ineffectual property

The music industry, and later the movie industry, weren’t on top of the technology; they let it get way out ahead of them, probably because it would have cost too much to gear up to it. So how much is it costing them now? Hundreds, maybe thousands of times more than it would have if they hadn’t been looking to make the greatest profit possible and failing to develop long term plans. They deserve privacy. They throttled down the public’s access to their products because they couldn’t find their way to a business model that would incorporate the new technology. So consumers went ahead and developed that technology themselves, and released it onto the world for free. Then, out of their desperation, instead of taking their licks and gearing up as Johnny-Come-Latelies, the corporations went crying to the government to help them protect the “intellectual property” that “pirates” were “stealing” as a result of the industries’ own incompetence. This is a perfect case of blaming the victim for what you do to yourself.

little pricks

Wilhelm Reich said that sexual repression resulted in authoritarianism. I never read that it was an inevitable process, but I would think not; probably just a tendency, however likely. But Reich did strongly make the point that fascism rose directly out of authoritarianism, implying—if he did not state it outright elsewhere—that fascists are sexually repressed.

I would add that, following from the above logic and adding in a little bit of Freudian-like content, fascists have small penises. It makes sense. Men with big dicks tend to use them in other ways; it’s those little pricks that cause all the trouble, by projecting their inferiority onto others whom they see as weaker than they are and thus compensating for their insecurity.

You see it all the time, cops, bureaucrats (A-holes in general) proving to themselves that they are “real men” (despite their lack of length) by imposing their will on others, beating them, and even shooting them down in the street. A bully is a bully, whether in a schoolyard or on the force.

We’ve begun to work on the problem of bullying in schools and other institutions, but we’ve yet to turn our attention to the bullies who would kill us in our streets and even in our homes. And, because we fail to do this, the rules and policies that law enforcement uses to “police” us are becoming increasingly lax. Stop-and-frisk becomes jump-out; bean bags and rubber bullets become full metal jackets; choke-holds become death grips. The “authorities” believe that, if they can kill off enough of us, the rest of us will fall into line, become good little, compliant, unknown citizens.

But, instead, what is going to happen is they are going to start a war—a revolution. And it will be our own fault, because we haven’t done what we have needed for quite a while now to do: insist that the A-holes stop spying on us in the name of terror threats that don’t actually exist (save the terror for the terrorist and leave the citizens alone), stop beating us senseless, and, especially, stop shooting us down in the streets. Because, if we don’t get this message across to the “law” enforcement “community,” the next step is tit-for-tat. We’ve been there before, several centuries ago. But, again?

democracy, then and now

The history of humanity is a long-running battle between the desire for the freedom of democracy and the oppression of the masses by selfish, greedy, power-hungry autocrats. No news there.

There have been several break-throughs the oppressed have made in the enduring quest to be free of assholes, one of the more impressive being the American Revolution. Still no real news.

But that revolution, despite its promise, did not last as long as most people want to believe. It didn't take too long for the autocrats to reassert their dominance. It is their forte, after all.

This anti-revolution eventually resulted in the formation of The Corporations. It only took them so long because the democratic ideals of the American Revolution were so difficult to overcome.

But overcome they did, leaving us with what we have to tolerate today, remnants of a revolution that only pretends now to democracy. But hope is not lost, not by a long shot. Today, we also have...

The Internet. This far-reaching technology has been the greatest revolution since 1776. Perhaps even greater. But, like its predecessor, the autocrats, who want it all for themselves, are usurping it.

The fascists who control The Corporations, with the aid of their governmental stooges, feel threatened by this vehicle of unfettered democracy, and for good reason. True democrats use it to be free.

Using the internet, the true democrats have been with increasing effectiveness foiling the fascists' attempts at ubiquitous control. At this very moment, the fascists' are fighting back hard--in government.

The outcome of the battles now raging in congress and at the FCC (and most likely in any number of yet to be determined governmental offices) will reveal whether or not American democracy survives.

Or reconstitutes itself, since a good argument can be made for its demise, the corporations having killed it off and replaced it as it slept with alien pods that it grew in places where no one was looking.

But, lately, we have had a form of democracy, on the Net. We have been able to communicate freely, and that communication has been the bane of corporations as citizens slowly discover what they are up to.

So what choice do they have but to try to take it all away from us? Us. It's ours. A public utility. If the fascists are to continue to succeed, they must stifle the effectiveness of our communication. Up the Net.

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can’t touch this

So you want to "regulate" the internet, ostensibly to prevent the piracy of intellectual property, but in fact in order to squash the criticism you receive as the result of a truly democratic medium. Well, go ahead and try and good luck to you. Who knows? You may even win a battle or two before you inevitably lose the war.

Meanwhile, I am "subscribed" to a developing internet service that you'll never be able to regulate. There is no danger to this form of net neutrality. No ISP is going to limit my bandwidth. No corporation will subvert its usage for its own pecuniary purpose. The democratic principle of this service is guaranteed to be forever ubiquitous. Its very nature is the quality that prevents usurpation. Want to know what it is and how to get online?

Well, if you don't already know, it's not likely you will ever find out. Even if I would tell you (which I won't), you're not likely to ever access it unless you already know how, because that is something I can't tell you. It's something you have to learn how to do all by yourself. And you won't, because what you fail to understand is that your own attitude and behavior precludes your participation.

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not all bad

Instead of the "advanced" Western world exporting "civilization" to the less civilized areas, the reverse seems to be happening: The less uncivilized countries are exporting their barbaric tactics and beliefs into the west. The Western countries are loosening up their former stranglehold on law and order (which is not necessarily all that bad; it had been a bit overly oppressive and corrupt) and the crazies are taking advantage of the lackadaisical atmosphere to perpetrate their craziness (which is also not all bad, if their particular craziness is not violent, but merely different).

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the corruption of power

The government strong-arms Bank of America to stop dealing with Assange's Wikileaks because the government can't think of anything else to do, feels it can't defend itself against the truth, and so must set about to "influence" corporations and other governments and assassinate characters in order to curtail a truth teller.

I don't know if Assange did the criminal things he's accused of doing (apparently legal entities in the UK believed he hadn't, since they released him from custody), but I do know what our government does to people, I know how it lies to hide truth that it finds inconvenient, I know how it corrupts bureaucrats into doing its dirty work.

[In fact, there is no 'it' in the government; 'it' does not act, corrupt agents of the government act, against the ideals of our democracy. Higher up agents corrupt lower agents to act in a conspiratorial fashion to subvert the rule of law. Politicians and quasi-governmental agents (corporate goons) put their own interests ahead of the people.]

Under the broadest definition of terrorism, which our government chooses to use all the time to characterize fanaticism and computer malfeasance, the government itself is a terrorist organization. Yeah, it doesn't actually kill people...well, now wait a minute...yes it does. Maybe we don't need so broad a definition after all.

I'm less and less happy with this government as time goes on. I thought we elected Obama to end this shit. Meet the new boss... The US government is a terrorist organization in the same way as local cops are the most powerful street gang in any given area. Authoritarianism claims its privilege to overpower any dissent. What democracy?

Gotta Revolution.

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moral concerns

Never mind the moral concerns, if you're prosecuting a war, at whatever level, whether as leader of a nation, as a grunt in the field, as paper pusher in an office, or as a citizen who supports the efforts of any of the former (including spouses and children who give aid and comfort and thereby further enable the bellicose actions of the various warrior classes), then you are compromising (at best, or far worse, debilitating) the future of this planet and the human species.

Lives are being lost, lives of people who might have one day contributed significant knowledge and wisdom to our great adventure, who might have acted to relieve much suffering and further death, who might have advanced us much farther along toward becoming the benevolent and humane species we are capable of being, who might have found a way to more effectively negate the nastiness strain that currently runs through our basic human nature.

And an incredibly enormous amount of money is being wasted on campaigns and munitions, money that could be used to advance us in the same ways as people who are dying might have, that could be used for medical and genetic research, that could raise humanity up to levels previously unthought of, not only some few of us, but everyone. Those of us who think this is a bad idea, who smugly claim that wars (and poverty) kill off the worst of us, can go to hell (and will).

President Obama: You are responsible here. You market yourself as a caring politician, which is why we elected you, despite the intense opposition of warmongers, greedmongers, and bigots. And yet you allow their policies and practices to proliferate, you even adopt them and adapt them to your own political agenda. This is not acceptable. You are selling the future of the planet and its populations for present day political convenience. Stop it! Come out from among them.

Actually, now that I think back on it, these are moral concerns.

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