An Entirely Understandable Position

Removing all government restraint on commerce would of course benefit quite a few people.  Not just the "one-percenters" but those who are connected to them economically and strive to join their club.  And more broadly there are those who would not directly benefit but object to handcuffing the invisible hand of capitalism on principle.

This is a rational position to take, as it would no doubt create exactly the kind of economic environment in which cut-throat capitalism flourishes.

But lets assume you're not already a one-percenter or can touch one with a stick.  For the actual People, it is not such a beautiful win-win idea.

When one considers the cost of doing business, the calculus is not so simple.  The resources.  The waste.  The poverty.  The knowledge that there is no safe harbor.  That there is no such thing as living in peace.  Every day must be a life and death struggle.  Every moment is a moment lost.

This is not what the People want.  I do not speak for them.  They will speak for themselves.

And I quote:

"Someone saw something he felt was unconscionable and acted to try and correct it."

Since when is it up to someone like Snowden to decide what's "unconscionable" and what is troubling?  It seems anyone in Congress who actually cared about this sort of thing was welcome at the briefings.  Surely many of them knew the basic outlines of the operation, and though a few of them raised concerns and asked for a more open debate, none of them considered it unconscionable.  And if you consider that liberal Democrats are generally all about civil liberties, its noteworthy that even Al Franken said it was both legitimately under supervision and necessary for the defense of the nation.

Snowden declared himself judge jury and executioner and still has the balls to say the Congress, President and the courts* were somehow acting anti-democratically.  Why does he get to decide what's good and what's bad for the American people?  No, he was simply assuming that everyone who "matters" sees things his way and the rest of the country can go fuck itself.

And BTW, what exactly did he save us from?  They were collecting metadata they can use to retroactively track someone's communications.  According to everyone who actually knows something about the program says they can only open the box and look at the data when they have a court order, which is exactly what they have to do to get the old-fashioned phone records.  They decide they want to find out who someone is talking to, and can not only start tracking him from the moment the judge signs the court order, but they can also go backwards in time to look at the trail as it was captured in the database.  How is this "unconscionable" exactly?  Visa, my bank, even my workplace keeps records of everything I do.  What is the story here exactly?  Did they look at data without first getting a court order?  Those are violations of the law, and should be prosecuted.  But that's not what Snowden supposedly "saved" us from.  He claimed that the very notion of keeping records of everyone's phone calls in a quick access database was "unconscionable".  Dont see it.

Now of course it could turn out that there's more to the picture than meets the eye.  If they were actually putting phone call audio into a searchable format, that would cross a line that would require a much more robust debate.  But wait a minute.  I seem to remember exactly that debate happening about 10 years ago when "total information awareness" became a thing to freak out about.  They <b>were</b> actually planning to keep everyone's voicemails and such in a giant database.  When enough people in congress looked at it they (and the ACLU) said, "wait a minute, that's not cool".

That's how democracy works.  Snowden is a traitor.  And since this is /. I will also throw in a little conspiracy theory action 'atcha.

The timing of the leak and his various pronouncements about China coincide rather conveniently for the Chinese as the new Premiere meets the President for the first time under the cloud of the emerging cyber-cold-war.  Perhaps the Chinese have been manipulating young Master Snowden in one or more ways.  Money, fame, protection.  Any or all of these may have drawn Snowden into a trap that he is now attempting to escape.  Praising the Chinese and claiming that he has information on US spying operations in China is all on it's own a traitorous act.  In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if that's one of the things they charge him with.  As if that matters now.

I'm out...

*Dont like FISA, but that's been a public debate for years now, so this leak does little more than push people toward more visibility.

/.Post - No Difference?

"We choose between the party that taxes us to subsidize farmers and hollywood, or the party that taxes us to subsidize banks and oil companies. You may claim there is a difference, but I don't see enough of one for it to matter."

-AK Marc

The difference is in the history and direction of the subsidies you include in your equation. Their current "vectors".

I understand that because food and fuel are arguably in the same range in terms of necessity and there are giant corporations on both sides, it is easy to make them appear equivalent.

The banks are a special case here wherein they are accused of and in many cases proven to have shot themselves directly in the foot. And when they can't perform their function because their too busy bleeding to death. Therefore the lack of any alternative system of currency exchange - aside from pigs and bales of wheat - the feds had no choice but to stop the bleeding and buy them all Segways so they could go about their business.

They got away with murder and the motto has been "never again" ever since. I agree.

The oil companies are a different story. Because of a century of not only subsidies but the entire US military to back them up, they have established themselves as the most profitable firms on the planet. Bar none (except Apple, which is really astounding BTW).

On the other side of your equation you have farm subsidies and Hollywood. Now I'm not sure what you mean about Hollywood, but I'm fairly sure whatever it is its 0.01% of the bank bailout and aircraft carriers dont protect the honey-wagons on a location shoot.

I also agree that farm subsidies are out of control. But precisely because farming is big business, you can't suddenly choke off millions of dollars of what is effectively "income" and not expect them to slash costs. Which would inevitably reduce the quality and quantity of what they produce. You know, bread and stuff.

Now when someone in power has the cajones to go after these subsidies in a rational way, I will support them even if they are attacked relentlessly by Karl Rove's PAC. But until then we have bigger fish to fry.

Look, as a share of what we spend, there is no comparison. And as outrageous injustices go, hedging with swaps has already written its own chapter in the history books and oil itself may well be humanity's undoing.

Basically, I dont question the numerators in your equation. It's a basic 1-1. Its the denominators that are waaaaay off.

Freak Show

I was recently watching an interview on Charlie Rose with the authors of a new book called, "The Way To Win: Taking the White House in 2008".  Among other things, authors Mark Halperin and John Harris posit that the old "Nixon Rules" of campaigning, i.e., run to the left or right during the primaries and run to the center during the general election, have gone from a recipe for success to a recipe for certain failure.  The most important change since that era has been the emergence of the freakshow - an amalgam of media outlets and personalities in fierce competition with one another for ratings in an increasingly blurb-based culture.  Since the "gotcha" can attract the attention of channel and net surfers more easily than the indepth analysis of a candidate's platform, the contradictions inherent to the Nixon strategy will be jumped upon like "sharks on chum" (to paraphrase Halperin).  Such contradictions have become the building blocks with which campaigns construct a story about the opponent that the more thoughtful (or at least literate) of the freakshow's outlets might pick up on as familiar to their viewers/listeners/readers. 

According to Halperin/Harris, as there is no longer a way for candiates to speak out of both sides of their mouths without drawing the attention of the freakshow, the successful candidate will stick with a solid, if somewhat narrow set of policy positions that will avoid offending their base, while simultaneously wooing swing votes.  But what does this mean for the viscious political environment we are now faced with? 

More to come...

Sir Carlin the Elitist

George Carlin on the Dennis Miller Show, Summer 2001

I agree with a great deal of what carlin said.  He is right to say that "the people" are in general overestimated.  But only in the sense that their potential, something no more evenly distributed than intellegence, is not being met.  If people were to get into the habit of performing at least a cursory examination of what they believe, (whether the belief oringinates from faith or observation), there would be a great deal less one could accomplish through deception. 

Which brings me to something else Carlin said.  He implied that there is a conspiracy to indoctrinate young children into "primative" belief systems.   Whether this conspiracy is among members of society at large or an individual institution is not clear, but considering Carlin's long history of commentary on the Catholic church, an institutional one seems likely.  Either way, he would be right about the indoctrination, but wrong in his implication that this is somehow an unnatural or unhealthy thing. 

The development of established ways of life, which - at their best - is what most institutional religions are.  Such templates for achieveing a prosperous existance took thousands upon thousands of generations to evolve.  How can a child be expected to acquire such wisdom in the course of a few hormone driven, high activity years?  When an unindoctrinated child asks, "Why are we here?", or "What happens when we die?",  are we to hand them a library card and hope for the best?  Or perhaps we should take no biased action at all and let the schools or the media or George Carlin answer for us? 

As an elitist - and I say this in the best sense of the word - Carlin, (and Miller for that matter), believes that there is a minority of people best suited to run things, and should do in the best interest of everyone else.  This was Plato's view.  In many situations it is a perfectly reasonable position.  It is, in fact,  the very position the Christian church took during the dark ages.  With only a few people literate enough to know what anyone beyond earshot was up to, those people were best suited to educate the rest of the rabble.  It is in the vacuum of ignorance that rumor and superstition take hold.  In that vacuum is where angels were born.  People were told to think of a man when they think of God, because as a concept, it is beyond even the most thoughtful of the rabble.  The greatest philosopher in any era will tell you that sharing experience among a collective conscience such as ours is an imperfect endevour indeed.  And when the experience is enough to fill a thousand lifetimes, such an endeavor becomes impossible.  Which is why we give people a head start. 

This is the case in all areas of experience.  When the rabble experiences light, it is as a thing.  But what kind of a thing?  They feel its effects, but do not understand it's nature.  Many of the elite have over the centuries made observations, written them down, explained them, tested them, refined them, abstracted laws, tested them, refined them.  We take this fact for granted now, and we should.  That is why we do it in the first place.  So people not yet born can understand what we have learned. 

Sir Carlin the Elitist

George Carlin on the Dennis Miller Show, Summer 2001

I agree with a great deal of what carlin said.  He is right to say that "the people" are in general overestimated.  But only in the sense that their potential, something no more evenly distributed than intellegence, is not being met.  If people were to get into the habit of performing at least a cursory examination of what they believe, (whether the belief oringinates from faith or observation), there would be a great deal less one could accomplish through deception. 

Which brings me to something else Carlin said.  He implied that there is a conspiracy to indoctrinate young children into "primative" belief systems.   Whether this conspiracy is among members of society at large or an individual institution is not clear, but considering Carlin's long history of commentary on the Catholic church, an institutional one seems likely.  Either way, he would be right about the indoctrination, but wrong in his implication that this is somehow an unnatural or unhealthy thing. 

The development of established ways of life, which - at their best - is what most institutional religions are.  Such templates for achieveing a prosperous existance took thousands upon thousands of generations to evolve.  How can a child be expected to acquire such wisdom in the course of a few hormone driven, high activity years?  When an unindoctrinated child asks, "Why are we here?", or "What happens when we die?",  are we to hand them a library card and hope for the best?  Or perhaps we should take no biased action at all and let the schools or the media or George Carlin answer for us? 

As an elitist - and I say this in the best sense of the word - Carlin, (and Miller for that matter), believes that there is a minority of people best suited to run things, and should do in the best interest of everyone else.  This was Plato's view.  In many situations it is a perfectly reasonable position.  It is, in fact,  the very position the Christian church took during the dark ages.  With only a few people literate enough to know what anyone beyond earshot was up to, those people were best suited to educate the rest of the rabble.  It is in the vacuum of ignorance that rumor and superstition take hold.  In that vacuum is where angels were born.  People were told to think of a man when they think of God, because as a concept, it is beyond even the most thoughtful of the rabble.  The greatest philosopher in any era will tell you that sharing experience among a collective conscience such as ours is an imperfect endevour indeed.  And when the experience is enough to fill a thousand lifetimes, such an endeavor becomes impossible.  Which is why we give people a head start. 

This is the case in all areas of experience.  When the rabble experiences light, it is as a thing.  But what kind of a thing?  They feel its effects, but do not understand it's nature.  Many of the elite have over the centuries made observations, written them down, explained them, tested them, refined them, abstracted laws, tested them, refined them.  We take this fact for granted now, and we should.  That is why we do it in the first place.  So people not yet born can understand what we have learned. 

Defining "The Media"

How does one define something as nebulous as the media?  One way is through metaphor. 

In J. David Bolter's "Turing's Man: Western Culture in the Computer Age",
he describes the ways in which a technology influences - and is
influenced by - the society in which it exists.   In the age of
enlightenment, our perception of ourselves was heavily influenced by
the most complex machine of the time - the clock.  Philosophers took to
describing nature as an infinitely complex yet deterministic machine
driven by the gears of natural law, powered by a spring wound by God at
the dawn of time.  Therefore it is not surprising that while the
development of memory, logical processing and artificial intellegence
has offered us a sharper view of our physical nature,  it has also fed
back onto our understanding of ourselves.  Thus genes are described as
the "building-blocks of life", atoms are clouds of charged particles,
and aritificial intellegence is built using neural-nets, (i.e., a
"net-like arrangement" of neurons).  We are still using the language of
antiquity because we have not yet developed a common understanding of
the true nature of these insights.

Jean Paul,
the German humorist and philosopher, suggested that human language is a
"dictionary of faded metaphors", which is to say that when a new
concept is recognized, individuals are forced to rely on an imperfect
yet commonly understood analogy until a more specific term emerges. 
Thus we are brought to our original question.  How do we define the
concept of modern media

Such is the problem faced when
defining "the media".   The term itself is a metephor.  A "medium",
(the singular form of media), is more or less defined as, "an
intervening substance through which something else is transmitted or
carried on" - ask.com

strawmen in the phosperous

One way to mislead useing the media is to get an outlet to post what someone said without giving any sense of what is meant by it.  This is not as simple as it sounds.  There has to be some built in alternative meaning that can be looked at as a possible cause.  "While one would think that he would say X, he actually said Y."  The differences can be worth highlighting if they are genuine and weighty; or disruptive and deflating when the result of irony.

Take this headline:  Numbers don't lie

This is a quote from the Whitehouse spokesman, Tony Snow, who when asked to comment on the latest casuality milestone, (which apparently assessed as such based on how evenly it is divisible by 1000), replied with a guarded answer of, "The numbers don't lie",  which is a presumably tacit nod to the realities the administration has been trying to get everyone to ignore in the hope of keeping our earnest support - as opposed to our frightened, between a rock and a hard place support.  The commentator, (or commentators, as the case may be - it was written by the editorial "staff", so no telling who actually wrote it), attempts to make the case that this was the perspective of some aloof loungechair general who simply sits back and orders more tanks on the shopping channel and puts and add on craigslist for troops.  Every sort of numbers and statistics are bullet pointed to make the clear and tounge in cheek argument that the speaker is not only heartless, but incompetent.

What does this acheive?  It makes us question the integrity of the man and the people running the institution for which he speaks.  Does it make any insights into the issue at hand.  Perhaps.  Perhaps someone who reads it will become aware of some fact about the war or its aftermath that changes their mind about it.  But this could have been acheived in a number of ways.  Why would such a discovery more likely take place in this context?  Is it perhaps because the person reading it happen is drawn to what seems like a meaningful attacks on an enemy, and is rewarded with knowledge and a bit of righteousness.