Hunger Games: An eerie reflection of our “new American society”

Tea Party Nation ^ | April 1, 2012 | Dr. Rich Swier

[txnuke]

Rides_A_Red_Horse: "The late ruler of North Korea was a fat little bastard. The population could have been prosperous. Communist Kim reduced them to eating tree bark.... Rhodesia was a net exporter of food until Communist Jimmy Carter installed Communist Robert Mugabe. Now Zimbabwe is one of the poorest, hungriest nations on Earth.... Under Batista, Cuba thrived. Now, people will ride anything that can float to escape Communist Castro’s 'Socialist Paradise'...."

THANK you for the excellent examples. I realize we are a wealthy (and blessed) country. We throw away SO MUCH FOOD!

if I could bring up the standard of living of the rest of the world by 10 percent or 20 percent and see my own lowered by the same amount, I might be willing to be a progressive. It does not work like that (as proven by the "Big Black Book of Communism" -- more people have died in the attempt to bring about communist utopias than in ALL THE WARS IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD!!!). We are headed for trouble, big trouble. And those (on the conservative side or the more liberal) who think that revolution can be achieved peacefully are just fooling themselves.

[aruanan]

Hunger Games: An eerie reflection of our “new American society”

Who is it who is busy trying to pit various sectors of society against each other to keep his regime afloat while starving the nation for:

electrical energy (EPA shut-down of coal-fired electrical generation, more than 40% of U.S. electricity comes from that, coal mines),

petroleum (one of the biggest ever restrictions on exploration and drilling in the history of the U.S. while subsidizing Brazil to drill for oil in the Gulf of Mexico, EPA shut-down of refineries, plans to impose Cap and Trade, rejected by legislation, by regulation through the EPA that will add many hundreds of billions in costs to every sector of the economy),

health care (supposedly to get insurance to about 15 million uninsured, who account for 1/2 of 1% of all health care costs annually, Obamacare has already resulted in skyrocketing premiums and will soon, if not stopped, force about 30 million to lose their insurance they get through their employment),

jobs (the total number of people employed has shrunk by millions over the past 3 years, those missing who are no longer looking for a job or are unemployment compensation are no longer counted in unemployment statistics, making what looks not so good a lot better than it would if it accurately reflected reality),

money (refusing to continue the current tax rates and then increasing taxes greatly to fund Obamacare will increase the amount of money going to Washington, leaving even less with people to spend, invest, start businesses),

fiscal sanity (has piled on a greater amount of debt in a shorter amount of time than anyone in U.S. history and has blown nearly all of it on bailouts for foreign banks, for contributors’ “green energy” companies, for unions, for taking over companies like GM and then giving them to his contributors, for vastly expanding public sector employment at both state and federal levels, for plans for fricking trains, for absolute morons like Stephen “we could have everyone paint his roof white” Chu, who, though he may have a Nobel in physics, doesn’t have a clue about energy production)

[aruanan]

He found they are clustered primarily in four key centers or capitols: Washington, D.C., New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Ouch.

[GreyFriar]

Dear Aruanan,

The answer is quite obvious: GEORGE W. BUSH

;-)

[grey_whiskers]

I haven't read the book, nor have I seen the movie: so I can only comment on the article at the top of the thread.

The closest thing I can see is that Obama (and the globalists / Communists / whatevers behind him) are trying the classical techniques for undermining / subverting a society -- see also Antonia Gramsci and/or the famous 1963 Congressional Record article on the Communist Goals for America; or Paul Harvey's speech on what he'd do to destroy America if he were the devil.

I think there are a number of reasons for this.

1) The United States is steeped in freedom and individuality -- everything from the Declaration to the Constitution to the Bill of Rights to "Go West Young Man" has created a cultural memory with its own inertia, which is proving harder than expected to eradicate. More on this later. Whereas Europe's cultural history is full of feudalism, overlords, monarchies, dictatorships: the people have a cultural memory of being servile, and without social mobility.

2) Related to this, the United States has long been a Christian country: we fought a war to eliminate slavery. And Christianity focuses on the individual: Christ died for sinners, to *make* them worthy, not *because* of anyone's or any group's inherent superiority.

3) Putting these factors together, the left has been trying to eliminate the cultural memory of the U.S. ("Hey hey! Ho Ho! Western Culture's got to go!") and to dumb down the people (public schools were developed in Germany to make compliant serfs for the masters, and fit in well with the "Organization Man" meme of the post-World War II bureaucracies). And hand in hand with this has been the effort first to remove religion from the public square, then to make religion bad ("homophobia" or "anti-science" anyone?), and then to destroy the last bastion of resistance to tyranny, the family (birth control / abortion / welfare / hookup culture).

The thing is, it isn't working: or rather, it isn't working like clockwork as it has in other countries.

And so the Gramsci-ites and others are working on other time-tested techniques: Cloward-Piven (put enough financial strain on the system that it will collapse), dependency, class warfare. The idea is twofold: one, if the great middle class is in the way, get rid of them by pressure from without (outsourcing / taxes / regulation to stop entrepreneurs) and by subversion: encourage unhealthy personal and societal habits in order to foster near-universal dependence on government.

So instead of dividing the underclasses *geographically* as in the movie (although to some extent this happens with the Rust Belt and/or the South being full of "bitter clingers"), people are divided along class lines.

And as in Animal Farm where the puppies were raised to be attack dogs, so the underclasses are being groomed via Race Hatred and the Occupy Movement to attack the Middle Class, the elites hope to pit the non-elites among one another, fighting for the scraps.

But two things are happening, that the conspirators haven't counted on. One, is that all their toxic results are hitting the lower classes; two, the more educated youth, having been inculcated with a sense of entitlement, are nonetheless left with a sense of *superiority* such that they will not deign to accept handouts: oh, no, they want a job commensurate with their perceived status.

And they remember that four short years ago, everyone HAD jobs. But now? They have awful debt, and NO job.

So who are they going to blame? Not themselves. The man at the top: the one who *PROMISED* change...not telling them it was change for the worse.

And the second, is that one has to time things VERY carefully. The Cloward-Piven is working so well, that not only are the underclasses running out of money; the lower echelons of the elites (the government functionaries, the apparatchiks, are threatened with losing their livelihoods as well.

And if both the lower classes and the middle classes become dispossessed at the same time -- someone just *might* get the idea that "Let's get the dirty bastards at the top!" will bring more *positive* change than fighting each other. It wasn't the Rust Belt Union Boys who came up with the idea of sending all the factories to China: it was MBA hot-shots doing the bidding of the top dogs. It wasn't the middle-aged white male programmers who came up with the H1B visa and having to train in their own replacements: it was the elites. And it wasn't the working-class blacks who came up with the idea of de facto amnesty for illegal aliens in order to lower costs by paying manual labor their wages under the table, and socializing the health care and other disruptions. Yup, it was the elites again.

And I fear that it was a grave mistake to try to keep power by resorting to the politics of personal destruction to keep Palin and Cain out of power: it simply acted to plug up a pressure cooker of political frustration...

Cheers!

[SaraJohnson]

The “smart” people. Socialists created them and now embraced them as supeior rulers. It figues given their politically correct (re)education which ensures compliance of thought and behavior amongst their national and international equals.

The added element of delusional superiorty over the politically incorrect riff raff, is a given. They are too arragant and stupid to be ashamed of themselves. They might end up losing their pretty heads.

[Calliecat]

I haven’t read the books, but my husband and I saw the film last night. I didn’t go with terribly high expectations, but I thought it was an arresting film with some very nice artistic touches, particularly during the flashback scenes. I just felt it started lagging in the last 30 minutes, with the repetitive romantic scenes. One of two would have sufficed, but that’s a minor point-—it still kept my attention until the credits.

[Talisker]

I think there are a number of reasons for this.

Wow, freeking fantastic analysis! Well done!

You've pissed me off plenty of times, but I sincerely doff me hat to you for this one, good sir.

I'm saving your missive for future reference.

[GreyFriar]

The romantic scenes actually have a point to them. The contestants must get sponsors who will buy items that they need to survive and possibly win the games. Haymitch, the mentor for Katniss and Peeta, knows this and tells them to play up the “romantic angle.” Katniss has no real interest in doing so, perhaps this is more evident in the books; however she comes to realize the need to “market” herself and Peeta. The ointment and soup both came from sponsors who took a liking to the 2 contestants from District 12.

Remember what Cinna said: “You have to sell yourselves.” or words to that affect, perhaps it was “Make the crowd like you.” Read at least the first book in the trilogy.

[GreyFriar]

The romantic scenes actually have a point to them. The contestants must get sponsors who will buy items that they need to survive and possibly win the games. Haymitch, the mentor for Katniss and Peeta, knows this and tells them to play up the “romantic angle.” Katniss has no real interest in doing so, perhaps this is more evident in the books; however she comes to realize the need to “market” herself and Peeta. The ointment and soup both came from sponsors who took a liking to the 2 contestants from District 12.

Remember what Cinna said: “You have to sell yourselves.” or words to that affect, perhaps it was “Make the crowd like you.” Read at least the first book in the trilogy.

[txnuke]

grey_whiskers: "But two things are happening, that the conspirators haven't counted on. One, is that all their toxic results are hitting the lower classes; two, the more educated youth, having been inculcated with a sense of entitlement, are nonetheless left with a sense of *superiority* such that they will not deign to accept handouts: oh, no, they want a job commensurate with their perceived status. And they remember that four short years ago, everyone HAD jobs. But now? They have awful debt, and NO job. So who are they going to blame? Not themselves. The man at the top: the one who *PROMISED* change...not telling them it was change for the worse.

"And the second, is that one has to time things VERY carefully. The Cloward-Piven is working so well, that not only are the underclasses running out of money; the lower echelons of the elites (the government functionaries, the apparatchiks, are threatened with losing their livelihoods as well."

Thanks, that was fascinating, helpful, uplifting... in short, as expected.

[ctdonath2]

Oh, the romance is not a minor point. It is forced, and it is there for other than its own sake.

Remember, this is a trilogy.

[ctdonath2]

The Hunger Games is similar to The Lottery, but of course much longer & more complex. Notable difference is in the former everyone knows why the event happens, participants are children up to 18, participation may be voluntary, and much time is spent on conflict/combat involving multiple, um, winners.