Lewis Black gave an extraordinarily touching talk for the National Press Club and he was brittle and nervous as a deer at a fireworks show, probably in large part because his parents, aged 96 and 95, were in the audience. Black's topic was What Made Me This Way and that's not his normal focus as his comedy is in observations of the lunacy of the world rather than his own variety of it. That was unnerving for him but the result was exceptional.
There were observations of my own while he spoke as his parents weren't teaching him anything except through the things they did. It's a similar thing with my own parents as they weren't teachers, I just watched. For me there is some wistfulness in it as there has never been a teacher of any guiding significance in my life except insofar as there was a lesson from my parents that learning comes only through observation.
Lewis Black's observation is what brought him to his conscience and that's where he came to his thoughts on socialism with his most novel observation, loosely paraphrased, that Christianity says you should take care of the poor whereas socialism takes the should out of it: you will take care of the poor.
Don't write an anti-Christian diatribe into what he said as that did not happen. His focus is more toward what socialism is rather than what other things are not or do not do successfully.
To save a step for conservatives, some will say socialism doesn't do a good job of taking care of the poor but that's true of any government which is not run well. There's a false premise of a socialist society in which everyone is dispensed precisely the same ration of everything and life is a vast boring plain in Maoist grey.
That works well for cartoons but 'the greatest good for the greatest number' or 'from each according to ability, to each according to need' and similar concepts do not mandate the dispensation to any two individuals must necessarily be the same unless their needs are the same. In the Rockhouse view of socialism, it would not preclude someone having a Cadillac Escalade so long as ownership of it did not prevent others from getting whatever they need.
For any system of that nature to work, the concept of need has to be understood a whole lot better than it is now as any idea of a need for a Cadillac Escalade stretches believability beyond whatever we did to bring Tinkerbell back from the dead.
Some people need to breed thoroughbred horses and why not as this is something humans have done for thousands of years. The ones who don't breed them many times like to watch them race or whatever they do because they're such elegant animals. In this view of socialism, living closely with animals is a true need as opposed to an artificial consumer need because we become less human as we lose understanding of animals.
(Ed: what happened to bashing richies?)
My purpose isn't to bash richies, per se, but rather the wastefulness of someone who would spend hundreds of millions on a yacht only a few people will ever use and which the owner probably can't even visit that much of the time because he has to get around to enjoy all his other richie amusements.
Being rich is a problem due the root paradigm that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Money gives power and a lot of money gives a lot of power. This is inherently a problem and the stories of what comes from that are in a huge stack of Disintegration on Wall Street books to show the behavior of good ones, bad ones, etc. The maniac behavior in foreign policy is just another example of the same thing.
A view many like to cast is of the giant constructions of George Orwellian apartment blocks with state-ordered locations for the residents. The assumption is flawed because such housing is only necessary because Orwellian society is being drained by a corrupt leadership. Were that not so, there's no reason housing has to change all that much from what it is today. People get three-bedroom room houses because they need them not because they want to impress some dork in a Cadillac Escalade.
It's encouraging to hear Lewis Black talking about being a socialist. He won't be a guide any more than anyone else but his position shows my observations were valid in the conclusions coming from them and that affirmation is a swell thing.
There were observations of my own while he spoke as his parents weren't teaching him anything except through the things they did. It's a similar thing with my own parents as they weren't teachers, I just watched. For me there is some wistfulness in it as there has never been a teacher of any guiding significance in my life except insofar as there was a lesson from my parents that learning comes only through observation.
Lewis Black's observation is what brought him to his conscience and that's where he came to his thoughts on socialism with his most novel observation, loosely paraphrased, that Christianity says you should take care of the poor whereas socialism takes the should out of it: you will take care of the poor.
Don't write an anti-Christian diatribe into what he said as that did not happen. His focus is more toward what socialism is rather than what other things are not or do not do successfully.
To save a step for conservatives, some will say socialism doesn't do a good job of taking care of the poor but that's true of any government which is not run well. There's a false premise of a socialist society in which everyone is dispensed precisely the same ration of everything and life is a vast boring plain in Maoist grey.
That works well for cartoons but 'the greatest good for the greatest number' or 'from each according to ability, to each according to need' and similar concepts do not mandate the dispensation to any two individuals must necessarily be the same unless their needs are the same. In the Rockhouse view of socialism, it would not preclude someone having a Cadillac Escalade so long as ownership of it did not prevent others from getting whatever they need.
For any system of that nature to work, the concept of need has to be understood a whole lot better than it is now as any idea of a need for a Cadillac Escalade stretches believability beyond whatever we did to bring Tinkerbell back from the dead.
Some people need to breed thoroughbred horses and why not as this is something humans have done for thousands of years. The ones who don't breed them many times like to watch them race or whatever they do because they're such elegant animals. In this view of socialism, living closely with animals is a true need as opposed to an artificial consumer need because we become less human as we lose understanding of animals.
(Ed: what happened to bashing richies?)
My purpose isn't to bash richies, per se, but rather the wastefulness of someone who would spend hundreds of millions on a yacht only a few people will ever use and which the owner probably can't even visit that much of the time because he has to get around to enjoy all his other richie amusements.
Being rich is a problem due the root paradigm that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Money gives power and a lot of money gives a lot of power. This is inherently a problem and the stories of what comes from that are in a huge stack of Disintegration on Wall Street books to show the behavior of good ones, bad ones, etc. The maniac behavior in foreign policy is just another example of the same thing.
A view many like to cast is of the giant constructions of George Orwellian apartment blocks with state-ordered locations for the residents. The assumption is flawed because such housing is only necessary because Orwellian society is being drained by a corrupt leadership. Were that not so, there's no reason housing has to change all that much from what it is today. People get three-bedroom room houses because they need them not because they want to impress some dork in a Cadillac Escalade.
It's encouraging to hear Lewis Black talking about being a socialist. He won't be a guide any more than anyone else but his position shows my observations were valid in the conclusions coming from them and that affirmation is a swell thing.
2 comments:
Great speech. He should run for president. Love to see a debate between he and Donald Trump!! UH!
The only part of Donald Trump I want to see is the eyeholes peeking out from a layer of tar and feathers. He is my current favorite for the disingenuous way the country deals with racism. It would really surprise me if Black would waste time talking with him. I'd like to see him talk with Sanders or Smith and it would be hilarious to see him shred Bush or Clinton.
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