Davidson foisted himself upon the trolley after the staff member became so scared that she ran from the train. – STV News
Finding good videos for this column is a more uneven process than finding good links; sometimes there are so many they get backed up for weeks, and sometimes so few I have to go looking for them. Today’s first video is a revolting bit of TSA propaganda designed to condition children to submit to the police state; it was called to my attention by Mark Bennett when it first appeared in December, but due to the holidays it got pushed back until now. I’m glad it did, however, because the second video, a parody of the first, was only posted on Thursday (thanks to Kevin Wilson for spotting it). Everything above the first video was contributed by Radley Balko, and the links between the videos by Lucy Steigerwald, Brooke Magnanti, Dave Barry, Mistress Matisse, Mike Riggs, Jason Kuznicki, Popehat, Grace, Aspasia, and Mike Siegel (in that order). Finally, I present this very special link by request from Popehat.
- Cops handcuff drunk man, dump him in parking lot to be fatally run over.
- Court says it’s OK for cops to charge people a fee for being arrested.
- This week in “Never call the cops for any reason whatsoever.”
- Following the good example set by our wise leaders.
- It’s OK; all the drugs involved were legal.
- Creepypasta.
- Headline of the week.
- I hate it when this happens.
- What could possibly go wrong?
- This week in overcriminalization.
- Politician fights for the right to bear imaginary arms.
- Quite possibly the most humiliating way to die imaginable.
- Cops conspire to abduct toddler because he said “dirty” words.
- Woman sues lawyers for not telling her divorce would end her marriage.
- “Lots of people think everybody else’s stuff should be [theirs]…most of [them]…think Cookie Monster and Dora the Explorer are real people.”
From the Archives
- Nanotechnology, tyranny, Lovecraft, surveillance, libertarianism, cops, bogosity, censorship, Spirograph, dualism & Washington DC.
- “Child sex slaves” supposedly “rescued from traffickers” by Australian con artists are shown to be ordinary Thai schoolchildren.
- Neofeminists aren’t concerned with “stereotyped gender roles” when it comes to “rescuing” sex workers.
- Time glorifies the controlling behavior of a pathologically-entitled prude.
- This reaction to a terrible freak accident is, apparently, not a parody.
- Texas wants all sex work as dangerous as criminalized street work.
- Societies, like people, sometimes develop autoimmune disorders.
- The more “ordinary” women get involved in sex work, the better.
- Antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea has become five times as common.
- Judge blocks law intended to ban inexpensive escort advertising.
- Foreign officials: pay your hookers! Hookers: collect in advance!
- Apparently, the average age of Xactware board members is 12.
- My two previous columns for Epiphany (AKA Little Christmas).
- Václav Havel’s famous essay “The Power of the Powerless”.
- The media are convinced that dogs don’t actually bite men.
- Politician accused of rape is beaten by a crowd of women.
- The problem with modern interpretations of Irene Adler.
- “For the children!” hysteria actually endangers children.
- A Swiss newspaper challenges “trafficking” hysteria.
- Intra-family spying gets ever more intrusive.
- Language classes for Brazilian sex workers.
- Why whores aren’t out of place in church.
- The UK’s first brothel for disabled clients.
- The truth about “The Truth About…”
- The outing of Suzy Favor Hamilton.
- When I first started Twitter.
- Rapist cops of the week.
- Bullshit! and Sex Power.
- Paypal is at it again.
- 2012 in review.
When I was younger I was persistently amazed at the way Western Intellectuals clung to the delusions of Communism. As I grew older I realized that Communism is simply another in a long chain of excuses that would-be elites have told themselves to justify pushing “little people” around. Each generation of wanna-be masters bitterly denounces those that came before it while behaving in almost exactly the same way. The progress of civilization, such as it is, has been the slow expansion of the circumstances in which Important People are told to Keep Their F*cking Hands Off the persons and property of unimportant people.
A Communist is a Plantation-Owner is an Aristocrat. And all of them deserve to be relegated to the ash-heap.
“A Communist is a Plantation-Owner is an Aristocrat. And all of them deserve to be relegated to the ash-heap.”
Almost agreed. I’d totally agree if you had said that a “A Communist party boss or government official is a Plantation-Owner is an Aristocrat. And all of them deserve to be relegated to the ash-heap.” because that would be correct. For the average party member? Not so.
I think everyone who supports any system which tramples the rights of individuals, whether the supposed beneficiary is an elite, an institution, “the nation”, “the people”, “society”, the gods or whatever, needs to be relegated to the ash-heap. The masses who support tyranny are just as guilty as the tyrants, and need to be consigned to the flames with the masters they love so bloody much.
I recognize there are always ‘true believers’ who will never ever change their views, but that still seems to me we’re consigning an awful lot of people to the flames, people who might only support a system out of ignorance that could possibly be convinced of the error of their ways and turned to better views. How many citizens of the USSR only supported communism because they’d never had the opportunity to learn otherwise or indeed knew there were other opportunities in the first place?
Depends. Currently, we have an elite that believes they have the right to cheat, steal, and kill to enrich themselves. I have no problem seeing that “right” trampled on.
In my personal experience all would be Communists imagine that they will be among those who issue orders, not those who are ordered. I suppose it’s theoretically POSSIBLE for one to yearn to be a prole, and just because I’ve never met one doesn’t mean that none exist … but I’m going to hold to my position until such time as the theory turns up in the flesh.
The (near?) universality of the belief that they will be on top strikes me as similar to the widespread and almost certainly deliberate ignorance of the historical pattern that the Intellectual class supports the Communist revolution, and is among the first to be liquidated by it.
Earlier this week I was told about Mayerson’s article by a co-worker who found it and told me about how incensed she was at it’s communistic suggestions.
I went ahead and read it myself. I thought it was indeed a poor product, and any merit had be dug for through half-thought out ideas and lame attempts to sound “down” with the kids (“You know what blows? Landlords!”). The only thing that had the slightest bit of impact was the suggestion of a guaranteed income. That was only because I’d seen the idea discussed elsewhere in a far more rational and less “stick it to the Man” context, but I digress.
That being said, I don’t agree with Mr. Davis’ method of taking down Mr. Mayerson and his article. Yes, Mr. Davis briefly mentioned the parts of the USSR constitution where Mr. Mayerson’s ideas were first mooted, but I would much rather have read more about the history of the USSR and how those ideas led to its downfall. Then I could say I truly learned something. Instead I read an article that I found smug, self-righteous and sarcastic that allowed a group of like-minded commenters to dogpile on Mr. Mayerson.
Perhaps this is a foolish question in this day and age, but does anybody give a thought to actually changing the minds of people through respect and reason anymore? Mr. Davis’ article, to me, is another example of how both sides of the spectrum choose to write each other (not just the leaders of a given moment) off completely as fools and idiots to be mercilessly mocked and excluded.
Would an educational article about why the USSR failed have convinced Mr. Mayerson that his suggestions are unworkable? Probably not, but it might have convinced someone else who was thinking of following Mr. Mayerson to think twice.
As the saying goes, “you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.”
(Full disclosure: I subscribe to Rolling Stone and while I am cognizant of its biases I do think the print version is a good product. As a subscriber I also get the daily e-newsletter, but I don’t recall Mayerson’s article being included in it. Given the vitriolic response it’s received, I’m not surprised.)
Yes, the former U.S.S.R., and Communist China has killed people. So have capitalist societies. Do we really want to count up the dead of all the wars on behalf of global corporations?
But we don’t dismiss the idea of capitalism with a snark. Now I am not a communist. I am a anarcho-socialist, and I totally support the idea of Guaranteed jobs, guaranteed income and public banks, through the ending of corporations, and making all businesses employee owned or co-ops. Banks are currently run by crooks. They need reforming.
Let’s not toss out the ideas because of the presentation.
Communism beats any other ideology HANDS DOWN in any competition for top mass murderers. THE BLACK BOOK OF COMMUNISM (Harvard Press) asserts that Communist States murdered between 85 million and 100 million people in the Twentieth Century. That number does not count war dead, BTW. Top dishonors go to Mao and Stalin, with Pol Pot getting a medal for special di-stink-tion for murdering one quarter of his country’s population. Only one movement in History even comes close; the Mongol Horde.
One of the Big Lies that the Political Radical-Left has used to make their obsessions respectable is that “corporations” have provably killed anything LIKE the numbers of dead that can be attributed to Communist States. I trust the average Corporation as far as I could kick them in my stocking feet, but they just can’;t compete with a State for broad-spread bloody-handedness.
Granted, in that dismal contest, Stalin, Mao and Pot probably killed more. Mostly, corporations kill not by design, but only if people are in their way of making a profit.
Still, killing people isn’t the only way to a more just and equal society, nor is it a good way.
In the end, we must realize we can’t trust anyone with great power. (Not even Spidey) That power needs to be distributed, and remain close to the people most effected by it’s decisions. That’s what Communism, and Capitalism have missed.
I would argue that Corporateism is at fault rather than Capitalism; Capitalism rewards both individual and collective investment of Capital.
Re: Creepypasta.
One of my current favorite obsessions and timesucks. I wish the article had brought up the SCP Foundation and I’m wondering if the Night Vale podcast would also count as creepypasta, albeit with a humorous slant. Also, for a “real life” creepypasta, I stumbled across this site a couple months ago and I definitely mentioned it on Twitter, this group of people who swear they remember Nelson Mandela dying in prison in the 1980s. The site predates Mandela’s actual death this past December by several years, by the way. It also covers other, what they call, “alternate memories” of other world events, television shows, history, etc etc. Fascinating, but don’t read that site for more than a few minutes. And the site doesn’t seem to be a meta-creepypasta site, these people legitimately (or as legitimate as you can get online) make these claims of alternate memories.