Fucking Bollocking Ball Bag Gym. Fucker.

I don't know why I even bother going. I mean it makes no difference anyway. All I'm doing is shedding £55 a month and not the good pounds either.

Lunch today : a quite revolting salad of my own concoction : Cous cous, tomatoes, celery, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, pigeon breasts. Sounds good, but trust me, it didn't really work. And I had a Vanilla Coke - diet naturally, but still inherently EVIL.

American Socialists

I was just thinking about why American's keep electing Republicans even though it's so patently not in their own best interests, and realised that Gramsci had his finger on the button 100 years ago. This from Wiki explaining Cultural Hegemony :-

Gramsci argued that the failure of the workers to make anti-capitalist revolution was due to the successful capture of the workers' ideology, self-understanding, and organizations by the hegemonic (ruling) culture. In other words, the perspective of the ruling class had been absorbed by the masses of workers. In "advanced" industrial societies hegemonic cultural innovations such as compulsory schooling, mass media, and popular culture had indoctrinated workers to a false consciousness. Instead of working towards a revolution that would truly serve their collective needs (according to Marxists), workers in "advanced" societies were listening to the rhetoric of nationalist leaders, seeking consumer opportunities and middle-class status, embracing an individualist ethos of success through competition, and/or accepting the guidance of bourgeois religious leaders.

And that pretty much hits the nail on the head as far as I can see. So where does that get us? Absolutely nowhere unfortunately. Let's face it, you can probably be arrested for reading Gramsci in the Red States these days. And that's not a joke. It could come under the heading of 'programme related activity' (bad thoughts). After all, if hanging around by the side of a road looking a bit hairy can get you unlimited detention in Guantanamo Bay who knows what reading a book by a revolutionary socialist (and an Italian to boot) would get you? Death by public stoning perhaps?

Of course it doesn't help that many recent immigrants to the USA only have decadent and corrupt governments to compare the US experience with and so are only too happy to vote for the party that says it's going to leave them alone the most. Of course the way US politics is going at the moment there'll soon be little real difference between Congress and The Democratic Republic of South Backscratcher.

Don't believe me - read up on just where elected representatives are getting their bribes from these days.