“On the first hour of the Tuesday Ochelli Effect, Dylan Wade substituted for Mike Swanson. Dylan and Chuck had a quickly shifting conversation about vaccines, politics in New York, and Blazing Saddles among other things.”
“During the second hour, Jp Sottile talked about blood and soil in this place we call America.”
“THE FOLLOWING IS A COPY AND PASTE FROM JP’s FACEBOOK POST he read in part during the show:”
People keep on expecting politicians and “the government” to change things. And they often find themselves disappointed when they don’t. That leads them to blame politicians and the government for America’s intractable problems. But that’s kinda bullshit. The politicians are the American people. The government is made up of the American people. And as I look at American history and, not for nothing, the last fifty years, what I see is that politicians and “the government” have often reflected the character, the ethics, the theology, and the self-serving desires of the American people. This all hasn’t happened by accident. Nor is most of what we’ve seen the result of some cunning conspiracy that’s fooled most of the people most of the time.
Instead, America was born out of some deeply disturbing ideas, deeply immoral contradictions, and shockingly violent, pathological behaviors. But instead of admitting and owning that dark inheritance, repenting and evolving past it, the vast majority of us have lived in convenient denial of the truth and instead embraced fanciful lies rooted in Exceptionalism, NIMBYism, and a divine right to except ourselves from the sins committed both in our name and, sadly, far more to our material benefit than some are willing to admit. Most importantly, we prefer to identify scapegoats for our ills rather than face the fact that it is ultimately We, The People who have cheered, catalyzed, aided, and abetted most of the crimes we regularly blame on politicians and “the government.” In the final analysis, we must look at ourselves and the essential character of our ragged, banal culture to find potential for growth as a polity and a society. We have to be willing to accept responsibility and admit truths. Sadly, the one
American tradition stronger than an aversion to responsibility is the rejection of the common good. And it has made us anti-social. If there is one ideology that I would call truly “American” it would be that. We’ve turned to be anti-social into a fully-fledged “ism” … Anti-Socialism. And that makes it hard, if not impossible, to begin to accept collective responsibility, particularly in a rapidly decaying empire. Just ask the Iraqi people.
