Gift Hub: The Idea Generation and Dissemination Sector

...time/Worships language and forgives/Everyone by whom it lives" - Auden

Re: A paper (in pdf) provided by New Progressive Coalition, entitled, The Idea Generation and Dissemination Sector. What a phrase! Are we talking about ideas here, or propaganda, marketing, punditry, framing, and spin? People with ideas, whose minds are alive, teeming with unkempt thoughts, pursuing a line of inquiry were it leads do not use these inert phrases like, "The Idea Generation and Dissemination Sector; " bureaus or sectors with that or similar names are found in regimes not at all democratic. When did trimming ideas for a living and calling it Idea Generation and Dissemination become an acceptable fate for a would-be intellectual? That it has worked for hacks like Shambra on the right is not a recommendation, but a sorry cautionary tale. If we keep on with this Idea Generation and Dissemination on behalf of funders who want Political Return on Investment, we too will suffer the torments of the damned as the soul and the independent intellect within us dies. (Sorry, Bill, I use you because in fact your mind is very much alive, and you will appreciate my trans-partisan point. For you as for me the pleasure is in offering Sadistic Tutorials to the dense. Being right is out of reach for us; we lost our academic skills years ago. We settle for being annoying.) Everyone in the think tanks are talking left and right about values, but they work in a whorehouse all the same, not that I can claim any better lineage. We are all in Wealth Bondage saying the word Freedom as we bang our heads on the bars. Those who fund us demand "Political Return on Investment." I call that sickening. I write sermon and satire for love of country, though I admit I would be willing to accept a tip, or a good bottle of Thunderbird.