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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insurance tax

There's only one reason that I have car insurance: because I'm required by law to have it; because the insurance companies conspired with the state legislature to guarantee them a little bit more income. If you believe that the legislature passed the law in order to protect the consumer, then grow up, you naive idiot.

If I weren't legally required to have insurance, I would not have it, because insurance companies are rip-off companies who greedily suck up your premiums but do everything they possible can to get out of paying off on claims, and when they think they can't possibly not pay off, they delay payments for as long as possible.

I think of car insurance as just another tax that the state levies for the privilege of driving a car. But it's a tax that has been privatized, with the proceeds going to insurance companies instead of benefiting state citizens. It's way past time for state-run automobile insurance. "But that's...socialism!" Yeah, like we're not a socialist country already.

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false advertising

I'm completely fed up with grocery store advertisements (which are really nothing more than an extension of the more general corporate hype that falls just short of outright lies--when it doesn't cross the line from the start). Do they really think, when they advertise a product as selling for four for nine dollars with a coupon for fifty cents off (which gets doubled), that I'm not going to bother with doing the math? Or, worse, do they actually believe that selling an item two-for-one without advertising the actual price is going to dupe me into believing that they haven't jacked the price up to nearly twice its previous cost to compensate for the one "free" item you're getting is going to trick me into believing that I'm really getting one whole item free? Or even worse, when they advertise the savings of a "buy one get one free" item as $6.48, do they really not know that I can calculate the actual price as $3.24 and understand that last week's price at $2.98 means that this is not in fact a sale, but a price increase? In fact, the large majority of the items listed in stores' "sales" flyers are not really sales at all, but either the regular item price or are discounted only by pennies.

These advertising "techniques" offend me. They suggest to me that stores think I'm stupid. Maybe these ads do con some (stupid) people into believing they are getting some kind of great bargain, but if they do, is it right that the stores take advantage of people's ignorance in this way? What's wrong, I'd like to know, with simply stating the price of a single item outright, with no complicated mathematical formula to work out? That way buyers would be able to detect immediately who has the cheapest prices and a true competitive marketplace would prevail. Oh...excuse me; that is what's wrong with it. Can't have any of that kind of truly competitive capitalist stuff going on. That would be a betrayal of our great system of corporate pseudo-capitalism.

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