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Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JF Quinnelly who wrote (54702)	8/16/2000 10:19:44 PM
From: jbe	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71178

I thought revolutionary Marxism was out of date. Whoever talks about the proletariat these days, let alone about a vanguard?

To: JF Quinnelly who wrote (54702)	8/16/2000 10:46:15 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71178

That's just silly. In our society there are no ants and grasshoppers- NOTHING in the real world is that easy. Of course it makes a good funny and good dogma to simplify things- but it is of no use. In our society there are people born out of wedlock to teenage crackheads. There are babies born with aids. There are people born into such abusive homes I can hardly comprehend their living conditions- I remember reading about one little girl, beaten to death by her mother, forced to eat her own feces while she was alive. Would she have been a grasshopper? What about little boys in the decaying urban communities who see the only way to define their lives is to join a gang, which might offer them some form of support akin to the family that never existed for them. Are they grasshoppers? Or are they ants because they are trying to network and make some cash in the only way available? How about the ignorant low IQ folks- crippled by bad nutrition, and execrable parenting? The world is inherently unequal. We are lucky and privileged if we are born or adopted by people who care enough about us (and are ABLE) to feed us properly, give us health care, and raise us to be productive. "Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it." It cannot be pleasant in a world of luxury, where the media constantly shows images of wealth and power, to feel out of the loop- even if handouts from the "ants" keep you from starving on the streets. And if the grasshoppers WERE starving on the streets- what do you think would happen then, to the happy ant world? We pay for the stability we have in this country. We pay, so that the poor, and ignorant, and disenfranchised, will not rise up and kill us in a revolution. I don't feel the cost is too high. I wish the peace were better- but then we don't give the kind of security other countries give. We have taken the middle ground- so much and no more, enough to keep away revolution, but not enough for real social comfort and change. In a way we pay enough to assure that there will always be ants and grasshoppers. We aren't willing to pay enough to turn the "grasshoppers" into ants. So really, deep down, we "ants" have bought the grasshoppers. And don't they make us feel better? To look at them and say "look at those grasshoppers, I am SO much better than THEY are." But is a fellow who thinks he is an "ant" really better? Or is it just an accident of birth?