Video: Xeni on Maddow on Net Neutrality victory

There are no sides, just people who help you and people who don’t.

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Regardless of the length there’s a smell of hypocrisy when something supposedly bringing “transparency” is kept secret.

Publishing draft rules before they’re voted on, and publishing final rules as soon as they’re approved, will make it easier for everyone to understand the process, and for the media to provide accurate coverage.

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“Of course there is no Us and Them / but them they do not think the same…”

Nice. For the record I don’t have such a manichean world view, but sometimes it does feel like us vs them, and of course we all want “us” to be “good”, and “them” to be “bad.”

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Well there IS a 99% vs. a 1%, or thereabouts.

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You know, I agree, but not everyone in that 99% seems themselves as part of that 99%. They think they’ll be a 1%er someday, evidence to the contrary not withstanding. Or they see the US vs THEM in very different terms, because they don’t believe that we actually have a class system (I guess because it doesn’t involve royalty or whatever?).

Also, a friend of mine and I were talking about the death of the mall, and you know, it’s not all malls that are going away, just the ones that aren’t rich and fancy. The upscale malls are doing a brisk business, actually, while the middle class suburban malls are disintegrating… So, the 1%'s malls are just fine.

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While I’m not sure I’d characterize the fight as “Big Corps vs. Other Big Corps.” I see why Maddow would at least bring up companies like Netflix and Google.

“The People” certainly have a win if we preserve Net Neutrality but it’s not really a struggle of “Corporate Interests vs. the People’s Interests” so much as “Cable Monopolies vs. Everyone Else (Including Other Big Corporations).”

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Thanks for the clarification, and I can agree with that. Seems to me though that there’s also a story of 4 million+ signatures (i.e., The People) versus corps that everyone thought were going to buy their own laws yet again, and I didn’t see Maddow playing that up as much as I would’ve liked. I guess there are two “vs.” stories here.

@Mindysan33, I’m on board with all of that. What was that Steinbeck said about most Americans thinking of themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires? :slight_smile: Still, I do think Occupy did a great service by getting a lot of people to realize there is indeed an entrenched 1% (or so) that colludes against the rest of us.

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Here is an article that sort of addresses the “big corps vs. other big corps” issue (it’s Gawker, so YMMV):

http://justice.gawker.com/thanks-for-the-net-neutrality-oligarchs-1688571806

The article basically hinges on the fact that unless you are ultra-rich and own a corporation, you get nothing out of Washington, unless it’s something that coincides with something that big corporations or the rich and powerful want. That might be a point of debate, but it is something to think about, at the very least. Are we really so far gone? I dunno. It can seem that way.

Absolutely. But like everything else, it did get commoditized and turned into something not nearly as powerful. I’m not sure where we can go from here, really.

I bet the top 1% of that 1% doesn’t think much of the bottom 99%, either.

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