A Quote by Jay McInerney
There's a socialist bias to the consensus of the literary world: a '30s mentality that says factory workers are more worthy of our attention.
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Sure, they are the future of our world. Nike and Reebok need more factory workers every day.
Hitler did not have Mussolini's revolutionary socialist background... Nevertheless, he shared the socialist hatred and contempt for the 'bourgeoisie' and 'capitalism' and exploited for his purposes the powerful socialist traditions of Germany. The adjectives 'socialist' and 'worker' in the official name of Hitler's party ('The Nationalist-Socialist German Workers' Party') had not merely propagandistic value... On one occasion, in the midst of World War II, Hitler even declared that 'basically National Socialism and Marxism are the same.'
Finally, I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way.
On the world scene, it is our position that there is a resurgence of socialism taking place. The world's socialist and Communist forces are now on the move to restore socialism in the former socialist countries and to strengthen the existing socialist countries... there is a new socialist world on the horizon, a resurgence of the world revolutionary process.
In fact, what were called the socialist countries in Eastern Europe were the most anti-socialist systems in the world. Workers had more rights in the United States and England than they had in Russia, and it was somehow still called socialism.
A female writer does definitely get more attention if she writes about male characters. It's true. It's considered somehow more literary, in the same way that it's more literary to write about supposedly male subjects, such as war. You're considered more seriously by the literary establishment.
I've spent my whole working life standing up for workers. Didn't matter if it was the two trapped miners at Beaconsfield or professional netballers or indeed factory workers or construction workers.
I'm a huge supporter of animal rights - and I've been an outspoken critic of the cruelties routinely inflicted on livestock at factory farms. But it really bothers me that the mistreatment of pigs and chickens and cows seems to attract a lot more attention and spark a lot more outrage than the abuse of immigrant workers.
As for the workers' movement, I find that I reach workers more easily as neighbors than I do standing outside the factory despairingly giving out a leaflet telling them to take over, say the Ford plant.
I believe it is dangerous to think that the more extreme forms of censorship are more worthy of our attention. If we put all our effort into looking for the splinter in Turkey or China's eye, we may fail to recognise the plank in our own.
It is significant that the socialist mentality is usually also an atheistic mentality, where atheism is understood not so much as the disbelief in God as the hatred of God˜an attitude as precarious logically as it has been destructive in practice. There is an important sense in which religion as traditionally understood reconciles humanity to imperfection and to failure. Since the socialist sets out to abolish failure, traditional religion is worse than _de trop_: it is an impediment to perfection.
There are those who believe a liberal or a conservative bias permeates the media. I don't. The operative press bias is one that favors conflict, not ideology, and it is lashed by a market-driven bias to boost ratings or circulation with more wow stories, more sizzle.
While everyone has racial bias, I reserve the word 'racist' to describe the bias that white people have - our collective bias is backed by institutional power.
If a task is worthy of our attention, it is worthy of our best.
I know [canned music] makes chickens lay more eggs and factory workers produce more. But how much more can they get out of you on an elevator?
No occupation is more worthy of an intelligent and enlightened mind, than the study of Nature and natural objects; and whether we labour to investigate the structure and function of the human system, whether we direct our attention to the classification and habits of the animal kingdom, or prosecute our researches in the more pleasing and varied field of vegetable life, we shall constantly find some new object to attract our attention, some fresh beauties to excite our imagination, and some previously undiscovered source of gratification and delight.
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