of ignorance. I guarantee you he's never read Alisnky, Gramsci, or Webb. No, he's almost certainly gleaning this information from some conservative and/or religious website or society. They, in turn, pick quotes or ideas they dislike from these different schools of thought and try to associate them with Obama (who is surely an evil Communist hell bent on turning the USA into the USSR). The reality is, of course, these people had both good and bad ideas, as does Obama.
I really dislike the kind of faux intellectualism used by people like Butterbean in an attempt to categorize that which he does not like. The fact is that the Fabian Socialists, while having some bad ideas, were early promoters of things like minimum wage and socialized medicine and included prominent members of society, such as H.G. Wells. Gramsci examined the idea of cultural hegemony, in that the working class assimilated the values of the ruling class. Do we not see that to a large degree today? Look at how materialistic the average American has become. Better yet, just look at these boards and you'll see that many in the middle-class here will defend the elite and wealthy, even to the point of calling the bottom 90% lazy and undeserving. They never seem to mention that most people who die wealthy were born wealthy. But this was the point of Gramsci, one of the reasons Capitalism remains successful is because the ruling-class convinced the working-class that it is in their own benefit that the ruling-class is protected and does well. Whether or not you agree with this, you can certainly see this behavior in action both in these boards and in real life.
Now, Gramsci, Alisnky, and the Fabian Socialists weren't right about everything (IMO), but that's not the point. They encouraged people to question the status quo. To question their own deeply held beliefs. You may find yourself exactly where you started or you may modify your world view, that journey is your's. And this is why people like Butterbean are so dangerous. He can hate these thinkers without ever having actually considered their ideas. He operates at the behest of others who think for him and who almost certainly have their own motives. I think it's time that people become more critical of the things they hold to be universal truths.