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Nixon was also operating at the height of the Cold War, when there may have been a legitimate right to more control over what the press can and can't say or rel

Nixon was also operating at the height of the Cold War, when there may have been a legitimate right to more control over what the press can and can't say or release. Obama is operating at the height of what? Asymmetric warfare where we're basically beating third world peasants into submission. Or maybe the War on Drugs where we're basically beating first world peasants into submission and slavery, whilst turning a complete blind eye to what's only comparable to genocide in a country we share a boarder with. What our government is trying to do is on par with returning us to serfdom. I keep hearing that things are supposed to get better, but it's important to remember; freedom comes after the blade of a guillotine. No one in power is going to stop abusing it, we only have to look at the repeated introduction copyright legislation, time after time after time it gets submitted until it gets broken down and submitted piece by piece and slips under the radar. This will stop when its forcibly stopped, and the longer it takes the greater chance it will be done by violence.

hga 13y ago
How about the less inherently violent Pareto "history is a graveyard of aristocracies". We've got something akin to that in our ruling class, and we need a Pareto style circulation of elites to fix it. That doesn't inherently have to be ultra-violent, then again, there doesn't seem to be much in the way of limits our ruling class has in what they're willing to do to retain power. As you specifically note, "on par with returning us to serfdom", which does not strike me as hyperbole.
- electromagnetic 13y ago
  It sounds hyperbolic, but when you look into the prisoner rates and the amount of non-voting past felons who essentially are stuck in wage slavery at or below minimum wage just to work. The amount of people who are stuck well below the poverty line due to working minimum wage jobs, with zero job security and zero ability to move as unemployment is so high there's less than no guarantee you'll get a job if you do, and the size of the middle class who are frequently living pay check to pay check. > The Domesday Book showed that England comprised 12% freeholders, 35% serfs or villeins, 30% cotters and borders, and 9% slaves. It really doesn't look too far from where we're already at. Although we do have the right to vote who oppresses us... even though we have no way of knowing if the votes are actually representative of the desires of the people what with vote rigging.
- Daniel_Newby 13y ago
  > ... there doesn't seem to be much in the way of limits our ruling class has in what they're willing to do to retain power. I disagree. There are strong limits on what our courtier class is willing to do. Those limits are not even particularly objectionable. The problem is that the limits are beyond what it takes to provoke a strenuous response from the average person. Our government is unstable. If it were to move one millimeter beyond public toleration, a vicious cycle of escalation would start. The last straw would be something seemingly trivial, like a flippant speech about how hungry Americans could just eat cake. (A scenario that is actually plausible, given Washington, D.C.'s obsession with paying their cronies to turn corn into transportation fuel.) The most disturbing thing about the courtiers' obsession with espionage is how careless they are being with operational security. They are using espionage to score PR points but neglecting the basics of opsec: mandatory access controls, cryptography, competent background checks, etc. If some Booz Allen yahoo could rifle through NSA documents, then other countries already had everything.
  - electromagnetic 13y ago
    What's worth pointing out with the corn->ethanol issue is that it would take 1 acre of prime farmland to run your average F150 for 5 weeks. That acre would be damn close to perfect nutritionally (IE mixed diet, animals actually use more land but can feed on relatively infertile but pasture-able land) feeding one person for a year. However, in actuality one bushel of corn averages 50 ears, the national corn harvest average per acre is 123, which means 6150 ear of corn, which means ~16.8 ears of corn a day. 110 calories for your average ear of corn, meaning 1800 food calories a day for a full year. On one tank of gas for your average commercial vehicle. I do not get why anyone would want to turn corn into fuel, because even fuelling a statistically insignificant portion of the market would literally mean removing hundreds of thousands of peoples food from circulation. And it is food grade corn that goes to make ethanol, because unsellable ears of corn are already spoken for and sold for animal feed. One of the main reasons I want to buy land is so I can become as close to fully self sustaining as possible.
PavlovsCat 13y ago
And even forgiveness and generosity can only be applied once the chains are broken. As long as you're still under the yoke of someone else, you cannot really punish them; when you're free from it, you don't need to. I had a dream to that effect a long time ago, I still remember it vividly and it's still my favourite dream. People are chained with lies, anything more real than that they built themselves, based on those lies, and they can destroy it just as easily. I hope.

hga 13y ago

How about the less inherently violent Pareto "history is a graveyard of aristocracies". We've got something akin to that in our ruling class, and we need a Pareto style circulation of elites to fix it. That doesn't inherently have to be ultra-violent, then again, there doesn't seem to be much in the way of limits our ruling class has in what they're willing to do to retain power. As you specifically note, "on par with returning us to serfdom", which does not strike me as hyperbole.

electromagnetic 13y ago
It sounds hyperbolic, but when you look into the prisoner rates and the amount of non-voting past felons who essentially are stuck in wage slavery at or below minimum wage just to work. The amount of people who are stuck well below the poverty line due to working minimum wage jobs, with zero job security and zero ability to move as unemployment is so high there's less than no guarantee you'll get a job if you do, and the size of the middle class who are frequently living pay check to pay check. > The Domesday Book showed that England comprised 12% freeholders, 35% serfs or villeins, 30% cotters and borders, and 9% slaves. It really doesn't look too far from where we're already at. Although we do have the right to vote who oppresses us... even though we have no way of knowing if the votes are actually representative of the desires of the people what with vote rigging.
Daniel_Newby 13y ago
> ... there doesn't seem to be much in the way of limits our ruling class has in what they're willing to do to retain power. I disagree. There are strong limits on what our courtier class is willing to do. Those limits are not even particularly objectionable. The problem is that the limits are beyond what it takes to provoke a strenuous response from the average person. Our government is unstable. If it were to move one millimeter beyond public toleration, a vicious cycle of escalation would start. The last straw would be something seemingly trivial, like a flippant speech about how hungry Americans could just eat cake. (A scenario that is actually plausible, given Washington, D.C.'s obsession with paying their cronies to turn corn into transportation fuel.) The most disturbing thing about the courtiers' obsession with espionage is how careless they are being with operational security. They are using espionage to score PR points but neglecting the basics of opsec: mandatory access controls, cryptography, competent background checks, etc. If some Booz Allen yahoo could rifle through NSA documents, then other countries already had everything.
- electromagnetic 13y ago
  What's worth pointing out with the corn->ethanol issue is that it would take 1 acre of prime farmland to run your average F150 for 5 weeks. That acre would be damn close to perfect nutritionally (IE mixed diet, animals actually use more land but can feed on relatively infertile but pasture-able land) feeding one person for a year. However, in actuality one bushel of corn averages 50 ears, the national corn harvest average per acre is 123, which means 6150 ear of corn, which means ~16.8 ears of corn a day. 110 calories for your average ear of corn, meaning 1800 food calories a day for a full year. On one tank of gas for your average commercial vehicle. I do not get why anyone would want to turn corn into fuel, because even fuelling a statistically insignificant portion of the market would literally mean removing hundreds of thousands of peoples food from circulation. And it is food grade corn that goes to make ethanol, because unsellable ears of corn are already spoken for and sold for animal feed. One of the main reasons I want to buy land is so I can become as close to fully self sustaining as possible.

PavlovsCat 13y ago

And even forgiveness and generosity can only be applied once the chains are broken. As long as you're still under the yoke of someone else, you cannot really punish them; when you're free from it, you don't need to. I had a dream to that effect a long time ago, I still remember it vividly and it's still my favourite dream. People are chained with lies, anything more real than that they built themselves, based on those lies, and they can destroy it just as easily. I hope.