The tendency of tech society is tyranny

[Ibrahim]

My point exactly. They do not go back to the farm. In China, they go to camps of unemployed and possibly back to the old villages to spread discontent as shiftless, uppity extra labor that will never be married. I am thinking in was an Esquire piece that spoke of this. I will find it shortly.

But I agree with your assessment. No amount of professional malleability will make up for the fact that the unemployed simply isn't high- end AI, and this will do nothing but get worse. That's why the perpetual criminal system ( note: NOT justice system) is a thing of beauty. You don't need to employ than. They are employment when they're put into tiny little boxes. At that point, you can just have them bust rocks. They won't be much trouble.

Well coping with a discontented population is the basic game of all government through history. I haven't yet seen a solution that appeared to be workable long-term. But then civilization hasn't collapsed yet so who knows?

The prison system in the US is an interesting method that I don't think has been tried before (Stalin's gulags, the only historical comparison, had a different motivation). The problem I see is that the prison system, while privately profitable, is still a public expense, and the public purse in the US is getting a little strained. In fact that's the interesting question about the entire techno-totalitarian concept: how does it pay for itself? I guess the first step will be cutting all services to the plebs.

Cutting services to the plebes is more expensive as prisoners get far better and more expensive treatment than a free plebe out on the open market. And since the plebescite is losing its market power, it will increasingly turn to crime as a way to make up for the shortfalls in the system. So ultimately the prison structure is more expensive than simply putting people on welfare.

I agree entirely. Its a combination of ideology and effective lobbying that those public funds go to prisons rather than programs that prevent people going to prison. The statistics of US crime and corrections vs. any other Western nation bears this out, unless a person wants to go the "yeah, but blacks..." route.

Arguably the private profitability of prisons is a kind of technology, and relies on certain technologies, and I think the for-profit prison complex fits nicely into DoU's theory of techno-totalitarianism.

Arguably totalitarianism itself is a product of the modern (i.e. 20th century) era.

Well, in reality, prisons change function depending on where on the timeline you are. At first, prisons were used( in addition to holding dangerous people) reinforce racial class structures. This is where it is still very much at today, but prison mutated during this time. It became a way to keep a permanent economic underclass under monitoring and supervision.

But all the while, the real mechanisms of control were being laid on. In the media, in the culture, from all quarters, choices multiplied but all remained in approved- of margins. You don't keep a cow out of trouble by staking in to the ground on a four foot leash. You give it a safe, clean pen to chew its cud. The mechanisms of control that are more subtle than shackles are already doing their work. Playstation civilized New York, not Giulliani. The best chain imaginable is the one a prisoner begs to wear.

What's interesting to me about specific cases is how one city will be some kind of violent hellscape, then be cleaned up, then the problem moves somewhere else. Today it is obviously the south side of Chicago, before that west Baltimore (immortalized by HBO) and before that south-central LA (immortalized by some good movies/albums and many bad ones).

The general principle that American justice is all about protecting the middle class white people in the 'burbs (who mostly don't want to leave their houses anyway) I agree with completely.

[noddy]

I would argue that you may not have an interest in politics, but politics has an interest in you.

That's the nature of totalitarianism. You might be able to escape it by dying before it reaches your shores, but your children will not.

sure - however my personal definition of the difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter is the percentage of people that agree with you.

as such, as a good citizen and a decent human (hah, i feel funny typing that) my only choice as a minority viewpoint is to accept i dont have the right to cause chaos and death for my own wishes.. hence im left as a minor league fabian for liberty and/or a migrant waiting to happen.

i absolutely believe that in a roughly 50/50 split in two party support that a magority of each side love the authoritarian comfy conformity and the liberty viewpoints in both sides are minorities... mayhaps it 20% at best across the entire population.

stay irrelevant, stay free

truer words have seldom been posted.....

Big Brother knows if you just control the fads the cool kids buy into, the rest of the herd will fall in line (on line?).....

At least that's what Beyoncé said in one of her tweets.....

"stay irrelevant, stay free "

This is actually an example of not being free, and exposes the errors in the outlook of both posters, SM and noddy. If you aren't willing to actually kill people to be free then you are only ever one of freedom's freeloaders and not a champion of or believer in freedom itself.

dont go prattling on to me about americas founding fathers one second and then go getting all stand and fight the next - we are all the descendants of borderers and immigrants who made a lifestyle out of walking away from corrupt class systems with ossified political structures... you would still be in some shitty old world european country living in a city if this wasnt true.

i do admit the above was my "going galt" muse - im fighting that feeling alot lately.

[noddy]

My point exactly. They do not go back to the farm. In China, they go to camps of unemployed and possibly back to the old villages to spread discontent as shiftless, uppity extra labor that will never be married. I am thinking in was an Esquire piece that spoke of this. I will find it shortly.

But I agree with your assessment. No amount of professional malleability will make up for the fact that the unemployed simply isn't high- end AI, and this will do nothing but get worse. That's why the perpetual criminal system ( note: NOT justice system) is a thing of beauty. You don't need to employ than. They are employment when they're put into tiny little boxes. At that point, you can just have them bust rocks. They won't be much trouble.

Well coping with a discontented population is the basic game of all government through history. I haven't yet seen a solution that appeared to be workable long-term. But then civilization hasn't collapsed yet so who knows?

The prison system in the US is an interesting method that I don't think has been tried before (Stalin's gulags, the only historical comparison, had a different motivation). The problem I see is that the prison system, while privately profitable, is still a public expense, and the public purse in the US is getting a little strained. In fact that's the interesting question about the entire techno-totalitarian concept: how does it pay for itself? I guess the first step will be cutting all services to the plebs.

the failsafe on these situations with prisons and propaganda failing in societies big and small has always been war unless a good plague cut in first.

my own personal sense of the time to war clock has gone from 6.00 pm to minutes before midnight over the last decade - even the cold war pressures seem quaint in comparison to the modern situation of market failures and population pressures and changing power structures.

hopefully im being pessimistic but the rhetoric about interlinked global markets making war irrelevant only work if these markets are confident and growing and you dont see alot of that in the future right now.

[Simple Minded]

stay irrelevant, stay free

truer words have seldom been posted.....

Big Brother knows if you just control the fads the cool kids buy into, the rest of the herd will fall in line (on line?).....

At least that's what Beyoncé said in one of her tweets.....

I would argue that you may not have an interest in politics, but politics has an interest in you.

That's the nature of totalitarianism. You might be able to escape it by dying before it reaches your shores, but your children will not.

Amen bro. I could not agree with you more. I have often said the fact that Fred and his progeny reap the benefits of his rational thinking, and suffer the consequences of his irrational thinking are one of the most beautiful aspects of life. I wish everyone all the best of success in their effects to change themselves and the world, right or wrong, they will realize it after a few decades.

Perhaps due to faulty DNA, or self-induced brain damage, I just can't buy into most of the currently popular concepts of cause and effect.

The military/media/prison/medial-industrial-complex..... big oil...... big pharma...... Bilderbergs..... CIA creating AIDS...... chemtrails..... MMGW...... 2012...... birthers...... 1%ers.... 99%ers..... Cheney/Haliburton......Dems/Repubs/Liberals/Conservatives/whites/blacks/Christians/Jews/Muslims are evil..... etc..... No matter where I turn, I just can't find a currently chic
weltanschauung that makes sense to me.

Maybe my CPU is tooooooo slow? If only I could just view myself as a victim of something other than my own thinking!!!

That, and I also believe (as noddy has pointed out), just because one is a minority and miserable, does not give one the right to impose their idealized view of reality on others. I know I am a minority, but I'm not miserable..... so no group of cool kids will have me.

As best as I can tell, every single person I have ever met is a minority, why some choose to be miserable and some don't is a mystery of the mind. Sometimes, ya just gotta respect their chosen mode of thinking, even if you think they are wrong.

Check out Descartes third maxim....

So for the foreseeable future....... I'm sticking with "Don't trust anyone over 30!" and "Japanese culture is superior to all others (cept maybe Stralian)!"

[Simple Minded]

stay irrelevant, stay free

truer words have seldom been posted.....

Big Brother knows if you just control the fads the cool kids buy into, the rest of the herd will fall in line (on line?).....

At least that's what Beyoncé said in one of her tweets.....

"stay irrelevant, stay free "

This is actually an example of not being free, and exposes the errors in the outlook of both posters, SM and noddy. If you aren't willing to actually kill people to be free then you are only ever one of freedom's freeloaders and not a champion of or believer in freedom itself.

One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter..... or One man's freeloader is another man's ex-wife... brother-in-law.... teenage child....... concubine....... lawyer..... or something like that..

[monster_gardener]

My point exactly. They do not go back to the farm. In China, they go to camps of unemployed and possibly back to the old villages to spread discontent as shiftless, uppity extra labor that will never be married. I am thinking in was an Esquire piece that spoke of this. I will find it shortly.

But I agree with your assessment. No amount of professional malleability will make up for the fact that the unemployed simply isn't high- end AI, and this will do nothing but get worse. That's why the perpetual criminal system ( note: NOT justice system) is a thing of beauty. You don't need to employ than. They are employment when they're put into tiny little boxes. At that point, you can just have them bust rocks. They won't be much trouble.

Well coping with a discontented population is the basic game of all government through history. I haven't yet seen a solution that appeared to be workable long-term. But then civilization hasn't collapsed yet so who knows?

The prison system in the US is an interesting method that I don't think has been tried before (Stalin's gulags, the only historical comparison, had a different motivation). The problem I see is that the prison system, while privately profitable, is still a public expense, and the public purse in the US is getting a little strained. In fact that's the interesting question about the entire techno-totalitarian concept: how does it pay for itself? I guess the first step will be cutting all services to the plebs.

Cutting services to the plebes is more expensive as prisoners get far better and more expensive treatment than a free plebe out on the open market. And since the plebescite is losing its market power, it will increasingly turn to crime as a way to make up for the shortfalls in the system. So ultimately the prison structure is more expensive than simply putting people on welfare.

I agree entirely. Its a combination of ideology and effective lobbying that those public funds go to prisons rather than programs that prevent people going to prison. The statistics of US crime and corrections vs. any other Western nation bears this out, unless a person wants to go the "yeah, but blacks..." route.

Arguably the private profitability of prisons is a kind of technology, and relies on certain technologies, and I think the for-profit prison complex fits nicely into DoU's theory of techno-totalitarianism.

Arguably totalitarianism itself is a product of the modern (i.e. 20th century) era.

Well, in reality, prisons change function depending on where on the timeline you are. At first, prisons were used( in addition to holding dangerous people) reinforce racial class structures. This is where it is still very much at today, but prison mutated during this time. It became a way to keep a permanent economic underclass under monitoring and supervision.

But all the while, the real mechanisms of control were being laid on. In the media, in the culture, from all quarters, choices multiplied but all remained in approved- of margins. You don't keep a cow out of trouble by staking in to the ground on a four foot leash. You give it a safe, clean pen to chew its cud. The mechanisms of control that are more subtle than shackles are already doing their work. Playstation civilized New York, not Giulliani. The best chain imaginable is the one a prisoner begs to wear.

What's interesting to me about specific cases is how one city will be some kind of violent hellscape, then be cleaned up, then the problem moves somewhere else. Today it is obviously the south side of Chicago, before that west Baltimore (immortalized by HBO) and before that south-central LA (immortalized by some good movies/albums and many bad ones).

The general principle that American justice is all about protecting the middle class white people in the 'burbs (who mostly don't want to leave their houses anyway) I agree with completely.

Thanks for your post, iBS

all about protecting the middle class white people in the 'burbs

Another one of your lies, Ibrahim.......

Justice is also about Black folks or folks of any color not wanting Niggaz/perps Black or White (video below at ~5:53) or any color taking their stuff, assaulting them etc..............

But from the Nikah Sheik thread so far, you seem not to care about brown on brown crime so it is not much of a leap to guess care most/mostly about white on brown crime.........

f3PJF0YE-x4

[Demon of Undoing]

Playstation civilized New York, not Giulliani.

Why didn't playstation civilize Chicago, South Central LA, etc.

It did. Violent crime is down in virtually all categories, nationwide, as opposed to where it was at the peak of the 70s and 80s. It is only among the gung- ho civilian paranoiacs that the lesson of that has not been learned. Among that crowd, zombies and spree murderers have never been more prevalent. Actually, though, we're very nearly at a post- War low. Too much TV will make you think otherwise.

[Ibrahim]

My point exactly. They do not go back to the farm. In China, they go to camps of unemployed and possibly back to the old villages to spread discontent as shiftless, uppity extra labor that will never be married. I am thinking in was an Esquire piece that spoke of this. I will find it shortly.

But I agree with your assessment. No amount of professional malleability will make up for the fact that the unemployed simply isn't high- end AI, and this will do nothing but get worse. That's why the perpetual criminal system ( note: NOT justice system) is a thing of beauty. You don't need to employ than. They are employment when they're put into tiny little boxes. At that point, you can just have them bust rocks. They won't be much trouble.

Well coping with a discontented population is the basic game of all government through history. I haven't yet seen a solution that appeared to be workable long-term. But then civilization hasn't collapsed yet so who knows?

The prison system in the US is an interesting method that I don't think has been tried before (Stalin's gulags, the only historical comparison, had a different motivation). The problem I see is that the prison system, while privately profitable, is still a public expense, and the public purse in the US is getting a little strained. In fact that's the interesting question about the entire techno-totalitarian concept: how does it pay for itself? I guess the first step will be cutting all services to the plebs.

the failsafe on these situations with prisons and propaganda failing in societies big and small has always been war unless a good plague cut in first.

my own personal sense of the time to war clock has gone from 6.00 pm to minutes before midnight over the last decade - even the cold war pressures seem quaint in comparison to the modern situation of market failures and population pressures and changing power structures.

hopefully im being pessimistic but the rhetoric about interlinked global markets making war irrelevant only work if these markets are confident and growing and you dont see alot of that in the future right now.

America has been at perma-war with vaguely defined enemies for twelve years now, and all it did was cost two trillion dollars and main/mentally injure rather than kill a generation of soldiers (more expenses). To get those Malthusian/Spengleroid benefits of a war you need some real Somme/Ypes stuff and I don't see how we get to there from here unless somebody starts popping nukes. I think the fear of war is more useful than the war it self for modern technocracies.

[Ibrahim]

Violent crime is down in virtually all categories, nationwide, as opposed to where it was at the peak of the 70s and 80s. It is only among the gung- ho civilian paranoiacs that the lesson of that has not been learned.

To me it makes perfect sense that this segment of the population wants to play-act the frontiersman defending his family from hostiles even as his life becomes safer and more similar to everyone else's.

[noddy]

Playstation civilized New York, not Giulliani.

Why didn't playstation civilize Chicago, South Central LA, etc.

It did. Violent crime is down in virtually all categories, nationwide, as opposed to where it was at the peak of the 70s and 80s. It is only among the gung- ho civilian paranoiacs that the lesson of that has not been learned. Among that crowd, zombies and spree murderers have never been more prevalent. Actually, though, we're very nearly at a post- War low. Too much TV will make you think otherwise.

dont go bringing facts into this - it ruins the narrative of fear.

[noddy]

My point exactly. They do not go back to the farm. In China, they go to camps of unemployed and possibly back to the old villages to spread discontent as shiftless, uppity extra labor that will never be married. I am thinking in was an Esquire piece that spoke of this. I will find it shortly.

But I agree with your assessment. No amount of professional malleability will make up for the fact that the unemployed simply isn't high- end AI, and this will do nothing but get worse. That's why the perpetual criminal system ( note: NOT justice system) is a thing of beauty. You don't need to employ than. They are employment when they're put into tiny little boxes. At that point, you can just have them bust rocks. They won't be much trouble.

Well coping with a discontented population is the basic game of all government through history. I haven't yet seen a solution that appeared to be workable long-term. But then civilization hasn't collapsed yet so who knows?

The prison system in the US is an interesting method that I don't think has been tried before (Stalin's gulags, the only historical comparison, had a different motivation). The problem I see is that the prison system, while privately profitable, is still a public expense, and the public purse in the US is getting a little strained. In fact that's the interesting question about the entire techno-totalitarian concept: how does it pay for itself? I guess the first step will be cutting all services to the plebs.

the failsafe on these situations with prisons and propaganda failing in societies big and small has always been war unless a good plague cut in first.

my own personal sense of the time to war clock has gone from 6.00 pm to minutes before midnight over the last decade - even the cold war pressures seem quaint in comparison to the modern situation of market failures and population pressures and changing power structures.

hopefully im being pessimistic but the rhetoric about interlinked global markets making war irrelevant only work if these markets are confident and growing and you dont see alot of that in the future right now.

America has been at perma-war with vaguely defined enemies for twelve years now, and all it did was cost two trillion dollars and main/mentally injure rather than kill a generation of soldiers (more expenses). To get those Malthusian/Spengleroid benefits of a war you need some real Somme/Ypes stuff and I don't see how we get to there from here unless somebody starts popping nukes. I think the fear of war is more useful than the war it self for modern technocracies.

this is true but i dont agree it requires popping nukes - it just requires that the existing status quo of peaceful trade breaking down and the cost/benefit analysis of being in charge of the new world order of market and trade making the short term costs of war more attractive to a long term standing.

the up and comers can create a much better place for themselves and america and europe are much more paranoid about losing the current control and all the elite rulers are wondering what they are going to do with increased angry millions inside in their own borders due to the downturn.

some blame the big wars on specific events which triggered them others say those triggers are but the spark on an existing tinderbox and right now that tinderbox is as dry and dangerous as it has been in a long time.

golly gosh im optimistic right now - heres hoping we are under the control of the multinational lizard people banking squids - only that will stop the above from happening hahah.

[Demon of Undoing]

Violent crime is down in virtually all categories, nationwide, as opposed to where it was at the peak of the 70s and 80s. It is only among the gung- ho civilian paranoiacs that the lesson of that has not been learned.

To me it makes perfect sense that this segment of the population wants to play-act the frontiersman defending his family from hostiles even as his life becomes safer and more similar to everyone else's.

What they're doing is fighting the last war. There was a time that filling the moats with stakes and pitch was an appropriate ( or at least viable) response. Now, though, you can man the catapults all you want. The kids still have an iTunes account.

Those cultural anachronists are seeing the intel they expect to see- increasing crime, assaults on nonwhites, constant oppression of Christianity. They are not totally wrong, that is happening in some cases. But they mistake estrangement for assault. It's not they are alone against the world, which their tradition and philosophy assures them is the case. They are simply ones among billions. To think that collectivism is being stuffed down their throats is an inaccurate assessment. Six billion mouths and counting simply makes no room for anything but collectivism. It's nothing personal. It's just business, inevitable business once you not only drive off the predators but make coats of them.

[noddy]

Violent crime is down in virtually all categories, nationwide, as opposed to where it was at the peak of the 70s and 80s. It is only among the gung- ho civilian paranoiacs that the lesson of that has not been learned.

To me it makes perfect sense that this segment of the population wants to play-act the frontiersman defending his family from hostiles even as his life becomes safer and more similar to everyone else's.

What they're doing is fighting the last war. There was a time that filling the moats with stakes and pitch was an appropriate ( or at least viable) response. Now, though, you can man the catapults all you want. The kids still have an iTunes account.

Those cultural anachronists are seeing the intel they expect to see- increasing crime, assaults on nonwhites, constant oppression of Christianity. They are not totally wrong, that is happening in some cases. But they mistake estrangement for assault. It's not they are alone against the world, which their tradition and philosophy assures them is the case. They are simply ones among billions. To think that collectivism is being stuffed down their throats is an inaccurate assessment. Six billion mouths and counting simply makes no room for anything but collectivism. It's nothing personal. It's just business, inevitable business once you not only drive off the predators but make coats of them.

yep - not dealing well with becoming just-another-minority.

[Simple Minded]

this is true but i dont agree it requires popping nukes - it just requires that the existing status quo of peaceful trade breaking down and the cost/benefit analysis of being in charge of the new world order of market and trade making the short term costs of war more attractive to a long term standing.

the up and comers can create a much better place for themselves and america and europe are much more paranoid about losing the current control and all the elite rulers are wondering what they are going to do with increased angry millions inside in their own borders due to the downturn.

some blame the big wars on specific events which triggered them others say those triggers are but the spark on an existing tinderbox and right now that tinderbox is as dry and dangerous as it has been in a long time.

golly gosh im optimistic right now - heres hoping we are under the control of the multinational lizard people banking squids - only that will stop the above from happening hahah.

I recall reading a concise summary of "When it is profitable to project power, empires are built, when it is no longer profitable to project power, empires collapse." Regardless of desire or intent....

[Enki]

this is true but i dont agree it requires popping nukes - it just requires that the existing status quo of peaceful trade breaking down and the cost/benefit analysis of being in charge of the new world order of market and trade making the short term costs of war more attractive to a long term standing.

the up and comers can create a much better place for themselves and america and europe are much more paranoid about losing the current control and all the elite rulers are wondering what they are going to do with increased angry millions inside in their own borders due to the downturn.

some blame the big wars on specific events which triggered them others say those triggers are but the spark on an existing tinderbox and right now that tinderbox is as dry and dangerous as it has been in a long time.

golly gosh im optimistic right now - heres hoping we are under the control of the multinational lizard people banking squids - only that will stop the above from happening hahah.

I recall reading a concise summary of "When it is profitable to project power, empires are built, when it is no longer profitable to project power, empires collapse." Regardless of desire or intent....

Good point, but the nature of capitalism is that empires can arise from within Empires. The American Empire falls every single generation. In terms of our foreign footprint we just took over the British Empire. But in terms of who rules and how they rule inside the country that shifts based upon which industry is ascendant. We were ruled by the children of Standard Oil and General Electric for the past century but the new century belongs to Google and some others that haven't shaken out as supreme. I think people really need to take a step back, look at Google and recognize that it didn't even exist 16 years ago.

[Marcus]

Good point, but the nature of capitalism is that empires can arise from within Empires. The American Empire falls every single generation. In terms of our foreign footprint we just took over the British Empire. But in terms of who rules and how they rule inside the country that shifts based upon which industry is ascendant. We were ruled by the children of Standard Oil and General Electric for the past century but the new century belongs to Google and some others that haven't shaken out as supreme. I think people really need to take a step back, look at Google and recognize that it didn't even exist 16 years ago.

Utter foolishness as I see it, Tinker, and one more, off-beat brand of conspiracy theory.

We will be ruled by God (read "The Moral Law") or we will be ruled by tyrants regardless of the system in place.

As for Google et al., more foolishness . . what you're seeing and can't figure out is the coming together of humanity in a new world order the state is powerless to prevent.

[Mr. Perfect]

To think that collectivism is being stuffed down their throats is an inaccurate assessment.

You would do well to learn about segmentation. You have often taken people with very little similarity, formed a fake average and drawn erroneous conclusions.

Six billion mouths and counting simply makes no room for anything but collectivism.

Collectivism starves people, it doesn't put food in their mouths.

[Demon of Undoing]

To think that collectivism is being stuffed down their throats is an inaccurate assessment.

You would do well to learn about segmentation. You have often taken people with very little similarity, formed a fake average and drawn erroneous conclusions.

Six billion mouths and counting simply makes no room for anything but collectivism.

Collectivism starves people, it doesn't put food in their mouths.

And you would do well to try looking at the world from a viewpoint not your own.

Collectivism may indeed starve people. It is a fact that capitalism can do it ,too. We're not talking about favorite ideologies. We're talking about you playing the part of the British Army in the movie "Zulu" but having no rifles. If you insist on looking at it with 20th century eyes, that's what you will see.

Right up until you realize that the concertina wire barricades don't keep them out. They keep you in. Actually, at this point, it's a fait' accompli.

[Mr. Perfect]

The economic fundamentals of capitalism go back to Babel, nothing will change about that till the Lord comes. Yes, many have embraced collectivism and the starvation attendant will return as well.

Some of this is a rural/urban split, a very high percentage of the rurals will be able to re-adopt agrarian capitalism while the spreadsheet wizard urbans will not.

[noddy]

most of the happy church groups and community groups ive seen are collectivist - in itself its a healthy thing.

the dissonance only cuts in when external forces demand collectivism between groups that wouldnt form it naturally via free consent and most of the political true believers dont respect free consent so tyranny is a natural outcome.

the ability to inflict tyranny is only limited by the technology - which brings up nicely back to the morbid topic, the only thing id change in the wording is that the tendancy for most societies is periods of tyranny and tech just makes it more so.

[YMix]

most of the happy church groups and community groups ive seen are collectivist - in itself its a healthy thing.

They're probably starving as we speak.

[Demon of Undoing]

Diversions, diversions. Capitalism, isn't and collectivism in its current incarnation is prone to celebrate individual choice more than even the most libertine capitalism of yore. The categories fail this, and that's not a bug, its a feature.

As far as technological tyranny is concerned, financial attitudes are irrelevant. There are capitalist tyrants and collectivist tyrants. Technology has finally allowed the pie- in- the- sky dreams of the biggest monsters imaginable. It will be used, flat out, and the economic theories of various constituencies will be used just as long as warranted to get everybody in the concertina wire. This isn't a theory. It's history.

[Ibrahim]

Violent crime is down in virtually all categories, nationwide, as opposed to where it was at the peak of the 70s and 80s. It is only among the gung- ho civilian paranoiacs that the lesson of that has not been learned.

To me it makes perfect sense that this segment of the population wants to play-act the frontiersman defending his family from hostiles even as his life becomes safer and more similar to everyone else's.

What they're doing is fighting the last war. There was a time that filling the moats with stakes and pitch was an appropriate ( or at least viable) response. Now, though, you can man the catapults all you want. The kids still have an iTunes account.

Those cultural anachronists are seeing the intel they expect to see- increasing crime, assaults on nonwhites, constant oppression of Christianity. They are not totally wrong, that is happening in some cases. But they mistake estrangement for assault. It's not they are alone against the world, which their tradition and philosophy assures them is the case. They are simply ones among billions. To think that collectivism is being stuffed down their throats is an inaccurate assessment. Six billion mouths and counting simply makes no room for anything but collectivism. It's nothing personal. It's just business, inevitable business once you not only drive off the predators but make coats of them.

That's also the wall you run into with any opposition to tech-based society. We can't feed all these people otherwise. The far-right and far-left individualist ideologies bump into the same problem, and eventually have to say "so what, more room for trees/'real' Christians."

[Ibrahim]

Violent crime is down in virtually all categories, nationwide, as opposed to where it was at the peak of the 70s and 80s. It is only among the gung- ho civilian paranoiacs that the lesson of that has not been learned.

To me it makes perfect sense that this segment of the population wants to play-act the frontiersman defending his family from hostiles even as his life becomes safer and more similar to everyone else's.

What they're doing is fighting the last war. There was a time that filling the moats with stakes and pitch was an appropriate ( or at least viable) response. Now, though, you can man the catapults all you want. The kids still have an iTunes account.

Those cultural anachronists are seeing the intel they expect to see- increasing crime, assaults on nonwhites, constant oppression of Christianity. They are not totally wrong, that is happening in some cases. But they mistake estrangement for assault. It's not they are alone against the world, which their tradition and philosophy assures them is the case. They are simply ones among billions. To think that collectivism is being stuffed down their throats is an inaccurate assessment. Six billion mouths and counting simply makes no room for anything but collectivism. It's nothing personal. It's just business, inevitable business once you not only drive off the predators but make coats of them.

yep - not dealing well with becoming just-another-minority.

This is the big cultural crunch for white American conservatives today, but its a temporary problem. Its only the current generation living through the demographic shift that freaks out and fills the basement with Glocks and Spam. The next generation of right-wingers will have grown up with ethnic and religious plurality and be used to it, they'll focus on other things.

[Enki]

Violent crime is down in virtually all categories, nationwide, as opposed to where it was at the peak of the 70s and 80s. It is only among the gung- ho civilian paranoiacs that the lesson of that has not been learned.

To me it makes perfect sense that this segment of the population wants to play-act the frontiersman defending his family from hostiles even as his life becomes safer and more similar to everyone else's.

What they're doing is fighting the last war. There was a time that filling the moats with stakes and pitch was an appropriate ( or at least viable) response. Now, though, you can man the catapults all you want. The kids still have an iTunes account.

Those cultural anachronists are seeing the intel they expect to see- increasing crime, assaults on nonwhites, constant oppression of Christianity. They are not totally wrong, that is happening in some cases. But they mistake estrangement for assault. It's not they are alone against the world, which their tradition and philosophy assures them is the case. They are simply ones among billions. To think that collectivism is being stuffed down their throats is an inaccurate assessment. Six billion mouths and counting simply makes no room for anything but collectivism. It's nothing personal. It's just business, inevitable business once you not only drive off the predators but make coats of them.

yep - not dealing well with becoming just-another-minority.

This is the big cultural crunch for white American conservatives today, but its a temporary problem. Its only the current generation living through the demographic shift that freaks out and fills the basement with Glocks and Spam. The next generation of right-wingers will have grown up with ethnic and religious plurality and be used to it, they'll focus on other things.

I think that people like me are probably the future of that party if it has a future.