And I know, I know – if everyone voted that way then we’d all be murdered. But I don’t care. I don’t want everyone to vote that way, just me. Yay!

At the same time, I don’t know if I’d buy something from a murderer. That would mean I’d have to go into his store, where I’m pretty sure I’d be helpless. Or I’d be able to kill him…

So yeah, voting with the dollar still seems more powerful, even though politicians can send kids to war to protect their financial interests and blah, blah, blah. We *all* try to force markets through threat of violence to our own designs, it’s just that most of us don’t have much power. Until we join forces and stand together, of course.

And that’s why I need all of you to join forces with me. Let’s all go out and buy a Diet Coke Plus, because my dollar votes for Diet Coke with random vitamins added to it every time. It’s like Centrum Silver, but loaded with aspartame! What more are you looking for people?

I’m going to be sad if the market doesn’t support my beverage of choice and I have to go back to taking pills with my soda. It’s just not the same.

I would have to disagree with your first statement. We do not live in a capitalist society, we live in a society of Mercantilism. Markets should not, and do not follow money, the opposite is true. Politics/government try to force markets through threat of violence to their own designs. This is where most problems lay. A capitalist society would/should have no controls but be allowed to move unfettered. For more info check out Chalmers Johnson’s “Blowback” the chapter Meltdown.

Two: Ken, we vote with our dollars. In our capitalistic society where we can buy everything from hormone-laden milk to fair trade coffee to politicians, the market and the politics follow the money. Also, your second post/comment was very confusing and jumped around a lot, so perhaps I am not fully understanding your point in the first paragraph.

Shrug.

I’m actually very sceptical of talk of ‘generations’ and so on. I think people are people, and supposed generation-defining incidents are just incidents, after all, though they vary in scale. I participated in the march in London against war in Iraq in 2003, and I’m glad I did. I don’t feel it committed me to particular stands in other arguments though, and it doesn’t give my generation any kind of cache. I have a problem with identifying protests against the Vietnam War or participation in World War II as something “we” went through and “you” didn’t. It’s ridiculous.

So, to cut a long story short, my comment is this: I am incredibly impressed Sarah, that you put up an Ian Brown song. The man is a legend. And an exceptionally appropriate song as well. I’m off now to wear a big coat, shake my head around like a deranged simian and tell people I’m “mad for it”.

Second: I am not sure I agree with Courtney Martin on this:

When Friedman was young and people were taking to the streets, there were a handful of issues to focus on and a few solid sources of news to pay attention to.

Yes, there were only a few solid sources of news, but there were a lot of things to talk and think about because in any historical age there are a lot of things to think about and care about. Infinite sides of governance. There were reports of wars, etc., coming out of the wars around the world throughout the 20th century, albeit at a different pace. The reporting on the Vietnam War or even on Korea could probably be said to be more thorough and possibly fact-based than that on the Iraq War.

The difference is that our concept of ‘governance’ and what issues affect us has now become global. We no longer thing the infinite things we have to care about are just taxes, local politicans, segregation, racial issues, family structure… i.e., domestic issues. This infinite list includes those things, yes (although how much do most of us actually know about tax codes? arguably less than before). This list includes all the wars because it is now part of our accepted arguments that these things–wars in ‘other people’s countries’–now directly affect us. (Because they do.)

I thought Henri’s point about how the arguments are more complicated is true, too, and good. I.e., we are more aware of all the consequences a given moral choice might take. So maybe you buy only local produce to reduce food miles, but now a farmer you used to buy from is unemployed and if everyone did it he would probably be worse off. Or you buy organic food but then it uses more landspace.

I think the question of responsibility for murder is important, though. I think my friend Skye wrote a lot of blogs about these ethical questions (If you know someone will die and don’t save them, then are you responsible? If you could do something and don’t, are you responsible? If you don’t stop the politicians who are doing these things, are you responsible? Even if you can’t stop them, if you don’t try, are you responsible? etc.) based on Peter Singer’s arguments (the food ethicist, not the private military company expert). But I also think one problem that leads to a lot of ultimately more damaging policies is the idea we have the responsibility to ‘fix’ the rest of the world, which we often do by imposing our social-political-economic structures on them in ways that destroy other things.

And lead to overwhelmedness for us…

And I have gotten carried away. But I close with this comment my friend sent after I sent her the Friedman article:

Anyone who reads and whose first two elections to vote were 2000 and 2004 could very easily feel this way.

Voting for someone who is not running on a platform to kill people does make me feel better than voting for someone who is running on a platform to kill people. But I’m might be weird in that way?

Maybe Ellen is right, if we bury our heads in the sand long enough, we can go to war with a nationalist Iran, so when we have a so called terrorist attack we can say “Lets kill’em! They had no right to come here and kill my friends, just because we dropped a nuke on them,” Yeah because with the exception of a few all candidates said Nuke Iran is an option.

The effects are everywhere how she could say we feel nothing is crazy! The dollar is worth nothing, and I can’t get a WII. I have to get a national idea card that’s biometricly read , which is cool but wrong. The local cops here let me smoke weed, but if a fed sees, I’m screwed. Yes, I thought about leaving the country but they have expatriot taxes, so I still have to pay. Which brings up the fact when I stopped paying taxes the government said tey would send me to jail! I don’t know I’m tired, I talk about this all day at work and by now it’s pretty hard to focus so…. wait I like puppies, and Ron Paul is going to WIN! I’m also Irish, drunk and like to get hit in the face. night “Every generation needs a new revolution” Tom jefferson.