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So a bunch of us are acting all LiveJournally over at The Other Place, throwing out LOOOOOONG comments on political topics, belying the essentially tweety, attention span-deficient nature of the joint... so I thought I'd bring it here to see whether there was still any rhetorical life in my LJFL.
To begin with, amidst my usual anti-fascist ranting,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bxiie pointed out that Obama's Justice Department is trying to make it legal to attach a tracking device to cars without a warrant, arguing that a reasonable right to privacy in public spaces (including one's car) does not exist. Thereto, FoF Dan Rosenberg pointed out that, "after all, there must be at least an implicit belief in the expectation of privacy in one's car, or we wouldn't still be constantly catching people picking their nose."
An elegant and irrefutable argument! Get thee to court, Dan. Or perhaps nosepickers should file a class-action suit seeking an injunction against DOJ.
Not that it matters. We'll all have subcutaneous chips implanted soon. That'll really freak out the fundies! Hell, even in the 1970s my grandparents were still half convinced (after three decades) that Social Security numbers were the mark of the beast, that we were a year or two at most from being forcibly tattooed by the Government in preparation for the arrival of the Antichrist. This was both scary and exciting in that it meant that (as Geo. Carlin would have it) Jesus would soon be bringing the pork chops!
But the broader discussion over at The Other Place has been about the present tenor of American politics: what the Tea Party really represents (v. what they start out as), whether we should be nervous about the impending theocracy, whether there is any hope whatsoever that our elected politicians have our back in the direst of circumstances (hint: no). Dan offered the following insight:
While we're in this rhetorical vicinity, though, I do have to open up to anybody who identifies as Libertarian (maj- or miniscule L). I ask this not at all pugnaciously but rather from the depths of real ignorance:
It has always seemed to me that The Market is as much a shrine in the Libertarian pantheon as it is amongst the conservatives. Is that a fair statement? Since Libertarians embrace the smallest, most local possible solution to any problem, when international monetary forces are at work, what interventions and solutions are appropriate when those forces foster the common ill? How, if at all, do Libertarians treat such market forces as have been strangling the American working class, replacing literally millions of U.S. jobs with second- and third-world outsourcing? When staggering power has accreted to the robber-baron class, what is a society to do?
(I have my own tentative rhetorical answers to this problem, but I'm interesting in hearing from other folk.)
To begin with, amidst my usual anti-fascist ranting,
bxiie pointed out that Obama's Justice Department is trying to make it legal to attach a tracking device to cars without a warrant, arguing that a reasonable right to privacy in public spaces (including one's car) does not exist. Thereto, FoF Dan Rosenberg pointed out that, "after all, there must be at least an implicit belief in the expectation of privacy in one's car, or we wouldn't still be constantly catching people picking their nose." An elegant and irrefutable argument! Get thee to court, Dan. Or perhaps nosepickers should file a class-action suit seeking an injunction against DOJ.
Not that it matters. We'll all have subcutaneous chips implanted soon. That'll really freak out the fundies! Hell, even in the 1970s my grandparents were still half convinced (after three decades) that Social Security numbers were the mark of the beast, that we were a year or two at most from being forcibly tattooed by the Government in preparation for the arrival of the Antichrist. This was both scary and exciting in that it meant that (as Geo. Carlin would have it) Jesus would soon be bringing the pork chops!
But the broader discussion over at The Other Place has been about the present tenor of American politics: what the Tea Party really represents (v. what they start out as), whether we should be nervous about the impending theocracy, whether there is any hope whatsoever that our elected politicians have our back in the direst of circumstances (hint: no). Dan offered the following insight:
...in virtually every revolution one can think of, the idealists and moderates who started the fight were eventually overtaken and eliminated (often very violently) by the extremists. Remember Russia, France, Rome, even Germany to an extent, in that the thugs that began it were no match for the uber-thugs who slaughtered them. [Ed: Night of the Long Knives, perhaps?] The American Revolution was the only one (that I can think of) where the extremists were eventually suppressed by the idealists. What a truly remarkable and rare thing, and how tragic that we have devolved so far.Indeed, that's what makes Gourd very nervous about the seeming trajectory of our electorate. Of course, if the economy were to recover robustly in the next year or two, maybe the pitchforks and guillotines would get stowed and the trogs would go back to the general anaesthesia that is Television; not that that's ideal, of course, but it would clear the revolutionary playing field for the tiny minority of us who do actually care. Should our economy remain weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable, though, no matter who's doing the beheading, the oligarchs have nobody to blame but themselves... but it affronts me rather to have my head on the block for sucking dick as opposed to sucking the honest salaries of my employees.
While we're in this rhetorical vicinity, though, I do have to open up to anybody who identifies as Libertarian (maj- or miniscule L). I ask this not at all pugnaciously but rather from the depths of real ignorance:
It has always seemed to me that The Market is as much a shrine in the Libertarian pantheon as it is amongst the conservatives. Is that a fair statement? Since Libertarians embrace the smallest, most local possible solution to any problem, when international monetary forces are at work, what interventions and solutions are appropriate when those forces foster the common ill? How, if at all, do Libertarians treat such market forces as have been strangling the American working class, replacing literally millions of U.S. jobs with second- and third-world outsourcing? When staggering power has accreted to the robber-baron class, what is a society to do?
(I have my own tentative rhetorical answers to this problem, but I'm interesting in hearing from other folk.)
