Who Owns You?

[pokerfan]

More George Carlin from 'Life Is Worth Losing.'

"Forget the politicians, they're irrelevant. The politicians are put there to give you the idea you have freedom of choice - you don't.

You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own, and control the corporations. They've long since bought, and paid for the senate, the congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets, and they own all the big media, so they control just about all the information you get.

They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying - lobbying, to get what they want.

Well we know what they want. They want more for themselves, and less for everybody else, but I'll tell you what they don't want - they don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking.

They don't want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that - that doesn't help them. That's against their interests. That's right.

They don't want people that are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table, and think about how badly they're getting screwed by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. They don't want that.

You know what they want? Obedient workers - Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines, and do that paper work. And just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime, and vanishing pensions that disappear the minute you go to collect it, and now they're coming for your social security money.

They want your retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street, and you know something? They'll get it - they'll get it all from you sooner or later cause they own this place.

It's a big club, and you ain't in it. You, and I are not in The Big Club.

[readmoreoften]

1. I can hear his voice. I just happened to be listening to that the day he died.

I hadn't listening to anything in a few years either. There's a voice that I'll miss but it'll never go away.

He's pretty much said it all. All there is to say really.

[pokerfan]

4. Yeah

It always seemed like he was reading my mind (for the most part) and was able to articulate the thoughts. I'm sure that he probably seemed like that to most of his fans.

I've got pretty much all his albums and I suppose that I'll soon complete the collection. Picking up his "All My Stuff" collection at this point would be superfluous but maybe I'll donate a copy to the local library if they don't already have it.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. I think the wise person disconnects from the mainstream

and finds a place where they can survive. Time to get off the grid, grow your own food, make your own way.

[beevul]

5. Theres truth in that.

It shouldn't be true, life should not be that way, but it is.

[readmoreoften]

6. Nah. We gotta stick together. Not everyone can get off the grid.

Only room for about 300,000 Americans or so that way. We gotta realize our power as a unified force.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

9. Ah, but the key to survival is community

Local community. Band together, determine what you can do to help the whole. Swap, trade--this can be done even in the city.

Not sure why you think only a small number can get off the grid. There are many ways to get off it.

[readmoreoften]

11. Problem with community is where does my community end and yours begin?

My goal is to think of a world without adjectives. Farm towns that keep out queers are communities. Nazi Germany was a community. The only kind of communities that are worthwhile are the ones that are mixed and capable of welcoming anyone: universal locals. Kinda like one great big union. We're all equal members and my locals just happen to be the members who live nearby.

(People in the NY and LA area can't get off the grid and they're about 1/10th of the US population if not more. )

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

21. Well, my community is like the universal locals

you are talking about. Everyone's invited in, and everyone's working together.

[pitohui]

20. a wise person never needs medicine or heart surgery?

the wise person who plans to get older cannot "get off the grid"

i can raise my own chicken, i can't do my own bypass surgery

there are lots of folks in africa living off the grid, every damn one of them would choose to have electricity, clean water, and good medicine if it was up to them

we don't do ourselves or anybody else any favors by indulging in sour grapes, there are good and valuable things that are only available to those "on" the grid

life is about more than just ugly brute survival or it should be

[Xenotime]

22. Does that mean owning guns too?

[H2O Man]

26. The modern Essences.

I think it makes sense.

[BeatleBoot]

3. They are getting the retirement money for sure

More and more people are cashing out 401K's to weather this mortgage crisis and other economic conditions.

[Initech]

7. Carlin really hit the nail on the head with that one.

[annabanana]

8. I will hear his voice forever.

With each repetition it became clearer & clearer.. "They own you."

And you get angrier and angrier, which you should be. That was part of it. The more & more people to get angrier and angrier, the better chance we have that even the memory of the ideal that was "America" will not vanish altogether.

[tama]

10. Who owns me?

Technocracy. The opposite of technocracy: community of equals where everybody can make - at least in principle - the necessary tools that are needed for satisfying basic needs.

[readmoreoften]

12. There's no reason why even a global community of equals couldn't make the technology we have.

It's not like the rich CONTRIBUTE anything. If we took the money they've stolen over generations and/or continue to hoard, capped salaries globally at $250K a year, put all the profits any one idea made back into a community fund for bright ideas to help the world progress we'd have technology and whatever else we wanted.

The rich don't MAKE anything accept poverty. They don't give, they take.

Creative people make things. Rich people just give back .0001% and act like they're "funding" you.

"They're a big club. And we're not in it."

All they got is their club.

[tama]

13. There is

Technology we have is not sustainable but based on destroying it's own carrying capacity. Once you start to think and realize what really is sustainable and what is not, you will understand that WE are the rich and only by making the planet poor and poorer. Sorry kids.

[readmoreoften]

14. "Technology" is a broad word. Pens are technology. Looms are technology.

It's not "technology" that's the problem it's advanced capitalism and the unnecessary garbage it produces and the fact that it kills any good idea that destroys grotesque profit that's the problem...not rural electrification in Peru or Guatemala or Tanzania.

[tama]

25. tools and technology

http://www.eco-action.org/dt/primer.html

[Swamp Rat]

15. SallieMae

[readmoreoften]

23. Refinance with citibank

Student loans? Got em at both places. Sallie Mae? Cheneysuckers from Hell. Fucked up all my records. Screeching at me on the phones and via emails. Moving everything to citibank--they're much nicer.

[lynettebro440]

16. He will be sorely missed

I have in on tape for eternity.

[T.Ruth2power]

17. Straight truth K&R

[Mojambo]

18. I wouldn't mind if they owned me if they'd pay for the fucking upkeep. n/t

[sammythecat]

19. And that is the sad truth. The absolute truth.

How can it be argued otherwise? It can't.

[earth mom]

24. Huge K & R! Ever since Carlin died I've been thinking how little we've heard of him in recent years,

while in the 70s he was all over the place and I loved hearing him-he always nailed it.

Obviously "The Big Club" effectively shut him up and kept him out of the mainstream the past 30 years! :grr:

[Blue_Tires]

27. MBNA.... 'nuff said