I'm not sure what this TV Funhouse segment on Saturday Night Live proves: that NBC magnanimously allows writing staff a wide range of opinion, or NBC and GE are so established that they don't even have to worry about public opinion. Somehow I think it's the latter, coupled with a presentation of these issues that doesn't reflect their gravity (hence, the humor) nor gives the viewer enough time to really learn about them.
Hat tip to the Agonist.
To set the context of my comments (and hopefully your comments as well), please watch this (LONG) two part Derrick Jensen talk (if you don't have time to watch it, please wait to read what I have to say until you do, or at least be open minded about what I'm saying until you watch it):
Now I don't pretend that we can know exactly how a free society will be, but I'm curious about the vision of left libertarians. I'd like to know your opinon on these two questions:
Is the world headed for an environmental disaster? Do you believe the situation is grim with respect to sustainable human civilization on this planet - anywhere near as grim as Jensen does?
I'm going to try not to make a habit of talking about Ron Paul's campaign too much on this blog, but there's one thing that I have to get off my chest, and that's all this talk about Paul's alleged ties with racists. Here's the accusations of which I'm presently aware:
So, let's assume for the moment that all of these accusations are damning - that they demonstrate Paul's association with the far Right. OK, so if Paul is an abject racist, where is all the racist legislation? After all, if Paul's alleged racism is dangerous to the country, it's because he will use his position of authority and power to advance a bigoted agenda. So show me when, in his capacity as a member of Congress, he has legislated in line with the hateful ideas he's purported to hold?
I don't think anybody will be able to meet this challenge because Paul's political philosophy would expressly prevent him from acting on these opinions, even if he actually held them*. The whole reason you're supposed to keep racists and bigots out of government is because they're going to use the power and authority of government to advance their extremist agenda. Well, where's the agenda, handwringers?
It's not really a whole quote, just a fragment of a sentence, but it was poetic enough to choke me up just a little bit. It's from Roderick Long's review of the Commissario Brunetti murder mysteries by Donna Leon:
When in the course of his investigations Brunetti comes across evidence of tax evasion or violation of various petty regulations, he always ignores it, identifying less with the state apparatus than with the vast informal fraternity of ordinary people trying to get on with their peaceful lives.
The only times I feel like this world might turn out ok are when I get a glimpse of how beautiful and perfect that fraternity is, made all the more special because of how often we drive it from our minds.
Last year I wrote a post in which I admitted confusion about an anarchist position towards voting. On the one hand, I reject the State and don't want to legitimize it by participating in its ceremonies. On the other hand, there are better politicians than others, and there's immediate dangers at hand. Not only that: as much as we may seek a community based on the principles of voluntary association, it's undeniable that the political system is not immediately extricable from the civil society. To reject that system root and branch divorces you in some way from the authentic political conversation that (though we don't like it) co-exists with the statism we abhor. What is an anarchist to do?
I've come to accept Charles Johnson's argument that to participate in elections is not the same thing as legitimizing them:
Well, I think the problem here is that you're giving too much credit to the State's own legitimating myths. There are cases in which participating in a process means tacitly accepting the legitimacy of the proceeding, and tacitly consenting to the outcome. But voting, at least, is not among them. For participation to count as consent, even tacit consent, it must be the case that refusing to participate would have exempted you from the outcome. Otherwise, I can't see how the "permission" you give to the government by voting is any different from the "permission" you give a mugger to take your money instead of your life when you hand over your wallet.
I think that reasoning holds up very well. If the State is illegitimate and just a big, mythical system, then how can it possibly matter what role I play in it? What ultimately matters is what individuals do in particular contexts. The superficial, systemic context only informs that ultimate analysis, in my opinion. I'm not saying there's no place for institutional analysis - we can gain a lot of understanding about what's actually going on through that - but that's the point: the analysis is supposed to give us data about what's going on behind the scenes, not to confuse the scenery for the substance.
From Kevin Carson's review of Chris Dillow's The End of Politics: New Labour and the Folly of Managerialism:
The hierarchical, authoritarian corporation is especially ill-suited to knowledge work, and other forms of production in which human capital is the most important factor.
It might make sense to give the order "be here by nine o'clock." But it's just gibberish to say, "be creative."
In an authoritarian environment, workers prefer (in the words of Kenneth Cloke and Joan Goldsmith) to "suppress their innate capacity to solve problems and wait instead for commands from above." [p. 279]
You would be surprised how small the corporation can be while still expressing this absurdity (although the small ones tend to be worlds better than the bigger competitiors). As a software developer who wants to stay in this business, I'm finding out more and more that I'm probably going to need to go freelance at some point to gain any sort of satisfaction from the work I do. And more than that, I'm interested in experimenting with organizational models that could sustain individual motivation and creativity without weighing it down with false managerial priorities. I'd like to put my money where my mouth is and tie my radical ideas with entrepreneurialism.
Ultimately, I want to work with others - but the corporate form makes this cooperation so grating. It's never organic - it can never be organic by definition - because I'm being ordered to cooperate. What is that?
Remember to contribute as much as you can - especially today - to Ron Paul! Both Tasha and I just submitted our donations.
And first YouTube upload ever. Tasha did the video on her new MacBook - like that "Ken Burns" effect? Enjoy!
I'm in the final hours of my first RubyConf, the annual international conference for rubyists being held in Charlotte, NC this weekend. There's been way too much information for me to possibly absorb completely, but the exposure to the community, the attitudes and thinking, and the possibilities people are exploring has certainly been a wonderful phenomenon to experience. I'm also seeing that I really haven't even scratched the surface of ruby - there's much more for me to learn than I suspected in my most pessimistic estimates.
Conference highlights (from memory) are as follows:
Jim Weirich's talk on Advanced Ruby Class Design. I was struck by his focus on the problem rubyist's essential dillemna / task of thinking outside the box when approaching a problem. Using rake and other examples, he showed how Ruby makes possible ways of coding that make the old, standard Java-esque OO approaches obsolete and unnecessarily one-dimensional. This is something I constantly struggle with, because I get used to solving a class of problems in one way instead of looking at each unique problem as an opportunity for a creative and expressive Ruby solution. I need more experience with a variety of Ruby projects: I learned more about Ruby by doing a scripting program over a week or two for a buddy than I have in 1.5 years of Rails coding.
Ben Bleything on Controlling Electronics Using Ruby was damn cool. This is an area I've been trying to get into for a while. I've wanted to do a custom security setup tied to my home computer ever since I did it professionally at NetTalon. I really feel like Ruby could make it fun, but I dunno - I'm easily frustrated and electronics seems frustrating. But it's awesome to see support out there for rubyist electronics hobbyists.
I'm officially posting in support of thisnovember5th.com, a site dedicated to raising $10 million in one day for the Paul campaign.
I'm not normally down with political contributions. However, the interesting thing about the Paul campaign is the spontaneous following he's generated out of those independents to which libertarians are always trying to appeal. This could be the start of something big - if not a libertarian presidency, then certainly a new and powerful popular libertarian movement.
Paul has constantly stressed that his message is more important than his personal political future. In that spirit I would urge you to pledge $100 to Ron Paul on November 5th - perhaps not so much to elect Paul as to provide tangible support for this new grassroots political consciousness that is emerging out of nowhere in this country. It would be absolutely unprecendented to raise $10 million in one day for a libertarian political agenda, and I want to be part of that.
But a man with a gun (the power to punish) is told only what his target thinks will not cause him to pull the trigger. The elite, with their burden of omniscience, face the underlings, with their burden of nescience, and receive only the feedback consistent with their own preconceived notions. The burden of omniscience becomes, in short, another and more complex burden of nescience. Nobody really knows anything anymore, or if they do, they are careful to hide the fact.
This one comes from my favorite vulgar libertarian, Radley Balko. Despite some of his corporate apologism he is doing some absolutely awesome work on police militarism. Today he has a penetrating comment on police justifications for SWAT raids:
This sort of case also emphasizes the inherent contradiction in the way police justify these raids. You'll notice in the article that the police say they conducted the no-knock, middle-of-the-night raid to catch the suspect and his family off-guard. They then turn around and say the girl who fired the gun should have known they were police officers. You can't have it both ways. You can't say nighttime SWAT raids are necessary to catch people unaware while they're sleeping, then say they "should have known" that the men invading their homes were police.
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