And what happened to “leisure?” People forget. They don’t remember that they had “leisure” — not in the sense of Veblen’s or groo’s but in the sense of the Athenian citizen… to study, ponder, make art or love, to learn and to grow and to serve one another. This kind of leisure was typical of the middle class, and it was being extended more and more broadly. There was no idea of raising retirement ages; they were going to be lowered. I am old enough to remember a time when 55 was proposed as the retirement age in the future, even as lifespans were being extended. I remember a time when there was no tuition charge for higher education in California and the University system and California higher education in general were the envy of the world. The goal was to provide all California residents with the benefits of higher education, even if not all residents went to college.

The ideal of leisure is necessary for that kind of educational system to exist.

When it once again required at least two incomes per household to maintain even a relatively modest standard of living, that whole concept of “leisure” disappeared. Family life, nearly everything one did or had an interest in, became the equivalent of “work”. The very idea of having time and space and interest for personal growth and community disappeared. In my experience, many people have simply forgotten there ever was a time when these concepts weren’t like they are now.

Not so strangely, though, when the economy collapsed, throwing millions of Americans out of their homes and into unemployment and poverty, for some of them, “leisure” re-appeared (or appeared for the first time.) Many older workers realized they were never going to be employed again. Many younger people realized there were no jobs and thus no materialist future, so they found other avenues. Occupy is part of that, but there is much more. There’s a whole other world in the process of coming into being as we ponder these things.

Necessity is the mother of invention and all that.

The lawlessness and impunity with which our rulers and their hirelings operate is part of the impetus for the creation of something else again — hopefully better, but there’s no guarantee!

And groo your leisure class description of small property holdings and equally modest rent extractions reminds me of some of the real estate investment schemes that used to be promoted endlessly at “seminars” conducted in hotel ballrooms all over this great land of ours (they may still happen, I don’t know.) The idea was to convince the rubes to buy the books and tapes that would tell them how to buy properties for little or no money down and then rent them out and live like potentates on the beach at Maui or in the Caribbean. As few as five properties would be enough to live like kings, working not at all, living the life of Leisure they have always aspired to. A few were always able to do it, too!

well, my understanding of Veblen is, that he -with the ‘leisure class’- characterized a character-type, which nowadays is synonymous with the 1%.

Which correlates, upon closer inspection, with relative status, narcisissm, self-interest, downto outright sociopathy.
Which is a syndrome, i.e. a cluster of traits, which are self-reinforcing.

I tell you a story:
I have been in the hospital for a couple of days, which is not such a scary thing over here from the financial side, and met some people whom I never would meet during normal circumstances.
Those were medium high class-people, privately health insured, and so on.

Now what are those people?
What do they think?

I tell you.
They have, say, average five properties all over southern Europe, which they occasionally visit and most of their mental energy goes into maintaining this property.

Which, I think is quite typical of the upper middle class over here, and quite aligns to Veblens thinking.

This class is totally absorbed into
a) maintaining/multiplying their property
b) maintaining relative status VIA property. Property is a display of status.

This is NOT the 0.1%, but they share their values, and through this shared value system they reinforce the status quo, which is a system of rent extraction through property values, and its display as status-’value’.

The lower classes are pressured downto subsistence level, not being aware of that.
And ‘belief’ follows the pressure.

These pressures lead to something peculiar:
A divergence of beliefs: master-belief versus slave-belief.

The powers that be do not want the working class to have time to think. They have succeeded in that.

And thanks, Che Pasa, for the reminder about the coup of 2000. I was reading Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine” when it occurred to me that the Bolivian coup of 1985 that she writes about reminded me of 2000. A disputed election led to:
“The details of the backroom negotiations have never been disclosed, but the results are clear enough. On August 6, 1985, it was Paz who was sworn in as president of Bolivia. Only four days later, Paz appointed Goni [Businessman who went to U of Chicago} to head up a top-secret bipartisan emergency economic team charged with radically restructuring the economy.”

The secret plan called for taking away food subsidies, dropping price controls, freezing government wages, letting unrestricted imports in, raising the price of oil by 300 percent, and “called for a downsizing of state companies, the precursor to privatization.”

Paz’s party knew nothing about this plan, neither did his own cabinet. When he unveiled it, he locked the doors of the cabinet room and had the plan read to them. He said that if they didn’t agree to it, they must resign.

So sad that our lawyers did not take to the streets in 2000 as they did in Pakistan when their Supreme Court went amok.

And what is this “leisure” of which you speak? Americans know not thereof, for they have little now and can’t remember a time when they ever had more.

“Leisure” comes when Americans get old enough to drive around in their Winnebagos, sour and perplexed, until they die.

… in fact, in too many circumstances the People are actually complicit in the destruction of Law and Justice. …

and why is that?

It is beliefs, imposed by those who should know better.
Albeit they would have the leisure to know better, they do the opposite.
See Thorstein Veblen’s leisure class.
The human condition mostly is inclined NOT for the pursuit of ‘knowing’, but for ‘relative status’.

‘Happiness is a warm gun.’
Alright, if it fits your target.

That was the date that the Constitution of the United Stated of America, already a tattered and threadbare document barely being held together with tape and chewing gum, was irrevocably shredded by the lawless intervention of the US Supreme Court into a presidential election dispute.

Ever since, the ‘rule of law’ in the United States has — and will continue to be — a joke. The impunity with which Our Rulers operate has grown exponentially since the decision in Bush v Gore was rendered, and there is no going back under the present regime.

What seems odd to me is that we are still in a period of transition between the remnant republic (quite extinct, though many of its attributes remain in place for show) and a full on imperial autocracy.

Arbitrary imposition of authority is taken for granted, as is the differential application of “justice.” Everybody knows that authority is arbitrarily imposed on those who can’t easily fight back, and that the poor, the brown, and the black people among us are treated far more harshly than they deserve, and that the rich and the palest and most powerful of us are able to avoid any sort of rational justice at all, quite literally getting away with murder, even being rewarded for it.

Nothing the People do seems able to change this state of affairs for the better; in fact, in too many circumstances the People are actually complicit in the destruction of Law and Justice.

Still, we do what we can…

https://www.torproject.org/download/download.html.en

Do your homework before downloading and using this browser; there is a learning curve.

These last 2 Democracy Now programs should scare the holy shit out of anybody viewing said programs.
It’s a very dangerous world out there.
Learn and thrive; cheers.

http://www.democracynow.org/2012/4/23/more_secrets_on_growing_state_surveillance

Case in point.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-23/n-j-state-police-investigating-death-race-sports-car-caravan.html

New Jersey State Police are investigating whether troopers escorted a “Death Race” convoy of Porsches, Lamborghinis and Ferraris speeding at 100 miles per hour on the Garden State Parkway to Atlantic City.

Witnesses said they saw two state police cruisers on March 30 escorting a caravan of 25 to 30 sports cars, according to complaints obtained by the Newark Star-Ledger. The pack included former New York Giants running back Brandon Jacobs, the newspaper reported, citing an unidentified person with knowledge of the trip.

The patrol cars had their flashing lights on, and the cars were weaving in and out of other vehicles and had their license plates covered with tape, the Star-Ledger said, citing the complaints. One witness, Wayne Gantt of Little Egg Harbor, dubbed the incident “Death Race 2012,” according to the paper.

I’m reminded of the war games where they wanted to test out their surveillance capabilities, and the general who led the “bad guys” used motorcycle couriers to deliver messages. The war games were stopped and the general was told not use couriers but rather to use phones and email.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Nice one; I had completely forgotten that incident. But it’s certainly in line with what I was thinking; pigeons would be another possibility. I think even snail mail, up to a point, would be effective.
Low-tech/no-tech is really on order here.
I just talked to a friend in Oregon 2 hours ago and this was the topic of a good deal of our conversation. I usually say hello to the NSA (Asia to U.S. is monitored 100%).
I’ll not fly ever again. Ground/Sea transportation or nothing.
Cheers.