Peeling Back the Vinyl

[The Good Reverend Roger]

How can you stand it knowing the unexposed surfaces all around you are unfinished? Did you ever take off moldings or wainscotting?  They hide some of the shittiest painting and wallpapering jobs ever.  Remove a wall plate from a switch or something. What do you see? Rough edges, slopped plaster, frizzled insulation. Fingerprints.

Ever look at the underside of a couch?  How about taking off your kitchen chair seats?  Cloth, randomly cut and simply stretched and STAPLED or PINNED with thumbtacks, so only the visible side looks good!

Now imagine what the underside of your society looks like.  Oh, yes, there's been some rather shabby work done in the areas you can't see without making a conscious effort to look.  Example:  What you eat isn't what you think it is ("pink slime", etc).

Try finding some examples of gross/poorly thought out or executed infrastructure, cultural mores, etc.  Report your findings here.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

One of my most reliable hallmarks of a Good Person, I'm sad to say, is when a person does a job right, even when his boss isn't looking and isn't likely to see his handiwork. When someone has respect for the task they're performing, and not just for the paycheck they receive for it or the kudos they'll get later. The flip side to this is the way it is now socially expected to bitch and moan when you have to do a good job, like it's asking too much.

To your first point, it bugs the holy living shit out of me that most things are cheap and veneered. Strip malls with fake "Brick Siding™" glued on top of chicken wire and plywood, for example. The world would look so much nicer if we didn't build sloppy shit and slap a cheap veneer on it so that from 5 miles away it looks nicer.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Banking has become an exercise in unreality.

Entity A makes a loan to person B.
Entity A sells the debt to entity C.
Entity A then insures the debt with entity D.

System collapses under bad debt, entity D goes down and takes a shitload with it, Entity A makes out like a mad bandit.  Entity A in fact deliberately made bad loans, for the purpose of collecting the insurance when the loans failed.  The bundled loans have no value, but value is stapled to them by the act of insuring the bundled loans (bonds).

OR

Arizona as a state of unreality.

Arizona decides that all women ARE legally pregnant, if they CAN be pregnant.
A fictional state of pregnancy has been created.
Soon, a bill will be introduced making it unlawful to interfere in a pregnancy.
Since all women that CAN get pregnant ARE pregnant (legally), the pill is now illegal, as it interferes with the "legal pregnancy", a non-real state.

[LMNO]

In order to "keep the peace", cops have simply become the largest armed gang in town.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

This is good... lots of material for this. The very first thing that comes to my mind is the Republican Party's traditional anti-abortion stance. They're anti-abortion, but if they can so help themselves they refuse to do the things that would prevent abortion, such as subsidized birth control, improved education, and programs aimed at reducing poverty.

My favorite thing, though, is that they're anti-abortion, but also don't want to have to pay for poor women's prenatal care, let alone the bill for giving birth in a hospital or for her child's pediatric care. A lot of them don't even want to have to pay for vaccines. What they are champing at the bit to do, though, is throw more of these ne'er-do-well's into prison... most of them are a no-good lot, you know, they come from single moms, and their fathers were in prison the whole time they were growing up, instead of at home supporting them; they're deadbeats. It's just the kind of people they are. It's what they do. They're not really any better than animals, you know, and that's why we shouldn't oppose the death penalty. Get them off our streets and out of our society. Break the cycle, the endless chain of immorality passed from father to son. That's why we don't want them in OUR neighborhoods, anymore than we want abortion clinics in our neighborhoods, because we need to save the innocent babies from these murdering animals.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

In order to "keep the peace", cops have simply become the largest armed gang in town.

Police are a social fiction.  Their guns are real, their batons are real, their jails are real.  "Police" are not.  Police are a group of humans that we have agreed have the right to detain other humans for breaking the rules that we have arbitrarily chosen to live under.

Some of those rules make sense.  Murder, rape, theft, etc.

However, when it comes to a 20 year old college student smoking a joint, the arbitrary part of the system becomes very evident.

Or perhaps we should talk about the actions of a group of police in Seattle, pepper-spraying an 80 year old woman who was doing something we all agree is okay (peaceably assembling to petition for redress of grievances).  The police decided that the disturbance was at point violent, so their actions were justified...Despite the fact that the violence was at that point entirely caused by the police.

Circular reasoning seems to play well with the public.

[Cain]

Sockpuppet management software means social media, the means by which many people derive their news and form opinions around the world, including government organizations and media groups, can be almost entirely subordinated to private interests.

The most advanced account management software allows for hundreds of unique identities, often using "clean" proxy servers and with accounts and posts dating back years, distinct writing styles and points of view to be operated by a single individual in a social marketing office in downtown Tampa.

Humans as social animals derive their understanding of the world around them via the opinions and beliefs of others, especially those they have learnt to trust based on their past signalling.  Putting that kind of power in the hands of a small number of individuals allows them to have a disproportionate impact on national discourse, a skill set that will almost invariably be used by elements of the ruling class (not necessarily the state - though that is also a possibility in some countries).

What this will lead to is a large impression of certain bodies of opinion which are not in fact shared by the population at large, or are at the very least rejected by a significant plurality.  Even very small minorities have, in the past, carried out acts of political violence when they believe their viewpoints and beliefs are being unfairly neglected, rejected or surpressed (aided by certain institutional and cultural factors, of course).  The larger this group is, the less united it will probably be, but the greater threat it can eventually represent.

What this means is that a technique devised to manufacture consent (buzz off, old man Chomsky) will in fact contribute to greater political discontent.  It will also cause policymakers to lose connection with reality, as they attempt to appease constituencies that do not exist.  Such political disconnect would essentially break down the feedback systems which make democracy a superior form of government to autocracies and dictatorships.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

This is good... lots of material for this. The very first thing that comes to my mind is the Republican Party's traditional anti-abortion stance. They're anti-abortion, but if they can so help themselves they refuse to do the things that would prevent abortion, such as subsidized birth control, improved education, and programs aimed at reducing poverty.

My favorite thing, though, is that they're anti-abortion, but also don't want to have to pay for poor women's prenatal care, let alone the bill for giving birth in a hospital or for her child's pediatric care. A lot of them don't even want to have to pay for vaccines. What they are champing at the bit to do, though, is throw more of these ne'er-do-well's into prison... most of them are a no-good lot, you know, they come from single moms, and their fathers were in prison the whole time they were growing up, instead of at home supporting them; they're deadbeats. It's just the kind of people they are. It's what they do. They're not really any better than animals, you know, and that's why we shouldn't oppose the death penalty. Get them off our streets and out of our society. Break the cycle, the endless chain of immorality passed from father to son. That's why we don't want them in OUR neighborhoods, anymore than we want abortion clinics in our neighborhoods, because we need to save the innocent babies from these murdering animals.

Poverty is bad.  Therefore poor people are engaging in bad behavior (living in poverty), which of course leads to all manner of dire consequences.  Ergo, those consequences are in fact their own fault.

I am not being flip, here.  Many republicans and damn near all libertarians believe this as stated.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Sockpuppet management software means social media, the means by which many people derive their news and form opinions around the world, including government organizations and media groups, can be almost entirely subordinated to private interests.

The most advanced account management software allows for hundreds of unique identities, often using "clean" proxy servers and with accounts and posts dating back years, distinct writing styles and points of view to be operated by a single individual in a social marketing office in downtown Tampa.

Humans as social animals derive their understanding of the world around them via the opinions and beliefs of others, especially those they have learnt to trust based on their past signalling.  Putting that kind of power in the hands of a small number of individuals allows them to have a disproportionate impact on national discourse, a skill set that will almost invariably be used by elements of the ruling class (not necessarily the state - though that is also a possibility in some countries).

What this will lead to is a large impression of certain bodies of opinion which are not in fact shared by the population at large, or are at the very least rejected by a significant plurality.  Even very small minorities have, in the past, carried out acts of political violence when they believe their viewpoints and beliefs are being unfairly neglected, rejected or surpressed (aided by certain institutional and cultural factors, of course).  The larger this group is, the less united it will probably be, but the greater threat it can eventually represent.

What this means is that a technique devised to manufacture consent (buzz off, old man Chomsky) will in fact contribute to greater political discontent.  It will also cause policymakers to lose connection with reality, as they attempt to appease constituencies that do not exist.  Such political disconnect would essentially break down the feedback systems which make democracy a superior form of government to autocracies and dictatorships.

Manufactured opinion/consent is an excellent result.  Funniest part is, the "opposition" party has started to believe the manufactured ideas themselves, or at least to accept them as mainstream values.

And this is why the Overton Window as perceived by the nation at large. is sliding to the right at relativistic speeds, even though a bare majority (~ 53%) of Americans are slightly to the left.

[LMNO]

Capitalism is structured to create economic inequality, but people who try to address this problem are told that they are creating economic inequality by not being Capitalistic enough.


Some of these aren't so much the gunk behind the vinyl, as unrecognized hypocrisy.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Capitalism is structured to create economic inequality, but people who try to address this problem are told that they are creating economic inequality by not being Capitalistic enough.


Some of these aren't so much the gunk behind the vinyl, as unrecognized hypocrisy.

Yeah, I'm looking more for solid things built on no foundation.