When people ask " Where is the outrage"?, I think the reason is that

[KlatooBNikto]

people feel so powerless against the onslaught of our corporations against them, they have become numb.If you carefully look into the way most corporations treat their employees, you will see that the relationship is one between a master and a slave. The slave has no chance of standing up to the power of the master.So it is with our people against corporate power.

[BlueEyedSon]

1. Frog, meet slowly boiled water.

[Theres-a]

11. Precisely.

[bryant69]

2. I think the real problem is that things aren't that bad

for the educated middle class. TO have a revolution or immediate change you need to get them riled up - without that, revolution rarely happens. And while things aren't as good as they were 8 years ago or 10 years ago, they aren't so bad that it requires an immediate change.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[KlatooBNikto]

3. You may have put your finger on our predicament.Our complacency

comes from our "not so bad" situation.No amount of outrgaes will move us off dead center unless something happens to disturb our complacency. Good thinking.

[bryant69]

9. So we find ourselves in the unenviable position of

wishing things were worse. That's the problem with hoping for revolution - people have to be pretty desperate before revolution makes more sense than a gradulized evolution. That doesn't bother me too much, because I have little to no faith in revolution, but it would bother others who want to see dramatic and immediate changes.

[H2O Man]

12. "Revolutions" rarely, if ever,

happen when things go way downhill. Rather, revolutions and significant social movements gain strength when the masses perceive things beginning to improve, and a significant set-back occures. Waiting for things to "get worse" is not a good strategy, as you obviously recognize. Work to make positive change every day.

[BlueEyedSon]

4. No, they just don't realize how bad things are, and will realize too late.

[mcscajun]

18. Like all generalizations, this one has holes in it.

I'm a member of the 'educated middle class' -- or at least I was until my work, like that of many in the IT field, got outsourced to India. My degree isn't of much use right now (no, it's not a CS degree) as there are thousands upon thousands of educated 50-year-olds out of work these days; I'm looking at a downsized future.

I only gained membership in the middle class during the Clinton years; went back to college and got my degree, got divorced, and managed somehow to buy a tiny house I can call my own. I'm from strictly working class parents, and grew up in a one-bedroom apartment with three sisters, so this is a pretty amazing thing to me just to have gotten where I did...too bad I can't stay there.

So, I'm pretty riled up that just at the point where I was poised to make my gains pay off, put something serious aside for my future, and maybe travel a bit, thanks to our new global masters and BushCo, I'm just gonna scrape by for the rest of my life, just as I did in my childhood and young adulthood.

I think we need an immediate change, but true, not everyone in the middle class has been hit hard...yet. It's a fair guess to make, though, that nearly everyone in the middle class KNOWS someone who HAS been hit hard.

I'm just lucky I have no one else to support.

[leftofthedial]

21. I know several dozen members of the educated middle class

for the whom the problems are clearly that bad.

Chronic unemployment, loss of health care, erosion of the families, lost homes, lost net worth . . .

The middle class has shrunk dramatically since the coup of 2000.

[H2O Man]

5. Right.

It simply comes down to the idea of efficacy. Does the individual believe that he/she has the ability within him/her, or does that individual grant the power to outside forces. We have a system that attempts to instill a sence of impotence. It's a lie, folks. we have the power to control our lives and change the system.

[blogbear]

6. People are overworked and under compensated..Many are worked as a

work horse to a frazzle and are too worn out to acknowledge 'outrage'..

[ArkDem]

15. ***********Mixed Metaphor Alert***************

[mcscajun]

19. This seems like a more accurate "take" on the situation.

IMO.

[ecstatic]

7. That, plus the corporations control the media

which affects the perception of most Americans. They brainwash many of us to the point where we don't even realize there is a problem.

[raccoon]

8. I agree about the master/slave comparison

also, seems like there are so many people that aren't concerned about something until it affects them personally.

[KlatooBNikto]

10. In my own experience with several large corporations over the

years, the ones who advance in their hierarchies are the ones who do not rock the boat,go along to get along and never express any opinions of one kind or another.That corporate life has made almost all of us poor citizens of a vigorous democracy that our founding Fathers envisioned.

So say goodbye to our old democracy and welcome the dawning of the new age of corporate plantations where the silent,the obedient and the conformist get rewarded. Nobody said our people can't see the writing on the wall.

[raccoon]

20. Well said! nt

[Just Me]

13. Well, I am really straining to recall being taught about my inner power.

I mostly recall folks just resigning to a "this is just the way it is" sort of cynicism and denying any possibility of change. I recall a close friend of mine opining that we reach adulthood the day we let go of our dreams. I was astonished at that perspective because, in my life, the day I let go of my dreams is the day I am no longer alive.

I think that, a series of personal disappointments and failed expectations (which were built upon quite a few falsehoods delivered by leaders/culture to begin with) can lead to resignation, cynicism and hopelessness. I'm not sure what it is that distinguishes those who choose something outside/beyond such disappointments. Whatever it is, it would be a wonderful gift to spread about,...the gift of having power to choose beyond resignation.

[KlatooBNikto]

14. As I have aged and reached the point of adulthood, by your definition,

I chose the route of teaching my seven kids to be the vehicles through which I could see my own long abandoned sense of empowerment as an ordinary citizen realized.By and large, that strategy has worked quite well and I get a great deal of spiritual and emotional satisafction in seeing my children express outrage at things that I am willing to put up with in my waning years.

[H2O Man]

16. Okay. Here it is:

Whenever people feel discouraged, the Water Man recommends that they keep what Schlesinger called RFK's most eloquent passage in mind: Robert was in South Africa, and he made the racist repressive government furious by telling the crowd, as individuals, to never accept "the belief there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills -- against misery and ignorance, injustice and violence .... Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.

"It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centres of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."

There you go. You have now been taught about your inner power. You can choose to believe RFK or to believe Tricky Dick Cheney, or to believe Martin Luther King, Jr, or George W. Bush. Believe in yourself. Those who imply you have no power are liars and thieves.

[Just Me]

17. I'm not sure where I acquired my view of each of us as a drop of water.

Drops of water that can gather into ripples, rivers, waves, even oceans that lead to tides of change. I only know that I have chosen to adopt that view and, obviously, it influences the way I look at my life and the lives of others,...in a positive and powerful way.

Your poster name, H2O Man, hit me as relating to that perspective of humanity.

I always embrace your encouraging words of empowerment.

[H2O Man]

22. Good thread.

This is an important discussion.