I don't read Joe's post as a genocidal fantasy, but it does strike me as a tactical fantasy; there's a big difference between a country in which a million-man army has just been "disbanded" (especially when that country has a number of heavily-armed neighbors) and the US. Joe, where do you think IEDs come from? What I've read says they're mostly artillery shells; I doubt ANFO is as effective.
True, but there's also a difference between fighting insurgents in somebody else's country and fighting them in your own country where they can directly affect your financial and materiel supplies.
As for Alex's suggestions of my sick genocide fantasy, what part of "madness" didn't you understand? I live here, man. Why the fuck would I want to burn down my own country, especially while I'm trying to raise a kid in it?
What I'm trying to do is point out the fact that historically, one of the things that keeps the folks on top from saying "Fuck it, you're all serfs now!" is remembering the French and Russian Revolutions. Piss on the proles hard enough, and they flip out and burn the whole machine down. The knowledge that a sizeable chunk of the proles are armed keeps them farther from that edge of overt slavery than good will ever does. You'll notice how carefully both sides (Dem and Rethug) tiptoe around the dominionists and the antiabortion terrorists. That's because they're also heavily represented in the gun culture, and the rightist terrorists are still actually killing people. Leftist activists (ELF, BlackBloc, all of them) nearly always confine their attacks to property, which is why nobody in the machine gives a rat's ass about them. They're not scary enough to give the machine pause. One of the curses of behaving like civilized people, I guess. Makes things harder in the short run.
Another note: yeah, the machine looks pretty invulnerable and eternal right now. Factor in an economic collapse that'd dwarf the Great Depression and make Weimar Germany look like 1980's Japan. That's the sort of thing that'll turn the social fracturing that makes our public discourse so divisive these days into the kind of internal butchery that's sweeping over Iraq. Sudden economic collapses make people do crazy shit to each other, and there's a lot of crazy folks out there who're waiting for something to make people start taking their bad craziness seriously.
That's the stuff of my nightmares, right now.
But the record of armed citizens in the US preventing police oppression doesn't look so good. Look at the drug war for ample examples.
Drug war's not about preventing police oppression, from the dealer's side. It's about keeping drugs illegal. As soon as drugs become legal, their competition ceases to be the other dude on the corner and becomes Phillip-Morris, Budweiser, and Glaxo-SmithKline. When dealers shoot at cops, it's just to keep them off their back at the moment. Otherwise, you'd see stuff like police stations getting blown up and cops getting deliberately targeted, just like you do in Iraq. Drug war's just a gimmick to pump up the funding and get a bunch of legal precedents set up so's the cops get a free-er hand next time they want to do something their employers care about.
And one of the reasons this will happen is that the government has much bigger and better guns that you can get hold of; there hasn't been reasonable parity of equipment between the government and the populace since... well, at least since WWI, if not before.
At this point, I think our best hope is for the ballot-box revolution to continue. And if it doesn't -- if the Republicans manage to get their juggernaut back on track in 2008 -- our second-best is that sooner or later, the Armed Forces will remember their oath and turn against the theocrats... because no amount of armed civilians is going to make a lot of difference if the Army is fighting for the theocrats.
Take a look at Iraq and Afghanistan. How well is the big dog doing in those fights? The Iraqi insurgents don't have armor, jets or anti-aircraft rocket batteries. All they've got is small arms, improvised explosives, mortars and some anti-tank
munitions, but they seem to be doing OK for themselves against the world's largest and most technologically advanced military force. If they'd stop shooting at each other and concentrate on us for a bit, we'd be done even quicker than we're gonna be. How much easier do you think it'd be for the US military to function against an uprising in their own supply base, fighting against their own people? I'm not talking about shooting at poor half-drowned refugees in New Orleans, I'm talking about snipers and IEDs in New York City, LA and Dallas. The government can only threaten to nuke so many stateside cities for insurrection before things get complicated. They can only trash so much of their own economic infrastructure before they can't resupply the folks in the tanks anymore.
Understand, this is not the direction that anybody sane wants to go. But the potential for this sort of madness is one of the things that keeps the folks at the top of the machine from getting more ambitious than they've gotten thus far.
For now, the Constitution works, that's the line. Getting the government to work for the people instead of business is the more immediate problem, and one that doesn't need the fires of revolution.
Of course the Constitution works. It does precisely what it was built to do; it keeps nearly all political power in the hands of the elite, distracts the general populace with periodic opinion polls and popularity contests, and keeps the tools of power separate enough that nobody at the top gets too greedy and tries for the whole shebang. That last bit's getting a bit ragged of late, but it's still sorta working.
Yeah, every once in a while the folks at the bottom manage to work around the machine and make enough noise to convince the elite to throw them a few more bones (Eugene Debs, the civil rights movement, that sort of thing) but those tricks only work once. The machine adapts pretty quickly for something so large, and the folks at the bottom keep trying the stuff that worked last time. The founders wanted a setup that'd make sure that they and their sort (the rich white dudes) would keep most of the pie, that me and my sort (the broke white dudes) would shut up and do what we're told in exchange for a few crumbs of pie, and everybody else (women, black folks, etc) would fuck off and die. Over the last few centuries, a few of the folks in the FOAD category have managed to sneak into the few crumbs category, and every once in a while one of the folks in the big slice category feels generous or guilty and tosses a few bigger chunks over the balcony, but overall, the machine does what it always did. It keeps us from seeing what's going on and keeps those who do see what's going on from doing anything about it.
The last time I felt like I needed to purchase a firearm was watching Pat Buchannon speak at the 2000 Republican National Convention. Why do I feel like I need to go get one all the time now?
Because you do. Seriously. The more armed liberals and progressives there are, the safer liberals and progressives all are. Governments tend to tiptoe very carefully around the interests of armed citizens.
They'll still try and screw you blind, a'course. But they'll be a lot sneakier and quieter about it. That's one of the reasons that the ReThugs (and the Dems, for that matter) all tiptoe around the Dominionists. Most of them are armed to the teeth.
Not a cure-all, by any means, but it's a big help.
I think it's important for us not to lose sight of the fact that the police are not supposed to be our enemies and when law-abiding people fear the police because of the actions of the police and government, this is a deeply wrong situation that needs to be corrected immediately rather than "yeah, it's always that way, whaddya expect?"
Well, up until about 40 years ago, that's pretty much the way it was. Miranda and associated legal principles, (including the notion that stomping confessions out of non-white/non-middle class people is a bad idea) are much more recent notions than most people seem to be aware. For that matter, our nine Supreme Nazgul have been dismantling a lot of those associated legal principles while nobody's looking.
See, I know a fair number of cops here in town, so I'm fairly comfortable dealing with them. I don't think I'd characterize it as "trust", rather experience. Outside of town, I'd be a lot more careful and less casual dealing with law officers, and I'd definitely think carefully about voluntarily involving the police in any conflict (violent or non) I was involved in. It's just good sense. Police, on the whole, are interested in quiet rather than justice.
One of the main reasons for the existence of government is to protect the poor from the rich. Comes under "promote the general welfare." Clearly, the only sensible kind of government to vote for is one that does that. There are more poor people than rich people.
That's a fairly optimistic view of the nature of government. See, from my perspective, government exists primarily to protect the rich from the poor, and to protect the rich from each other. Yeah, occasionally enough of the poor will get their shit together to potentially threaten the rich and then some of the rich will use the government to slap some sense into their fellow rich folks and convince them to throw a few more crusts over the railings to pacify the poor folks standing outside with pitchforks and torches. It even usually works (see FDR and Bizmarck), but the rich have short memories, and within a few generations the whole thing starts over again. We're just in one of those periods where the rich folks have forgotten what a rampaging mob of starving peasants looks like, and not enough of the poor folks remember where the pitchforks and torches are.
See, poor folks generally don't vote, and if they do, they generally vote how they've been taught to. Middle class folks (the few that are left) vote with their aspirations, not their class awareness, because they've been taught pretty carefully to ignore any sense of class awareness. Rich folks vote with their wallets and their donations. That's why we still have voting. Because it doesn't change much, and what it does change is within very carefully limited parameters. And it allows the rich to point at the results and say "Well, you voted for this, it must be what you want, right? Quitcherbitchen, prole."
But, y'know, I'm an anarchist, so I'm probably a bit biased.
Got it in one. John and Jane Q. Public are supposed have an IRA or participate in a 401(k) or have a Keogh if they're self-employed. Some folks have a combination of these.
[cue bitter working-class laughter]
Some folks don't have any of them, and are never going to. I may know a couple of folks in meatspace with jobs that give them these sorts of bennies, but only a couple; most of the folks I know/work with/am related to are relying on Social Security to keep them in cat food and government cheese when they're too old to work anymore. Me, I figure the gasoline fumes will have finished me off before it's an issue; I'm just hoping I can stick it out long enough to get my kid a fighting chance.
Um, are you describing Hamas or the Bush Administration? There seem to be an awful lot of similarities between the two when you put it that way.
Well, yeah. Hamas wants to be the Bush Administration when it grows up, and under stress, the Bush Administration (or any other, for that matter) turns back into Hamas. Or the Medillin Cartel. Nature of the Beast.
The Right has achieved its satori: the citizenry pays taxes, is told to expect no vital govt services in return, and the citizenry sighs and goes out to buy more candles.
Well, at a certain point it becomes too expensive for any bandit group to maintain the facade of "governance" and they revert to their natural state of banditry. Among the first things to go are all those shiny social benefits that they use to keep the peasants comfortable. The last thing to go is their exclusive reservation of the use of violence. Hitting peasants and taking their money is what they're really about, at the core.
Now some members of the bandit group may have forgotten what they were really there for, or may never have realized what they were actually doing, and they get wierded out by the transition, and make noises about "abandoning our responsibilities" and suchlike. This usually results in the more practically minded bandits arranging for them to get it in the neck at the earliest convenient moment.
Question is whether the folks getting raided by the bandits will realize what's going on, or just recruit a new set of bandits to protect them from the old bandits.
And yeah, I do tend to conflate the mafia, Golden Triangle warlords and the US government. They're just different stages of the same social phenomenon.
This anarchist screed was brought to you by the letter A and the number 23.
Where would Earth's real/non-fictional population fit today?
Texas. With room for a 2000 square foot apartment for each of 'em.
The dangers they represent come only from the consequences of their illegal status, as far as I can tell.
Yeah, that's the main thing. Illegals can't complain when their employers treat them like shit, and that's what make them popular with far too many employers.
Me, I've got a scrub midnight gas attendant job, and as a result I get to see most of the folks who go to work in the morning and come home way too late at might. A sizeable chunk of the building trades here in northern Mass are staffed by spanish-speaking folks who look either Aztec or Dineh, mostly in groups of 5+ in a beatup minivan or driving one of the company trucks. An even more sizeable chunk of the late night cleaning ladies are middle-aged spanish-speaking women in a beatup car filled with cleansers and kid's toys.
Interestingly enough, these folks tend to tip more (and better) than the rich white folks in the SUVs. Which is to say, they actually tip. Rich folks are some cheapass motherfuckers, I tell you what.
Far as I'm concerned, let 'em all in, and give 'em all access to the same legal protection that citizens get. That'll sort out the majority of the problem. As for cultural assimilation, that's what time is for. Me, I'd like more immigrants who can cook. We've only got one mexican place in town, and they're kinda weak. What I wouldn't give for a decent Thai place, or a Morroccan place, or...
Dammit. Now I'm hungry.
Please accept my wishes for a green and pleasant De-Wombing Anniversary, from the rather chilly north. Dang, it's cold out there.
Let's see, how do you feel about public education?
I think the public oughtta be educated, and in most available cases, when left to their own devices, will do a good job of educating themselves. I know I did. Overwhelming majority of the stuff I learned came from reading on my own.
That, and eating smart folks' brains.
Fluoride in the water?
Waste of time and money.
Tinfoil hats?
Sez it all.
Ayn Rand?
Mediocre writer, worse philosopher. Had an occasional good idea, but tended to express them poorly.
UFOs?
They make pretty lights
Pi?
I like pecan-pumpkin pie.
Historically, that's been the basis for many governments, but not the one you live under. Yours is based on the mutual consent of the governed, and on the individual's inalienable right to life, liberty (as in "nobody owns you," rather than "nobody can tell you what to do"), and the pursuit of happiness.
That may be what it says on the paperwork, but there's a lot of wiggle room in the fine print. Those rights are plenty alienable if somebody rich or powerful wants your land or doesn't like what you put in your body or what you read. Yeah, there's paper defences you can use, but they're only as solid as the green paper you can stack up behind 'em.
By mutual consent, we elect representatives to a central federal government and to our local governments. By mutual consent we tax ourselves to provide for our various needs -- defense, infrastructure, and the well-being of our citizens, mostly. By mutual consent, we fund police, firemen, EMTs, prisons, and the judicial system.
Mind you, all that mutual consent is the mutual consent of the community, assuming that what they consent to doesn't infract other laws or your own LL&thePoH. Our entire system of government doesn't get renegotiated if one individual withholds consent.
If you can't say no, how does that qualify as consent? Can't say no, can't leave (no place to go), what else is there but sullen aquiecence? Yeah, the threat of violence is sufficiently delegated that in most cases it's nearly invisible, but that doesn't mean it's not there.
If a government body does a crappy or malevolent job, it doesn't go away. It might get restructured, and a couple of stooges might get reassigned if they step on somebody big's toes or if somebody small attracts the attention of somebody big, but that's the way it is with any coercive power structure. If you can get the right nobleman's attention or if the local capo tries to skim too much from the pot, yeah somebody bigger might step on him. That doesn't make you free.
Since you're a middle-class white guy with a buzz cut, pretty much the only way you can get shot by an officer of the law is if you get violent first and then get violent second: say, assaulting the guys who operate the tow truck, or tussling with the police when they try to take you in on a warrant, and then escalating into "credible threat" range when you're told to freeze, put your weapon down, and come along quietly.
"Middle class"? Heh. No, blue collar welfare kid. No, really my collar's blue and everything. And yeah, now that I know most of the cops hereabouts from pumping their gas every night for the last 11 years, I'm much less likely to get the same ration of shit they dish out to everybody else. Doesn't mean a thing outside the city, and it doesn't mean a thing to my not-so-respectable-looking friends and family members.
So, yeah, I'm polite and friendly with the police sergeant who's polite and friendly back, but I still remember him breaking my long-haired friend's nose on the hood of his car for walking around at 3 in the morning.
Could you start with unpaid traffic tickets, and end up getting shot? You could -- but you'd really have to work at it, and what you'd actually get nailed for would be assault plus immediate threat of further life-threatening mayhem. Meanwhile, the root offense underlying all your troubles would be, approximately, "refusing to acknowledge that you live under the same rule of law as everyone else."
So, yeah, if I actually defend my property or personal liberty, yeah, I might get shot. That's one of the reasons my boss usually says to just give the guy with the gun the money. Sometimes, I just can't. Yeah, that's nearly gotten me shot or stabbed occasionally, but sometimes I've gotta push back and say "Fuck no, you're not getting the money in the drawer."
Yeah, as long as I'm willing to roll over for whoever's got the gun, whether they've got a badge or not, I'll probably live. And yeah, as a responsible dad, most times I've gotta roll over to keep food and roof for my daughter. That doesn't mean I can't dream of a freer world for her to grow up in. And that doesn't mean that social administration based on coercive force isn't wrong. So I'm an idealist. There are worse things to be.
State of nature: no fun. That's why human societies stop living in it, as soon as they figure out that there's another way to go.
Well, when we do, sign me up. That's what I'm working on, too. But what we've got now is just the State of Nature with the big rock hidden behind somebody else's back.
Hey, that got kinda long. Sorry about that, and my apologies for the continuing thread drift. I just like you guys, and I'd like to have you get a vague idea what I'm talking about.
Well, Julius Caesar probably thought he was doing something very similar when he did his thing. That's been one of my larger worries about this whole Bush fiasco, that the generals would get tired of being ignored and having their soldiers wasted on dumbass stunts and pull a military coup. After all, it'd just be temporary, y'know, until they could put the country back on track and return it to the staunch republican values of our forefathers. That always works, doesn't it?
Oh, wait, no it doesn't. Military rule is a genie that's damn hard to put back in the bottle, but it can be really tempting to folks who are used to having people do what they're told without question, and not all of the folks in the upper military echelons are as fond of the subordination of military power to civilian authority as they used to be. US military culture has been getting more and more separate from civilian culture over the last 150 years, and a lot of the brass are from military families and have been part of that military culture since before birth. We're profoundly alien to them, and it's very easy to just opt for violence as a method of dealing with the alien.
It serves on every level to demean and dismiss, on the one hand, the idea that government can ever be a tool in which good people can do good things, and on the other, the idea that one ought to expect good things out government generally or the congress specifically.
Well, yeah. That's why I like it. Never forget, every action by a government agent has, at it's core, the promise that if that agent is disobeyed, eventually another government agent will come and shoot you. Government is force. If the only way you can get people to support your program of social reform or charitable aid is by threatening to kill them if they don't do what you tell them, you're probably not the best person to administer that plan.
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