[OT] [Long] [Inflammatory] Re: [Coco] Jingo - Jango - Mars

[John Collyer]

I too have considered leaving the USA for greener pastures.
America is not what I'd like it to be anymore. Hey if we all
leave would that be the end of the greatest civilization known
to mankind.  I can see it now.  They will teach in history class
about, "The Rise and Fall of the Great American Empire."

John Collyer

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dennis Bathory-Kitsz" <bathory at maltedmedia.com>
To: <coco at maltedmedia.com>
Sent: Thursday, January 15, 2004 2:18 PM
Subject: [OT] [Long] [Inflammatory] Re: [Coco] Jingo - Jango - Mars


> At 09:30 AM 1/15/04 -0500, James C. Hrubik, Sr. wrote:
> >There's nothing wrong with looking at the world through clear lenses.
> >I live in a country where I still have far more freedom and "goodies"
> >than I could have anywhere else in the world.
>
> As one who is slowly working on emigrating to the Netherlands, I'll say
> that where the US has advantages for you, it also has some disadvantages
> serious enough for me to leave it.
>
> One disadvantage is its 150-year-long, ongoing movement toward unbalanced,
> aggressive, and zealous capitalist theocracy. This was set in motion by
the
> constitution's property guarantees -- neutral in themselves -- but
advanced
> beginning with the granting of corporate personhood in the 19th century.
> >From there, the country has careened ever further away from creating a
> meaningful and rich culture toward feeding a rapacious, consumptive beast
> that wants a worldwide Pax Americana in the guise of Coca-Colonization.
>
> Do we have more freedom in the US? It only depends on how you define your
> freedoms, and how those definitions are implemented. Saying the US meets
> the standards of its own US constitutional freedom (even if that's true,
> which it isn't) just becomes tautological.
>
> Do people want to come to the US to better themselves? Certainly -- but
the
> whole world is not knocking at our door, however US propagandists might
> like to present that. Developed countries worldwide are flooded with
> immigrants. America is iconic, yet there is much disappointment facing
> those who arrive ... especially as the country fills up and the doors are
> closed.
>
> In any case, as an artist who has watched generations of great American
> artists have to leave this country to survive, I don't believe the US has
> come close to meeting its potential in what is the ultimate realm of
> humanity, i.e., society and culture, and has dug an ultimately fatal
> constitutional hole in this regard. While putting forth claims to
> excellence, we work to encourage mediocrity or failure -- the former by
> decrying differences and meeting imagination with anti-American labels,
the
> latter by refusing to acknowledge the worth of that which does not operate
> in the commercial realm. Meaning is increasingly measured in terms of
coin.
>
> Staggering as it may seem to say out loud, I am as free to be a successful
> composer here as I might be in a dictatorship. The difference? There my
> work would be censored by state machinery and have to conform to its point
> of view. Here it is censored by the corporate machinery and has to conform
> to its point of view (and I'm happy to present evidence if you really want
> it, but it would clog this list!).
>
> It is not possible to meet one's potential as an artist in the US because
> of the nature of art (in which I include the visual arts, music, dance,
> etc. -- all of what makes life worth living) and its natural challenge to
> mass-market measurement. So I will 'escape' to a place where corporate
> censorship is held in check by the state and human culture is encouraged
> alongside what is still one of the strongest capitalist traditions in the
> world. That, to me, is more freedom, not less -- and those are the 'clear
> lenses' through which I look at the world.
>
> Dennis
>
>
>
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