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The Internet has become the lifeblood of Democracy. It’s up to all of us to speak for those who do not have it – or who have had it taken away. I think I safely speak for all Meppers when I say that our thoughts and hopes are with our brothers and sisters in Tunisia and Egypt who have risen up against their oppressors.
FYI, here is a fantastic video feed that has continuous updates on anything that breaks in Egypt.
On the eve of the State of the Union, thought I’d take the time to display some recent exposition I participated in about the nature of our country and where it is relative to our founding ideals. Featuring three Brandeis debaters!
Mini Cup Round 3 (Brandeis A vs Brandeis/BU) from Will Crocker on Vimeo.
Our teetering economy is completely based on an ongoing imperial campaign to dominate resources around the globe. Our country’s primary contribution to the rest of the world is death. We export death, that we may import gadgets and trinkets and nonsense. So says Joe Rogan.
The big political news today is the new Congress’s attempts to rescind Obamacare. As a consummate radical, I actually believe they’re doing the right thing, if for the wrong reasons. Mandatory private health care does nothing but prop up a staggeringly broken system. Dennis Kucinich elucidates the reasons that our for-profit health care system will always lag behind the rest of the world. And he does it in one minute flat:
I’ve always felt the turning point in the 2008 U.S. Presidential campaign was the moment when the sight of then-candidate Barack Obama after wrapping up the Democratic nomination was almost immediately contrasted with now-failed-candidate and angry man John McCain, in front of a sickening green background and performing to an audience which sounded more like a canned laugh track, giving a nasty, pitiful screed about the man who would trounce him in the election only a few months later. One man represented the best of what America would like to imagine itself as–intelligent, broad-minded, appealing to the better angels of our nature–and the other represented the impossibly tired bitterness of a rapidly disappearing part of our society. The choice, and thus result, was never more stark.
Beyond expressing my sorrow for the lost and injured and all those affected by this tragedy, I have little to say about the horrific events in Arizona yesterday except one thing. Regular Mep readers / listeners will know all of us here put a high value on communication and the power of rhetoric; the two greatest speakers of the twentieth century (arguably) were Martin Luther King and Adolf Hitler, and I don’t think anyone needs a cheat sheet to determine which person pursued the good and which the evil. What yesterday conclusively, definitively proves is that rhetoric is not an unalloyed good. It is a neutral tool, and it has consequences.
No commentary for you this evening on the Arizona political depravity egged on by vapid celebriticians. Suffice to say, it’s bad out there. And it will get worse before it gets better. No fretting about that now, though. It’s Saturday night. Have some Norweigan mountain ranges. Nobody has shit on them yet, as far as we know.
Been staying up past my bedtime and re-watching Network. If you’re not familiar, the Paddy Chayefsky creation is one of the finest screenplays ever written. It also eerily predicts the rise of pundit-driven entertainment/news. Many commentators have noted that NewsCorp’s Glenn Beck is a rather transparent re-creation of Howard Beale…
Another TheraminTrees piece, this one on conformity studies. Particularly of note, was the Weaver study, which established that hearing something multiple times makes it more convincing even if you are hearing it repeated by the same source. Could Fox News and friends have incorporated this bit of social engineering into their broadcasting style any more obviously?
An old Fry and Laurie sketch that may be more prophetic than they anticipated.
