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[Carlos del Vaca]

If you give the authorities a toy, they will use it.  Yes, the four security guards should have just carried the guy out.  But they had tasers, so... they had tasers! 

Same thing goes for local police departments that get SWAT units, when they almost never have actual armed standoffs that call for such things.  They sit around going unused, so eventually someone authorizes their use for crimes that don't really call for it.  Then they break down your door and shoot you accidentally when they actually wanted the house across the street.

[smick]

The clapping, and guys sitting in the seats next to him smiling as he gets tasered really eats at me. 

It makes me want to hide in my house and not mingle with the rest of you sick fucks (you in this case being anyone that isn't inside my head.  You're all suspect.)

[Ruta Bagas]

The Camp for Climate Action by Heathrow earlier this summer was a pretty fine example of genuinely grass-roots mass protest. I had a wonderfully well-observed further remark to make on the matter but I got distracted and it popped out of my head. Alas.

The police action there, though, did pretty well destroy the part of me that used to be surprised by stories like this one, national differences aside. Ah, how I miss the days when my perceptions of the police as an institution were shaped entirely by children's television...

[littlefallsmets]

See but there's the point.

I'm a news junkie... a mostly left-leaning news junkie, no less... and I have no idea what The Camp For Climate Action is or that there WAS a police action, Ruta.

Back when there was one culture... at least one "mainstream" culture... you generally knew where you were and where you stood, y'know. We're now in the midst of a Crisis on Infinite Cultures. Everyone's fighting for their exact tiny pidgeon-holed point of view and nobody's ever gonna find enough people who all exactly agree on a positive to get anything done anymore.

We all have our own news sources, we can configure our own news feeds, everything is true, anything is true, nothing is true, nothing is true.

If there's no newsworthy faces attached to force these things to be covered, it didn't happen. And if there was anyone associating themselves with it of fame, it was so toned down to get their handlers to agree to it that it probably wasn't much of anything.

And there's not even "an underground" anymore to make everyone aware of the things that aren't covered popularly.

There's no overground either.

Just ten million buzzing points of view, y'know, all cancelling each other out and all that the establishment voice has to do is be loud enough to speak over all those self-cancelling voices.

Big Brother's a lot more cost effective when it doesn't have to be the only voice or even the main voice... when it simply has to be the Approved Voice in a sea of doubts and scandals and half-lies and gossip and games.

These are venture capitalists, after all, they know how to get the job done for less.

[jaydub]

BPoE?

The Elks?



(No offense intended)

[littlefallsmets]

The question isn't, of course, what matters.

The question is, what's possible, without giving up your life, your freedom, your soul or what you consider to be your responsibilities.

It's harder and harder to be both a functioning member of the human race AND an agent of positive change.

There's not a whole lot of middle-ground options without a mass movement to join and generally speaking, y'know, to abandon your parents and your children, your wives and husbands, your brothers and your sisters, all your worldly debts personal or economic... that's at best asking you to be Christ or Buddha and in most cases asking you to declare yourself insane.

How do you get experience without a job, y'know, if you can't get a job without experience?

How can you be an iconoclast without a movement and how can you have a movement without iconoclasts?

A set of questions which basically leaves you with... the only people ready to act are well-meaning but mentally-imbalanced kids who'll scream 'til they get tasered or people hiding in the woods with guns, waiting for Jesus.

[jaydub]

The only thing you can truly exert influence over is yourself.  Treat other people the way you want to be treated (and correct them when they don't), and live your life as though you're modeling appropriate behavior for the rest of us.  The 7-habits guy calls it working within your circle of influence.  If everyone did it, we'd all be better off.  We'd be a lot better off than we are even if just we angst-ridden middle classers did it.

And pass the idea on.  I'm pretty sure the 7-habits guy got the idea from that Jewish carpenter, but its pretty clever.

[Golfhaus]

We all have our own news sources, we can configure our own news feeds, everything is true, anything is true, nothing is true, nothing is true.

QFT. I can't remember the last time I watched CBS, NBC, or ABC to get my news. My top three news sources are:

1) The Yahoo! News blurb on their front page
2) Countdown with Keith Olbermann
3) The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

There's a lady in my office who has agreed with pretty much everything Bush the Junior has done the last few years. Everything. Thinks we should go ahead and wrap up the rest of the Middle East while we're there. A Baptist church and a Starbucks on every desert corner. She watches the news each night, I watch the news each night. She learns about current events, I learn about current events. And we come up with completely different ideas about it all, ideas we each form, in part, based on the news we watch.

I still feel that the only way any of us will come close to being happy with our government is if we break the nation up into smaller regions, so that a North Dakota senator can't legislate for Vermont, and a New England liberal can't stop Mississippi from doing something because it pisses HIM off.

[linnea]

what is this "high&tight"? basically a buzzed head?

Check this out. It's when the lower portion of the skull is shaven extremely closely, but there is still a small amount of hair on the top of the head. My ex was Army and was extraordinarily fussy about his H&T. He wouldn't let me near him to cut it, he had an ongoing quest to find barbers near our house that could execute a flawless H&T for less than ten dollars. I helped him Bic the shaven parts, though, so the effect of the cut would last longer.

There are some men who look extremely hot in a high & tight, but imho only if they're cut and clean-cut to boot. I ogle them shamelessly. ((edit: yowza!))

[theinevitable]

that is not a fortunate hairstyle.

[linnea]

that is not a fortunate hairstyle.

I still ogle all kinds of fellas, don't worry your pretty little head about it.

[littlefallsmets]

I don't know many places where we could transfer so seamlessly from a discussion of political activism in the age of the Message-Being-The-Massage to ladies sexually objectifying dudes with strange haircuts.

I like you people.

[pmcd9]

Check this out.

((edit: yowza!))

DOUBLE YOWZA NSFW!!!

[AugustWest]

DOUBLE YOWZA NSFW!!!

Dang Paul!  Just.... DANG!

[Lister]

Military action on two fronts.