Are You Ready for the Revolution? (Mickey Z.)

[The Stapler]

Quote:<snip>

Which brings me to a good question for 2011: Are you ready for the revolution?

Being a revolutionary needn't require one to sleep till noon, dress entirely in black, and sport a rail-thin, heroin addict physique. Then again, neither should Michael Moore ever serve as anyone's role model for healthy rebellion.

If you agree that fitness -- both mental and physical -- is a crucial component for any serious subversive, read on…

more...

http://worldnewstrust.com/all-content/ar...key-z.html

Although some will reflexively spin in a circle three times and spit on the ground at the mere mention of Ralph Nader's name, Mickey Z. quotes him below, demonstrating the wisdom with which Nader speaks to me as a progressive and a liberal (linked to a different source in order to avoid any copyright issues):

Quote:"Once we stop growing up corporate and grow up civic, we will be much more focused on nutritious food, rather than junk food; we will be much more inquiring about different kinds of products; we will look at pollution as a form of violence, not just something that is nasty and dirty; we will demand the mechanism so we can control what we own and use these great resources for an enlightened, just, prosperous, happy society where the pursuit of justice is filled with such joy it itself becomes the pursuit of happiness and the pursuit of happiness becomes the pursuit of justice."

http://planetgreen.discovery.com/work-co...green.html

I still have issues with Nader for having launched quixotic presidential bids (especially the one in 2000), but I'm not one to throw out the baby with the
bathwater where progressive prose is concerned.

The rest of the piece gives some good, commonsense advice that will come in handy, even if 'the revolution' never materializes.

[Treestar]

That is all true. Though we are far away from that. The majority of our fellow citizens seem to positively prefer junk! Junk food, entertainment, etc.

I don't like to feel snobby, but geez, when I look at what people absolutely love that I find absolutely junky and undesirable! People really get attached to football teams, for example. They think it's such fun to go to chain restaurants! I have some cousins who are very happy people, and the reason they are such happy people, is that the American culture is something they just love.

[Shea]

I wish Nader had stuck to his consumer issues, where he was a prophet and a leader. Too bad he ever decided to get mixed up in politics.

[SeattleGirl]

(01-02-2011 12:36 PM)Shea Wrote:  I wish Nader had stuck to his consumer issues, where he was a prophet and a leader. Too bad he ever decided to get mixed up in politics.

I agree, Shea. I think he did great things in his role as consumer advocate; as a politician, he's about as effective as a bull in a china shop. He leaves messes behind him wherever he goes.

[Willinois]

(01-02-2011 12:36 PM)Shea Wrote:  I wish Nader had stuck to his consumer issues, where he was a prophet and a leader. Too bad he ever decided to get mixed up in politics.

Or at the least, he could have done it intelligently. Many Greens understood his first run to be a party-building exercise. But, after 2000 he did nothing to help build the Green party infrastructure, and then ran as an Independent in '04. So, even from a Green perspective he was a complete failure.

[Willinois]

Industrial agriculture is killing us. Many people are learning how to reject the big-box economy by finding locally grown, organic, healthy food.

[Capn Sunshine]

Nader's shameless prostitution of his political organization as a proxy for and at the behest of the Bush era republicans pretty much negates all the good he did previously. He's a craven millionaire who resides inside the beltway, not a working class hero.