The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Zander:

As someone whose early views on American foreign policy were informed (as they say these days) by Tom Lehrer, that doesn't surprise me in the least.

Not much changes in seven hundred years over here...

There was a time, a brief time, when I was a carefree child (sh'yeah, right) when Cap'n Crunch was available in Britain. I loved it.

I probably wouldn't enjoy it nearly as much now as I did then, but it would be nice to find out.

I notice no-one's mentioned the arch-exponent of extra-legal violence, everybody's hero, Dirty Harry Callahan...

Hmm. I wonder how they'll enforce that across national boundaries.

If they can, no problem. I lived without the web before it existed, I can do it again (since, as a non-American, I certainly can't do anything to stop it).

Hmm.

Nyrond's Addendum to Yog's Law;

"but seldom very fast."

Okay, confused. Is this actually a spoof, or am I having a sarcasm detection failure here?

I just posted on exactly the same theme...spooky...

Somebody commented in Bruce's LJ to the effect that there are some things you have to turn off your brain to enjoy. I don't agree. What you have to turn off is precisely *that* attitude, the ego-driven need to "punch holes in things just to demonstrate that [you] can," to kick over sandcastles and scribble all over a little kid's picture. The "turn off your brain" comment, even though the commenter is agreeing with Bruce, smacks of the same attitude: let's go slumming and *not* smash in the windows. How kind of us. Anyone who doesn't feel that they are superior to what they are watching is thereby made to feel inferior to the critics.

There is a place for reasoned, honest criticism and in-depth analysis. There is a place where the deficiencies of the shows I like to watch, the books I love to read, should be tabulated and known, so that the breed can be improved. Just not while I'm watching. :)

"That such men as the Bushes, Gingrich, McCain, Allen, Santorum, and Reed, and such women as Katherine Harris, Phyllis Schafly, and, save the mark, Helen Chenoweth, could be considered leading figures in a party which was once adorned by Fremont, Lincoln, and Douglass, is beyond tragic."

Yes. if it wasn't for those pesky democratic elections they'd never have got into power...

Just because someone thinks compassion, tolerance and equality are bad things doesn't mean we shouldn't treat them with compassion, tolerance and equality. Indeed, I think it makes it all the more necessary that we do. Kicking this poor, misguided soul out of fandom, were it possible, would only give him something else to kvetch about. We should maybe cluster round him, offer him chicken soup, and make it clear that we want to understand how he went so terribly, terribly wrong, and help him gently back to the path of true wisdom. For one thing, he'd hate it. :)

I looked down the comments to the Free Republic post, and here for your edification is the self-confessed extent of his acquaintance with written science fiction:
_________________________________
I have only read the works and short stories of:

H G Wells
EE Doc Smith
Larry Niven
Robert Heinlein
AE van Vogt
Issac Asimov(Second Foundation, History of the Greeks)
Edgar Allen Poe(Facts in the Case of Mr Valdemaar)
John W Cambell Jr(Who Goes There?)
Arthur C. Clarke(Exile of the Eons)
Dean R Koontz (Phantoms)
____________________________________

Presumably he re-reads them a lot...

A number of underlying assumptions in some of these comments are bothering me, including the one that says it's possible to say anything meaningful about "the religious," and of course the old chestnut that says religious people don't think, or don't question, or don't have to make moral decisions, or don't respect reason. The staggering untruth of that one, and its continued currency, never fails to amaze me.

I was never comfortable with Eccleston. He looked like a thug, he didn't sound right*, and as it turned out he went into the job knowing he was going to bunk off after a single season. I've got used to him in his episodes now, but for me he will always be Placeholder!Doc. Tennant is better. For one thing he respects the role.

*By which I don't actually mean he didn't talk posh. Several of the Doctors had non-"standard BBC" accents. Eccleston just didn't sound believable as a Time Lord.

Wait a minute. I think we're on to something here. If we can get the Republicans to label anyone who does something wrong and gets caught doing it as a Democrat, then that gets Bush, Cheney and all the rest of them out of office (since they were voted in as Republicans) and...

Why are you all looking at me like that?

"Only an idiot fights a war on two fronts. Only the heir to the throne of the Kingdom of Idiot fights a war on twelve fronts."

They're just getting started...

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.

It's a mystery to me (or rather I wish it was) that the Republican Party even exists, let alone that it keeps getting voted in.

Surely it's only a democracy if voting makes a difference?

Anyway, thanks for this. I can now look forward to the day when I can say "The world is safer now George Bush is no longer in power."

(Whether it will be, of course, is another matter. I'm not counting any chickens...)

Zander

Distracting people from reality is the media's main job. We're still, apparently, obsessed with, e.g., how and why Princess Diana died. Never mind that, e.g., our government is a morally bankrupt Tory-lite cabal of adulterers, embezzlers and toadies, led by a man who is too scared of falling off the tiger to try to steer it.

It's the same the whole world over...

So the social security being broken thing is false? That's very interesting. Wonder if the equivalent claim is false over here too?

Of course, there's one sure way they could make sure there won't be enough money in the s/s pot when we retire, and that would be to take it out and spend it on something else...

Ah, The West Wing. I have fond memories of Josh Lyman trying to get John Hoynes to address the social security issue, or any issue, and trying, and trying. And trying. The writer(s) may have been wrong about some things, but I think they had the right approach.

OG: no you're not. I think many of these things are staged.

Keir: considering what Blair has got away with already, considering what *Bush* has got away with, I think it's perfectly reasonable to theorise that he might try this (again? I don't know). For one thing, if he can get people scared enough, he might be able to hold on to power a little longer. Scared people don't risk change. The Tories are just making noises: the pigs are now sufficiently humanised that it doesn't matter to the corporate demons who's in power at any given point, but Blair has been terrified of losing his job for some years now. You can see it in his eyes.

And I thought all this *before* I saw V for Vendetta, by the way: the idea of a government inflicting terrorism on its own citizens is all too credible to me.

No, I'm not arguing with anyone. I don't usually feel the need to disparage things I love (by calling them "overblown kitsch" and whatnot), but I'm comfy with the fact that other people do, and I can fit in if necessary. :)

Thank you, Francis, for providing the context for the quote, and also linking me to a video I hadn't seen.

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