Robert Barsky: Acting in Your Own Self-Interest

... any dissident or dissenter comes up against power, and interests, and, accordingly, considerable resources dedicated to the maintanence of status quo power relations, so it is incumbent upon him to offer up credible sources, "indisputable" facts and convincing rhetoric to guide people along the path to understanding not only the world but even their own self-interest. We ought to be concerned about how the government is spending our money, that is, the rational for spending a huge percentage of the federal budget on military and Pentagon expenses rather than upon the kind of social projects and programs that promote a higher standard of living for the majority of the population. This is self-interest, and informed involvement in political discussions by that measure is the exercise of our individual interest, in the same way as figuring out how our monthly income is being spent is in our own interest. But given that such self-interest conflicts with a power elite interest, because government officials like corporate managers would generally prefer to act with impunity (the cloaks of secrecy that surround our own government's actions on a range of fronts is testament to this), it's likely that attempts to become engaged in our own affairs will be met with resistance or scorn.

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