I believe there are ways to get what you want in this world without being a complete asshole about it. Took me a long time to figure that out, and to build the skills I needed to stay within that construct. Unfortunately, hardly any of that matters anymore.
Case in point: The guy who runs the joint where my wife works has said on more than one occasion (and out in the open for all to hear), "I have the power here. If you want any kind of power, you'll have to take it away from me." That's not quite a direct quote, but very close to it.
That's the dominant thinking in the executive suite now - actually it's been that way for a while. For the guys who've clawed their way up over the last 12-15 years, it's become a zero sum game. They believe with all their hearts that the only way they can win is for everybody else to lose - it's a binary universe where everything is either all one way or all the other way, so there are always and ONLY two diametrically opposed choices (which always seem to comprise a set of false alternatives, but that's a different discussion).
I don't like it of course, but my way of thinking has fallen out of favor (and is not bloody likely to make a big comeback soon), so I have to play in the other guy's house now.
Chris Hedges explains.
Slick public relations campaigns, the collapse of public education—nearly a third of the country is illiterate or semiliterate—and the rise of amoral politicians such as Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, who posed as liberals while they sold their souls for corporate money, have left us largely defenseless. The last vestiges of unionized workers in the public sector are reduced to protesting in Wisconsin for collective bargaining—in short, the ability to ask employers for decent working conditions. That shows how far the country has deteriorated. And it looks as though even this basic right to ask, as well as raise money through union dues, has been successfully revoked in Madison.
And this is what I need to know about right now:
The only hope now is more concerted and militant disruptions of the systems of power.
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