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Revolutions are not push button affairs rather, they evolve only if there exists a reservoir of hope and grievance that can be galvanized into popular action.

Michael Parenti

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Michael Parenti
Age: 91
Born: 1933
Born: January 1
Historian
Journalist
Political Scientist
New York City
New York
Hope
Affairs
Action
Evolve
Galvanized
Political
Push
Reservoir
Affair
Reservoirs
Popular
Grievance
Exists
Revolutions
Revolution
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Rather
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The dirty truth is that many people find fascism to be not particularly horrible.
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The Federalists also used bribes, intimidation, and fraud against opponents of the Constitution.
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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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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 nation, like the church, has its visible symbols and insignia, its parchments engrossed with the revealed word, its dogmas, hymns, liturgy, holy day celebrations, its early Fathers, prophets and martyrs, its priesthood and its lay sodality, its myths of sacred genesis and apocalyptic crises, its world-saving mission and its missionaries.
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The powers that be not only try to control events, but they try to control our memory and understanding of these events, which is part of controlling the events themselves.
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When change threatens to rule, then the rules are changed.
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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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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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Actually, the New Deal's central dedication was to business recovery rather than social reform.
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Capital requires protection, as do the institutions through which it operates. As capital expands its operations, the state that is associated with its protection must develop its capacity for autocratic control. Thus, the Free World increasingly resembles a dreary string of heartless police states.
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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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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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Our fear that communism might someday take over most of the world blinds us to the fact that anti- communism already has.
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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 last four secretaries of defense have pointed out that defense spending creates jobs. So do pornography, prostitution, and narcotics.
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The problem with capitalism is that it best rewards the worst part of us: the ruthless, competitive, conniving, opportunistic, acquisitive drives, giving little reward and often much punishment-or at least much handicap-to honesty, compassion, fair play, many forms of hard work, love of justice, and a concern for those in need.
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A huge national security state has developed in the United States since World War II. Its function is to buttress anticommunist, procapitalist governments and undermine and destroy popular movements whenever possible.
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The two party electoral system performs the essential function of helping to legitimate the existing social order.
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