I expected bromides and I received bromides, but I was still disappointed by the president's speech. It was a wasted opportunity. He should have entered the oval office carrying a fake turkey and wearing a codpiece. This would have lent dignity to the rebranding of the occupation. But he blew it. What a dipshit.
To tell you the truth, though, I’m still not convinced that Obama actually wants anything, at least not in a political sense. He seems to me an utter blank. He’s a self-propelling election device that exists solely to get itself elected. It continues to amaze me that so many people somehow thought this empty suit was a savior. Even his campaign message was just a recycled leftover from one of Axelrod’s earlier clients.
The rest of the post and the comments are very good.
I don't want to start one of those ghastly "failure of the Left" threads, but I want to throw something out there. And that is, the Left has nothing to offer to people whose political concerns revolve around protecting their status.
People who complain about "big government", but vote for Military Keynesians and Corporate Millenarians aren't interested in any kind of democratic control of capital. That's the last thing they want. Look at what they do. They're sending bagmen to the federal government and those bagmen do their jobs, with a vengeance. The rank and file is hanging on to its status in capitalism's race to the bottom. Without extravagant corporate entitlements and federal contracts, they're sunk and they know it.
When the Left talks about material security and economic justice, they're adding "relative to whom and not at my expense", not relative to what they have in an absolute sense. They despise and mistrust their petty nobility and its plans, and rightly so, but they have no problem with the concept of petty nobility itself. A true left wing program would mean complete upheaval in their world.
Book burning is not entirely without merit. There's a catch (not that one). It needs to be done in a way that increases book sales.
Also, three cheers for the Nanny State. When you need an infantilizing response to an infantile act,
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Officials in a Florida city have denied a burn permit for a church that is seeking to burn copies of the Quran on Sept. 11.Interim Fire Chief Gene Prince said yesterday that the open burning of books is not allowed under Gainesville's burning ordinance.
The Dove World Outreach Center drew international attention after announcing a plan to burn copies of the Islamic holy text on church grounds to mark the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.Prince says the church will be fined if the burning is held.
In an e-mail sent yesterday, the church said, "City of Gainesville denies burn permit - BUT WE WILL STILL BURN KORANS."
The Gainesville church made headlines last year after distributing T-shirts that said, "Islam is of the Devil."
Why not do the book burn inside the church? That would teach the fire chief a stinging lesson. Fill it to rafters, by all means, for it is written that pointless, faked-up, self-inflicted martyrdom is pleasing to the Lord, who shall ridicule them in His own time and at great length, for His mercy is infinite. But please forget about the Quran. There's no need to add insult to Predator drones, and there are worthy writers who need all the publicity they can get. Burn blogs in effigy too. Purify the ether!
There's no end to it. I really thought the death of the Hope And Change sparkle pony would collapse the market for it, but see for yourself, if you have a strong stomach. And don't say I didn't give you fair warning.
That's the least toxic of the screen shots. The rest are much worse.
Is there a qualitative difference between "Restoring Honor" and "Change We Can Believe In"? Their respective enthusiasts are equally sincere and have the same chance of achieving their notional goals. In practice, the notional goals will evaporate into a bad smell. Once they've achieved it, they'll feel the same maudlin sense of victimhood. The difference is one group will be sore losers and the other will be sore winners. Both will then want to "take back the country". The only thing that comes close to being real is the soreness.
I can sympathize, but only up to a point. Suffering caused by persistent, freely chosen victimhood is real suffering, and the degree of it is wildly unjust, but dragging everyone else down too is simply vindictive; the sufferers' ignorance and vulnerability to peer pressure notwithstanding.
Human behavior is not irreducibly complex. I can, with little effort, give an accurate prediction of criminal conduct right down to the crimes and individuals who commit them. It's like shooting fish in a barrel. Or, more to the point, like the mass murder of defenseless subsistence farmers.
I can also predict, with the same degree of accuracy, that the use of statistics-driven predictive policing to control less spectacular crimes will be used as a means of harassment, entrapment, false imprisonment and mass criminalization driven by moral panic. The great social philosopher, Richard J. Daley, observed that "[the] police are not here to create disorder, they're here to preserve disorder." Feed that into your program for change.
When it comes to reduction of less spectacular crimes, money is better spent on facilitating compliance than on enforcement. Policy is better directed at increasing economic security than on reducing it. Etc. It's hardly rocket science and the methods for doing so are well known.
Orthrus:
