It Was Eugene Debs Birthday Yesterday!

It was Eugene Debs birthday yesterday and I would venture to guess that many people, especially younger people, do not know the name or history of Eugene Debs. Brief bio of Debs. Debs was the founder of the Socialist Democratic Party of the U.S. and 6 time Presidential candidate. His last presidential campaign was run from prison. He was put in prison for sedition after making a speech against US participation in WW1.

Here is a quote from Debs at his trial just before sentencing:

Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.[

One of the reasons I decided to start this thread is the current state of education and media in the US. I read in the news that Keith Olbermann was suspended from MSNBC and I remembered Eugene Debs birthday and I put those ideas together and considered the state of American media and education. The idea that Olbermann’s partisan show is somehow dangerous just struck me as absurd and symptomatic.

You may be asking yourself, where is the “conspiracy”? Our media is nothing less than the “Ministry of Truth” and really shames George Orwell in it’s scope and success.

Perhaps this state of affairs is simply the result of the “market place of ideas” choosing corporate capitalism over democratic socialism? Social Darwinism or a “Natural Selection” of competing ideas. How can you select an idea you don’t know exists???

Labor history has been completely removed from school textbooks and thrown into the memory hole. Also it is beyond debate that the corporations and plutocrats shape and control the news. In fact they control what is acceptable for conversation. Conservative talk radio and Fox “News” are blaring from screens and radios wherever you travel with no relief or counter point. Corporations are “persons” and money is “speech” whereas workers (common people) are marginalized and disdained.

Information as a commodity is the point. This is not meant to compare or equivocate Keith Olbermann to Eugene Debs. It is more to point out how information is sliced and diced and presented as a product for sale.

Thank you OP for your very intellectual post. S&F for making my head hurt on a Saturday morning.

The left is being continually pushed further and further to the right. Obama would have been considered an Eisenhower republican a mere 50 or 60 years ago but today he is a radical socialist, muslim etc etc. The traditional right has become overtly fascist. Eugene Debs was a socialist feared by big business, Obama is not a socialist.