Today, ladies and gentlemen, I want to talk a little about patriotism.
In this modern day and age, for some strange reason, patriotism has become a very important issue indeed. We are, after all, supposedly engaged in a war of values against a merciless and cunning, yet at the same time, dogmatic and stupid enemy, who will stop at nothing to impose their values on everyone else. Whether I'm referring to the modern day rulers of the countries we inhabit, or the Jihadists I leave as an exercise for the reader to answer.
In such a situation, a war of values is very important. Unless you wish to live in a democracy or something. In recent years, it has been interesting to note the threat used against dissenters is "either you share our values or else...". Now, I was under the impression that within a democracy, the point is you can have whatever values you want, even if they run contrary to democracy itself, but apparently I was wrong. I still believe however, that a democracy asserted via threats and blackmail only ends up undermining itself and becoming, instead of a democracy, another form of autocratic rule, even if it keeps the functions of free elections and rule of law.
Now, keeping this in mind, it puts the New Labour project under Commissar-uh, Prime Minister Gordon Brown, of promoting a 'British identity' into a very suspect light. I would say in fact it was symptomatic of their desire for control over the population, and their awful belief that the purpose of the citizen is to serve the state, not the other way around. By taking it upon themselves to enforce a view of 'Britishness', top-down as it were, instead of letting such a feeling organically occur, from the bottom up and with the consent of the individuals involved, they are trying to recreate the identity of the nation.
This ridiculousness has become almost painful to watch within the last week in particular, with two particular suggestions from the Krem-uh, Downing Street. The first is that our soldiers and troops are being told to wear their uniforms in public, so we, the cowed and weak masses, can gratefully fawn over the torturers and killer-uh, Our Brave Lads, who went off to fight the Islamic Horde and in no way were complicit in any crimes that our press frequently accuse the USA of.
Secondly, we have the foolishness of the "oath of allegiance". It has been suggested by the very politically connected and influential Lord Goldsmith that all school leavers have to swear an oath of loyalty to the Queen and monarchy. Ignoring for the moment that somehow aping the United States of America will make people here more British....really? I think this tells us everything we know about the party who "have no objections to people getting filthy rich". Swearing allegiance to the Queen reinforces the fact there is a social hierarchy in this country and you, the serf, the subject, are at the bottom of it. Again, we are back at the idea of the subject serving the country, and that this state of affairs can only be maintained by blackmail and sabotage.
One of the greatest things about the UK that I, as a long term outsider, have noticed, is the way the British in general reject overt displays of nationalism and mock those who partake in them. Putting aside football matches, at least. Saluting the Union Jack, singing the praises of the stratified social system, serving the state religion...none of these things have anything to do with the current British character, and Eris forbid they ever do. What is British is irreverence to authority figures, eccentricity on a level only other nations could dream to reach, disgustingly unhealthy food and football riots.
Nonsense like making people swear allegiance to a sponging foreigner who practises waving her hand all day, and her idiotic brood, are laughable and will likely only promote more hostility to the monarchy (which I cannot really complain about), but there is also something rather sinister in this sudden prominence of debates on "Britishness" and emphasis on pathetic nationalism. It comes at a time where more and more those who do not "fit in" are being told to conform or leave, regardless of if they were born here or not, and often based on their skin colour and religion. It comes at a time where military-linked think tanks are bemoaning a lack of a firm national character to act as a mirror image to the Jihadists. It comes at a time where attacking "multiculturalism" and pluralism in general is very much in vogue.
I'm reminded that the system often creates its own enemies. The more tightly you define something, by definition the more exclusive it becomes. And when that tight definition of identity pushes out the Muslims, the Jews, the secularists, the republicans, the white working class...well, you're manufacturing the perfect recipe for civil unrest and disturbance. Normally, this wouldn't disturb me, because I like and thrive among that sort of confusion and chaos...but I have to wonder, whose purposes does such chaos serve? I am many things, but I refuse to be a useful tool for someone else's designs.
There seem to be two contradictory forces at work within British society right now, the dynamic of which is a cancer eating away at the heart of the country. The first is obvious, and that is unitary centralization. One State, under One Tightly Defined Concept (to be named later), Forever and Ever, Praise Tony. The other is more sinister, the exclusiveness, the drive to division and separation. Beware the Other. The Other takes many forms...he is the Muslim who seeks to establish a Caliphate on the burnt shores of this pleasant and green land...he is the Working Class Man who looks to his own self interest instead of seeing the self-evident wisdom of his masters in Whitehall...she is the antiwar protester supposedly spitting on the troops...they are the insane proponents of 'foreign' ideas like human rights and justice. There are plenty members of the Other's to completely Balkanize society, which is exactly what will happen if the state tries to hard to enforce its current course of centralization.
And I cant help but think this plays into the hands of the elite of society. "Leave the fanatical sub-human Muslims and puerile working classes and the antiwar idiots and everyone else to fight it out among themselves, while we can exist in our own little British versions of Green Zones." I may be wrong, but its a hypothesis I am willing to put out there. It may not even be a conscious drive by our own political and economic movers and shakers, but a far deeper, symptomatic drive buried within our own brand of late-stage disaster 'capitalism'. I don't know, and I freely admit it.
All I know is this: imposition of order = escalation of disorder. The drive for purity, be it of thought, action, political system or identity always, sooner or later, involves the "elimination" of dirt. But what happens when the dirt organizes itself and attacks the cleaning implements?
:mittens:
Yeah, that's pretty fucked up. The American Patriotic Virus is so ingrained into our society, it's very rarely questioned outright. Makes me sad to see it in other places like GB.
I recognise so much of what you're saying, but as the same distored view of these things that the media presents to us daily. And I'm not talking the Daily Mail or the Sun, as I'm sure you are aware.
The medias motives in so many of these issues seem to be unified and complicant with the top dawgs, and it seems that they don't have a problem hiding information the government doesn't want you to know.
The only thing I found interesting that semed to deviate "Off Message" from the Governent is the Archbishop of Canterbury saying recently that Sharia Law could and should be incorporated into the British legal system. (Allegedly)
Even if his words were taken out of context, the unified wave of revulsion that came from every quarter was amazing, especially because they were only reacting to what it SEEMED he was saying.
Whut?! You want to give England to the Arabs?! DIE FOR YOUR HERESY!
\
:nigel:
I think I started wandering off-topic before I even started replying here.
Well done though, informative and thought provoking as ever.
:mittens:
1) Nationalism, they just call it patriotism to make it more palatable.
2) You forgot the bits about england making 'anti-social behavior' illegal and giving the cops arrest quotas.
I see this more as a feedback loop then a strictly one-way feeding of bullshit from the 'elites' to the public.
My model for how all this nonsense gets going:
The public decides that a given meme (say, Britishness) is good to have. The 'elites' can't let themselves fall short of the public's expectations. If the public thinks Britishness is good, then the 'elites' better be even more British than the average person - he wouldn't be very elite otherwise, now would he? At the same time, the people who are against that particular meme are ignored. Especially in a democracy or republic, the threat of being ignored by the public is a very strong motivator for politicians. In a free market society, the same applies to businesses like the media.
To use a US example, everybody important (media, politicians, etc) has to Support Our Troops. Even the antiwar rhetoric is phrased in terms of Supporting Our Troops - we have to keep them out of harms way, for example. No one has the cojones to stand up and say "Our military is fucking up Iraq!" - it's all about politicians mismanaging our Really Cool Army. This even applies to you, Cain. You're not saying that Britishness is bad; in fact, you love your British heritage! You're arguing that Britishness means "rejecting overt displays of nationalism ... irreverence to authority, and eccentricity on a level other nations could only dream to reach..."
Of course, this feeds back onto itself. When everyone takes as a given in a discussion that Supporting Our Troops or Britishness is good, people forget that it was ever an issue. They don't need to think about it anymore; it's already been decided. And then they propagate the meme through their actions. A new observer, previously un-"infected" stumbles onto the scene and quickly picks up on the fact that the meme is good. If it wasn't, somebody would be disagreeing with it, right?
Since everyone else is doing it, :mittens:.
This Arab conflict in the UK reminds me of the 80's in the US re: "The Imminent Japanese Takeover" that everyone was running scared from. The media REALLY had everyone riled up over that.
Now it's the "Imminent Chinese Takever"...or "Imminent Smudgy People from Down South Takeover."
Old paranoia, same as the new paranoia.
I'm beginning to see a lot of signs that indicate that there will be a lot of social disillusionment with authority in the coming decades. Especially with religious and nationalistic authority.
Quote from: Payne on March 12, 2008, 04:38:55 PM
I recognise so much of what you're saying, but as the same distored view of these things that the media presents to us daily. And I'm not talking the Daily Mail or the Sun, as I'm sure you are aware.
The medias motives in so many of these issues seem to be unified and complicant with the top dawgs, and it seems that they don't have a problem hiding information the government doesn't want you to know.
The only thing I found interesting that semed to deviate "Off Message" from the Governent is the Archbishop of Canterbury saying recently that Sharia Law could and should be incorporated into the British legal system. (Allegedly)
Even if his words were taken out of context, the unified wave of revulsion that came from every quarter was amazing, especially because they were only reacting to what it SEEMED he was saying.
Whut?! You want to give England to the Arabs?! DIE FOR YOUR HERESY!
\
:nigel:
I think I started wandering off-topic before I even started replying here.
Well done though, informative and thought provoking as ever.
:mittens:
Thats part of the Balkanization message, I believe. Its removing the Muslims from the courts, in the same way similar rules for Orthodox Jews have removed them from the courts. Naturally, he wants to do it to increase the legal standing of the CoE and its power, but each way, its a process made to divide the country, to split it up into neat little self-sufficient working parts.
As for the media, I tend to hover on that point where the media can be actually challenged and confronted - the sort of blurred edge between journalists and bloggers. Reporting without feedback is useless, I find.
Quote from: Requiem on March 12, 2008, 06:18:46 PM
1) Nationalism, they just call it patriotism to make it more palatable.
2) You forgot the bits about england making 'anti-social behavior' illegal and giving the cops arrest quotas.
Well, I decided to ignore that special brand of lunacy (the ASBOs) because that is a whole seperate can of worms. Suffice to say, our government has a perculiar brand of authoritarianism running through it, a sort of post-legal authoritarianism, where designated boundaries of lack of law are allowed, in order to deal with "troublemakers". Our terrorism policy is the same.
Quote from: Golden Applesauce on March 12, 2008, 06:43:41 PM
I see this more as a feedback loop then a strictly one-way feeding of bullshit from the 'elites' to the public.
My model for how all this nonsense gets going:
The public decides that a given meme (say, Britishness) is good to have. The 'elites' can't let themselves fall short of the public's expectations. If the public thinks Britishness is good, then the 'elites' better be even more British than the average person - he wouldn't be very elite otherwise, now would he? At the same time, the people who are against that particular meme are ignored. Especially in a democracy or republic, the threat of being ignored by the public is a very strong motivator for politicians. In a free market society, the same applies to businesses like the media.
To use a US example, everybody important (media, politicians, etc) has to Support Our Troops. Even the antiwar rhetoric is phrased in terms of Supporting Our Troops - we have to keep them out of harms way, for example. No one has the cojones to stand up and say "Our military is fucking up Iraq!" - it's all about politicians mismanaging our Really Cool Army. This even applies to you, Cain. You're not saying that Britishness is bad; in fact, you love your British heritage! You're arguing that Britishness means "rejecting overt displays of nationalism ... irreverence to authority, and eccentricity on a level other nations could only dream to reach..."
Of course, this feeds back onto itself. When everyone takes as a given in a discussion that Supporting Our Troops or Britishness is good, people forget that it was ever an issue. They don't need to think about it anymore; it's already been decided. And then they propagate the meme through their actions. A new observer, previously un-"infected" stumbles onto the scene and quickly picks up on the fact that the meme is good. If it wasn't, somebody would be disagreeing with it, right?
Since everyone else is doing it, :mittens:.
1. I'm not British. More importantly, my British ancestry were considered the scum of the earth by the English establishment, and treated accordingly. That is to say, exile or deportation.
2. I was trying to build a counter-image. Because the government is pushing this, the grass root Tories are pushing a more defined version of this, the BNP are pushing this...and if it has to take root, I'd rather an accurate and somewhat less useful model of British nationality were to arise. In a perfect world, nationalism would be looked upon as another quirk or delusion, like white pride, or reading The Sun newspaper. Civic patriotism I can just about stand....and even then, it would have to be instituted by a government without a track record of duplicity, freaky power control issues and pandering to the most base elements of the media. Preferably, people would be taught about it, and left to come to their own conclusions.
Quote from: Dr. Felix Mackay on March 12, 2008, 08:57:30 PM
I'm beginning to see a lot of signs that indicate that there will be a lot of social disillusionment with authority in the coming decades. Especially with religious and nationalistic authority.
The state is often opposed to religions and nationalistic authority, because it detracts from its own.
And that, to me, is the problem. Most of the resistance to state power is either of the religious whackjob flavour, or the ethno-supremacist flavour. The Christian Identity Movement under Clinton, or the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, for example. Only in a few countries, like Iran, or Kosovo, is one of these movements allied with state power.
Oh, and just to make things more fun:
http://www.justice.gov.uk/news/sp050308b.htm
QuoteIn a democracy, rights tend to be 'vertical' - guaranteed to the individual by the state to constrain the otherwise overweening power of the state. Responsibilities, on the other hand, are more 'horizontal' - they are the duties we owe to each other, to our 'neighbour' in the New Testament sense. But they have a degree of verticality about them too, because we owe duties to the community as a whole.
Quote"Should we be aiming for a more explicit statement of the contract that covers both the service offered by the public sector (what is in and what is not) and what is expected from citizens (beyond paying taxes and obeying the law)"
Now, I know the government has only a tenuous connection with the history of British political thought at the best of times, but the idea of our system is that there are NO requirements beyond taxes and obeying the law. :x
"Arrest Quotas"?
I suppose once you have enough laws on the books, everyone is guilty of [/i]something[/i]...
I recall seeing or reading somewhere that Labour have introduced over 3000 new offences since May '97.
Celine's Third Law ITT
If you're going to get hung for stealing a sheep you may as well take the herd
-cybin's 2nd law ITT
Sorry Cain, it seems that I made some unjustified assumptions.
But still, if you were trying to speak to the masses, you couldn't outright say that patriotism is bad. You have to 'build a counter-image' for what Britishness is. The end effect is that both the pro- and con- sides admit patriotism. Both are infected by the meme, just different strains.
Quote from: Payne on March 14, 2008, 03:35:08 PM
I recall seeing or reading somewhere that Labour have introduced over 3000 new offences since May '97.
This is true, and while not all are offences, very many are.
Quote from: Golden Applesauce on March 14, 2008, 06:06:01 PM
Sorry Cain, it seems that I made some unjustified assumptions.
But still, if you were trying to speak to the masses, you couldn't outright say that patriotism is bad. You have to 'build a counter-image' for what Britishness is. The end effect is that both the pro- and con- sides admit patriotism. Both are infected by the meme, just different strains.
True, but one is often less destructive and more open to criticism than the other, and if the government is going to try and force the overall meme anyway, it would be better to subvert than to oppose directly. The collapse or failure of its propagation therefore is on their heads, not anyone elses, and believe me, Labour and their media scum friends love nothing more than looking for scapegoats. Subversion's got a trickier playbook, especially when dealing with more empheral aspects of control.
Very nice posts, Cain.
I'm not sure but what all governments tend toward authoritarianism over time. Honest governance and relatively honest democracy may be unstable -- not in the sense of an unstable society, but in the sense that a pencil balanced on its point is unstable.
They may tend to collapse toward authoritarianism, by way of manipulative politics and dishonesty.
My thought run thus:
1. A party or clique thinks that it has the best grasp of how to run the country correctly.
2. But it cannot put its ideas into practice unless it can get and maintain power.
3. Therefore the first aim is to get its people into power. And once there, the primary aim is to keep them in power so that the party's "good ideas" can be put into practice.
Once a clique is in power they have more tools for maintaining power than the minority party...barring grievous mistakes and the attendant voter disenchantment, that is. So the main thing become to use the majority position to consolidate power, to hide mistakes, and to spin missteps.
It seems to me -- and I may be misunderstanding your gist, or just plain being foolish -- it seems to me that once you have political parties competing on such terms you get a Darwinian situation which will, in the long run, favor the most efficient power-grabbers and truth-twisters.
It will not favor open and honest democracy. Hence open and honest democracy is likely to be the exception in society, and not likely to persist over the long run.
Is that possibly part of what you are seeing in GB? (And is it happening in Oz?)
Or have I gone off on a nonsensical tangent?
~~ Jack of Turnips
That seems a pretty fair assessment, and I would have to agree.
Of course, to a point, it is indeed accurate (if we define power as ability to affect the world around us), but even so, it has become an end in and of itself, above and beyond the reason the power is wanted.
I've often considered our political system as one which encourages such people, the power-hungry psychopath who can lie, cheat and do whatever it takes to achieve power. By necessity, such people succeed where those less power-hungry fail.
If I think this is true -- and I give it good odds of being so -- then my personal reaction would be, never trust any government or nation.
Never make an established government stronger. Seek to weaken it. Undermine, subvert, and sap its power in any (morally acceptable) way possible. Mockery is good and proper. Ridicule is a moral imperative. If politics is the last refuge of a scoundrel, then subversion is the best response to politics.
(I hope that, on this forum, I am preaching to the choir.)
For instance, I think everyone should send live insects to their political representatives. The scrabbling, scurrying little creatures would benefit from a change; their miniscule brains -- little more than a knot of ganglions, really -- would be stimulated; and their pathetically limited worldview enlarged. Not only that, but the insects might find some benefit as well.
~~ Jack of Turnips
Quote from: Cain on March 16, 2008, 02:51:04 PM
I've often considered our political system as one which encourages such people, the power-hungry psychopath who can lie, cheat and do whatever it takes to achieve power. By necessity, such people succeed where those less power-hungry fail.
That shit is true, on so many levels, over and above the petty machinations of politics.
It's the essence of survival of the fittest. Fittest is nothing to do with nicest. Quite the contrary - the meanest bastard will always win.
Strikes me this is why they invented all that karma and judgement in heaven bullshit - it's a consolation prize for the weak. :evil:
So in terms of selecting leaders who are competent, qualified, and who act in the interest of the people, would you say that democracy is better or worse than choosing at random from the population?
choosing people at random would be worse, because random schmucks would have no idea how to run a country or cooperate with other people. it's true that existing democracies are full of blowhards and powermongers, but to have a system that relied on choosing people selected randomly it would have to be so pre-defined as to eliminate the need for officials at all. the system would have to be designed so fine-tuned that the people selected amount to nothing but monkeys pushing a button. i guess you could govern a nation with a computer system, but not allowing for a human element would result in a whole host of terrible things, i'm sure, while maybe fixing a few corruption issues.
if you have to have an enormous, modern government, the best thing is to do what they already do but add a Ministry of Sabotage whose sole purpose is to go around messing up the government's ability to enforce the law.
I've been thinking for a long time about a multiple branch system with one group elected and the other chosen by lottery. The merits of both and all (or maybe the demerits of both, and I'm a fucktard, not sure).
@ vexati0n: how do you propose to keep the ministry of sabotage from being subject to the aforementioned darwinian effect?
@ Requiem: and multiple branches of goverment to balance things out have been tried by lots of govts, you'll have to be a bit more specific, just selecting for one of the branches at random doesn't do much if the other branches gang up on that one, or if that branch was continuously ignored.(as will happen when a group spouts nonsense 9/10 times)
@Cain: as if obeying the law wasn't able to cover pretty much everything, damn i'm pretty sure that in most countries just knowing the law is impossible.
Um, what I mean is basically one legislative body chosen at random, and one chosen by vote.
only two? then wich gets the deciding vote?
as in: what happens when its a draw?
Same as every other dual body legislation, both have to approve it or it doesn't happen.
Quote from: Regret on March 26, 2008, 01:11:52 AM
@Cain: as if obeying the law wasn't able to cover pretty much everything, damn i'm pretty sure that in most countries just knowing the law is impossible.
Very true. I know more than the average person (I have a depressing habit of reading legislation) and even then I dont know enough. I suspect that is the point. Passing so many laws no-one knows whether they are guilty or innocent would seem the perfect tool of control. It would mean that, faced with authority, most people would be uncertain, perhaps labouring under some level of guilt, and fear. Because they think they are innocent....but they cannot be certain.
In the USA some trials are now decided by the fact that the evidence must remain secret.
In other words, the state can defeat you in court just by invoking secrecy.
The next step is to make knowing about the secrecy laws illegal. That will follow from the already-established logic that knowing that something exists threatens the state by allowing opponents to develop effective counter-strategies.
Then you will be convicted not only on secret evidence, but on the basis of laws which you are legally prohibited from knowing about.
That is the same thing as totalitarianism. The state has total control. Challenging the state is impossible.
~~ Jack of Turnips
Quote from: Jack of Turnips on March 28, 2008, 06:25:29 PM
In the USA some trials are now decided by the fact that the evidence must remain secret.
[citation needed]
Quotepatriotism discordianism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
fixed.
A qualitively better sort of scoundrel, however.
Also, I believe certain pieces of evidence are kept secret in drug trials, terrorism trials and anything involving national security.
Well, yes, but I was looking for a citation where the trial was decided because the evidence was secret. As in, "if the evidence is secret, then you are guilty."
Quote from: Cain on March 26, 2008, 02:24:00 PM
Very true. I know more than the average person (I have a depressing habit of reading legislation) and even then I dont know enough. I suspect that is the point. Passing so many laws no-one knows whether they are guilty or innocent would seem the perfect tool of control. It would mean that, faced with authority, most people would be uncertain, perhaps labouring under some level of guilt, and fear. Because they think they are innocent....but they cannot be certain.
I know enough about the law here to know I'm a felon, at least once over.
Also, evidence that is secret from the public, or evidence that is secret from the defendent? (I'm going to assume it's not so horrific as to be secret from the judge and jury).
I think the cases he is referring too were tried by military commissions, so there weren't any juries to begin with.
Military commisions have a jury of military people. Not necessarily a jury of peers though since iirc, the jury is all officers.
Still, none of this is convicting a person simply because the evidence is a secret.
Quote from: LMNO on March 28, 2008, 07:18:45 PM
Still, none of this is convicting a person simply because the evidence is a secret.
I believe maybe it was miswritten, in that a person could be found guilty on so called evidence that is secret*, but not that secret evidence automatically convicts a person.
I took it as the former meaning.
*evidence has the same root meaning as evident, yet if it is not publically given in a court of law, it is clearly not evidence, merely testimony.
I'd say if the defendant does not have access to the secret evidence then they have no abilty to defend themselves.
Quote from: Requiem on March 28, 2008, 07:26:43 PM
I'd say if the defendant does not have access to the secret evidence then they have no abilty to defend themselves.
true.
and your point?