Tag Archives: Government

Why the Wall Street Movement Needs Your Attention

Business, Politics, Social Networking, , , , , , , , ,

There’s been a lot of conjecture from the mainstream media about how the Occupy Wall Street Movement is the liberal flip side to the Tea Party Movement. Unfortunately, they couldn’t be more wrong. It’s not like the mainstream media isn’t known for completely missing the boat even after it runs over them, but perhaps we need to explore what’s really going on to understand, perhaps, what’s really going on.

Let’s go back in time a bit with Duane’s special little time machine to, say, the middle of 2007. At this time, H. Clinton was the front runner for the Democratic Party, and Barack Obama was mainly known as a superstar senator from Chicago. A few people were talking about him as a possible political challenge to Clinton, but at the time there was little more going on with him other than the introduction of his book, The Audacity of Hope (released in 2006). During this time, I was focusing on Clinton, although not a real fan of her but figuring she had to be better than the crappy presidential administrations we were getting from the Republicans. I was probably wrong, but that’s another story.

Anyway, during this time, one of my fellow grad student colleagues started reading the book, and let’s just say he was overly enamored with Obama at this time, trying to get EVERYONE he knew to read the book because he had somehow found the new messiah. It was like you couldn’t hold a conversation with him without it turning to how great of a messiah Barack Obama was. And then, out of nowhere, it was like living in the world of the Invasion of the Body Snatchers, where rational people had been replaced by strange, pod people who didn’t become robotic but became Kool Aid drinkers of this new messiah of politics.

For months, it was nothing but a series of encounters with people that felt a lot like I experienced when I stopped drinking alcohol and started to notice that all of the drunks in bars were extremely stupid, but they couldn’t see it themselves because they were all drunk. That’s the kind of sensation I was getting on a daily basis as I dealt with people who I had normally discussed politics with. It was like all rationalization had been thrown out through the window.

What I started to suspect was something that took several years to occur, but I began to believe that we were being sold a messiah of politics, which meant one of two things was bound to happen: He was either going to fulfill that mission and everyone would feel wonderful (kind of as if we had a brand new John F. Kennedy or Ronald Reagan), or a lot of previously apathetic people who bought into the whole dream were going to emerge very, very pissed off at everything involving politics.

Well, the former didn’t happen. Sure, he got the Nobel Peace Prize for showing up for work on time and not actually doing anything that caused peace, but that’s about it. People had hopes and dreams with the guy, but the faith they had in him has diminished, and like waking up after a bender with a hangover, a lot of people have started to realize that four more years of the same would not really result in better circumstances, kind of like the Einsteinian definition of insanity (“continuing to do the same thing over and over and expecting different results”). So, we’re left with a lot of freshly enfranchised citizens who bought into the hope and change mantra hook and sinker, but didn’t get any positive results. So, where do we go from here?

If you listen to the mainstream media, they haven’t learned anything from what has happened, kind of expecting to go on autopilot like they have for the last four decades. Well, chances are pretty good that they are missing the boat yet again.

If you look at the Tea Party movement, you have a bunch of people who come from the right side of the fence, so it’s pretty obvious why they’d protest against a left sided president. Face it. No matter what he did, or does, they would never be satisfied. However, it’s pretty weak analysis if the belief is that the Occupy Wall Street movement is just the polar opposite of the Tea Party. If you think about it, you have a lot of people who didn’t care about politics before who are suddenly much more aware of current events and pissed that they didn’t get the messiah or religious experience they desired. So, of course, they’re going to be pissed.

But if the belief is that they’re pissed at Wall Street, one isn’t really paying attention to what’s going on. Wall Street serves as a great masthead for the corruption and problems going on, but if people are pissed off about the fact that “hope” didn’t result in positive “change”, the protests aren’t going to stop at Wall Street. Recently, President Obama has been trying to act like he “understands” the movement and “understands” the frustration. But if someone is part of the problem, then the chances are pretty slim that he actually understands enough to make a difference. It’s great if you’re trying to gain political capital, but if you’re trying to appease an angry population, that kind of patronizing is only going to piss them off more.

You see, the people are pissed at Wall Street, BOTH political parties, all politicians, corporations, lock-step police forces that defend everything they’re angry about (quite often with hostile approaches to everything without any desire to understand why the people around them are angry…police have never been very good at that sort of thing, and while it’s not exactly their fault, it’s not exactly their best attribute either), and a docile population that tends to side with the forces that are their own worst enemies. It was recently reported that the US has the worst CEO to worker pay disparity of any democracy (the numbers reported this year were 475 to 1, meaning for every $1 a worker makes, a CEO makes 475 dollars; that’s just absurd when you see countries like Great Britain at 35 to 1). But if no one seems to care, then obviously people are going to be pissed.

But what’s more important is where do we go from here? Do the protests start to turn to riots? Are leaders going to emerge that steer those riots/protests in any one direction? Or will they fizzle and people will go back to being sheep, like they’ve always been? One thing that probably won’t happen is that the people are never going to rally behind a passionate promise maker like Obama (or a group that makes promises in his name), which means that we’ll end up with even more apathy, which historically leads to either revolution or civil war. The only positive of those outcomes is that the population may become so apathetic that a revolution or civil war might occur and no one will show up.

That’s hope and change, I guess.

How Do You Steer a Rudderless Movement?

Economics, News, Politics, Social Networking, , , , , , , , ,

When the Tea Party first emerged, one of the notable features of the gatherings was the simple fact that there appeared to be no leadership whatsoever. However, as time passed, a few people became the spokespeople for the movement, and now whenever the “organization” is discussed, people can point at a few politicians and say “that’s their leader”. However, at one point, there were no leaders, and when the news media was trying to get comments from the protesters, it was very interesting to see how they tried to manage the fact that there was no one to actually interview.

Fast-forward to today, and we have yet another movement taking place that has virtually no leadership whatsoever. Unlike the Tea Party movement, this “organization” tends to hail from the liberal side of the political spectrum, but like the Tea Party, it shares the one attribute of having more in common with anarchy than actual political representation. The movement I’m talking about, of course, is the Take Back Wall Street movement that is currently occupying a lot of the current news.

It is yet another fascinating moment in people politics because it has absolutely no organization and has more in common with flash mobs than it does in any previous type of organizing behavior. Most events tend to be sporadic, immediate and out of nowhere, but unlike a flash mob, these movements tend to be stationary once they actually occur, meaning they don’t appear and then go away a few minutes, or hours, later.

But there are no leaders. And because of that, it is very difficult to determine exactly what they want, or what it would take to make them satisfied. The consensus, if there is one, is that people are outraged, upset and not going to take it any more, but when it comes to defining what they’re outraged about, why they’re upset, or what exactly they’re not going to take any more, that’s a little less apparent. Taking it one step further, what they actually want to fulfill their movement’s charter, if there was one, is even less tangible.

Analyzing it, they appear to be upset that Wall Street, or the people who work on Wall Street, have their own interests in mind at the expense of the rest of the country, or world. The claim is often made that the 1% (those who profit off of Wall Street antics) are profiting at the expense of the rest of the 99% of the country (and world). So, the desire is to somehow convince the 1% that the 99% are not going to take it any longer, and if things don’t change, that 99% is going to do something. What exactly, I’m not sure. No one else appears to know either. But they’re pissed, and they’re going to do “something” if “something” isn’t done to change things.

With a charter like that, it appears very difficult to figure out what they’re going to want or need to appease their members. Even worse, there’s no way to figure out who their members are, or even if they would be satisfied if “something” was done to appease them in the first place. I’m reminded of Mancur Olson’s The Logic of Collective Action, in which he pointed out that people have a tendency to free ride their way through collective action, expecting to achieve results but aren’t willing to do much to achieve those results. There appears to be a lot of free rider activity going on here, as was noticed during a recent Chicago flash mob of the Take Back Wall Street variation, reported by the Wall Street Journal, in which an independent trader named Roger Brownworth points out that he was disappointed at the turnout (he had seen only about 20 protesters), but at the same time didn’t seem all that interested in joining it himself.

But Olson isn’t the only source that should be of interest here. I’m also reminded of Poor People’s Movements by Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward (a great book, I HIGHLY recommend), who remind us that when people get together and form major movements to benefit their own interests, they’re often appeased by very minor reforms or benefits and then don’t show up for future gatherings, convinced that because there was such great outpouring the first time, they won’t be expected to show up for the next one, kind of backing up Olson’s projection. The Chicago gathering is a direct example of Piven and Cloward’s argument.

But that’s the movement itself, which in Piven and Cloward’s book usually points at an organization that has some type of leadership. With the Take Back Wall Street movement, we have no apparent leader where everything seems to be organized a lot like a flock of birds all turning together at the same time as a part of a social being rather than a collaboration of like-minded individuals. During the Gulf War protests during the Bush Administration, many gatherings of protesters were similar to this flash mob mentality, but quite often they were derailed by one or two individuals doing something uniquely ridiculous, like Woody Harrelson trying to climb up the gratings of the Bay Bridge during a San Francisco protest. Other major demonstrations were often turned by one or two individuals who acted as spontaneous agitators, yelling out something like “let’s take City Hall” which would cause throngs of people to start running off in one direction, causing a riot where a peaceful gathering was taking place only moments before.

That’s probably the biggest fear we have right now as when you have a mob (the obvious physical make-up of a flash “mob”), there’s a very real possibility that an agitator or two, either spontaneously or surreptitiously placed, may cause a group of people to react in a way that they were not intending to do when they first gathered to protest over concerns they may have had about injustices and unfairness. How many major sport events have turned violent because one or two individuals started doing or saying something stupid that somehow riled up a group of people who were already excited by the happenings of the particular event they were attending? Quite a few actually. Malcolm Gladwell points out in his book Blink that one of the biggest problems with excitable events, like a police car chase, is the excitement of the chase itself, which often can lead to adrenalin requiring some kind of release, which would explain why so many car chases end up with a physical altercation that might not have happened if people hadn’t been overly excited by the chase in the first place. The same thing occurs at these major social gatherings, like sports events, or for the sake of this essay, a flash mob. People are excited, they are yelling, and quite often it only takes a nudge in one direction for a group of people to start doing things they might not normally have done if they weren’t already overly excited.

Which means, there’s a good chance that one of these Take Back Wall Street events is going to turn violent if they continue to remain without leadership. However, if someone, or some people, arrives to take charge of this venue, there’s no promise that the presence of leadership is guaranteed to be in any way more positive. History is replete with examples of mob leaders who did some pretty horrific things once empowered with that ability to lead a group of people. And then there’s the equal fear that the emergence of leadership might doom the movement in the first place. Since the creation of “leaders” for the Tea Party movement, the spontaneous nature of that process has diminished greatly because a lot of the people who originally affiliated themselves with an unaffiliated organization never really fell in line with self-proclaimed wannabe leaders like Palin, Bachman, and the 70 or so Republican legislators who have claimed ties to the Tea Party foundations. Many of its members have actually gone underground, realizing that what they had to complain about was never solved by having people claim their throne in their name while never actually espousing their true beliefs.

The same problems may be seen for a Take Back Wall Street movement. The current crop of wannabe leaders already showing up are the likes of Michael Moore and other already entrenched in Washington political Democrats who see the movement as a way to shore up more support for their positions they already hold. There is also the tendency of the media to try to control the movement so it can be easier to report. CNN is already reporting How Occupy Wall Street Has Evolved, when CNN is still as clueless as the movement itself as to how it is changing, what it actually stands for, and what it actually intends to do.

What’s probably most significant is that a movement is underway, but no one knows where it is heading. It can become distruptive, like the Bolsheviks in Russia at the turn of the 20th century, it can be innovative like the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia in 1968, it can transform like the recent Arab Spring, or it may write its own chapter of unforseen future circumstances. Either way, it probably shouldn’t be ignored.

Why I Dumped the White House LinkedIn Group

News, Politics, , , , , ,

The other day, the President of the United States participated in a forum on the social networking site, LinkedIn. Having been a member of the White House LinkedIn group for a long time now, I observed the spectacle and didn’t think much of it. But then I posted another article to the White House group, which was subsequently ignored by the moderators and passed over as more “communication insiders” had theirs approved, asking the usual questions like “Is Obama Great or Just Wonderful” and other ridiculous tripe that is so one-sided it’s ridiculous. The article I posted was about the poor and political attention, which wasn’t partisan by any stretch of the imagination. But again, the impossibility of getting anyone to pay attention to a common person, like me, showed through.

So I finally decided I want nothing more to do with the White House or the President. As a matter of fact, I want nothing more to do with any politician who doesn’t give a rat’s ass about his or her constituents, except when it comes to getting their votes. I’m really sick of it. There are so many of us who are quite educated, with multiple ideas on how to fix the ails of this country, and getting heard is impossible. Basically, if you don’t have a lot of money to throw at a politician, no one wants to hear you.

So, from now on, no more memberships in groups that serve only to serve specific individuals who care pretty much only for themselves and pretend to care for the rest of us. This isn’t an anti-Obama thing, but an anti-politicians-who-don’t-give-a-crap-about-the-rest-of-us thing.

I left their group today, realizing I’d never make an impact anyway, considering the fact that even common comments are moderated and not included, so I thought I’d explain why. I figure no one cares, as was made clear in the fact that they never cared what I had to say before. However, don’t expect me to be a spokesperson, or a broadcast funnel for their ideas either.

The Struggles of Teaching Political Science to College Students

Economics, Education, News, Politics, , , , , , , ,
My role as a teacher

Every semester that I teach a new batch of students in political science, I find myself less and less confident in the future of America. Every now and then, a semester will throw off this natural trend, but more often than not, I find myself wondering what kind of future we’re leading to when so many students seem to have little to no grasp of the events happening around them.

I’m not talking about obscure political knowledge here. I’m talking about answers to simple questions like: “What’s going on the country today?” or “What are the important events happening in the world today?” I can understand the concept of being put on the spot to think of something. It used to happen to me when I first started my undergraduate days at West Point and an upperclassman would jump in front of your face and demand answers to “Tell me what’s on the front of the New York Times, New Cadet!” and you’d draw a blank more because you were scared to death of failing rather than actually not remembering what you read in the paper that morning. But this is different. When we finally end up with some story of current events in the discussion, like Obama’s “big speech on Thursday” I look around the class, and I’m met with completely blank stares, like they have no idea what was just mentioned. And when this continues over EVERY subject that gets brought up, you really start to feel scared when it comes to young people understanding what’s going on around them.

At one point in the past, I completely figured this was inconsequential because I started thinking, “who cares who knows anything about current events?” I figured it wasn’t all that important anyway. But it is important because significant decisions are being made each and every day in our governments, and quite often the people who influence public opinion and the decisions of leaders are completely clueless about what’s going on anyway. As Mussolini pointed out, when you have a population that is so blind to what’s going on around them, you can so easily influence them into doing anything you desire.

When we look at the last presidential administration and the atrocities that may have been carried out in our name, I look at the people of this country who don’t seem to care, and I immediately understand why so many bad things can happen at the hands of our leaders because no one will ever hold them accountable if no one has a clue what’s actually going on. When a presidential election occurs and the only reason someone votes for a leader is because of what partisan letter they registered for at one point in their life, we have a real problem. The country is divided into two camps of partisan designations, which means that the people who make up the party leadership of those two parties can practically do anything they want to do, and they’re still going to get the support of blind, oblivious constituents.

This is why someone like former Detroit mayor Kilpatrick can commit outright crimes against his own constituents, and he’d probably get reelected by the same people he cheated because their loyalties are to a mindset rather than to an individual. It’s why we have so much corruption in our governments these days. It happens so often that leaders rarely even hide it because they realize that they’re still going to get reelected because they’re not “the other guy”. This sort of thing stems from the fact that it takes a simple majority to put someone into office, and the majority of the population is filled with people who have no clue what’s going on in their government, and more importantly, don’t care.

The usual response to this argument is that “education” is the solution, but as one of those educators, I practically give up myself because no matter how much energy, how much struggle or how much entertainment I add to a class, students are generally only interested in rote memorization that will lead them to the answers for a test that they generally don’t understand. I’ve had students tell me a correct answer, but when I try to analyze the answer to see if there’s an understanding of the nature of that concept, they stare at me as if I just asked them the question in Klingon, meaning a) they don’t understand it, and b) as Klingon is from Star Trek, they figure it’s not important for them to give a rat’s ass about it anyway.

Yet, each semester I teach, I’ll receive a random email from a former student who thanks me for opening his or her eyes to knowledge he or she never realized existed, so I feel that I got through to someone. But when you have a classroom of 30-50 students, reaching two of them each semester leaves you with a sense that it’s not a successful achievement on a cost benefit analysis. You start to wonder if they would have come to this knowledge regardless, and you’re just surfing the wave that was heading towards the shore anyway. Or did you cause the wave to form? And if so, was it worth the costs of creating the wave in the first place.

I fear that not enough people are “getting it” to make a difference because when only 0.4% of the people who vote understand the process well enough to cast an enlightened vote, do the 99.6% doom us to bad choices, a doomed future and inevitable Mussolinis?

A Nation Without a Rudder

Business, Economics, News, Politics, , , , , , , ,

Sometimes, it is so easy to fall into partisan bickering that it’s not even necessary to write the column. Circumstances fill in all of the details for you. But if you’re one of those people who purport to be lacking in partisanship, or at least trying to avoid the pitfalls, it’s a lot harder to talk about the same issues without someone automatically believing you are part of the status quo (one side or the other) and immediately fill in criticisms because of such observations and beliefs.

The President of the United States delivered his “jobs” speech last night, and it went over like a lead balloon. The Los Angeles Times (most definitely not a conservative newspaper) took a tongue in cheek approach to covering the speech, and wrote an article that is probably one of the most sarcastic I have read in ages. Here’s an example:

But here’s the catch that Obama and his Windy City wizards missed: Most Americans are not politically obedient machine Chicagoans. Like a linebacker reading the quarterback’s eyes, they’ve already figured out this South Sider’s game.

But after the laughing subsides, you have to start looking at the bigger picture and wonder what’s really going on here. If it’s just about one side failing, and the other side benefiting, I guess it would be fine (if you were on the side benefiting, I guess), but in this case, we’re not in a zero sum situation (where one side wins); we’re in a no sum situation (where no one wins). The United States is in such need for sustained success, and we’re nowhere near finding it.

Unfortunately, our country is like a boat with no rudder. Granted, it’s a pretty strong boat, capable of floating quite well, but at the moment, no one has any idea where to take it, and even if they did, they don’t know what to do with it once we get where we’re going. Instead, the hope is that things will get better, and all we have to do is just hold our breath until we get to that better place. That’s not a plan for sustained greatness. It’s a plan to avoid bad things by hoping things won’t be so bad if we get beyond the current wave of bad things.

So what is the answer? Well, we need leadership that can focus on what’s really the problems with America and then do something about fixing them. But as long as every leader is only interested in self-interests, like getting re-elected, we’re never going to find a solution because we’re too stupid to realize that we need to allow them to fix things first instead of punishing them for trying to do what’s right. It’s like the whole Jimmy Carter election where he spent his re-election period trying to point out what needed to be done to fix America. He got slammed and destroyed by his opponent because he “hated America” and other such false-isms. We’re so stupid and incapable of realizing our own self-interests that we’ll let someone say nice things about us and then convince ourselves that the person must be a great leader because he said good things about us. That’s how simple the America psyche is. And that’s why we’ll never actually get any success.

America needs a splash of cold water in its face to wake up and realize what’s really wrong. But we’ll never get that because anyone who wants to run for office is doomed to have to say nice things and embrace American exceptionalism rather than try to fix anything that’s wrong. Think of it this way: If I was to run for office and say that the way to fix our cities is to eradicate poverty by actually focusing our attention on improving the lives of people in poverty, while creating a new atmosphere of intolerance towards gangs, racism, hatred, and corruption, and then turned around and devoted my political life to doing just that, my career would be over before it started. However, if I got up on stage and talked about how great America is, how I’ll use my office to put more police on the streets to “stop crime”, and that I will support business to “rebuild this country”, I have a far better chance of being elected, and once in office, I’ll be completely ineffective, but will probably be able to enrich myself by giving rich lobbyists exactly what they need to make sure their clients become richer, while people who really need help get limited help and lots of condemnation for not raising themselves up by their bootstraps. Think about that for a second because I’ve described practically every politician out there, from your local mayor to the President of the United States. And somewhere out there is a voice thinking to itself, “well, the problem is too big, so there’s really nothing that can be done about it” and another voice thinking, “well, if I can’t fix it, I may as well try to profit off of it and make a good life for myself”.

And so the band will keep on playing on.

America Needs a Social Messiah

Business, Economics, Education, News, Politics, Social Networking, Technology, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Most people feel it but don’t really know how to put it into words. Something’s wrong with our country, everyone seems to know it, but no one really knows what to do about it. Our politicians keep claiming they have it all figured out, but they’re floundering, unsure of what to do and constantly going back on everything they say because they’re as confused as the masses. Something’s wrong, and we’re at a stage where something needs to happen to fix what’s wrong.

Having said that, I have to point out that one of two things is going to happen (aside from nothing happening and this state of morass continuing for more years before a solution finally occurs). Either someone is going to come along and rally everyone together to lead them off the end of a cliff, or someone, or some thing, is going to arrive and lead us to a better place. We’re at that stage where we need something, and unfortunately everything already in place is totally incapable of doing the trick.

This is part of why Obama became president. He came after a crappy period in US history, when we had a president and and administration that led the country down a road into near despair and depravity. He came along and promised a new sense of America that would put the country back on track, kind of like a political messiah who would lead us to the proverbial promised land. Instead, he gave us a lot of what we already had, and basically became Bush Light, leaving us in a state where we’re still waiting for someone to come along and pick up the slack he was supposed to actually use to make things better.

It’s not just a bad economy that’s causing the frustration. It’s a sense that no one knows what to do with the most powerful country on the planet. We have no rudder, steering us to some place better because we honestly don’t know where a better place might exist. Technologically, we’ve created the computer and hand held devices that make life simpler, although they tend to make things even more complicated (adding to our work day instead of cutting it down). Intellectually, we kind of have a lot of science and medicine already figured out, although we still can’t provide health care for everyone, our medicine is created by companies that make only the drugs that are profitable and lobby to make sure things don’t get better for the masses, and we pay our businessmen far more than our engineers and scientists, which means we’ll always have more people making money than making better products. Our political landscape hasn’t changed since the 1800s, as we still rely on diplomacy that requires tit for tat game theoretical models which reward last year’s actions and beg next year’s compliance (even the Roman Empire planned five years ahead, rather than this “what have you done for me lately” policy we seem to have fallen into).

In other words, we don’t seem to have a direction, or even a clue as to how to get ourselves pointed in any direction. People are so focused on the now that they could care less about the future, and anyone who things progressively is seen as foolish and foolhardy, which means we are like ten year olds planning for lifetimes of mediocrity.

This is the time when someone can come along and change things. This could be a great thing, especially if we find an enlightened thinker, but unfortunately we’re so 18th century in our thinking that we all seem to believe we need an enlightened “leader” rather than an enlightened “thinker.” Think about that for a moment. When it comes down to it, we’re going to end up going to the polls, or erecting an homage to a power base, rather than follow the enlightened ideas of someone who has the right ideas. We’re so Hobbesian in our ideals (needing a leader to lead us) that we have forgotten that the US was created in Lockeian ideals (where we control the leader), and really should have been leading to Rousseauian ideals (where the group identity has more power than the individualistic desires that we have today…where some corporate entity can dominate the masses because it has economic power that speaks louder than ideas and voices).

Part of my fear is that most of the west is filled with people who are only capable of the lowest levels of Maslowian achievements (basic needs) rather than higher level analysis (using logic to figure out ways to fulfill needs rather than immediate gratification). This means that when someone comes along and tells us what we want to hear, we’ll comply and expect great results, and when that person proves to be no better than your average Detroit politician (i.e., corrupt), we’ll back that person even when things turn into Ponzi schemes and false hopes and promises. When people are incapable of thinking logically through higher level concepts, they’re constantly doomed to being cheated and exploited by their leaders (kind of where we are today).

The ideas of Rousseau are probably interesting to point out here because the ideas he espoused were those of an enlightened society that realizes its needs are met through its communicative knowledge, but as long as we want things fulfilled within easily constructed plans, we’re always going to be doomed to Hobbesian outcomes (the leader telling us to do what to do so he can get the payoff instead of us). The solution, unfortunately, involves more and more people talking to each other about how to make things better, but as long as media is one-way communication (them to us), we’re never going to get there. Social networking is designed to be two-way, but as I look at the recent approaches of Facebook and Google+, all I see are attempts to create celebrities with bullhorns, rather than a process to open communication between both sides. Which means we’re moving further and further away from where we need to be.

At the end of a diatribe like this, I’m sure the logical question will come: “Do we need to know this for the test?” And when I say no, thinking stops and texting starts.

So I give up again.

XXX: The Domain That No One Wants

Bizarre, News, Politics, Relationships, Social Networking, , , , , , , ,

An interesting thing has happened to the Internet. It’s adding porn. Yes, in case you didn’t know it, porn has not existed on the Internet until someone decided there was a need for it. Up until now, anyone involved with porn has been required to keep in off line, but some kid with a dream (supposedly a wet one) came up with this pie in the sky idea of creating a web domain so that all of the poor porn purveyors could one day experience pornography on the Internet. So, the government decided to invent XXX as a domain suffix (affix?) that now leads people directly to whatever their heart’s desire, as sick as that might be.

Okay, all sarcasm aside, porn has been on the web as long as the web has existed. You might even say that it led the growth, so to speak, of the Internet. But for the longest time, pornography has been integrated with non-porn sites so that quite often you ended up on a porn site instead of the one you were trying to get to. At least that’s the excuse I’ve been using, but that’s probably another issue. Anyway, the government decided some time ago that if they could create an area of the web where porn could be “controlled”, then everything would be great. So the idea of a XXX suffix was designed. And of course, because porn makes a lot of money, they decided they would charge $100-200 for the usage of the XXX domain.

Here’s the problem with their plan. No one wants it. And I mean “NO ONE.” The pornographers don’t like being separated from the rest of the web because they realize that most legitimate Internet providers will be cajoled into just blocking any XXX area. I’m sure someone will say “it’s for the children”, but whatever the reason, someone is going to make sure that people are unable to access this area of the web. The people who don’t like porn don’t like it either because they think that all of the bad people will suddenly come to the web (like they weren’t on it before). And I’m sure they’re convinced that because “of the children” they’ll need to somehow shut down this cesspool of depravity.

And no one else will like it either because it will mean more crap on the web that they don’t want to deal with. You’ll probably have all sorts of privacy issues and scams and whatnot because of this. What will end up happening is that the porn people will continue creating and making porn on the regular sites, and XXX will be relegated to a few choice names that most people won’t pay attention to. The government will probably step in and surreptitiously design some kind of monitoring system so that they can see who accesses pornography on the web (which they’ll argue is for good reasons, but will eventually be used to shame, humiliate and then blackmail people), so that the only people who use XXX will be those who are clueless at the problems they’re causing by accessing porn the “right way” instead of the logical way.

In the end, the whole project will be abandoned, much like the old newsgroups were destroyed when they were spammed to death by, well, porn. What started out as a great idea always ended up being destroyed by someone trying to make a quick buck, doing whatever he can do to scam you before you figure out what’s happening to you. The only victims will be the ones who went into it innocently because they felt it was the proper way to do things. The bad people, the criminals, and those smart enough to realize the value of anonymity, will continue to do things the way they have always done it. In secret and not where government and censors can find them.

(Update: Turns out I was incorrect on the price of the domain registration. According to Daily Tech, it is $200-300, not $100-200 as I thought).

Should Lying Be a Crime?

News, Politics, , , , ,

Recently, the Casey Anthony trial took all of the breath out of America, as people focused day and night on whether some young woman killed her kid. Personally, I wasn’t all that transfixed by the trial, but I do pay a lot of attention to what other people obsess over. I am a communications scholar, after all.

However, one thing that caught my attention is the crime she was eventually convicted for, in lieu of the major ones for which she was exonerated by the jury (as long as Nancy Grace isn’t considered one of her peers, as that woman doesn’t know the meaning of the word “impartial”), was lying to the police. They couldn’t get her for murder, neglect or bad parking, but they got her for lying to police.

Personally, I have a real problem with this. I’ve always been a strong advocate to not liking whenever government tries to get a foothold in control over its people, ever. And one area is the crossroads of compliance and truth. I don’t think people understand what a trauma it can be to have the police questioning you, trying to get you to slip up in a conversation so that they can use it against you in a court of law. The police are not your friends, your allies, or anyone with whom you have any allegiance. Yet, somewhere down the line, there’s this belief that if the police ask you a question, you have to answer truthfully.

I disagree. If I’m ever accused of anything, I would like to think it is in my personal rights to do everything possible to keep the government from suppressing my personal rights of freedom. They may have a responsibility to figure out the truth, but that doesn’t equal a responsiblity on my part to help them do that. Government is NEVER on your side, no matter how many political ads try to say otherwise in hopes of getting another corrupt politician elected. The police work with the sole purpose of convicting people who they suspect of crimes. When you are in their headlights, you stopped being protected by the government and become a target for all sorts of abuse. And historically, government and police are well known of doing everything possible to take advantage of that abuse. Lately, the Supreme Court has been siding with them on quite a few cases, meaning that if you’re ever suspected of anything, kiss your ass good bye because there is no one left to protect you from the system itself. Certainly not the truth.

I’ve seen the truth manipulated in ways that would make a politician spin. As an investigator, I remember working on cases where very directed investigators would go after a suspect with such a zeal that you wonder what kept them from launching it in the first place. I’ve seen people who could have been very innocent who were railroaded because some inquisitor “felt” that was his target, and all other logic was irrelevant. I remember having a conversation with an investigator when I pointed out that the “suspect” couldn’t have been guilty because of the logic of the facts, and being told “Well, I’m sure she’s guilty of something.” That’s the mindset that leaves me realizing that in no circumstance would I ever want to have to rely on the “truth” as being the difference between my freedom and my incarceration.

There have been a few cases recently where politicians have been brought down strictly on the lying crime. Most of them I didn’t like because I generally don’t like politicians anyway, but at the same time, I’ve liked the whole “crime of lying” thing even worse. I think we have something really to worry about when we’re more concerned about putting someone in prison because our interrogation tripped someone up into saying something he or she may not have meant, or we threw so much information at someone that 1 + 1 doesn’t equal 2 to them anymore. I’ve seen it happen, and it’s a sad day when we put someone away because we didn’t like them (like Casey Anthony) but said nothing about the way we did it because we didn’t like them in the first place.

I figure most people will disagree with me because of how they feel about the Casey Anthony case. That, unfortunately, is practically my point, but people stop listening once they let their passions do their thinking for them.

Keeping Up on the Ridiculousness of Current Events

News, Politics, Religion, , , ,
My buddy Joshua as he surfs the web reading the news

Sometimes, I find myself astounded at the news that I read on a daily basis. I mean, honestly, real people, living real lives, take themselves seriously while they live their lives doing the most ridiculousness shit I’ve ever seen. Some congressman tweets naked pics of himself to constituents in hopes of scoring with hot young woman while his wife is in the middle of announcing her pregnancy with his child. Another politician reveals her blatant ignorance of history while members of her flock try to justify her stupidity with even more stupidity rather than just chalk it up to yet another stupid moment in political punditry. And practically every other nationally elected representative in the country can’t come to a consensus long enough to decide whether or not the country should default, fold or just sell itself to China. Then we have teenagers whose claim to fame is that they played someone in some movie, who are offered million dollar writing contracts to publish books about ideas that they may one day write, as if anyone can write a book, and all you need is a “good idea”. Banks are arguing with retailers over who gets to charge fees for credit cards, oil companies are arguing over how much profit they should be able to receive, while OPEC countries try to convince the rest of the world that they’re not charging too much for oil, even though they’re realizing they need to lower prices or people will get smart enough to stop buying oil and start looking for other sources of energy.

Every day, I read the newspaper, and I basically learn nothing newer than I learned the day before. Very rich people cheat everyone else, and when they get caught, they use the illegal money they received to hire very wealthy lawyers who defend them for outrageous prices (which are obviously paid for by the outrageous amounts of money the crooks stole in the first place). Because the government really never actually “gets” any of the money back to the people, the victims are made to pay the price of the cheating, although sometimes through outrageous price hikes from the companies that never really lost any money in the first place, and more rich crooks keep making more money.

And every day, people who hate other people kill them, justifying it because the day before the other guys killed their people first. If you think about it, international politics is essentially school yard politics, where grudges from recess are carried over into lunch time. And sometimes, some of the kids gang up on the other kids after school. And tomorrow, it all repeats itself. It’s amazing how little we haven’t learned from simple elementary school politics.

Yet, when it comes to racism, hatred and anger for the sake of being angry, we are no different than when we were a bunch of Vikings with spears. We like to think of ourselves as enlightened, but we’re really only slightly politically correct, based on how much we answer to the people around us. In reality, we get away with as much as we think we can get away with, and when we’re called on our stupidity, we might apologize. If we’re more powerful, we might pay off the people we beat up, but we won’t actually apologize but instead will take no responsibility for our actions but “want to get the matter behind us.” Somewhere in the background, someone will act all sanctimonious and uppity, and that’s about all of the rationalization we’ll allow ourselves. But we’ll continue to tell ourselves that we are doing what is best, and that we’re really good people, although often misunderstood or misinterpreted.

And current events just don’t change. If you really want to boil down current events to simplicity, it can be said that people will do whatever they think they can get away with, basically taking responsibility for as much as they have to, mainly because there might be witnesses. I’d like to think there’s a moral foundation, or even a moral authority, but when our moral authority relies on religion, and our religion relies on hating other people because they’re not the same religion (translation: Anyone who disagrees with our Word is worthy of any punishment we see fit and thus, no longer privy to our best behavior).

Every day, I experience so much that is wrong with the world, so much that is wrong with individuals who think themselves “above” that sort of thing, and I’m bothered because I can’t even guarantee I’m above the same behavior I want to demand from everyone else. And if you can’t demand it from yourself, and I’m almost to the point where I believe no one can, then what’s really left to pursue? Perhaps the solution is to crawl under a rock and ignore the rest of the world. I’m starting to think it couldn’t be that much worse than the alternative.

Our Government’s Purpose is to Protect Government and Rich People

Memoirs, News, Politics, Writing, , ,

In case you haven’t figured it out, the reason our government exists isn’t to protect the rest of us. It’s to protect very wealthy people and other people in government. An example is the current event involving e coli poisoning. For the last week or so, we were told there’s absolutely no fear of any spread in the United States, even as the same articles were reporting that were sporadic cases of infection in the United States. It’s almost like no one even pays attention to what’s really going on and then just continues business as usual. Well, guess what? There are actual cases of e coli spread in the United States now. Imagine that.

I’ve been stating this for a long time, but no one seems to care (and they still won’t): Our government isn’t really representative of the rest of us. It’s representative of very wealthy people who continue to believe themselves worthy of raiding the government coffers for themselves. They’ll justify it under all sorts of different rationalizations, like “giving back to the poor” or “the wealthy pay the most taxes” or whatever makes them feel best. But in the end, when it comes down to a simple yes or no decision, rational actors decide what is best for them, not for the greater good. This is why we can have a story where the claim is made that oil companies are profiting off of people by doing horrific things to other people and the environment, and then when challenged by “government”, they’ll still continue to do horrific things to other people and the environment, and then turn around and claim “PROFIT!” before giving out absurd sums of money to their executives in bonuses, right before turning to the government and claiming a loss in the same breath that they tell stockholders they are raking in more money than ever before. And the rest of us? We’re so insignificant that they don’t care what we think.

Right now, we have a party in power that got into power by claiming the other party was doing evil things. Rather than stop those evil things, they continued doing the same evil things, claiming the issue is “complicated”, and have asked for four more years to continue doing the same things to make things better by doing the same evil things that have been done for decades. And we’ll vote them that extra time. Why? Because we’re morons. And they know it, so they’ll lie to our faces and tell us everything’s great. And we’ll buy it. Not only that, but we’ll donate to their campaigns to make sure they keep doing it.

And a few of us will complain. And no one will listen because we’re not listened to by anyone. Hell, we can’t even get a major distributor to give us a voice for other people to hear. Instead, the people who get heard are the mainstream people who keep doing the same shit over and over again. And then someone will try to sell us Lady Gaga as if that’s “extreme”. Or they’ll talk about how outrageous Charlie Sheen is. And we’ll buy into it. Why? Because we’re morons. And they know it.

That’s really all I have to say. Which is okay because I’m not important to have anyone pay attention to me anyway.

Have a nice day.