Stradiotto

Exceptionalism

The Predator Class is a decent article that doesn't go far enough and hasn't gotten the attention it deserves. What spoils it for me is the exceptionalism of blaming the Boomers, Gens X and Y. Yeah, Boomers et al suck, have an enormous sense of entitlement, had and have it soft compared to, etc. . . The thing is, there are huge numbers of them. It's no wonder their impact is so far reaching. The combination of inane self-referential media, the couch potato consumerist mentality fostered deliberately since the fifites and globalized communication at light speed make the problem loom larger than is historically warranted. Now, things are definetly NOT peachy keen, but a little modesty is warranted, please.

The Robber Barons of the Gilded Age had their employees shot in the street, almost completed the eradication of the Native Americans and slaughtered the populations of colonies with a will. J.P. Morgan could eat Ken Lay for breakfast and pick his teeth with Michael Milken's bones.

Today's yuppie vermin are content to bilk grandmothers, throw canapes at the homeless from their limousines, have their minions shoot protesters with "non-lethal" projectiles after tear-gassing them and whine about "free market" solutions to the problems they create. They're pikers, genocidally speaking.

Not that they should be underestimated. Environmental devastation - their biggest gift to future generations, endless subversion of foreign governments and domestic reform movements, soul sucking greed, wholesale abrogation of the spirit and letter of the Bill of Rights, pathological banality and slobbering adherence to Cliff Notes versions of various discredited philosophies may yet put them in the running for places in the top ten Evil and Heinous Generations. Who knows, they may even jockey for search engine ranking as the darkness descends.

Addendum: I'm not saying post WW2 Americans have doomed the world or anything. Just giving them credit for trail blazing.

Torture

I've been nursing a grudge against celebrity legal beagle Alan Dershowitz for some time now. He's always been something of an ass; self-aggrandizing always and now, apparently, a plagiarist.

His attempt to cloak the unthinkable, despicable and illegal practice of torture in legalisms has earned him the hatred I normally reserve for sociopaths.

What the pompous ass Dershowitz should know - but clearly does not, is that abuse of the legal process is fairly routine, seldom remedied in a timely fashion, of dubious efficacy and a gross, though frequently winked at, violation of human rights.

Dershowitz has given a modicum of mainstream respactability to the ongoing assault on human rights that followed the miserable failure's theft of the presidency.

Triumph

Metafilter, an obvious front for the VLWC misses the most significant digression to an otherwise worthy thread; the most valuable network utility ever created, Poop Alerts!

Respect

I have a great deal of respect for Dan Savage. I have none whatsoever for Rick "man on dog" Santorum.

My foil hat

Ken MacLeod takes a look at conspiracy theories. An older article from ZMag offers a similar view. The standard left wing perspective is that conspiracies to commit crimes against humanity are inherent in the hierarchical structures set up to protect the privileges of the elite. There is no chance Henry Kissinger will brought to Den Hague in chains. It's a nice day dream, but it's never going to happen. Even minor despots like Milosevic rarely face the music. The re-appointment of assorted war criminals from the miserable failure's predecessors in psycopathic policy makes it abundantly clear that the elite view their role in governance as predatory and expect, with good reason, to get away with it.

Nevetheless, I like to follow the coverage given organized crime by the excellent Xymorpha and more recently, Eli Stephen's Left I on the News. I nurse the lingering hope that exposure of an outrage sufficient to disturb even the biggest couch potato will temporarily curb their excesses.

If Rumsfeld and Cheney were caught strangling puppies, that would doom the Bush regime. More seriously, big time gangsters become stupid with success and get caught for the little things. That's reason enough to keep gathering information; the off chance some it sticks. I'm not expecting justice. Just hoping for a respite.

A hot steaming turd from the annals of gross stupidity

Everyone is familiar with the "Patriot Act", a feculent stew of deranged prosecutorial demands that has nothing to do with improving "homeland security". And anyone who knows anything at all about security knows that's it not prosecutorial powers that reduce crime. What diminishes crime is a combination of competent police work, addressing the causes of discontent and offering people a means for improving their lot.

Making granny take off her shoes before boarding a a flight is not only abusive, it's shit-for-brains stupid.

The British government, no laggards in the rush to impose half-assed "remedies" on people who resent them for past and present infamies, has its own hodge podge of lickspittle enabling legislation. More is being proposed and, no doubt, more will be enacted. Dear reader(?), follow the link below.

When a tabloid journalist is able to breach the security of Buckingham Palace with bogus papers, it becomes painfully obvious that legislation aimed at fighting the War on Terror™ is less about catching actual terrorists and more about codifying the boot in the face wet dreams of militant authoritarians. The most basic background check - one any competent administrative professional could do - would have sussed out this potential evildoer in less time than it takes Pastor General Ashcroft to smear his hair with cooking oil.

Kicking the poodle

True to form, the despicable Bush administration has rewarded the enormous sacrifice Tony "don't I look like an ass now" Blair imposed on Great Britain by issuing this insane fatwa. Comment and more insight than I can bring to bear at Professor DeLong's site.