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Ellen Willis

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“Under present conditions, people are preoccupied with consumer goods not because they are brainwashed but because buying is the one pleasurable activity not only permitted but actively encouraged by our rulers. The pleasure of eating an ice cream cone may be minor compared to the pleasure of meaningful, autonomous work, but the former is easily available and the latter is not. A poor family would undoubtedly rather have a decent apartment than a new TV, but since they are unlikely to get the apartment, what is to be gained by not getting the TV?”

PeopleMayPleasurePoorConditionsTvsActivityEatingAvailableMeaningfulIceFormerConsumersDecentBuyingLatterGoodsRulersMinorsApartmentCreamIce CreamUnlikelyAutonomousBrainwashedConesPoor FamilyIce Cream Cones
Author:Ellen Willis
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“Mass consumption, advertising, and mass art are a corporate Frankenstein; while they reinforce the system, they also undermine it. By continually pushing the message that we have the right to gratification now , consumerism at its most expansive encouraged a demand for fulfillment that could not so easily be contained by products.”

ArtProductsDemandMessagesMassAdvertisingCorporateFulfillmentPushingConsumptionConsumerismGratificationMass Consumption
Book:Out of the Vinyl Deeps: Ellen Willis on Rock Music
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“The drug war has nothing to do with making communities livable or creating a decent future for black kids. On the contrary, prohibition is directly responsible for the power of crack dealers to terrorize whole neighborhoods. And every cent spent on the cops, investigators, bureaucrats, courts, jails, weapons, and tests required to feed the drug-war machine is a cent not spent on reversing the social policies that have destroyed the cities, nourished racism, and laid the groundwork for crack culture.”

WarWholeKidsCultureSocialBlackCommunityJusticeCitiesPolicyDrugCreatingWeaponsRacismTestsMachinesResponsibleCourtContraryDestroyedDecentNeighborhoodCracksJailCentsCopProhibitionDealerBureaucratsWar On DrugsInvestigatorsGroundworkSocial Policy
Book:No More Nice Girls: Countercultural Essays
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“Whatever their limitations, Freud and Marx developed complex and subtle theories of human nature grounded in their observation of individual and social behavior. The crackpot rationalism of free-market economics merely relies on an abstract model of how people "must" behave.”

PeopleHumansIndividualSocialHuman NatureTheoryBehaviorModelsEconomicsComplexesObservationLimitationBehaveRelyAbstractSubtleGroundedFree MarketRationalismSocial BehaviorCrackpots
Author:Ellen Willis
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“The project of organizing a democratic political movement entails the hope that one's ideas and beliefs are not merely idiosyncratic but speak to vital human needs, interests and desires, and therefore will be persuasive to many and ultimately most people. But this is a very different matter from deciding to put forward only those ideas presumed (accurately or not) to be compatible with what most people already believe.”

PeopleNeedsBelieveHumansIdeasDifferentMatterPoliticalDesireBeliefSpeakInterestMovementProjectsDemocraticCompatiblePersuasiveHuman NeedsPolitical Movements
Book:Don't Think, Smile!: Notes on a Decade of Denial
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“The Democratic power elite on some level feels delegitimized by its working-class, black and female constituencies. What it wants are the "legitimate" votes of suburban, white, middle-class, affluent males. Even liberal voters and organizations tend on some tacit level to accept the idea that they are not the "real" Americans the Democrats must pursue.”

WantFeelsIdeasRealBlackWhiteLevelsAcceptingClassMiddleFemaleVoteOrganizationDemocraticDemocratMalesPursueMiddle ClassVotersElitesWorking ClassAffluentTacit
Author:Ellen Willis
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“A triumphalist corporate capitalism, free at last of the specter of Communism, has mobilized its economic power to relentlessly marginalize all nonmarket values; to subordinate every aspect of American life to corporate "efficiency" and the bottom line; to demonize not only government but the very idea of public service and public goods.”

IdeasGovernmentLastsValuesLinesEconomicCapitalismAspectBottomCommunismCorporateGoodsEfficiencyBottom LinePublic ServiceSubordinatesAmerican LifeEconomic Power
Author:Ellen Willis
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“For a decade Americans have been steeped in the rhetoric of "zero tolerance" and the faith that virtually all problems from drug addiction to lousy teaching can be solved by pouring on the punishment. Even without a Commander in Chief who pledges to rid the world of evildoers, smoke them out of their holes and the like, we would be vulnerable to the temptation to brush aside frustrating complexities and relieve intolerable fear (at least for the moment) by settling on one or more scapegoats to crush. To imagine that trauma casts out fantasy is a dangerous mistake.”

WorldHas BeensMomentsProblemWould BeMistakeFantasyImagineTeachingDangerousDrugAddictionCastsTraumaDecadesTolerancePunishmentHolesTemptationVulnerableChiefsSmokeSettlingComplexityCrushZeroImagine ThatRhetoricBrushesFrustratingCommandersPledgePouringDrug AddictionDrug AddictCommander In ChiefScapegoatZero Tolerance
Author:Ellen Willis
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“To say that historical conditions made personal life possible, and with it the self-consciousness that allowed psychoanalysis to emerge, is to tell half the story: one also has to consider that the erotic impulse, ever pressing for satisfaction, had something to do with making the history that encouraged its expression.”

MadeSelfStoriesHalfConsciousnessConditionsExpressionHistoricalSatisfactionImpulsePersonal LifeEroticPsychoanalysisSelf ConsciousnessHalf The Story
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“Individuals bearing witness do not change history; only movements that understand their social world can do that. Movements encourage solidarity; the moral individual is likely, all unwittingly, to do the opposite, for bearing witness is lonely: it breeds feelings of superiority and moralistic anger against those who are not doing the same.”

WorldFeelingsIndividualSocialCan DoMoralMovementLonelyOppositesWitnessSolidaritySuperiorityBearing Witness
Author:Ellen Willis
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“Some conservatives have expressed outrage that the views of professors are at odds with the views of students, as if ideas were entitled to be represented in proportion to their popularity and students were entitled to professors who share their political or social values. One of the more important functions of college that it exposes young people to ideas and arguments they have not encountered at home is redefined as a problem.”

PeopleIfsImportantIdeasProblemHomeYoungPoliticalValuesSocialViewsShareStudentsCollegeArgumentFunctionProportionProfessorsOddsPopularityEntitledOutrageSocial Values
Author:Ellen Willis
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“The public's continuing ambivalence about cultural matters is all the more striking given that the political conversation on these issues has for 30 years been dominated by an aggressive, radical right-wing insurgency that has achieved an influence far out of proportion to its numbers. Its potent secret weapon has been the guilt and anxiety about desire that inform the character of Americans regardless of ideology; appealing to those largely unconscious emotions, the right has disarmed, intimidated, paralyzed its opposition.”

YearsHas BeensMatterCharacterPoliticalDesireGivenNumbersSecretEmotionIssuesInfluenceConversationAnxietyWeaponsWingsGuiltIdeologyRadicalProportionUnconsciousOppositionAggressiveContinuingRight WingIntimidatedParalyzedAmbivalenceInsurgency
Author:Ellen Willis
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“The concept of emotional or spiritual survival has an honorable history, but it does invite self-indulgence. In my own case, the worst I ever survived was severe personal and political confusion, the temptation to various sorts of craziness and a couple of bad acid trips. It felt pretty horrendous at the time, and some of it was even dangerous, but Auschwitz it wasn't.”

DoeSelfSpiritualPoliticalFeltMy OwnCasesWorstDangerousEmotionalCoupleSurvivalConceptsVariousConfusionTemptationInvitesSurvivedHonorableSevereIndulgenceAcidCrazinessAuschwitzSelf IndulgenceAcid Trip
Book:Beginning to See the Light: Sex, Hope, and Rock-And-Roll
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“Often men's impulses to coerce and degrade women seem to express not a confident assumption of dominance but a desire to retaliate for feelings of rejection, humiliation, and impotence: as many men see it, they need women sexually more than women need them, an intolerable balance of power.”

MenNeedsFeelingsSeemsDesireBalanceImpulseRejectionAssumptionHumiliationSexuallyDominanceDegradeImpotenceCoerceBalance Of Power
Book:No More Nice Girls: Countercultural Essays
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