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Failed Conservative Values: Jeeni Criscenzo on Scapegoating
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Individual Responsibility: A detachable burden easily shifted by conservatives to the shoulders of God, Fate, Fortune, Luck, one's neighbor or other Scapegoats. In the days of astrology it was customary to unload it upon a star. Modified Devils Dictionary
I interviewed Jeeni Criscenzo in Sacramento, California. Jeeni brought up the prevalent use of scapegoating by conservatives. I find it curios how a Conservative Movement that preaches individual responsibility is so adept at finding scapegoats and not taking true responsibility. I think it has to do with the type of responsibility they preach. It is not the unqualified progressive sense of responsibility, where you feel responsible for yourself and the society around you, but rather conservatives always talk about a qualified 'individual responsibility' which actually is really no longer true responsibility, but rather a value of selfish self-centeredness. It's like taking the value of love or caring and saying we're for 'individual love' or 'individual caring'. The values lose their meaning and are turned into nothing but the Failed Conservative Value of individual selfishness and greed.
Failed Conservative Values: Jeeni Criscenzo on Scapegoating
Jeeni Criscenzo: I think conservatives have lost their way, they don’t realize that. I recently saw a video of the Minutemen movement who were out there giving the finger to people, and being obnoxious and rude. There was also something with them being at a church where they were interrupting the communion and screaming about not letting immigrants into this country. If they could see themselves, what they look like and how they sound. I think that they would be repulsed by what they saw. They are trying to protect themselves. They see themselves as being activists who feel helpless with the way things are going in this country, and they need to blame someone. And a scapegoat is being delivered to them. And they don’t realize they are being used.
The goat shall be used for making atonement by sending it into the desert as a scapegoat. Leviticus 16:10 The rightwing in this country and beyond the rightwing, the corporatocracy, the military-industrial complex is trying to take over our world. It’s using two techniques: it’s called divide and distract. And too many of the people in this country who are frustrated because they are losing jobs, because life is not turning out the way they thought it would be. Our children don’t have the same opportunities and hopes that their parents had. And they need to blame someone. So they’re falling right into this trap – of divide and distract. And unfortunately, I think, the immigration is all about that. Yeah, they make you find somehow who is at fault for the fact that their lives are not – that they are not happy. There is a great emptiness in a lot of people that comes from thinking that you can feel whole by having enough stuff. And we are bombarded by this message all the time. You need more stuff. You need a bigger car. You need a bigger house. You need more and more and more. And they keep trying to fill up this hole in them that can’t be filled with that. And then there is delivered a message by people that they trust, by politicians, by church people, that says that the reason that you don’t have enough is because of them, because of the other. And it’s so easy to fall into that trap. And they become so dispirited and angry, that they don’t realize that they’ve been manipulated. One thing they are trying to say is that we want to give away the store. That we want the government to take care of us. That we want the government to pay for everything. That we’re socialists or communists. And that’s not correct. We as human beings have a responsibility to one another. Whatever happens to the least of them happens to me. I can’t be happy and live safely and have a good life if I am surrounded with people who are starving, who are living in the street, who are homeless, who are not being given health care. That is a direct threat to my quality of life. If I want to look at it in a completely selfish way, I can’t feel safe if there are starving people around me. They are going to come and take what I have. So, for conservatives to look at progressives and say, “Well, you just want to give everything away” is incorrect, because it is in their best interests to have everyone have at least basic health care, basic food on their table, shelter. No human being should ever have to sleep on the street. When you fall asleep you are in a condition of complete vulnerability. How can you do that if you don’t have a safe place to lay your head. So it’s a basic human right that everyone has to have shelter and food. And for conservatives to say “Oh, well, if you give it away, then people aren’t going to work, and they should work”. There is a basic human right that we all have an ability to earn a living, that we will have the opportunity. And then – for lack of a better word – this military-industrial complex is depriving more and more people of that by not providing mental healthy care for people who are not capable of taking care of themselves. And again, it comes back to, okay, you need to take care of those people. I don’t own a car. I take public transportation all the time, and the buses are full of mentally ill people. And they talk to themselves, are in another world. Some of them are maybe a little threatening. But mostly, it’s really very sad that these people are just tossed out like garbage, because our society is not taking care of them. 
(Cartoon: The Secret of Success is knowing who to Blame.)
http://images.acswebnetworks.com/1/934/scapegoat.jpg
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(Cartoon: 'I was a failure as CEO because my scapegoats were inferior.')
http://www.cartoonstock.com/lowres/hsc3337l.jpg
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(Cartoon: Organization Chart: Scapegoats)
http://www.cartoonstock.com/newscartoons/cartoonists/jsi/lowres/jsin330l.jpgMore about Scapegoating
Definition:
- One that is made to bear the blame of others.
- scapegoat - someone who is punished for the errors of others
http://onelook.com/?w=ScapegoatAt Wikipedia
The scapegoat was a goat that was driven off into the wilderness as part of the ceremonies of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, in Judaism during the times of the Temple in Jerusalem. The rite is described in Leviticus 16.
The word is more widely used as a metaphor, referring to someone who is blamed for misfortunes, generally as a way of distracting attention from the real causes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ScapegoatScapegoat Society
Scapegoating is a hostile social - psychological discrediting routine by which people move blame and responsibility away from themselves and towards a target person or group. It is also a practice by which angry feelings and feelings of hostility may be projected, via inappropriate accusation, towards others. The target feels wrongly persecuted and receives misplaced vilification, blame and criticism; he is likely to suffer rejection from those who the perpetrator seeks to influence. Scapegoating has a wide range of focus: from "approved" enemies of very large groups of people down to the scapegoating of individuals by other individuals. Distortion is always a feature. http://www.scapegoat.demon.co.uk
(Cartoon: I didn't say it was your fault...I said we are going to say it is.)
http://www.cartoonstock.com/lowres/jmo0599l.jpg
The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices -- to be found in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own -- for the children and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined to the Twilight Zone. Rod Serling
Progressive Value Alternative: Responsibility
Part of the Failed Conservative Values of: Irresponsibility , individual responsibility
Some Questions To Ponder:
- What is scapegoating all about?
- Why does the conservative movement that says they value 'individual responsibility', yet seem to always blame others and is always looking for scapegoats?
- How does this conservative value of scapegoating differ from progressive values?
- What are some examples of conservatives using scapegoating? liberals, welfare queens, immigrants, Muslims?
Failed Conservative Values
I ask for your assistance to systematically build the arguments and tell the stories that reveal how Conservative Values have Failed. Join in our effort to create a documentary and book on the subject by contributing articles, posts, chapters for the book and video clips. Check our website for more information and a growing outline of tasks that need to be done on this project. http://progressivespirit.com/Projects/FailedConservativeValues
More Progressive Values Stories:
Edwin Rutsch
What Are Progressive Values? Documentary Project
http://ProgressiveSpirit.com
and Study Group
Yep, him.
Yeah, way ?
Way !:
http://www.abovethelaw.com/images/entries/howard%20dean%20young%20man.jpg
Free Spirit sez HI!! She's sitting out this Presidential election, working for local candidates. Wishes ya'll good luck.
Iran aint dealin in greenbacks anymore amigos.............odd how another aircraft carrier appears in the Persian Gulf just in time.......................
http://www.counterpunch.org/ford04302008.html
Barack Obama's strategy to win the White House was to run a "race-neutral" campaign in a society that is anything but neutral on race. The very premise -- that race neutrality is possible in a nation built on white supremacy -- demanded the systematic practice of the most profound race-factual denial, which is ultimately indistinguishable from rank dishonesty. From the moment Obama told the 2004 Democratic National Convention that "there is no white America, there is no black America," it was inevitable that the candidate would one day declare the vast body of black opinion illegitimate.
That day came on Tuesday, April 29, when a battered and truly bitter Barack Obama made his final, irrevocable break with his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose televised Black Liberation Theology tour de force the preceding Friday, Sunday and Monday had laid bare the contradictions of Obama's hopeless racial "neutrality."
Obama was less than eloquent. "All it was is a bunch of rants that aren't grounded in truth," said Sen. Obama, low-rating Rev. Wright's remarks at the National Press Club, in Washington, the morning before. Rev. Wright had become a "caricature" of himself, said the wounded candidate - another way of calling the minister a clown.
Under questioning from reporters in Winston Salem, North Carolina, Obama swore up and down that he had never before, in 16 years as a member of Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ congregation, observed his pastor behave in such a way. The declaration rang patently false, as even a red-state Republican white evangelical observer would have recognized Wright's Press Club performance as that of veteran pulpit-master with a vast repertoire of church-pleasing moves and grooves to draw upon, all of them honed over decades for the entertainment of his parishioners - including Obama. "
Clearly, this is what panic looks and sounds like when Obama's flimsy tissues of "race neutrality" are stripped away. He berates Rev. Wright and other black voices for self-centeredness in failing to strike a balance between African American grievances and whatever ails white people.
Rev. Wright succeeded in drawing a line in the sand, whether that was his intention or not, daring Obama to take his stand on one side or the other. Race "neutrality" - an impossibility in the actually existing United States - went out the window as Obama in extremis positioned himself at the political/historical fault line alongside the defenders of the Alamo and American Manifest Destiny.
Obama had belabored the same theme in his Philadelphia speech on race, a few weeks earlier - a widely applauded piece of oratory that was at root an exercise in moral equivalence that equated white and Black grievances in the U.S., as if history and gross power discrepancies did not exist. Obama is as quick as any smug corporate commentator to dismiss as the ravings of extremists and those who "prey on hate" the very idea that U.S. imperialism is an historical and current fact.
In order for his race-neutral strategy to appear sane, Obama must constantly paint a picture of an America that does not exist. This cannot be accomplished without mangling the truth, assaulting the truth-tellers, and misrepresenting America's past and present.
He claims that 1980s Ronald Reagan voters had understandable grievances due to "the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s," in the process cleansing the Reagan victory of any racist content.
Race neutrality requires that Barack Obama become a cleanup boy for racists, historically and in the present day. At the same time, Obama is driven to loathe most those people and facts that might lead to divisiveness. America's worst enemies are not the racists, but those who point out the facts of racism, as Obama explained in mid-March in Philadelphia:
Perhaps it is fitting that, having absolved American racists of all manner of crimes against others, Obama also holds them blameless for their assaults on himself. That's his prerogative, as long as he's the only one being assaulted. But Obama was also trailed over the long weekend by the ghost of Sean Bell, whose death in a 50-shot New York City police fusillade was held blameless by a white judge. Many African Americans anxiously awaited Obama's reaction to the three police officers' acquittals on all charges. "We're a nation of laws, so we respect the verdict that came down," said Obama, when asked about the case by reporters in Indiana. "Resorting to violence to express displeasure over a verdict is something that is completely unacceptable and is counterproductive." That was it.
Hillary Clinton, aware that the Sean Bell verdict was an outrage to Black America, issued a prepared statement:
"This tragedy has deeply saddened New Yorkers - and all Americans. My thoughts are with Nicole and her children and the rest of Sean's family during this difficult time. The court has given its verdict, and now we await the conclusion of a Department of Justice civil rights investigation. We must also embrace this opportunity to take steps - in our communities, in our law enforcement agencies, and in our government - to make sure this does not happen again."
It is difficult not to conclude that Obama distanced himself from the facts of the acquittal - except to counsel against violence and urge folks to "respect" the verdict, whatever that means - while Clinton had the sense to prepare a statement that sounded sensitive to black anger and on top of developments in the story.
The relationship between Rev. Wright and Sen. Obama has undergone "great damage," says Obama, understatedly. But the break was inevitable and is no tragedy, because it reveals the incompatibility of Obama's adapted world view with the body of knowledge amassed by African Americans since before the landing of the Mayflower. The truth is always a revelation.
I've often noted Counterpunch's self-satisfied bitterness. It's what keeps me from reading it much. That bitterness often keeps it from seeing with open eyes, open heart. Keeps it from being able to see/know what is true.
A long time ago I was in a fairly serious relationship with a black man. He was Bermudian, not American. And I noted that, not having the history, he didn't have the bitterness that I'd felt from American Blacks. I feel this same lack in Obama, and perhaps for the same reason.
My friend from Bermuda was often able to put himself in situations and befriend and be befriended by people that were beyond the ability of my American black friends to accomplish. Again: I feel the same from Barack Obama.
I hope he makes it.
Puddle--Glen Ford is not a regular "Counterpuncher". He's executive editor of "Black Agenda Report and a regular radio commentator. The article I quoted from was published there first. He represents the Black Intelligentia, and I take his opinions very seriously.
I do agree with your characterization of much of what appears in Counterpunch. They do have some very astute, and IMO well versed and articulate commentators, Including Ralph Nader, Dave Lindorff, Mike Whitney, and Alexander Cockburn.
There views are generally to the left of Center, but then, so are mine!
I excerpted probably close to half of Ford's piece, because I've always been uncomfortable with BO's happy talk--and outright fabrications-- concerning the state of race relations in America
John wrote "I've always been uncomfortable with BO's happy talk--and outright fabrications-- concerning the state of race relations in America."
I've never seen you draft a more preposterous statement. Obama is unique among Americans of his stature in addressing the subject of race relations in the United States, which is otherwise chronically and furtively swept under the rug. The fact is that his candidacy is forcing many voters to take a hard look at their own feelings about race, and the sensation is proving to be unpleasant for many.
I don't mind the left of center, lol! (last time I took the political compass I was -9 both directions). But no matter where you are on the scale, truth needs to enter into it too. Wright was, by ALL accounts totally off the wall -- to claim that Obama "must" have seen that, that he's lying if he claims not to have, is speculation, slanted, not truthy, and, yes, bitter.
As an INFP, if find this VERY interesting, because it rings very true to me. . . .
http://www.slate.com/id/2184696/pagenum/all/
We are perhaps unused to seeing this personality type in politics. That DOES not make *them* evil, coniving liars. . . .
The more work of Glen Ford's I read, the bigger douche I think he is. He disparages the attempt by Obama, a person whose father was black and mother was white, for attempting to run what he describes as a "race neutral" campaign.
I am in true suspense to find who is Ford's preferred candidate. I've yet to read about it in the detritus of his incessant grousing.
Tom, Ford is simply articulating the concern many people, both black and white, have with Obama's assurances, implicit and explicit, to the white power structure (which I know you admire) that he won't rock the racial boat as president.
Would you care to point out the factual errors, or even one of them< in Ford's screed?
John wrote "Would you care to point out the factual errors, or even one of them< in Ford's screed?"
I wasn't aware that Ford was presenting any facts in his pretentious polemic.
When I took my library class on black writers, I was the only white person in the class: students, AND teacher. The other members of the class were of the opinion that the teacher, because she had her PhD, was an Oreo cookie.
Because Ford's black, *doesn't* make him a more (or less, necessarily) astute commenter. Blacks, as are white, are able to be fully brutal against one of their own who seems to be "making it." Anyone but me remember paper bag parties?*
*For those who don't -- a party would be given, and a brown paper grocery bag taped to the front door. Attendees were expected to put their arm next to the bag, and if they were darker, to leave. Lighter? Or as light, come on in. . . .
- <dd class="comment-body">
tell the blog I will rejoin them when they have a way for me to do it, but I can only see the truncated versions and it gets stuck when I hit expand, reply gets me to the last comment, but not to the comment box, so I sort of can keep up, but I have planting to do so will probably just take a break for a few weeks and hope it is fixed by the time I am done in the fields
Phil
is what should happen to Hillary. Read her right-wing talking points on O'Reilly.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/4/30/151146/541/967/506518
with Rush Limbaugh will be happening in Indiana. You know, this is just sickening to me.
I just hope Barack wins NC BIG - 15-20 points at least although Hill has narrowed the gap. ;-(
haha puddle
soon as you post that I come in the house and the blog boots right up.
I'll still share lunch with you all.
Thanks to Rev. Wright Hillary can't "win" Indiana even if she comes out ahead because this business of race has nothing to do with her; unless she wants to jump in with something more constructive than she has so far. No Democrat can win without the African-American vote so you can be sure the Republicans will continue to stir the melting pot. Obama has to win the nomination now to keep the party intact. Racist talk will do it quicker than anything and it will be the white super delegates closing rank that does it, so Barack Obama can indeed run as the candidate that transcends race.
I like the possibilities this opens up for this country.
Obama can continue his race to the mountain top.
I wonder if the pollsters are polling independents in Indiana. Their open primary should help Obama quite a bit, perhaps even get some of those Republicans who support him -- those that aren't taking orders from Rush Limbaugh that is.
March on Barack and Michelle. The road is long and hard but the prize will be worth it.
I use a clean and simple Internet Explorer 7, few addons, and about the only problem I have is occasionally having to log on multiple times. I wouldn't change it for anything else as it always works well for me on any website.
I know this is basic stuff, but when you have problems with this new program, it may help to reboot not only the computer but the DSL modem at the same time.
It doesn't matter whether Barack Obama wins Indiana or not, Clinton won't pick up more than one or two delegates. What does count is organizing the precincts for the fall and here is the perfect chance.
The FEC report will get a good look by the remaining unpledged Delegates though so if you want to help kick in a few bucks.
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By former on Apr 30, 2008 3:03 PM EDTHere it is, who is first now!
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April 30, 2008
Today is an exciting day for our campaign and our movement: my new book, The Revolution: A Manifesto, is officially released.
Although a short book, it is the product of many years of thought and action. It is a defense of the principles to which you and I have devoted our lives.
My friends are calling it "Ron Paul's legacy."
These principles - individual liberty, sound money, the Constitution, and the foreign policy of the Founding Fathers - have had no home in American politics for a very long time. With The Revolution: A Manifesto, I'm letting the establishment know we're not going away.
Finally, Americans can hear and judge these great American principles for themselves, instead of through an unfriendly media filter. And they can learn once and for all that they need not be satisfied with the phony choices the system offers them every four years. Another way really is possible.
Two days ago I did a book signing in New York at the Borders on Wall Street. All 530 copies had been sold before I even arrived.
They had underestimated you again.
Imagine the attention our cause and our principles could attract with a fantastic opening day today, with people marching into bookstores across the country for their copies. If it should become a publishing phenomenon, The Revolution: A Manifesto can fuel our revolution for a long time to come. You can make that happen.
I hope you enjoy this book, which was a real labor of love for me. Please spread the word.
And may the future be ours.
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