He said. She said.
“But what of the freedom-to? Not just the freedom-from. Not all compulsion comes from without. You pretend you do not see this. What of freedom-to. How for the person to freely choose? How to choose any but a child’s greedy choices if there is no loving-filled father to guide, inform, teach the person how to choose? How is there freedom to choose if one does not learn how to choose?”
-David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest, 30 April/ 1 May, Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment
Rant on.
-T
Speculators at megabanks or investment firms such as Goldman Sachs are not, in a strict sense, capitalists. They do not make money from the means of production. Rather, they ignore or rewrite the law—ostensibly put in place to protect the vulnerable from the powerful—to steal from everyone, including their shareholders. They are parasites. They feed off the carcass of industrial capitalism. They produce nothing. They make nothing. They just manipulate money. Speculation in the 17th century was a crime. Speculators were hanged. -Chris Hedges
Source: Truthdig
Hyperlink in quote from moi.
“Like most North Americans of his generation, Hal tends to know way less about why he feels certain ways about the objects and pursuits he’s devoted to than he does about the objects and pursuits themselves.”
-David Foster Wallace – Infinite Jest
“Much as warlords seized land in the Norman Conquest and levied rent on subject populations (starting with the Domesday Book, the great land census of England and Wales ordered by William the Conqueror), so today’s financialized mode of warfare uses debt leverage and foreclosure to prey away land, natural resources and economic infrastructure. The commons are privatized by bondholders and bankers, gaining control of government and shifting taxes onto labor and small scale industry. Household accounts, corporate balance sheets and public budgets are earmarked increasingly to pay real estate rent, monopoly rent, interest and financial fees, and to bear the taxes shifted off rentier wealth. The rentier oligarchy makes itself into a hereditary aristocracy lording it over the population at large from gated communities that are the modern counterpart to medieval castles with their moats and parapets.”
Bold text worstwriter.
Rent on.
-t
“But it transcends the mechanics. I’m not a machine. I feel and believe. I have opinions. Some of them are interesting. I could, if you’d let me, talk and talk. Let’s talk about anything. I believe the influence of Kierkegaard on Camus is underestimated. I believe Dennis Gabor may very well have been the Antichrist. I believe Hobbes is just Rousseau in a dark mirror. I believe, with Hegel, that transcendence is absorption. I could interface you guys right under the table, I say. I’m not just a creatus, manufactured, conditioned, bred for a function.”
-David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
“College educated elites carried out the neoliberal assault on the working poor and now they are being made to pay. Their duplicity embodied in politicians like The Clintons and Barrack Obama succeeded for decades. These elites, many from east coast ivy league schools, spoke the language of value, civility, inclusivity, a condemnation of overt racism and bigotry, a concern for the middle class, while thrusting a knife into the back of the underclass for their corporate masters. This game has ended. There are tens of millions of Americans, especially lower class whites, rightfully enraged because of what has been done to them, their families and their communities. They have risen up to reject the neoliberal policies imposed on them by college educated elites. The democrats foolishly anointed Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomised the double-dealing of the college educated class, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women who hold up the bible, of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working poor to corporate power. And unless there is a resurgence of left-wing populism, which can only occur outside the democratic party, to defy the neoliberal order, we will cement into place an American fascism.” -Chris Hedges
Rant on.
-t
The most incurably frustrated–and, therefore, the most vehement–among the permanent misfits are those with an unfulfilled craving for creative work. Both those who try to write, paint, compose, etcetera, and fail decisively, and those who after tasting the elation of creativeness feel a drying up of the creative flow within and know that never again will they produce aught worth-while, are alike in the grip of a desperate passion. Neither fame nor power nor riches nor even monumental achievements in other fields can still their hunger. Even the wholehearted dedication to a holy cause does not always cure them. Their unappeased hunger persists, and they are likely to become the most violent extremists in the service of their holy cause. -Eric Hoffer, The True Believer
