09-13-2022, 01:05 AM
(09-10-2022, 09:54 PM)JasonBlack Wrote: Song from the 2T/3T cusp. I can see why a lot of y'all aren't a fan of the idealist/reactive cuspers. This song is a good example of the narcissistic hedonism of a reactive...but with the preachy condescension of an idealist. Like...really? You were irresponsible and got knocked up and now you're...literally giving your father a lecture? Way to combine the worst of two generations
(PS: this forum doesn't have a single good laugh emoticon? come on man! lmao)
After writing what I said... of course I despise Madonna's stage personality. She has talent and a solid work ethic.
At least her persona is keeping the baby... although I endorse abortion rights, I still dislike abortion. Then again, I don't like amputation, but there are circumstances under which such is a necessity, as is so with abortion. I would try to talk someone out of an abortion for a trivial reason such as a means of holding onto a well-paying career and not putting it on hiatus.
Narcissism is common in the entertainment industry as it isn't in, for example, manufacturing. Indeed working in some of the most debasing work around, public-contact jobs or domestic service jobs that require the crushing of any self-esteem and individuality, and perhaps any reasonable hope of improving one's lot in such work except by doing something else -- like working in a factory, where one is not obliged to smile frequently as an endorsement of personal misery. I can tell you about my experiences as a retail sales clerk in a department store after graduating from college... stagflation was on, and the sorts of jobs that I exp0ected to open didn't . I worked for a company that had people working for near-minimum-wage (indeed I got one pay raise solely because the minimum wage caught up with that employer's pay) in competition with each other for slight advantages on the job. The company had headquarters in Arkansas, and it was not Wal-Mart. This company broke people down, reminding them at every turn that they were expendable losers whose lives would be shattered if they quit and the insight that everyone is a thief if the opportunity arises, and if you get caught you will be prosecuted. Its ownership had the audacity to believe that its employment of anyone was an act of consummate charity instead of a mere financial transaction.
Anyone vulnerable in any way to the shattering of self-esteem will be exploited economically and emotionally, whether by a pimp or a particularly-vile employer. One is told that one is worthless and that one's survival is an act of charity by some rapacious exploiter.
Somewhere between the extreme debasement of life working for a pathological employer in which one is constantly told that one barely deserves to live and the extreme narcissism of people exempt from economic competition must be a healthy optimum. We know what extreme narcissism does when it is Donald Trump or Jeffrey Epstein -- or numerous plutocrats and corporate bureaucrats who set rigid, low glass ceilings for everyone else so that nobody has a chance after ever doing genuine work. These people are little better than how I found the self-image slave-owning planters who believed themselves the benefactors of their two-legged machinery. I came to the conclusion that if there ever were to be a revolution these people would be the first to go between the firing squad and the wall. (By the way -- should there ever be a revolution against an exploitative elite, then we will need a free-wheeling capitalist system, as a welfare state takes time to develop and needs a strong economy behind it to work, and because the bureaucratic elites of the old regime will have no way to live except in their old way, if mouthing some new 'revolutionary' slogans while being little changed).
We are out of balance. The class struggle is real, and even if the plutocrats and executives allow us some cute trinkets, empty entertainment, and an occasional trip to the casino or amusement park (whorehouse coming soon!) as breaks from the numbing boredom we are still the oppressed proletariat in mindless, joyless, loveless lives.
Maybe we go back to the pattern of the 1950's in which people could start in the mail-room or on the assembly line, prove some competence and dedication, and get ahead in life.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.