Fucking Huffington Post. It's poorly staged bukkake for the dull and unimaginative. There's no brink here. A bunch of invented personae are arguing over how to distribute imaginary currencies, in order to pretend that they aren't otherwise doing real harm to living persons for their own emolument.
If you think fiddling with budgets and politics is anything but theater, you are an uninspired idiot and you should put your cookware to good use by bashing yourself in the face with it until you go deaf, dumb and blind and your sensory organs finally match, in capacity and usefulness, your organic data processing capabilities.
Anyways.
When ten thousand robin'oods blossom, and a hundred thousand more conspire to hide them, we'll be "on the brink" of something.
19 comments:
absolutely wonderful on that last line.
Well said. It's not even the least bit entertaining, either. It just bores you to tears. Come to think of it, that's probably the point.
My unscheduled/unpaid vacation at midnight suggests this is more than theater to my life.
At least you can visit the beach, fish.
~
Nice. But there are some cool things about it, if it happens. A few people, like fish, won't get paid, but they won't be working. I think the service people are going to work and they are not going to get paid. I find that intriguing. And the airport folks. The TSA's will risk their lives for $9 an hour, but will they do it for free?
It is also very cool because it is imaginary in the truest sense. They are talking about not spending something which not only doesn't exist, but which they claim they are out of and need to owe less of because they haven't even made the stuff yet! That is actually very fucking cool.
This is the image I was looking for.
fish,
That's what I mean by "...in order to pretend that they aren't otherwise doing real harm to living persons for their own emolument."
The discussion of budgets is theater. But, it has a companion show, which we ourselves perform, having learned to do so almost automatically over the course of learning how not to starve to death.
What would happen if you and your coworkers were to show up, tomorrow. Use your passcodes and entry keys, and start doing what you normally do?
You would be performing the appropriate labor, but you would get no monies or recompense for it, right?
That's because our paychecks are in fact permission slips to give back to the company stores our labor - represented in dollars, etc - at reduced value.
We do this theater every day of our lives. We pretend that the people who say they own things and control things actually do. They don't. There's not enough of them to ever actually keep us under wraps if we decide we no longer want to perform in our pre-scripted roles.
What would happen if only the ruling class was left performing its skits? What if we did the work, and distributed its produce, and didn't ask for their permission to have their permission?
What if you and your coworkers showed up, tomorrow, regardless of the televised theater?
drip,
How true. They are pretending that the fiat money they declare to have value is not sufficient to equal its declared value.
What if we did the work, and distributed its produce, and didn't ask for their permission to have their permission?
Parallel economy.
Hola KFO. que nota?
Soy imparcial, drip.
The circus is especially good right now. I'm plowing through the popcorn. Or were they rice cakes? Not very tasty but heard they're good for me.
What if you and your coworkers showed up, tomorrow, regardless of the televised theater?
Ironically, we would have been fined harshly. Where I work, myself and the people I supervise wanted to continue and would not have been allowed. But I happen to be lucky enough have a job that carries rewards beyond a paycheck.
I pretty much agree with much of the theater of it all, although I think even most of the principle actors are unaware of the dynamics controlling the roles they play. Not so much a shadowy cabal, but driftwood following the current.
So while the outcomes were certain enough that even Digby could predict them, I was not convinced 800k employees wouldn't have to deal without a salary for an indeterminate time. Harm on top of harm.
The Errol Flynn 'stache back in fashion? Never happen.
Jack, have you been noticing stuff like this?
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2420887
Gene,
It's not familiar to me, in all honesty. But those aren't circles in which I've ever traveled, and I lack the aptitude and expertise needed to use the computer in that manner.
It's heartening to see that there are those who can, and do.
Jack,
Sorry, I thought you'd get the handle
Gene S. Dio = Diogenes. if you start reading after the period and wrap back.
It's Justin.
The context of the discussion group is a debate about the conflict between Sony and the hacker group Anonymous.
The story is typical corporate tyranny kind of thing. Sony went after a guy who hacked their encrypted code on his Sony game console that allowed people to access all the content. He published this on a web site. Sony sued his ass off, shut it down, and started tracking down the people who ever accessed his site to sue as well for copyright infringement.
Enter anonymous who then hacks Sony's database and finds the personal information of all the top level executives and begins to harass them personally and their families.
When you said Robin Hoods and such, this is what anonymous is doing essentially on the internet.
If you recall, a few months ago they brought down the private security company HB Gary for its role as a tool of the security state. And they made another fairly successful attack on credit card companies who tried to cut off access of funds to Wikileaks.
The hackers that are doing this stuff are very closely aligned to our beliefs and have acquired the technical knowledge to put those beliefs into action on the internet in a way that matters to the power structure. As proof of that, consider that what they do is illegal.
Justin,
I saw it, assumed I was wrong, reminded myself not to be clever, and went wool-eyed into an earnest reply.
I'm laughing right now. So that's something.
More later, have to get a kid from school.
PS - Not ignoring what you wrote, elsewhere. In older parlance, I feel convicted by it. Had me at a loss.
I like Anonymous, Justin, but I'm also wary. It's exactly the sort of org/non-org which could be co-opted by spooks and we'd never, ever know it happened.
One of the net goods of the older party (faction) organization which arose in Europe, and its Wobbly/Union analogs in the Americas, was that face-to-face interaction gave emotional heft to the formation of loyalties. Those orgs could obviously still be penetrated by the cops and federales , but members could still know who their allies really were.
Or something like that.
Convicted? Me too. I hadn't even though about Anonymous as a counter-argument to the absolutist conclusion I came to about the internet as a medium of activism even though I already had these opinions of them.
I still feel like what I was saying had merit. To me, blog-writing such as what I've been involved with was the equivalent of going to the approved protest spectacle in time for the local news and coming home in time to catch the ball game. Doing what Anonymous does is the equivalent of actually going to a protest prepared to fight and occupy the local courthouse if need be.
Just like in the real world, you have to be willing to learn how to fight and expose yourself to the wrath of authority to be an activist online. Not trying to convict you, convicting myself really, because its clear that I have not been willing to take on those risks. And I convict myself far more than you given the scope of our comparative real life obligations.
Anyway, of anyone writing now in these blogs, you have far more potential than anyone else imo especially when you expose readers to your personal reclamation/redemption project in progress and experiences as an upper management type with access to the power establishment. So I'll still be following along.
The real battle online to come, imo, is over the legitimacy of groups like Anonymous. The powers that be are going to criminalize these types of movements and hit them hard because what they are doing is actually an irritation to business as usual. The analog in my mind is how the media characterized the WTO protesters of 1999. That discussion thread I posted already has the dynamics in play.
Justin McCarthy
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