Iskander <theinfinitiveofgo@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> bukvich@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
> > On May 9, 8:06 am, Iskander <theinfinitiveo...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> >> Ah. But is it just? The Buddha disapproves of schadenfreud,
> >I am pretty> sure.
> > That isn't schadenfreud; it's apathy and my rationalization of why I
> > don't want any of my tax dollars to go for repopulating the flood
> > zone.
>
> No blood for oil! No money for houses!
We need a bunch of stuff at the mouth of the Mississippi. And the
Mississippi keeps trying to put its mouth elsewhere. Why not work out a
plan? Build a new New Orleans at the new ****t, and do it right this
time. Arrange things so the river can flood properly and maintain the
delta. Preserve the wetlands.
Well, of course there are obvious reasons not to. Somebody would have to
do a lot of thinking, and there would have to be a lot of politics
involved in a situation where most of the big money favors the status
quo.
> >> And any answer off the 'mainstream' will promptly get you
> >****canned by> various office holders who control the party.
> > If a hunting rifle was still a weapon of mass destruction we could
> > have a bloody revolution every thirty years and the mainstreamers
> > would unanimously keep their mouths shut.
>
> It's still a weapon of mass destruction.
No, it's supposed to cause significant casualties or property
destruction. Hard to kill even a hundred people a day with a hunting
rifle, and harder to even get started the second day. If a hunting rifle
is a wmd then so is a sharp knife -- you could kill just as many people
by slitting their throats provided you had them all lined up orderly for
it.
> > You could go to black mass
> > and be a pillar of secular society six days a week.
>
> Somehow, I doubt that; one notes that freedom of religion and an
>
> anti-government attitude resulted in ... Mormonism. Not quite up there
>
> with the black mass thing.
No? If the black mass people got the commercial success mormons have,
they'd look just as stodgy.
> > Alas the force of the status quo makes a puny little hunting rifle
> > next to useless for making the society more interesting.
>
> The thing is, is that the world has never been like that.
> Rebellions
> tend to fail.
They work best when most people don't care who's running the government.
Failing that, they work when most people don't care who's running the
government provided it isn't the idiots who're in there now. The hunting
rifles usually aren't very im****tant because the government distributes
lots of military rifles to people it hopes are loyal, and at the times a
rebellion has a reasonable chance to succeed, a lot of those people turn
out not so loyal after all. Why bother with hunting rifles when military
rifles are so much more available?
> Rebellions (or revolutions) are practically batting .000,
> in terms of changing the social mores. Guerilla war makes it expensive
>
> to occupy. It rarely totally overhauls the culture, and even when it
> does the effects are usually not that lasting. Note that the Soviets
> failed to wipe out the Orthodox.
Sure. When people don't care who's running the government it's because
they don't notice it getting in their way much. (Not to say it doesn't.)
And when people want to get rid of the current bozos they aren't usually
giving a mandate to a new bunch to do something extreme. Every now and
then they do, but when enough people are ready to sup****t extreme
measures for real, it's likely not to take much of a revolution to get
started.
> >> That's because they're trying to maximise the power of the
> >press by> controlling the nomination process. And the easiest way to
> >do that is to> focus on trivial crap.
> > That's part of it. The main driver is what draws ratings. That's
> > Monica Lewinsky and OJ, not the deficit and the dollar.
>
> Bah. They could draw ratings lots of ways; they are not required
> to be
> stupid and mendacious. That's a failure of imagination, not a method
> of meeting demand.
But isn't that the default? When you call a plumber do you expect a
plumber with imagination? Do you expect carpenters to do great
imaginative work? Not especially, they build to code or they know some
sneaky tricks for quick results that will probably pass inspection. All
over, we expect craftsmen to do their jobs, not to do brilliant
innovation. If you want innovative structures you hire an architect, not
a carpenter. If you want innovative medical treatment you get into a
controlled trial (and maybe wind up in the placebo group), you don't go
to a regular MD. If you want innovative clothing you go to a tailor, not
a retail salesman. And if you want to get public attention you go to an
advertising agency, not a news organization. If advertisers wanted
newsmen with imagination they'd pay them to think.
> > Those topics
> > make eyes glaze over and the viewers hit the channel changer button
> > en' masse.
>
> That's the argument of the press: the press can't make
> uninteresting
> things interesting. I say the press doesn't know how to make
> interesting topics interesting. They do know how to make things
> sleazy.
Sure. Well said.
> >> The question is, is are the R's worn out enough that they
> >can be beaten> in 2012 or do we get stuck with Guilani and civil
> >war/dictator****p?
> > You are getting ahead of your time bindings.
>
> But I have said it before.
Do you expect a republican president with a solid-majority democratic
congress? Or will they get control of congress too?
I'm ready to believe maybe the fix isn't quite in. August September
October maybe iraq will go visibly bad, and maybe the media will notice.
Does anybody in iraq really still want us there? Even the Badr
government guys -- we give them a lot of money but there are so many
strings attached, they've got to wonder if it's worth the bother. We've
spent some time bribing the sunnis to leave us alone, would August be a
good time for them to announce "So long and thanks for all the guns and
money"? How many more decisive victories can we get over the Sadrists
before it starts looking like we can have decisive victories until we
get tired of paying for them? I can't see McCain backing off from
victory in iraq, and it could turn into a big issue.
But then I keep hearing rumors about plans for war with iran. Say
there's a quick strike in October, in and out, achieve some sort of
goals and leave and declare victory, what would that do? Or say we get
into another war that clearly isn't over by November.
And then there's the question of how fast the economy will slide, and
what voters will decide it means.
I just don't see it as all decided. Unless the media are organised well
enough to be sure they won't turn on the GOP even when there are juicy
stories available, it just doesn't look settled yet. Too much can
happen.
|
