[MD] The American Ruling Class

[plattholden at gmail.com]

On 11 Dec 2009 at 20:26, ARLO J BENSINGER JR wrote:

> [Platt]
> The notion of exploitable ignorant masses is held by those who have a
> insatiable need to boost their own egos, a congenital preoccupation of the
> liberal mind. 
> 
> [Pirsig]
> Along the streets that lead away from the apartment he can never see anything
> through the concrete and brick and neon but he knows that buried within it are
> grotesque, twisted souls forever trying the manners that will convince
> themselves they possess Quality, learning strange poses of style and glamour
> vended by dream magazines and other mass media, and paid for by the vendors of
> substance. He thinks of them at night alone with their advertised glamorous
> shoes and stockings and underclothes off, staring through the sooty windows at
> the grotesque shells revealed beyond them, when the poses weaken and the truth
> creeps in, the only truth that exists here, crying to heaven, God, there is
> nothing here but dead neon and cement and brick.
> 
> [Arlo]
> I'll take Pirsig's liberal mind any day.
> 
> [Khaled]
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self
> 
> [Pirsig]
> I know what it is! We´ve arrived at the West Coast! We´re all strangers
> again! Folks, I just forgot the biggest gumption trap of all. The funeral
> procession! The one everybody´s in, this hyped-up, fuck-you, supermodern, ego
> style of life that thinks it owns this country. 
> 
> [Arlo]
> Amen, Comrade Pirsig. Amen.

[Pirsig]
The Metaphysics of Quality provides the vocabulary. A free market is a 
Dynamic institution. What people buy and what people sell, in other 
words what people value, can never be contained by any intellectual 
formula. What makes the marketplace work is Dynamic Quality. The 
market is always changing and the direction of that change can never be 
predetermined. The Metaphysics of Quality says the free market makes 
everybody richer-by preventing static economic patterns from setting in 
and stagnating economic growth. That is the reason the major capitalist 
economies of the world have done so much better since World War II 
than the major socialist economies." (Lila, 17)

Thank you for setting the leftists straight, Mr. Pirsig

Platt