Speech by Greg Lemond

[BroDeal]

the world isn't just going to hell in a hand basket, it's always been going to hell in a hand basket.

You can't find me an era since the invention of language that people didn't say that about their own time. it's usless tripe and serves no fucntion other than the self aggrandizement of the writer. tisk tisk tisk, isn't it a shame, nothing can be done really, not like back in my day.. what utter bunk.

There were probably Romans saying just this...right before the barbarians sacked Rome.

The British used to lament the state of their culture at the beginning of the twentieth century. Their rush to WW1 was due in part to a belief that the youth had gone soft and a good war would harden them the F up. How's that British empire doing today?

 

[rhubroma]

the world isn't just going to hell in a hand basket, it's always been going to hell in a hand basket.

You can't find me an era since the invention of language that people didn't say that about their own time. it's usless tripe and serves no fucntion other than the self aggrandizement of the writer. tisk tisk tisk, isn't it a shame, nothing can be done really, not like back in my day.. what utter bunk.

I'm going to assume that there's plenty of people out there that are just as smart if not smarter than you are, and no less moral, and they want the sport they are passionate about to be clean. and they are doing more than just sitting around wagging their finger.

i've heard the money arguments in american sports too.
my opinion? if the money is there, the performers should get as much of it as they can. it's strictly a management/labor issue. when team owners start driving beat up cars and shopping at walmart,wake me up.

The problem with guys like you, is that you accept the system, or, if not, pretend that by pure wholesome pronouncements and wishfull thinking that it can be changed, without starting the revolution which is needed to change it. How pathetic. What's needed is condemnation and a revolution, not wishfull thinking like yours. And not a feeble one, but a total annihilation of the status quo by a major jaring revolution. But the masses who think like you do are too weak for such a revolution and can't stomach it. That's the truth. And so the rich and famous who make a mockery of all descency are laughing all the way to there graves. Whereas, you, in your unwillingness to rock the boat even gently, make an alibi (as you have here) of serious criticism, by saying that society has always been going to hell in a handbasket. Invariably that's your only response, that we've allways been going to hell in a handbascket so it's futile and even stupid to make any serious criticism which attacks such a degredated state. That's it nothing more, and its just sickening. But you forget that society has "always been going to hell in a handbasket," as you say, precisely because people like you can't stomach the revolution which is needed to change it.

 

[davidg]

Wheres Che Guevara when you need him

 

[krebs303]

Wheres Che Guevara when you need him

selling all those t-shirts with his picture on them

 

[Anonymous]

 

[Anonymous]

There were probably Romans saying just this...right before the barbarians sacked Rome.

The British used to lament the state of their culture at the beginning of the twentieth century. Their rush to WW1 was due in part to a belief that the youth had gone soft and a good war would harden them the F up. How's that British empire doing today?

the world didn't end. things went on. next generations come and go

the world now still looks much better than the world in the 1930's and 40's.

things aren't the worst they've ever been. the world no more about to end than when the last person said it was and the state of cycling today is not a reflection of the final decline of western civiliazation.

everything is hopeless because we all die, but that's no different than it has ever been.

we are not special.

 

[BroDeal]

the world didn't end. things went on.

Sometimes it did. The Incas are gone gone gone. So are the Aztecs. History is not a continuous line of progressive improvement. After Rome fell took nearly a thousand years for the standard of living to come back up to where it used to be. The Chinese have spent centuries as a pale shadow the empire they once were. The muslim world is still in its own dark age.

Sometimes the world really does get worse.

 

[Anonymous]

The problem with guys like you, is that you accept the system, or, if not, pretend that by pure wholesome pronouncements and wishfull thinking that it can be changed, without starting the revolution which is needed to change it. How pathetic. What's needed is condemnation and a revolution, not wishfull thinking like yours. And not a feeble one, but a total annihilation of the status quo by a major jaring revolution. But the masses who think like you do are too weak for such a revolution and can't stomach it. That's the truth. And so the rich and famous who make a mockery of all descency are laughing all the way to there graves. Whereas, you, in your unwillingness to rock the boat even gently, make an alibi (as you have here) of serious criticism, by saying that society has always been going to hell in a handbasket. Invariably that's your only response, that we've allways been going to hell in a handbascket so it's futile and even stupid to make any serious criticism which attacks such a degredated state. That's it nothing more, and its just sickening. But you forget that society has "always been going to hell in a handbasket," as you say, precisely because people like you can't stomach the revolution which is needed to change it.

if you go carrying pictures of chairman mao, you ain't gonna make it with an anyone any how.

what a pathetic attempt to bait me into knocking down your strawman version of me. you've done nothing here but rant.

"mockery of all descency". lmao .. do you read your own stuff? i don't know about mocking decency but mocking you would be like shooting fish in a barrel.

to say i accept things as they are is absolute proof you know nothing about me at all.

 

[Anonymous]

Sometimes it did. The Incas are gone gone gone. So are the Aztecs. History is not a continuous line of progressive improvement. After Rome fell took nearly a thousand years for the standard of living to come back up to where it used to be. The Chinese have spent centuries as a pale shadow the empire they once were. The muslim world is still its own dark age.

Sometimes the world really does get worse.

the Egyptians were pretty cocky about their shtick too. I love it when our fellow Americans act like we discovered a chocolate nobody ever knew existed, and that never goes bad. I would suggest that the materialism we export as "culture" is as degrading to a society as any Visigoth. That and sooner or later, even if we scrape by for a while. A country built on credit and consumerism as the only major industry is bound to fail. The numbers just don't work out in our favor.

 

[krebs303]

. What's needed is condemnation and a revolution, not wishfull thinking like yours. And not a feeble one, but a total annihilation of the status quo by a major jaring revolution. But the masses who think like you do are too weak for such a revolution and can't stomach it. That's the truth.

One of the keys to any successful revolution is convincing people to "think" in novel, revolutionary ways that defy the rules of simple logic and get them accustomed to finding excuses for "innovations" that they know inherently are contrary to right reason, if not right reason and Divine Revelation together. Using sophisticated means of thought-control and psychological manipulation, revolutionaries seek to get their dupes into distrusting their own beliefs and thought processes, portraying themselves, that is, the revolutionaries, to be the possessors of "secret" knowledge that must be "unlocked" by their own "expert" abilities. This is, course, of the essence of gnosticism, the belief that there is secret knowledge, "gnosis," that can be understood only by select few, who then have the "responsibility" of helping others to "see" and to "act" in accord with that "secret knowledge."

 

[krebs303]

as you say, precisely because people like you can't stomach the revolution which is needed to change it.

He doesn't remember the 60's does he? He should look up Mario Savio, Kent State, the civil rights movement, et. al.

OK guys back to cycling or I'll get out my IWW songbook and start singing.
yeah I was a wobbly many many years ago

 

[Anonymous]

Originally Posted by rhubroma
as you say, precisely because people like you can't stomach the revolution which is needed to change it.


spoken by someone that's probably never been near one.

i got beat by riot squad on the osu campus the day before kent state.

i was at kent state on the 4th anniversary of the shootings and saw daniel ellsburg waiving his hot of the presses copy of the transcripts nixon had been forced to publish.

he was yelling "we have him!!! he is doomed!!! this ends the presidency!!!!"

Nixon lasted until august. (rumsfield and cheney however didn't stay dead)

we stopped a war, toppled a president, went to the moon.

who are you to be so flip about revolution?

 

[davidg]

how did we get from Lemond to Nixon?

Could be a whole new thread for any Freud fans out there.

 

[BroDeal]

how did we get from Lemond to Nixon?

I would have thought a more natural route would have been Armstrong to Bush to Nixon.

How a bunch of dirty hippies getting beat up by the Man fits into this I am not sure.

 

[krebs303]

how did we get from Lemond to Nixon?

Pretty obvious they were both born in California.

 

[Anonymous]

I would have thought a more natural route would have been Armstrong to Bush to Nixon.

How a bunch of dirty hippies getting beat up by the Man fits into this I am not sure.

one make flip comments about us being too cowardly to embrace revolution.

well the hippie, not dirty, got beat for protesting nixon's esclation of the war to then include an invation of cambodia.

students the next day doing the same thing at kent state were murdered.

you know exactly how we got there. you were in this talk. gave us history lesson or two.

 

[BroDeal]

one make flip comments about us being too cowardly to embrace revolution.

well the hippie, not dirty, got beat for protesting nixon's esclation of the war to then include an invation of cambodia.

students the next day doing the same thing at kent state were murdered.

you know exactly how we got there. you were in this talk. gave us history lesson or two.

People who protest today are terrorists. They either stay in the government approved free protest zones, which are hidden away from everyone else, or they get hauled off to a secret prison.

 

[krebs303]

People who protest today are terrorists. They either stay in the government approved free protest zones, which are hidden away from everyone else, or they get hauled off to a secret prison.

Public demonstrations are used today by a multiplicity groups ranging from
Norwegian anti-fuel tax car-owners to Florida retirees protesting the ballot design
of Miami-Dade county, Philippino ‘people power’ intent on ousting President
Estrada, local farmers critical of the McDonaldization of French culture, street
theatre like the gay Mardi Gras in Sydney, and consumer boycotts such as those
used against British supermarkets stocking genetically-modified foods. Events at
Genoa combined a mélange of mainstream charities like Oxfam and Christian
Aid, as well as radicals like British 'Drop the Debt' protestors, the German Freie
ArbeiterInnen Union, and Italian anarchists like Tute Bianchi and Ya Basta!
Collective action through peaceful channels has become a generally accepted way
to express political grievances, voice opposition, and challenge authorities

 

[rhubroma]

if you go carrying pictures of chairman mao, you ain't gonna make it with an anyone any how.

what a pathetic attempt to bait me into knocking down your strawman version of me. you've done nothing here but rant.

"mockery of all descency". lmao .. do you read your own stuff? i don't know about mocking decency but mocking you would be like shooting fish in a barrel.

to say i accept things as they are is absolute proof you know nothing about me at all.

Well anybody who makes this comment: "i've heard the money arguments in american sports too.
my opinion? if the money is there, the performers should get as much of it as they can. " speeks volumes of the uttelry base and vulgur world vision you maintian, which annihilates descency by reducing culture to a pure market value. The logic of the market has replaced culture, because vulgar people like yourself haven't the capacity to go beyond man's own base insticts to earn cash. The world of the markets is choking on it's own excessive wealth, while man's state has been redused to that of a hungry pack of stray dogs. The society of the markets is composed of stray dogs, who think only of themselves and not the collective.

 

[davidg]

At last, this thread is starting to warm up - lol

 

[Seth Bullock]

speeks volumes of the uttelry base and vulgur world vision you maintian, which annihilates descency by reducing culture to a pure market value. The logic of the market has replaced culture, because vulgar people like yourself haven't the capacity to go beyond man's own base insticts to earn cash. The world of the markets is choking on it's own excessive wealth, while man's state has been redused to that of a hungry pack of stray dogs. The society of the markets is composed of stray dogs, who think only of themselves and not the collective.

WTF are you on about!?! I'm confused, is this a cycling forum or a uni thesis on political ideologies?

 

[tifosa]

WTF are you on about!?! I'm confused, is this a cycling forum or a uni thesis on political ideologies?

Apparently, some can't separate the two.

 

[krebs303]

WTF are you on about!?! I'm confused, is this a cycling forum or a uni thesis on political ideologies?

Even though this thread has moved way off topic and now includes Chairman Mao and dirty hippies. It has not mentioned Lance or doping in quite a while which is quite refreshing.

But this dialogue would be better placed in another forum.

 

[rhubroma]

WTF are you on about!?! I'm confused, is this a cycling forum or a uni thesis on political ideologies?

Having come to Rome from the provincial hell of America, I presume to talk to everyone about Cicero and Goethe. Quite perverse, I told myself. When I take America and the market apart, when I disect, annihilate and extinguish them, I am actually taking myself apart, disecting, annihilating and extinguishing myself. I have to admit that this idea of self-disection and self-extinction appeals to me, as I've told my students. And if I'm not mistaken I will succeed in this self-dissection and self-extinction.

The truth is, I've told my students, that parents shirk from the responsibilty for the children they bring into the world and rather allow the market logic to raise their children in their place. What I'm saying is true of many parents, indeed most parents. But I'm quite alone in saying it! We must keep such thoughts, which are contrary to the market logic, to ourselves and musn't publish them. We must choke down such thoughts in a world that would react to them with revulsion. Were I to publish a piece entitled Parents, it would merely result in me being pronounced a liar or a fool or both. The world wouldn't tolerate such views, because it's accustomed to falsehood and hypocrisy, not to facts. The truth is that in this world governed by the market facts are ignored, while fantastic ideals are proclaimed as facts, because that's politically more expedient and acceptable to the opposite. We have gone from Homo Sapiens to Homo Economicus, with the consequence that reality is passed off as fantasy and vice versa. As a result there is no shame in applauding the indecent sums we pay our athletes, who are mere entertainers! While the rest of the masses have to get by practically on slave wages. But rather than start a revolution because of the gross over earnings we pay our entertainers, to say nothing of our politicians, the logic of the market has beaten everyone into state of servile complacentcy, which the corporate world has known how to exploit through television and the media with devestating results. And even our lovely Tour has been destroyed, as Hinault correctly point out.

 

[Seth Bullock]

Having come to Rome from the provincial hell of America, I presume to talk to everyone about Cicero and Goethe.............complacentcy, which the corporate world has known how to exploit through television and the media with devestating results. And even our lovely Tour has been destroyed, as Hinault correctly point out.

Well, thanks for clearing that up for me......