Frank Zappa tells us something about Democracy

[90-percent]

I got this from a Zappa FB page. Seems pretty applicable to where we stand in the present day, don't it?

I bolded the important parts myself.

Enjoy.




SPIN: Do you think the outcome of the censorship movement can ultimately be meaningful?

Zappa: Let me point out something about democracy. Does anybody remember how Hitler took over Germany? He was voted in. People said, yeah, he’s got the right message for us. Now when you have a democracy, there’s always the possibility that they guy who could turn out to be the biggest menace to the planet could just get voted in. And the place where it’s most likely to happen is here, because of the media saturation, the illiteracy rate of the population, the social desperation of the population. Hitler came to power because things weren’t so good.

All we have to do is look at the early days of the Reagan administration and see how these factors converge. First of all, he owed a big favor to all the fundamentalist Christians and the television evangelists who helped him one way or another get elected. Forget about the October Surprise, he also had the help of these other groups. Then there was that depression. Americans like to believe in miracles, they like to believe in magic and when they consume religion it’s not on a philosophical level, it’s on a miraculous level. Jesus can do things for you. It’s about goods, it’s about the transference of goods and services from the cloud to your living room. You’re broke, you lost your job in the early days of the Reagan administration and instead of watching Madonna on TV you’re seeing these guys teaching prosperity theology. If you send your money, you gotta prove to Jesus that you really care, and he’ll reward you tenfold. It’s like buying a lottery ticket.

It’s always the free flow of information which is the major threat to the American way of life. To right-wing guys, there’s nothing more dangerous than free access to information. And you know what that stems from? It stems from the beginning of Christian theology, when Adam and Eve were in the garden, how did we get into trouble? It wasn’t because it was an apple, it was the fruit of the tree of knowledge, so the essence of Christianity is, nobody gets to be smarter than God and access to knowledge and ownership of knowledge damns you. Knowledge itself is the work of the devil. We must not have knowledge and what leads to knowledge? Information. Nip it right there, nip it in the bud.




This interview is probably from the early eighties, and Frank was livid about Reagan, televangilists and jeez-o-bucks and all. But he was a self described Constitutional Fundamentalist and knew what these fuckers are up to. Fast forward to 2016, and 30 years later it's perfectly apparent that "they got us by the balls", to quote George Carlin's STUNNING and PERFECT "Corporations own you" rant.

-90% Jimmy

[tonyt53]

1. Frank nailed it perfectly. What is even more sad is that the kids of the boomers ended up as yuppies

The TV was full of those televangelists wanting money, and lots of people sent them money - money many did not have to give away. Reagan destroyed the working class, and now he is a hero to the GOP.