Learned helplessness is a toxic meme

tl:dr pinkertons breaking strikes something something gilded age.

I apologize in advance for the length of this; somebody put a quarter in my slot.

Everything we have, every human “right,” was dynamited out of bedrock by our ancestors. It wasn’t a gift; it wasn’t assumed; and the forces of evil don’t want us to have that human dignity or control of our own fates because it interferes with their profit and power motives.

We have to keep dynamiting that bedrock of carelessness, of selfishness, of sociopathy. Of sophipathology, to use my own terminology with a free hand—this idea of Shareholder Value as a religion, this exploitation of a new gilded age.

We didn't manage to get out of the last gilded age without some risk and a lot of struggle. I have a feeling this one is gonna play out with difficulty also.

"The Democrats Don't Do Anything" is a toxic meme pushed by the right to make the left feel helpless and divide us. And I say this as an independent, not a Democrat.

This idea that you can’t change the future, that nothing will ever improve, is another, related toxic meme. Incremental change is real and worthwhile, and things like social security and Medicare (programs that the right wants to whittle away because they are so focused on short-term returns that they cannot figure out that social benefits reduce the burden on workers and make them more productive) have had real measurable benefits on the quality of life of people in the US over the last hundred years.