Work will make you free...

[karpomrx]

www.politicalaffairs.net/article/view/385/1/38/

More about the mythology presented by the Ministry of Plenty.

[Moses]

"Self-Help"

"Ya gotta believe in what you’re doing." "Stand up for yourself." "You gotta think of yourself as a winner, and you will be."


These are the sermons of one of the most popular men in contemporary pop culture, Donald Trump. His reality TV show, The Apprentice, has become an entertainment phenomenon, repackaging and reselling the increasingly elusive American Dream. It is perhaps no coincidence that The Apprentice is wildly popular at this point in American history. Never before has the divide between our nation’s richest and poorest been so large. Never before has corporate corruption and welfare been so flagrant. Therefore, we watch with rapt attention and desperation the unfolding of the American Dream on so-called reality TV, distracted from the fact that the Dream’s rewards are more fiction than fact nowadays.

The American Dream, with its emphasis on individual enterprise and responsibility, cleverly veils the economic and social forces arrayed against the poor by not recognizing the basic structural problems in suburban sprawl and concentrated wealth. It is convenient to accuse the working poor of being lazy, tardy, foolish with their money, and undeserving of wealth. That is easier than probing the problems of commuting, securing decent child care, and surviving on wages that have been systematically suppressed even as inflation has increased the costs of living. Even well-meaning, socially-conscious Americans are susceptible to judging the poor rather than seeing them as a shameful result of capital accumulation run amok. People in the lowest income brackets are admonished by pop culture icons such as Oprah Winfrey and Dr. Phil to better manage their money, and yet they are told what to buy to attain the stylish trappings of the American Dream. The Dream’s mixed messages, as they are played out in popular culture, add a psychological burden to an economic one. Not only do the poor struggle to exist on pittance wages, they are constantly bombarded by images selling the elite lifestyle.

I found myself writing to a journalist re: their education column about this, but was exasperated w/ myself because, after contending that her article was deceptive (she had cited a researcher whose research actually refuted the premise she was deceptively using him to suppport-- or maybe she is just stupid, being an education reporter), I expressed annoyance with her ending her article with "tips for parents". I gave this latter short shrift and I'm not sure she understood this latter point.

It does have to do with superficiality of analysis, as well as a paternalistic attitude toward we captives of the system/media. I know I am not the only one who has had it with "tips" (who was that woman on PBS that gave them for money management?-- she too contended it was possible for poor people to save and invest! ).

Having tuned out of politics since Reagan, hoping things would get better, I hadn't realized that those insulting "public service" announcements on NBC were actually conditioning us for serfdom in their "libertarian" ideology.

Didn't Oprah migrate from doing good issues analysis a la Donahue to smut to "self-help"? This must be mirroring the progress of her wealth and media empire.

And, had she not annointed George Bush as the hero of the little women in the suburbs, the world, and the people in it, would not be in such dire straights.