Picture Paragraphs

from the something awful forums:
First, let’s start with the core information of an article. it’s about the prospects of VAT for the US:
After Obama adviser Paul Volcker recently raised the prospect of a value-added tax, or VAT, the Senate voted 85-13 last week for a nonbinding “sense of the Senate” resolution that calls the such [...]

There is a trap that many of us fall into when imagining struggles against power. We imagine that we must be the lone hero, standing up against the indomitable might of our oppressors. We imagine ourselves taking heroic stands – like David against goliath, like Rosa Parks against racism. Or we imagine ourselves becoming powerful, [...]

The idea that the wealthy get less service from the government than the poor is one of the most dangerous but also the most pervasive ideas in our culture.

I am an atheist. Unlike many American atheists, I am not a “born-again” atheist. I did not find atheism after a childhood of religious oppression, or anything like that. I was simply raised without organized religion. My parents, growing up in China, were atheist, as well as college-educated. If there was Chinese religion in their [...]

but i do know that the common liberal/democrat reaction of laughing/mockery is completely wrong.
i am concerned with the tea party because of it’s incredibly fascist undertones, coupled with the class struggle which all of america is going through right now. while the hateful language of the tea party is more than a little cause of [...]

My teacher said that the 60s were the “last gasp of cultural criticism” before we were overwhelmed by the tidal wave of capitalist consumerism. But, I don’t know that we were suddenly overwhelmed by materialism; market capitalism was strengthened, not weakened, by the cultural critiques and studies of the 60s.
Without an understanding of what makes [...]