Thanks, did you read Daniel Ellsberg’s new book “ Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner”? (I wrote a summary of it and the fundamental problems we face: https://medium.com/@mariakonner/book-review-confessions-of-a-nuclear-war-planner-ac8771f78049)
The fundamental problem is that Americans are more interested in what’s new on Netflix or Amazon than the real world. As the world get more scary and complex, people retreat into their fantasies (e.g. all the lite sitcoms in the 60’s like “I Dream of Jeannie”, “Gilligan’s Island”, “The Monkeys”, were a great distraction from the height of the Cold War). I know this from personal experience, I was an activist for a while not too long ago(Green Energy), and the level of apathy was mind boggling. People claim they care about the environment on Facebook and in conversations over drinks, but try to get anybody to get involved is a joke. And those who are involved are hopelessly disorganized and idealistic, because those involved are usually the ones who don’t have a regular job or family. And of course those who have families have been brainwashed into believing that focusing on their kids sports and buyings more toys than their kids needs is the be-all-end-all. They have been programmed to worship this stuff, so they don’t pay attention to anything except the sport called “Spectator Politics”. And they say “somebody” needs to do something, and it never occurs to them that this “somebody” is them. Of course, they would have to explain to their kids why they can’t have as many toys or goto as many soccer games…oh my god, that would be a terrible thing to do wouldn’t it, have a backbone to explain to their kids that they need less crap to ensure their future. But they would look less successful than their friends, heaven forbid. (The brainwashing by the capitalist and political machine is working remarkably well.). I don’t have any children, so I suppose that’s why I’m immune.
I went to Zuccoti Park in NYC to see the Occupy Wall Street activity (I was there the day before they disbanded it). It was basically a circus run by drug addicts. As I walked towards it from the subway stop, I could hear the clamor from 3 blocks away. The messaging was all over the place — save the whales, save trees, abolish student loans — I think I saw one mention of the Glass-Steagall act. I ran into a NY Times reporter who had been covering it from the beginning. She said, at first regular working folks were there, but after a week they had to all go back to work. So they recruited people online, and what did they get — those who were unemployed. I have nothing against unemployed people, but in general, they tend to not know how to get organized and focused to deliver results.
So how do we rally people, when they’re not really interested? A few are interested, but it doesn’t appear like there are enough. I had two people on my show for one of my episodes a few years ago:
- The Editor of the San Francisco Bay Guardian (The flagship progressive New Paper in San Francisco for decades that was shut down by it’s new corporate parent). He discussed why it was shut down, and the future of publishing.
- A porn star from Kink.com discussing how he went from being a Mormon to starring in and producing gay porn.
Guess who get more views? The porn star got over 100K views (I lost count because YouTube pulled the video because somebody complained) . Guess how many views the Editor of the Guardian had?……..40. That’s a ratio of over 2500:1. Even after tweeting on their Twitter account of 25K followers they got 40 views. I got the message.
Sex sells, and it’s a lot more fun. I’m done trying to save the world, unless somebody can convince me that there are enough people who give a shit and are willing to take action and get organized like professionals and stay organized to fight a VERY long fight, and one you’re never going to get paid for. Until then, I’m going to have a lot of sex, and probably take this new job with a Wall Street firm because as much as I don’t like many of the values of Wall Street, I love working with them because they are smart, professional, respectful, focused, and they do want they say they are going to go. vs. activists who arrogant, unrealistic and disorganized.
