By Jerry Alatalo
“If you do not specify and confront real issues, what you say will surely obscure them. If you do not alarm anyone morally, you yourself remain morally asleep. If you do not embody controversy, what you say will be an acceptance of the drift of the coming human hell.”
– C. WRIGHT MILLS (1916-1962) American sociologist
fter listening to a powerful 1969 public address by Political Sociology Professor G. William Domhoff posted at Our Hidden History channel on YouTube, we found the following 2017 keynote presentation by Professor Domhoff, nearly 50 years later, to be of great interest and thus worth sharing with others.
Professor Domhoff was the keynote presenter at the Annual Meeting of the California Sociological Association held in Sacramento on November 18, 2017. Given the historical trends which have occurred since 1969 where the Vietnam War saw the unnecessary and tragic perishing of millions of innocent Vietnamese and near sixty thousand Americans, it appears the distinctly powerful messages of political sociologists like Professor Domhoff have yet to fully reach mass consciousness, evidenced by similar tragedies reported as current events as of late-2019.
Without going into a lengthy description of today’s Vietnam-like tragedies occurring around the Earth, and keeping in mind the internet rules against being overly weighted down with information which busy people tend to reject in favor of rapid-fire shorts bursts of news/analysis, we would point out some of the situations around the world related to the continuum of academic thought in the Political Sociology field by Professor Domhoff from 1969-today.
The Power Elite are involved in dramatically and rapidly evolving societal demand for positive change actions in what seems – to the stunned deer-in-headlights observers as is this writer – like every nation on the planet. As more people become aware of the “rubber meets the road” facts and details surrounding neoliberalism, the focus of 50-years of academic work by Political Sociologist G. William Domhoff, the Elite are becoming faced with more and more strenuous challenges to their attempts at maintaining world-record imbalanced status quo power.
The familiar phrase “wars and rumors of wars” remains the primary source of stress for many who’ve made the sometimes regrettable choice of pursuing greater awareness of world affairs, particularly the kind of awareness suppressed, deformed or omitted by corrupt business magnates, government officials and Elite corporate media titans.
The #1 challenge for peace activists around the Earth is building walls sufficiently strong enough to prevent any more outbreaks of war, and to end already ongoing deadly conflicts, whether it is in the Middle East, South America, Africa, or elsewhere.
Perhaps in the future – when civilization has long since abolished criminally insane, suicidal, unnecessary, catastrophic war on the human family – Professor Domhoff himself along with his like-minded colleagues, or later on by future generations, will find ultimate relief in finding his/their decades of effort have turned out successful.
We’ll stop and let vital knowledge foundation-building academic messenger Professor G. William Domhoff speak for himself.
Peace.
(Thank you to G. William Domhoff at YouTube)
