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Generosity toward the lower classes historically has never been an important part of upper-class awareness.

Michael Parenti

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Michael Parenti
Age: 91
Born: 1933
Born: January 1
Historian
Journalist
Political Scientist
New York City
New York
Never
Lower
Generosity
Toward
Awareness
Policy
Class
Upper
Part
Historically
Important
Classes

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Conservatives are fond of telling us what a wonderful, happy, prosperous nation this is. The only thing that matches their love of country is the remarkable indifference they show toward the people who live in it.
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The most powerful ideologies are not those that prevail against all challengers but those that are never challenged because in their ubiquity they appear as nothing more than the unadorned truth.
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You will have no sensation of a leash around your neck if you sit by the peg. It is only when you stray that you feel the restraining tug.
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The dirty truth is that many people find fascism to be not particularly horrible.
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Even though the crime rate has dropped in recent years, the United States has more police per capita then any other nation in the world.
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You see there are people who believe the function of the police is to fight crime, and that's not true, the function of the police is social control and protection of property.
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The enormous gap between what US leaders do in the world and what Americans think their leaders are doing is one of the great propaganda accomplishments.
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All economic and political institutions are contrivances that should serve the interests of the people. When they fail to do so, they should be replaced by something more responsive, more just, and more democratic. Marx said this, and so did Jefferson. It is a revolutionary doctrine, and very much an American one.
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The worst forms of tyranny, or certainly the most successful ones, are not those we rail against but those that so insinuate themselves into the imagery of our consciousness, and the fabric of our lives, as not to be perceived as tyranny.
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For the last fifty years we've been supporting right-wing governments, and that is a puzzlement to me...I don't understand what there is in the American character...that almost automatically, even when we have a liberal President, we support fascist dictatorships or are tolerant towards them.
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There is a century-old saying, The dollar votes more times than the man.
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The first atrocity, the first war crime committed in any war of aggression by the aggressors is against the truth.
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Russia became a juicy chunk of the Third World, with immense reserves of cheap labor, a vast treasure of natural resources, and industrial assets to be sold off at giveaway prices.
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Only by establishing military supremacy were the European and North American colonizers able to eliminate the crafts and industries of Third World peoples, control their markets, extort tribute, undermine their cultures, destroy their villages, steal their lands and natural resources, enslave their labor, and accumulate vast wealth.
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The rich have grown richer, but their tax rate has declined. The poor have grown poorer, but their taxes have increased.
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One finds fortunes built on slave labor, indentured labor, prison labor, immigrant labor, female labor, child labor, and scab labor - backed by the lethal force of gun thugs and militia. 'Old money' is often little more than dirty money laundered by several generations of possession.
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The close relationship between politics and economics is neither neutral nor coincidental. Large governments evolve through history in order to protect large accumulations of property and wealth.
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It is ironic that people of modest means sometimes become conservative out of a scarcity fear bred by the very capitalist system they support.
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Archbishop Romero of El Salvador was a member of the Salvadoran aristocracy. He could not have risen to the top of the church hierarchy otherwise. But after he began voicing critical remarks about the war and concerned comments about the poor, he was assassinated.
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America is a simplified ideological abstraction, an emotive symbol represented by other abstract symbols like the flag. It is the object of a faithlike devotion, unencumbered by honest history.
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