Brief Thoughts on Recent Events

Long time no write. My bad. Ultimately, it stems from me being pretty lazy. I am not a prolific writer. I don’t actually know how much I’ll cover with this post. I have only a few thoughts on some subjects, and they aren’t necessarily connected.

Paula Deen Says Things. Racist Things.

I wish I could say I’m surprised at the amount of support this woman is receiving  in regards to revelations that she is most likely what we (I) call a Probable Unexamined Casual Racist*. But I am not. Of course she has a fair amount of support. Personally, I have no problem with her Food Network contract being cancelled. They need to do what’s best for them, and it’s not like it’s going to leave her in the poor house (you know, with all those ethnic peoples).

Frankly, this situation is an example of how things should work. You say something stupid, you get called on it, and there are consequences. That’s the system working. Ultimately, I don’t think in Paula Deen news, this is as big as the whole diabetes med hawking fiasco was.

* This is what I call most people who routinely say racist shit, and have mild racist thoughts, but are not genuinely hateful like the Klan or anything. You probably know and interact with them all the time. In my youth, it was adults who said things like “I don’t mean all black people, just the niggers.”  Somewhere along the way, in their minds, “nigger” became more of a classist euphemism than a racist one. They’re wrong, but that’s how it is. They are hatefully racist, but they’ve also never examined their views on it. I think with folk a little younger than me, it seems to come up more in expressions such “Yeah, he really Jewed me on that one.” I have known people to say this and be absolutely, genuinely shocked when I explained what a racist thing it is to say.

Note – these people should not get a pass on this, even if they are older than dirt, because you’re never too old to learn. But with the PUCR, you might be able to enlighten or educate them so it’s worth a shot before turning to scorn, derision and mocking. Unlike with some others, where you should just jump right to mocking them, because fuck them.

Edward Snowden v. National Security Agency

Well. . . first, let me say just how much I am shocked and amazed that the NSA is monitoring communications metadata. I mean, wow, unbelievable.

That was sarcasm. Not my best, but there it is.

Did Snowden do the right thing by exposing the programs he exposed? Probably, though I don’t believe anyone was actually surprised by the reveal. I mean, he basically outed PRISM, which was a response to the Terrorist Surveillance Program, which we already knew about, so really, this isn’t news.

Is Snowden a coward? Yes and no. . . I view whistle blowing against the government as an act of civil disobedience. It’s breaking the law to demonstrate how the law is flawed or wrong. But a big part of civil disobedience is accepting the consequences of your actions.  Not running away like a frightened dog. So it was brave to release the information. It was cowardice to run from the consequences.

I know that in online discussions, I’m really, really tired of people saying he outed some huge illegal government activity. The entire point of the PRISM program is that it is, in fact, legal. As I noted, it came from the ashes of the illegal Terrorist Surveillance Program.

I’m also tired of people saying that we would have been screaming for blood if Bush had done this, but now that it’s “our guy”, we’re pretty quiet. That’s just a bunch of biased bullshit. Why? Well. . .

1. The Terrorist Surveillance Program was a Bush program, and there was an outcry about it.

2. PRISM was ALSO a Bush program (Protect America Act of 2007, FISA Amendments Act of 2008), so it’s not “our guy”.

3. There is an outcry about this. To say there isn’t is to intentionally ignore the response in order to try and score Internet Argument Points. In both this case, and the Terrorist Surveillance Program, though, the outcry isn’t from the general public (see below for more on that).

Does this mean I support PRISM? Fuck no. I think it’s a bullshit program, and would love for the law and regs concerning it to change. But I also have little faith in that happening (power possessed is rarely power released). I also accept the fact that PRISM and similar programs are not new, nor unique. They are descendants of programs that governments have been instituting since we’ve had governments. The people in power have always tried to accumulate and control information about both their enemies and their subjects. That’s simply the nature of the beast. Hell, even the Federation has Section 31.

Privacy and Why People Don’t Care

The reason we’re not seeing a huge outcry from the general public is because the general public doesn’t really give one rodent’s posterior about privacy. They think things like this are protecting us, they think things like this don’t affect them, and they just don’t care in general.

I mean, take a look at the rise of MySpace, Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter. Are those signs that people want privacy? No, they are not. They are examples of how people have essentially been waiting to expose all kinds of things about themselves. I mean, Joe Average might say how something isn’t any of his neighbor’s business, but then he’ll go and post pictures of it on Facebook. Now this isn’t just on the people. We’ve also been conditioned by moneyed and government interests to have a reduced investment in maintaining privacy.

But we live in a world where you are videoed and photographed all over the place. I mean, so many people have camera phones, and in fact, use their phones in place of regular cameras that there is a fair chance you’re being photographed every time you go outside. Then you’ve got companies trying to introduce products like Google Glass, and countless mini and micro surveillance devices.

The panopticon has arrived, and it’s too late to shove that genie back in the drowning sack.

The Fall of the Republic(an party)

Ah, Jesus, I don’t even know where to begin on this one. It’s getting to the point that literally almost every day a Republican will say something stupid at best, utterly abhorrent at worst. Lately, they’ve been scrambling to find a scandal to hang on the Obama administration, but nothing is really sticking.

They tried with Benghazi, but that didn’t stick (it didn’t help when it got out that Republicans had been involved with reducing budgets for security and personnel).

They tried with the IRS scandal, involving the extra scrutiny applied to certain groups with political sounding names. That too didn’t really stick. I mean, it had legs for a couple of minutes, until it got out that there was no connection to the Obama administration, the person who instituted it is a declared Republican, and the knowledge that Republican loudmouth (and selective transcript releaser)Daryl Issa knew about the investigations long before the news broke. Oh yeah, also the information that the groups deserved extra scrutiny (but some in fact did achieve the tax status they were seeking).

They are pretty much at the point of flinging fecal matter at the wall and praying something will stick. Really, though, that kind of describes everything the Republican party is doing these days, on both the state and Federal level.

They are continuing to wage attacks on the poor and on abortion rights on both the state and Federal levels, with some frankly scary successes on the state levels.

At this point in time, the Republican party is an embarrassment to the nation, in the eyes of the nation, and the eyes of the world. But as always, I maintain that these unconstitutional attacks and seditious speech are simply the last, desperate graps of a party that is collapsing.  And that is a great thing in the long term for the country (terrible for the short term with regards to the populace however). Why? Because when they fall, the Democratic Party will essentially become the new Republican Party, and a new party will step up (because God forbid we have a viable system of three or more parties) to balance them. Hopefully both will be sane parties.

Well, I’m tired now. Hopefully, I will write more later. But who knows? Only The Shadow knows.

P.S. I forgot, if you get the chance, absolutely check out the movie, Disco Godfather.