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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

Ok, here's my attempt:

Just as Gene inquired about the noise of the dehydrator, any such noise which 
persists long enough becomes accepted and ignored.  We are hardly aware it 
exists.  It is only when it stops that it might grab our attention.  At the 
birth of one child or the other, the midwife had travelled some distance and 
was 
there in plenty of time, so she went to a small trailer we had at the time a 
little distant from the house to take a nap.  "Ah," said we, "you will really 
get a good nap.  It is very peaceful and quiet here!"   

A couple of hours later she came into the house bleary-eyed and dishevelled. 
"Didn't sleep well?"
"Heavens, no!  How do you people ever sleep around here?  There was something 
kept walking by the window (a chicken, it happens) and there was that 
annoying noise those leaves were making!"

She lived the heart of a large city (Ashville, NC) and could sleep through 
headlights flashing through her window and horns honking.  But the footfalls 
of 
a chicken kept her wide awake.

Everyone reading this has just such a background noise playing in their heads 
that has been repeated so often, is so pervasive, that you have long since 
ceased to pay it any attention.  And yet it controls a great deal of your 
thinking unawares.  That conditioning is what we call 'schooling'.  It has 
nothing 
whatever to do with learning the academics, literacy, or any such.  It is 
designed to limit and control your thinking, persuade you that it is the 
normal way 
of things, and cause you a visceral reaction if you attempt to resist or 
question it.

People like to point out that we have had "public" schools from the inception 
of the colonies, but those schools did not resemble the modern government 
schools a whit.  The phenomenon of modern government schools came into being 
in 
the 1860's and were based on trips that John Dewey, Horace Mann, and others 
made to Prussia and observed a school system specifically designed to instill 
obedience and compliance on the population, or as Johann Fichte, a key 
founder of 
the Prussian system wrote:  "The schools must fashion the person, and fashion 
him in such a way that he simply cannot will otherwise than what you wish him 
to will."

Dewey and Mann were socialists (like Obama).  They had the full support of 
industrialists who wanted a compliant population conditioned to feel a 
visceral 
obligation to 'come to work' and be content with token rewards in exchange 
for 
their labor.  Or as the Austin Lounge Lizards song puts it:

"Boss is in the board room talking productivity,
 That just means to put the screws to working stiffs like me
 If we're good and work real hard and save our pay until
 We can afford to buy this crap they make us build."

Why, oh why, could anyone be surprised the extent to which corporations have 
America by the short hairs.  You were conditioned since preschool to believe 
that your worth was based on getting stars, smiley faces, good grades, and 
some 
letters after your name.  Why be surprised that most people can so easily be 
told that you are not worht anything unless you are buying this particular 
beer, or own that particular car.

Long enoug, I will continue in another post.
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