User:Mememe

Consider the differences and the similarities.
Is an American empire such a bad thing?

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• Diversion of attention to irrelevant matters.
• Exaggeration of importance of emotive matters that are not influential.
• Assumptions.
• Mimicry of philosophy and transformations for "mirroring" to encourage reletavism.
• Sycophancy.
• The economy of the US: Some would question the direction of dependency of economies. Does the US economy influence the rest of the world, visa versa or both? The determination of influence of this kind is very difficult. However, the US economy is certainly one of the largest in the world, and the use of that capital certainly has influence. Whether that power should be described as vested in the US or the companies it hosts is another question.
• Many are content only with moral laziness, only the very clearest and simplest moral model, or with excessive complexity that overwhelms the ability to make moral decisions.
  • Obviously, this leads to ammorality and corrupt and poor leadership.
• The nihilism of lust for wealth.
• One of the reasons for the fall of the Soviet Bloc is that the propaganda machinery of the west (America in particular) was percieved as primarily for producing entertainment which happened to sometimes incorporate propaganda, whilst in the Soviet Bloc it was percieved that the propaganda machinery happened to produce propaganda that was entertaining.
  • It should be realised that state control of the media in Russia, at least, has returned to some extent. The last shows heavily critical of the government, a Spitting Image style puppet show and a political pundit who described what he saw as the failings of the Putin administration, were taken off air relatively recently.
• So teaching American blacks about their history causes them to see themselves in the role of the oppressed, and this causes them to have low expectations? That's ridiculous! If it were so, the teaching of the history of the civil war to all American children would cause them to see themselves in the role of one threatened by oppression by an imperial power; they would feel constantly neurotic and insecure, there'd develop an inferiority complex, i.e. they'd overcompensate to show how powerful and independent... oh.
• The intermediate classes are becoming excessively influential, a) preventing people from engaging with the process of influence of government by using their knowledge and skills of manipulation of individuals, of b) distorting processes to make them easier to control by excluding external influence as far as possible (e.g. by reducing availability or through unnecessary obtuseness or verbosity) c) enforcing conservatism by creating worse alternatives and obscuring the considerations surrounding the formulation of existing processes; this occurs through influence of and use of academia (exclusively? no).
• The contemporary class system is very different to that of Marx' time. His work has no relevance if treated as a holy text. However, /consideration of classes in society is profitable.

Questions

• What are the parts of state machinery (government, companies and other organisations) from the point of view of the influence they have on people's lives? All aspects, not just those they realise or perceive. Which parts are accountable, and how?
  • Education
    • Organised and funded by the state
    • Not organised and funded by the state