And when government officials state openly, in public, before a cheering crowd, that they do have designs on your firearms, well, that’s just you mishearing them through the whirring of black helicopters and the subtle zip and thud of Spec Ops forces repelling down from the sky to take away your boomsticks, bitterclinger.
Oh, come now. It’s absurd to believe that government officials actually want what they openly to advocate for. It’s theater! Stop being so paranoid. Quit with the fearmongering! Embrace hope and change! Because the truth is, a powerful centralized government suddenly unfettered from constitutional restraints will finally be able to nurture and protect you against the “wealthy” and the “influence peddlers.” To champion you and bring about social justice. And such an entity would never, ever, ever harm you, seek to coerce you or nudge you or control you, or take away your means of defending yourselves.
Because what they are after is a great leap forward. And how can you not wish to leap forward with them? Unless you are some crazed, would-be domestic terrorist who is likely mentally deficient, that is?
— or so goes the argument.
Lots of sparks flying lately. Wonder which one will cause a conflagration, if any.
(h/t JHo)
Does anyone recall that Iraqi official who was claiming during the Gulf War that the Americans were no where near, while in the background you could see M1 Abrams rolling into town?
I can picture Uncle Joe giving a speech saying that they are not taking away our guns (which are all at the bottom of various bodies of water) while in the background swat teams are hitting houses to do just that.
They don’t want us to pay attention to what they are doing, but to just listen to what they say they are doing. A complicit media cheers them on, and liberty is on life support.
Ok, so this guy who was ordered to surrender his weapons? We found out who reported him. NOBODY reported him.
Fox is reporting that the NY State Police had the wrong guy. This law is a mess. But at least they passed it so we could find out what’s in it!
“Does anyone recall that Iraqi official”
Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf. He fulfilled the same role for Saddam that the major networks and newspapers play for Obama.
“Who are you going to believe; me or your lying eyes? And ears? And memory of what we’ve said and done through the years?”
Overreach (we can certainly vouch in this case) is the hallmark of all tyrants, everywhere and always.
These cocksuckers won’t prove any different. They’re incapable of learning from the past, especially since they’re progressively all about the future.
Thank goodness the media will suppress the evidence when this all goes wrong!
Such a nice day outside. Nice forever!
No, sdferr. These cocksuckers have definitely learned from the past. But they believe they’ve seen where the other, lesser tyrants made errors and can improve their hold over the masses.
My theory: Each major tyrannical regime is more brutal than the last.
My dictatorship will be benevolent. Trust me.
I can picture Uncle Joe giving a speech saying that they are not taking away our guns (which are all at the bottom of various bodies of water) while in the background swat teams are hitting houses to do just that.
I prefer the mental image of Uncle Joe telling everyone that there is no insurrection in Flyover Country, and that all Americans are cheerfully turning over their weapons and documentation to the benevolent State. While in the background you see yet another company of the Republican Guard (oh, the irony!) surrendering to a bunch of bitter clingers.
They’re hell-bent on turning the NRA into the IRA. They should definitely reconsider.
More brutal because more true, eh Darth? heh
They’re hell-bent on turning the NRA into the IRA. They should definitely reconsider.
I just finished reading “Unintended Consequences” by John Ross, which provides no only an excellent history of gun control and gun control legislation in the US going back to WWI, but also a realistic (in my opinion) look at what might happen when the long-tormented victims of the BATFE, the EPA, the IRS and the Federal Government in general decide to take the gloves off and fight back. In the book, in the midst of a campaign of targeted assassinations against Federal officials and agents, the WH crisis team brings in a Special Air Service (SAS) Major with extensive experience in Northern Ireland to brief officials on the UK’s decades long battles against the IRA. A helpful summary of the IRA is provided:
When pressed to directly compare the IRA with the pro-gun insurrection going on in the US, the Major responds in this short exchange:
I don’t think our elected betters have a clue as to what they are unleashing. They are kicking and slapping the dog at every opportunity with seeming impunity, not realizing that it is not physical chains holding the dog back from retaliating but rather his good and decent nature that’s keeping him from ripping the f*ckers’ leg off. For now.
BTW, the book is out of print but I have a copy in PDF.
outlaw with a sweater vest
Santorum: Intended for Mature Audiences Only
It’s unpleasant even to consider such an outcome, though I take some relief in thinking about how much more unpleasant it is for them to consider such an outcome. I take further relief in considering that if the lines are ever drawn, we’ll be on the side with the oil and the food and the entrepreneurs, and they’ll be on the side with the broadcasters and the boutique cupcakes and the voter cattle.
weren’t we talking about bear baiting yesterday?
Although I do not think they are this smart (or hope), the conspiracy nut inside me fears that the left pols are just hoping they can provoke one person to shoot up a federal facility in reaction to all the new laws further justifying the gun grab. Bonus if the person is also against gay marriage. Double bonus if they shoot up an abortion clinic.
re: dave above, yes in the first day attempt to take guns at the Branch Davidian compound, the trained Feds did not do too well did they?
they’ll be on the side with the broadcasters
And what happens when the media are advised that unless their reporting truly is fair and unbiased, they will be considered to be on the otherside and treated accordingly.
See here for one scenario.
bgbear, or the 1986 FBI Miami shootout either.
They didn’t do so well on the last day, either.
Perhaps McCain actually meant to call us all a bunch of Waco-birds… but he fucked up.
Link to pdf of daveinsocal’s book, “Unintended Consequences.”
Wouldn’t be the first time for Johnny.
Thanks, geoff. I meant to look it up and got sidetracked.
Thanks, geoff. That wasn’t where I got mine, so didn’t know about it.
Is Boehner preparing to totally capitulate on gun control and immigration legislation?
Boehner on Hastert Rule: ‘It was never a rule to begin with’
Sure looking like it.
Boehner was never a man to begin with.
Boner is such a jerk. Any gun legislation would die in the house if he wasn’t a pussy.
At least we won’t have to bother with blowing the GOP up in order to supplant it; not when it’s doing such a bang-up job of blowing itself up.
Think about the parents of the murdered children of Sandy Hook who work hand in hand with these Democrat demagogues. How could they, so near to the harm itself, think so feebly about what is actually to be done? How submerge their brain power to asinine political pandering, without thinking through the serious implications of the ineffectual motions at legislation on offer? It’s hard to understand, all the more so as they make their emotional appeals for remembrance of their pain. Fools.
toomey assh*le
link
Yeh, since the phrase “shall not be infringed” is so damn Ambiguous i have lost the last bit of respect for those that wish to tread upon us…..while the likes of Kermit Gosnell gets a pass from the media.
Not fools, sdferr, victims. Victims of nameless coward looking to live forever in infamy, victims of duplicious and manipulative politicians who never let a crisis, however deeply personal, go to waste, victims of a culture that wallows in shameless and confused public displays, and finally, victims of their own very human need to find meaning and purpose in the meaningless and purposelessness.
I pity them.
At least, I do until one or more of them discover they’ve outlived their 15 minutes of useful fame, and, like Cindy Sheehan, try to hold on to it. Then they’re scornworthy fools.
I really have half-expected more of them, not to say all of them, to think very hard about the ugly thing they’ve been confronted by. It isn’t an inhuman thing, to think, and to think truly. It can be hard, to be sure, but for circumstances as awful as this, seems almost a necessity — as if the anger these parents feel would drive them to think, rather than simply rage. But perhaps my distance from their pain guides me astray as to the most favorable possible measures to be taken to put a stop to these random murders, or at least put a stop to the ease of such acts.
Yet even if the solutions which seem most likely to be effective to me are not the best solutions, the idiocies put forward by the leftists are patently deficient. Yet these parents say not a word to this silliness. That’s what I don’t get. I’d think they would want a relevant offering, and would scorn anything obviously inadequate in response.
“Fool” sometimes seems a greater pejorative than is necessary. Merriam Webster offers us “a person lacking in judgment or prudence”. That seems fairly close to what we’re getting at here, right?
But, oftentimes, it sounds more like “jackass” to the ear which isn’t something we’d like to say to those we pity.
The old phrase “blinded by grief” might be applicable here.
[Added quotation marks around the word “jackass” as I mean the word itself.]
It’s not rage, it’s grief.
It wasn’t anger that made Achilles desecrate Hector’s corpse.
O, I differ there. But it is rage at the world moving in these people. They’ve set out to take their agony to beating on the innocent people amongst whom they live.
Speak for yerself, sucka. I pity the fool who’s afraid to show fools pity.
/B. A. Baracus.
Grief only sets in with Achilles upon Priam’s visit. Not before.
I think that they, in their genuine agony at the senseless murder of their children, think (really, feel) they’re acting so as to spare other parents from ever having to suffer like they’ve been made to suffer.
Arguably, it’s a perverse form of pride.
Here I thought that was compassion.
grin
Grief makes us crazy. Achilles was angry with Agammenon. He was crazy with grief over the death of Patrocles at the hands of Hector.
I believe that may be so, that they do believe this. Which I can only evaluate as unthinking in them, if it is so. Many do seem to have given themselves over to the hands of the politicians to make whatever shameless use the demagogues may choose. Can’t be much in the way of thinking involved in such a decision, I reckon.
And anyways, I like Ajax.
I don’t think so. While Achilles was certainly angry with Agamemnon (which only starts him on the path), he was also angry with Patroclus, angry with Hector, angry at the world, angry with himself. It was his rage that blinded him to the distinction between a living enemy and a dead corpse.
The suicidal one, or the other (littler) one?
It is unthinking. There’s also something seductive about it in our everybody a celebrity —regardless of what you did to merit the attention— culture.
It’s all the more reason to admire the father who spoke out against new gun control. Better I think to focus on that.
Sometimes grief manifests as anger. Kind of like how martyrdom can become mixed up with pride (think Cindy Sheehan, and what Ann Coulter said to get herself in trouble with the grieving 9/11 widows).
20 kids were murdered, they have 40 parents. Obama chose 11 to travel with him to DC. I’m sure he picked wisely for what he wanted.
The thought that often occurs to me in these circumstances is that it’s really the uncritical audience who is at fault here.
We’d like to excuse the grieving (and there is some enormous rage to be found within grief) but it only becomes an issue in the first place because of all the ignorant, emotional people out there in TV land who were never taught that the advocate’s personal experience/background/genetics makes absolutely no difference.
Hitler didn’t discredit vegetarianism by being Hitler. Pauling didn’t prove the miraculous qualities of megadosing Vitamin C by being Pauling. A mourning parent isn’t suddenly infused with wisdom by being a mourning parent.
Three jeers for the audience and their really, really shitty educations.
grumble grumble –where the *frack* is my Hammond translation? flip-flip-flip
Which one was from Salamis?
The anger of “I’ve been done wrong and I demand just satisfaction” is the anger at work on Achilles, and to some extent in these parents, I think. The rising gorge overflowing. But the demand for satisfaction won’t stop at reasonable bounds in the grip of anger: reason gets lost, distinctions fall away (can’t tell a corpse from a living warrior, pissing off the Gods is of no account, etc.), compassion is non-existent — thumos on the loose is a thing to be feared, and not solely feared by the passers-by.
That’s an excellent point.
I don’t believe all of them fall into the Cindy Sheehan category.
Hell, Cindy Sheehan didn’t start out as Cindy Sheehan –not that it took her all that long to get there.
they remind me of New Yorkers
they have the same warped stepford-like compulsion to think prescribed thinkings and make like it’s self-evident everyone else should think the prescribed thinkings too
but they just look shallow and dumb and mostly everyone is just embarrassed for them
Maureen Dowd would beg to differ.
Spear-chucking Telemonian Aias was from Salamis, the other the son of Oileus, a [puny] Locrian arrow shooter.
Yep, “absolute moral authority”, Ernst. I remember it well.
You’re telling me?
Telemomian is older or bigger?
I’m getting stuck on Telemos here. Little help?
Bigger, for sure, as to agedness I can’t say.
Is he of Telemos, like by ancestry or by character or something?
I’m really at a loss on “Telemomian”, not joking around.
With Agemmemnon. The death of Patrocles pushed Achilles, in his wild grief, to seek unjust satisfaction.
Hector was an honorable man. Arguably the most honorable character in the Illiad. Had Achilles vanquished him in single combat over the death of any other Achaean, he would have behaved differently.
Telemon (king of Salamis) was his dad.
Okay, thanks, sdferr. So Telemomian I can just read as “larger” or “greater” then?
Sorry to be so slow.
Straight from the loins of Telemos, bh.
And wasn’t Ajax’s mother lucky that Telemos graced her so?
people are making a super damn big deal about guns when really they’re not that big a deal at all
it gets very tedious, especially if you have cable
the thing to remember is food stamp is at his mostest happiest whenever we’re talking about something else besides the economy and jobs
it’s like how filthy rapists like it when you’re talking about stuff other than hey did you hear there’s a filthy rapist running around raping people
oh yeah i did I hear we’re supposed to pee on him
yup be vigilant and we should all probably drink some water
good idea glug glug glug
sdferr’s correct, it’s Telemon, not Telemos.
Okay, thanks.
Telamon/Telemos/Telemus variations were breaking my little brain there for a second.
Nope, I simply can’t agree that Achilles’ anger stops with Agamemnon. It only starts with Agamemnon and grows from there at the injustice of the world, which embraces Achilles himself. It’s big. It’s ruinous to everybody. It’s the driver of the whole kit and kaboodle.
That’s what I was getting at with my question above. You think you’re playing the holy fool, and your just an annoying jackass interupting an adult conversation. Go find somebody else to play with.
The grown-ups are busy.
Just to prove my point. Why is it, do you think, that the British were mustered in the middle of the fucking night to march on Concord, April the 19th, 1775?
hint: they weren’t on their way to sign up people for fucking food stamps.
The dude was big (megalos big), with a pop named Telemon — the derivation of which seems to be “shield-strap”, having something to do with a big-assed shield what could cover a whole man(?). Telemon also, it seems, was the brother of Peleus, Achilles’ dad.
Then maybe sdferr, the way we arrive at a resolution is to ask whether Achilles was using his grief at the death of Patrocles to hold on to his anger?
I’m not sure Mr. Ernst but in retrospect maybe they woulda been better off getting a good night’s sleep
I should take that as a starting point to study the question Ernst. I’ll take tomorrow to have a serious look see as to what I can find.
The British marched on Concord to confiscate the guns happyfeet. All of them, not just the couple of canon the patriots had acquired and stored there.
Artillery in the hands of private citizens. Imagine that.
I really do enjoy talking with you guys, btw. Cheers.
A fella can learn quite a bit around here.
I think it’s neat Mr. Ernst, about the artillery
but we should never forget we’re supposed to be able to take it for granted
I gotta duck out to watch the recaps. Mannyyanna.
For sdferr, if he’s still around. There was a book written about the Illiad by a combat veteran of the Vietnam war studying the epic as a narrative of men in combat and the emotions combatants experience. I can’t recall the name of the book, and the course syllabus that listed it in the suggested further reading is hopelessly buried.
Anyway, something you might be interested in. Or not, since this isn’t really all that helpful.
Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character
Jonathan Shay
Perhaps this one Ernst?
I must be getting old and tired.
not at all geoff it’s super late where you are
And a sequel.
I give up. You want to be a clown and shit all over the thread, be my guest.
You’ve missed your true calling.
1:12 am and a gun show to go to tomorrow. Then dinner with Mikey NTH.
Bed is looking good.
That’s the one, happyfeet and geoff..
After busting his balls for getting under my skin, I guess I have to acknowledge the solid happyfeet did.
damnit
He is a cooler. The only difference is that he’s freelance.
True.
And it irritates the hell out of me becaue he’s obviously better than he chooses to be.
Maybe that’s just the thwarted teacher in me.
I reckon people are a bit like pottery, Ernst. Once they hit the kiln — and it happens at different ages for different people — they are what they are from then on out.
Teachers can’t teach after that, it’s just time wasted.
Teachers can always teach.
It’s learning that’s hard.
And anyways, the teacher bit was autobiographical.
In 1994 I thought I was too good to teach high school. In 2004, I finally accepted the fact that I was never going to be good enough to teach college.
I very nearly wrote that I get what you’re saying there but after thinking on it a bit, I’m not sure that I do. I’ve never really experienced any of that professionally and I’d only be trying to imagine what it would be like.
Imagine yourself as Icarus. Then try to remember the most painful bellyflop you ever experienced or witnessed, and multiply by a factor of 10.
On the plus side, given what public education is (and probably always was), you might say I was spared my disillusionment.
And anyways, I’ve made all my own troubles for the most part.
My worry is that my kids won’t be that lucky.
On the teacher side of it, we all teach. We all acquire a body of knowledge and experience that we feel compelled to share.
What we can’t do is guarantee that others will accept that body of knowledge and experience that we have to offer.
My worry is that my kids won’t be that lucky.
After visiting a meeting of the Idaho Liberty Agenda, Berlet wrote: “It helps to recognize that much of what steams the tea bag contingent is legitimate.” He sees in the tea party movement a strong strain of producerism, a belief that the productive middle class is being preyed upon by both a parasitic elite (including politicians) and other unproductive segments of society such as minorities, the poor, and immigrants. Berlet writes:
They see their jobs vanish in front of their eyes as Wall Street gets trillions. They see their wages stagnate. They worry that their children will be even less well off than they are. They sense that Washington doesn’t really care about them. On top of that, many are distraught about seeing their sons and daughters coming home in wheelchairs or body bags.
But, to go back to your original point, you can’t learn the unwilling.
Or to put it another way, the conversation fizzles when the dialogue gets interupted by the monologue.
(And the proof of that is that I’m talking to myself in the middle of the night.)
The Icarus belly-flop certainly paints a picture.
I haven’t mentioned this on the blog before but a while back I was invited to speak on an area of expertise for the ol’ alma mater for a seminar course and I pretty much shat the bed. Terrible, just terrible.
On the plus side, it was a very brief experience. I have zero desire to ever try such a thing again.
The Jews didn’t believe what Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf either.
It was stated unequivocally who he blamed and what he would do.
Even paranoids have real enemies.
Class envy is a waste of time. You, for instance, (and no offense intended) drop all kinds of New Elite (to use Lebidoff’s terms) class markers as a matter of course. You’re a cosmopolitan –if only of the epicurean sort. And nobody has a damn clue what you earn, nor would it matter if they did, because your tastes would be the same if you were a Starbuck’s barrista.
In my case, I’m not worried about my kids falling into economic poverty. I’m worried about an ostensibly “benevolent” paternalist social welfare regulatory state fucking their lived up because some bureaucrat somewhere else is empowered to decide their interests for them.
One of the greatest freedoms we have is the freedom to make our own troubles for ourselves. That’s what we take for granted. For most of human history, I’d have to worry about some sonofabitch somewhere making trouble for me and mine in any number of ways. That hasn’t been the case for most of our history.
Or at least it was the exception, rather than the rule.
Sadly, that’s no longer certain.
I appreciate the substantive comment, by the way.
Heh, nah, I just went back and forth on mentioning my miserable failure with lecturing. Beforehand, I mentioned a variety of ideas by email with a couple folks from pw — I was very excited — and this is the very first they’ll have heard about how poorly it ended up going.
Also, if my kids start looking to D.C. to “care” about them instead of me and their mother and their grandparents and all the other family and friends and co-workers they’ll have to draw upon, then I’ll give their inheritance to the idiot libertarians and Reason to blow on marijuana.
That, or I’ll drink the rest of it.
Mr. Ernst what I worry is more that “they worry that their children will be even less well off than they are” is becoming a rule the Alinskies will make their enemies live up to, among lots of other similar-type rules.
Romney sounded phony a lot but never more phony than when he reached for those strained notes of reaganesque optimism.
This is also why I decidered to explore what unpatriotism might would sound like btw.
But anyway what I mean to suggest is that there will come a time that we have to acknowledge that yes yes yes the kids in general *are* definitely for sure going to be worse off – economically and in terms of their cultural heritage and et cetera.
Personally me I think that time was when Romney lost and food stamp’s first term was validated with a second.
Not every individual kid is screwed, but, in general, kids are screwed, and we should tell them that I think – not that we fear it might be so – but that we know that yes indeed this is their patrimony.
Having just now taken a moment to peruse the wikipedia article linked by happyfeet, I’m left wondering why the heck anyone would care what Chip Berlet (of whom I was happily ignorant) thinks about anything.
Chip is a weirdo – even the hufflepuffs won’t publish him
but I found him cause one thing I for reals think is that food stamp is a fascist, so I read about fascism sometimes
but Chip likes to say that nonono it’s the teadoodles what are the fascists
and mostly I think this affirms that the “food stamp is a fascist” charge must really bug the fascists to no end
I think this is why you hardly ever hear about national service programs for youth anymore – the fascists are acutely aware of how fascist that shit looks
now I have to go to sleep cause of I took pills and they’re kicking my ass
Okay. Thanks for the elaboration.
Ironically, I think that’s the one thing Romney wasn’t phoney about. Where Romney went wrong is that, unlike Reagan (if it moves, regulate it, if it keeps moving tax it, if it stops moving, subsidize it) he refused to assign blame. Obama wasn’t working, but apparently, that wasn’t Obama’s fault for spending too much time on the golf course.
We’re at a crossroads moment, like we were at the end of the 70s. Unfortunately we don’t have a John Paul II to tell us not to be afraid, a Margaret Thatcher to execute the program of free market reform that she said she would, or a Ronald Reagan to tell us that we’re better than the malaise our ostensible betters are telling us is our future lot.
So we’re going to have to be John Paul II, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan for ourselves. And we’re going to have to inspire others by our example.
It’s so much better to hear some actual thoughts rather than more shallow nonsense. Vastly better.
People can agree or disagree but there is some there there in these moments. Need they be so rare?
no
Good. ‘Night.
As somebody who came of age in the 80s (graduated high school in 1990), let me tell you how my family experienced the rising tide lifting all the boats that the liberals sniffed at (because the rich got richer faster than the poor got richer).
The rich still shopped wherever it was that the rich shopped. My mother got to shop at J.C Penny’s instead of K-Mart.
At the time, that was real social mobility.
These comments have been a great read. Thanks guys.
Connecticut’s Chris Murphy calls racing event a ‘celebration of guns’ and urges News Corp. topper to follow through on gun statements
I hate Connecticut Nazis.
Democrat Senator Cashing in on Newtown
and california nazis
Sen. Feinstein: Private Gun Sales Play into Terrorists’ Hands
There has been a notable lag in middle class and poorer family’s income compared to those who run the companies traded on Wall street.
One reason has been the company stayed here but shipped the jobs overseas (a fault of over regulation perhaps) thus the company’s stock increases but the employees are fewer.
Another is that they fire employees and automate thus the company’s stock rises while the condition of the employee’s gets worse.
No one can deny the facts that income has risen faster as a percentage for those at the top than for those at the bottom. Thus, tho our country appeared richer, is was actually getting poorer.
I don’t have a magic plan that would solve this problem then or now but denying it exists or claim that’s it’s just class envy is a false charge. The lessening wages is responsible for more people listening to those who claim to want to help them. That those same people are also promoting class envy isn’t the cause of their increased popularity.
When your company fires you and then gives the CEO a multi million dollar bonus, you could get a little upset about the disparity. (regardless of the logic)
Tied with the demise of the Union and them running scared and you have all the reason you need to determine why America has become divided.
The solution will never come while one party/ideology dominates Communication and the Bureaucracy in DC.
That’s weird. Terrorist plays into democrats’ hands.
The rich still shopped wherever it was that the rich shopped. My mother got to shop at J.C Penny’s instead of K-Mart.
Ernst, I think you and I must be the same age. And I recall that my siblings and I went from wearing our cousins’ hand-me-downs, to wearing actual new clothes from K-Mart, to wearing actual new clothes from Penney’s. The first jump came when my dad found a decent job; the second came when my parents refinanced the mortgage from 16.5% down to 12% (woo hoo!).
(In those years, we also went from eating beans and weenies to eating meatloaf to eating meat. Just one more reason why I find it so hard to keep from reacting to “white privilege” arguments by punching the speaker in the mouth.)
jcw,
What you’re describing is what economists would call “productivity gains,” where companies find more efficient ways of producing their goods and services. It’s true that these gains in efficiency cause workers to be dislocated, but that’s been true since Ned Ludd and his brethren threw sabots into the power looms that put them out of work. Sure, it was difficult for those workers to get through the transition, but most rational people still believe that the Industrial Revolution was a pretty good idea.
The problem isn’t that people are being displaced by advances in technology and techniques; the problem is that those people have no other opportunities for work, because our Washington overlords have strangled the job-creators. If our creative 30- and 40-somethings had any hope of success, access to capital, or confidence that the fruits of their labor wouldn’t be confiscated, they’d be creating and expanding their businesses and providing jobs for those who’d been outsourced or automated.
So if you’re looking for a “magic plan to solve this problem,” the answer lies in getting Washington out of the way and letting a few hundred thousand people launch the businesses they’ve been dreaming of. Three hundred thousand businesses employing eight workers each would go a hell of a long way toward solving our current malaise. But solving the problem isn’t what Washington wants. They just want power, and they’re happy to prolong and worsen the problem if it makes people desperate enough to loosen the reins. Our job is to expose them, discredit them, and get them out of the way so that we can go back to living our lives in peace.
Newtown families: Victims turn lobbyists
Jeff and crowd,
I’m thinking lately that not only do we need a new party, we need a new internet.
I’m of the mind that the Net is under a concerted degradation campaign, with the aim being to pollute the free-science parts (which, not incidentally, compete the most with Universities’ credentialing licenses), and to tabloid-ize the rest.
The goal is, of course, to fortify the university/government monopoly as arbiters of citizens’ potential for financial or intellectual success. And any ancillary ruin to the net’s free-science nodes or to Liberal blogging arenas is desireable “colateral damage.” The development of America’s caste system along rigid access-rights to information, while something most thinking Americans would detest is itself, to the old-media Monopoly, desireable, too.
I’m ready to invoke Aaron Schwartz’ suicide, because Eric Holder’s prosecution of him reveals the level to which the US Government is invested in the maintenance of its Progressive dominance in America’s learning-systems. But, to get at the full-face of what it is Aaron feared requires a much longer dissertation.
Suffice it to say, old dinosaur media (and yes, universities are media, too) are not content to “compete” with the web. They are at work co-opting, degrading or ruining it, deniably of course, too.
To pinch this one early (lest I make Leigh’s eyes tear over), we may need to build a new internet if Tea Partiers want to really reclaim our nation. And I’m not so sure that we’re up to that task.
Same here, in age and remembrances. Whatever flaws that people today point to about Reagan, he loved the country, and wanted the best for Americans, and generally everything got better. I consider myself lucky to have grown up when I did, even though it has meant witnessing massive cultural rot and corruption as our nation has failed its founding and its posterity.
steveaz:
Communications have to pass over common media, be they electrons over copper wires, radio signals over EM, light pulses, or any combination of same. So whomever controls that media exercises control over the comms.
I’m not unsympathetic to your concerns over govt control over transmission media, in fact I share a lot of it. But it’s a give and take; if you don’t have regulations on which bandwidths are used for which functions, you get clutter and instead of some people talking you have nobody talking. We can debate who should regulate that (govt, citizen regulatory organization, etc) of course.
I would not be surprised to see, in the near future, private liberty-minded groups funding their own comm satellites. If Alice thinks Carol is tapping the wire when she’s calling Bob, then having a wire Carol doesn’t own is useful.
I think we’re going to see a resurgence in a few comm technologies in coming years, namely: radio/other wireless traffic and encryption. I’ll leave it to other smarter/younger/more motivated than myself to work out the details, but I think sites like this one will of necessity be pushed underground, and you’ll need a member of The Initiate to hand you the 4096-bit key if you want to participate. Strong encryption to keep the enemy from reading your mail is the key to any campaign, be it military, political, or business.
Sorry to be so paranoid today, but I get to write a check to Uncle Sugar so’s some hoochie in Cleveburg can get five new Obamaphones. Hence I’m not in a good mood.
Man, I miss all the good discussions.
I think we’re going to see a resurgence in a few comm technologies in coming years, namely: radio/other wireless traffic and encryption.
Darth, it’s already started.
Darth,
The problem with the web is the article in front of it. It should be an indefinite one, like “a,” instead of the definite “the.”
Pluralism being like hemlock to Fascists, and all.
The other real danger is, we depend so much on the “net” that it is becoming an indispensible utility. Well, when some Chinaman decides to let loose a million ball bearings in the general orbit where Hughes.Net stores its satelites, as things stand today, we’d be drawn into WAR.
Whereas, if we had multiple, independent “nets,” we woudn’t be like a worm on a hook like we are now. As is, the tail is wagging the dog.
Quickly, ‘cuz I gots a job to go to…
What got me thinkin’ on this was, my monthly 5.0 gig buy of bandwidth (I use Verizon’s mobile broadband) is getting me less and less of the internet each month. Also, I began to notice that, although my mouse and keyboard were inactive, the external modem continues to transmit/receive at an epileptic pace. Is “the web” hijacking my bandwidth?
Then I noticed all those social media scripts, downloading with or without my knowledge, have increased from the 20-30 in the early ‘oughts, to more than 100 today. These seem to be pilfering my bandwidth, and, as I must re-up with my ISP, my pain is my ISP’s gain.
If GM built cars that waste gasoline so that Chevron can sell more gasoline, there’d be a consumer-watchdog filing a lawsuit. Is your ISP gouging you with FB ap downloads, reddit tabs and Google.ad spies, if only to sell you more bandwidth earlier than you’d like? And if you discovered it was, would it dull your appetite for web-surfing?
If you answer “Maybe,” and “Yes,” then, welcome to your new low-Net Caste. Aaron was onto something big. We, deep inside the web’s surfing consumer-societies, chasing “Likes’ and editorialists’ opinions, can barely see the outlines of the behemoth he feared.
A hint at the method lies in Bill Clinton’s Anti-SPAM bill. ‘Seems the Democrats blocked spammers from polluting my email “in” box, but they left open a weazle burrow so the could weazle their way onto my harddrive using Google-ads, instead.
Co-opted. Polluted. And Ruined. It’s who they are. It is what they do!
“It’s true that these gains in efficiency cause workers to be dislocated, but that’s been true since Ned Ludd and his brethren threw sabots into the power looms that put them out of work.”
Indeed. In the not-to-distant past, > 90% of the population was directly engaged in the intensive hand-cultivation of agricultural crops — smallholders if they were extremely lucky, serfs or outright slaves if they were not. Most of the rest were low-level foot soldiers, with a few left over to be nobles, knights, and priests of various sorts.
” Just one more reason why I find it so hard to keep from reacting to “white privilege” arguments by punching the speaker in the mouth.”
Yep. Try getting a job or a discount, or a better table,or a place in line, or even first access to a cab by asserting your ‘white privilege’. Consider that your baseline. Now try the same thing, dressed up, dressed down, with a mohawk, with a neck beard, with an eyepatch, a palsy, with a limp… People who don’t look clean safe and friendly will do worse than people who do and this is independent of race. If you look like an asshole or a weirdo then you are likely to be frozen out a bit no matter what your skin color is, and you might want to change that first impression people are getting.
White male privilege is bullshit. There just aren’t as many Boss Hoggs in this world as the assholes who get caught up in fighting white privilege would like to believe. White people aren’t relaxed when a cop car pulls up behind them because they have a privilege that insulates them from tickets and searches. The poor people of this country have long been in majority white and they are used to be treated like inferior scum by NPR types who think they are an aristocracy.
Day Tripper, for those of you keeping score at home.
Because of the rhythm !
So, why does the #GOP fail (besides being part and parcel of the DC Big-Government power-and-perks kabuki dance, of course) ?
We can’t Community Organize.
One might perceive that our inability to coalesce around a ‘Community Organizer®™’ might be a good thing, but when our mortal enemy (who has sworn to kill us) does community organize, we will lose every damned time. Because, physics: a large force diametrically opposed to a smaller force will shove that smaller force back up against the walls, and execute it.