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Post by midcan5 on Jun 16, 2013 7:48:44 GMT -5
I have a bad habit of reading too many books at once. Often an idea hits me and I have to read about it. But I did finish Barlett and Steele's book first in list and while it is sorta depressing it should be a must read for anyone interested in modern America. The others I can't vouch for (yet) but they look interesting. 'The Betrayal of the American Dream' Donald L. Barlett, James B. Steele www.amazon.com/Betrayal-American-Dream-Donald-Barlett/dp/1586489690/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8'The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America' George Packer www.amazon.com/Unwinding-Inner-History-New-America/dp/0374102414/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8'Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865' www.amazon.com/Freedom-National-Destruction-Slavery-1861-1865/dp/0393065316/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8'Against Thrift: Why Consumer Culture is Good for the Economy, the Environment, and Your Soul' James Livingston www.amazon.com/Against-Thrift-Consumer-Culture-Environment/dp/B008SM88UG/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8'Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race, Rights, and Taxes on American Politics' www.amazon.com/Chain-Reaction-Impact-American-Politics/dp/0393309037/ref=sr_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8'The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s' www.amazon.com/Unraveling-America-History-Liberalism-1960s/dp/0820334057/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8"What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley wrote in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984 Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us...This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right." Neil Postman 'Amusing Ourselves to Death' |
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Post by midcan5 on Oct 2, 2013 5:38:20 GMT -5
I want to add one of the most fascinating books I have read in recent years. How do we know we don't know? For my generation smoking was the issue that today would be a topic of the partisan divide. Odd huh. Most who have smoked, as I did young, know its consequences first hand, but there was so much doubt and so much corporate, and so called scientific counter argument, that many smoked just to prove something. Today global warming has enlisted the same corporate doubt machine and it works well as much of the debate demonstrates. I started reading 'Agnotology' and thought how easy it is to create ignorance and to make ignorance into knowledge. Worth a read for those willing to look into the telescope. "Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance' by Robert Proctor (Editor) , Londa Schiebinger (Editor) www.amazon.com/Agnotology-The-Making-Unmaking-Ignorance/dp/0804759014#"Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming" by Naomi Oreskes, Erik M. M. Conway www.amazon.com/dp/1608193942/ref=rdr_ext_sb_ti_sims_3"There can be no science without doubt: brute dogma leaves no room for inquiry. But over the last half century, a tiny minority of scientists have wielded doubt as a political weapon to halt what they did not want said: that tobacco kills or that the climate is warming because of what we humans are doing. ‘Doubt is our product’ read a tobacco memo--and indeed, millions of dollars have gone into creating the impression of scientific controversy where there has not been one. This book about the politics of doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway explores the long, connected, and intentional obfuscation of science by manufactured controversy. It is clear, scientifically responsible, and historically compelling—it is an essential and passionate book about our times." Peter Galison, Joseph Pellegrino University Professor, Harvard University |
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Post by midcan5 on Oct 6, 2013 7:33:55 GMT -5
A few more worth your time trying to understand how America today came to this place.
'The American Way of Poverty: How the Other Half Still Lives' Sasha Abramsky
'To Serve God and Wal-Mart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise' Bethany Moreton
'Invisible Hands: The Businessmen's Crusade Against the New Deal' Kim Phillips-Fein
*'Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance' by Robert Proctor, Londa Schiebinger
'Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming' Naomi Oreskes, Erik M. M. Conway
'The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy' Albert O. Hirschman
'The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin' Corey Robin
* I am reading this currently, fascinating study of the control of ideas.
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Post by midcan5 on May 6, 2018 9:43:58 GMT -5
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Post by midcan5 on Jul 16, 2019 14:51:14 GMT -5
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Post by midcan5 on Jun 20, 2020 6:05:30 GMT -5
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Post by midcan5 on Jul 20, 2020 5:40:06 GMT -5
Mentioned in history book above is Cormac McCarthy's 'Blood Meridian'. Read it. "The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning. The universe is no narrow thing and the order within it is not constrained by any latitude in its conception to repeat what exists in one part in any other part. Even in this world more things exist without our knowledge than with it and the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way. For existence has its own order and that no man's mind can compass, that mind itself being but a fact among others." Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1065465-blood-meridian-or-the-evening-redness-in-the-west |
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Post by midcan5 on May 8, 2021 10:17:15 GMT -5
"The great masses of the people will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one. If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed. Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it. By the skillful and sustained use of propaganda, one can make a people see even heaven as hell or an extremely wretched life as paradise." Hitler’s Control of the Masses, Mein Kampf One hates to bring up Hitler but I read that Trump kept a copy. The book below will challenge any Trump fan. Read it if you doubt. "No one saw it coming,” but what they mean is that they consider the people who saw it coming to be no one. The category of “no one” includes the people smeared by Trump in his propaganda: immigrants, black Americans, Muslim Americans, Native Americans, Latino Americans, LGBT Americans, disabled Americans, and others long maligned and marginalized—groups for whom legally sanctioned American autocracy was not an unfathomable horror, but a personal backstory." Sarah Kendzior 'Hiding in Plain Sight: The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America'www.goodreads.com/book/show/52274929-hiding-in-plain-sight"The president [Trump] is a nationalist, which is not at all the same thing as a patriot. A nationalist encourages us to be our worst, and then tells us that we are the best. A nationalist, 'although endlessly brooding on power, victory, defeat, revenge,' wrote Orwell, tends to be 'uninterested in what happens in the real world.' Nationalism is relativist, since the only truth is the resentment we feel when we contemplate others. As the novelist Danilo Kiš put it, nationalism 'has no universal values, aesthetic or ethical.' A patriot, by contrast, wants the nation to live up to its ideals, which means asking us to be our best selves. A patriot must be concerned with the real world, which is the only place where his country can be loved and sustained. A patriot has universal values, standards by which he judges his nation, always wishing it well—and wishing that it would do better." Timothy Snyder 'On Tyranny' |
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Post by midcan5 on May 26, 2021 18:29:11 GMT -5
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Post by midcan5 on Jun 21, 2021 6:37:59 GMT -5
This is an easy read and fascinating. I never realized how much money these news people make, no wonder they are more propaganda than news. No matter your political leanings you'll enjoy it. 'Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth' www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/53345186-hoax |
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Post by midcan5 on Jul 16, 2021 7:20:59 GMT -5
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Post by midcan5 on Jul 21, 2021 6:54:49 GMT -5
"We are responsible for our own ignorance or, with time and openhearted enlightenment, our own wisdom." IW I am finally back to this history after reading 'Hoax' Which covers Fox v Trump. I recommend both. Wilkerson's book is deep, it reminds me of James Baldwin's work. Race is a myth but caste is a reality. Read it. I want also to post this link in a comment I made yesterday. "Caste is insidious and therefore powerful because it is not hatred, it is not necessarily personal. It is the worn grooves of comforting routines and unthinking expectations, patterns of a social order that have been in place for so long that it looks like the natural order of things." 'Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents' Isabel Wilkerson www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/51152447-caste"Slavery was not merely an unfortunate thing that happened to black people. It was an American innovation, an American institution created by and for the benefit of the elites of the dominant caste and enforced by poorer members of the dominant caste who tied their lot to the caste system rather than to their consciences." |
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Post by midcan5 on Jul 28, 2021 6:52:36 GMT -5
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Post by midcan5 on Aug 16, 2021 6:40:33 GMT -5
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Post by midcan5 on Aug 31, 2021 14:49:19 GMT -5
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