On 10/17/2013 5:42 AM, Shay wrote:
> Patrick Elliott <kag### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
>
>> Its a "who watches the watchmen?", problem.
>
> Oh, that one's simple. *We* are the watchmen and *we* watch the watchmen.
>
> I regret to say, Patrick, that you've been a very poor watchman indeed. Instead
> of watching over the rise of unfettered power, you've fallen in love with the
> idea of controlling it.
>
No, you just keep insisting I have, while failing to understand anything 
either of us that have been discussing this have been saying.

Its not about "unfettered power". How the hell does hundreds, if not 
thousands, of unrelated, uncontrolled, groups, every one of them just as 
corruptable, none of which the general public has the slightest hope of 
knowing enough about to make rational choices, replacing a single 
entity, which we *have* some level of control over, help anything?

You imagine that the whole thing, to use a batman analogy, is filled 
with Max Ekharts. Some of us recognize that, while more corruption has 
gotten in, as all of those other entities have pushed their own ideas 
into the mess, there was a time that James Gordon was the norm. What we 
have, because everyone recognizes its broken, but some thing that there 
are too many of the former to fight, and others can't find more of the 
latter to elect, is a government full of bloody Harvey Dents (many, 
many, of them going in with some distorted, over zealous idea of 
justice, then getting burned and turning into someone that can't stick 
to any concept of right and wrong, randomly jumping back and forth, as 
the wind changes). The solution, we are told, is to give the watchman a 
desk job, lock the door, so he can't get out and muck things up, and 
hand the key over to some fictitious "league of enlightened self 
interest", which like an absurd scene out of Pratchett's book, "Guards! 
Guards!", is in direct competition with the "club of enlightened self 
interest", the "society of greater enlightened self interest", and an 
endless number of other, supposedly incorruptible, groups, at least one 
of which you imagine yourself a member of, even while denying it, who 
can be "trusted with the key, to let the watchman out, when he needs to 
actually do his job, as per what which ever one of those "enlightened" 
groups happens to have it at the moment thinks that actually f-ing means 
exactly.

Because, that is what you get when you forget both why all the shit 
people think its doing too much of landing in its lap in the first 
place, and it should stop, and well as the only way you will *ever* keep 
it from over stepping the line, even assuming you can manage to somehow, 
magically, fix it, without doing the hard work of bloody working out 
what is really broken, how, and why, and fixing it, instead of 
bulldozing the whole thing, and imagining that you actually have a clue 
how it got there in the first place.

And, this is part of it:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jensenko/the-brainwashing-of-my-dad-documentary

Certain groups figured out, quite well, that people are lazy, and if you 
pretty much totally take over talk radio, where people listen alone, and 
can't fact check, then you get some part of the TV news repeating it, 
then.. you can control public perception, one of the biggest lies told, 
at the start of this, at a point when the government still **was** 
working, and didn't have the massive polarization we see now, and it was 
possible to get deals across the line, etc., was, "The government is the 
problem, not the solution." Well, it certainly fucking is now, after 
decades of making it that way, and pushing the idea, to everyone that 
listens, that all the problems where caused *by* government, and not, 
instead, by people intentionally breaking it.

It did work. A lot of it still does, and would work better, if other 
elements didn't hate anything that actually tries to help people, 
sabotaging it. Everything from the damn post office (which is mandated 
in the constitution), to medicare and social security, to, now, any 
attempt to fix the mess they forced through with healthcare reform, 
after making damned sure what passed **was** broken to begin with, has 
been fought, lied about, distorted, derided, demonized, sabotaged, 
and/or defunded, when ever possible, since at least Reagan, with the 
efforts to do so only getting worse and worse.

And, people *are* waking up to it. Only.. your position isn't the one 
that they are looking at for answers. It is, rather, one of the 
ideologies **driving** all of the sabotage. Strange how similar the 
wackos in the Tea Party are to libertarians, if you just get rid of the 
religious fanaticism, and barely hidden racism, from so many of them, 
and only look at their theory of "government", "social services", 
"spending", and anything else that doesn't just happen to help them, and 
no one else. A party line pushed, even by fools that have their own 
kids, in the case of one of them, getting medical care, via medicaid, 
saying that, "Its the only logical option", while, simultaneously 
claiming it should be ended, for being socialist, dysfunctional, and 
"not proper capitalism".

You can't get corporate money and plutocracy out of government, but 
killing, or defunding, or undermining, the government. All you do is 
replace their services with ones more directly run by the plutocracy, 
and, in the process, you can watch it all you damn want, but.. then, 
there also isn't anyone left to arrest, fine, or otherwise force them, 
to stop screwing you. You just, basically, fired all the cops, corrupt 
and non-corrupt both, without fixing the problem, and locked the rest of 
them in a room, for 'everyone's safety", so they can't do anything 
"untoward", unless... someone, not you, me, or anyone else with no 
power, but.. just more of the same people that will lie to us, claim 
they are doing the right thing, then taking bribe money to decide when 
the cop gets to come out and actually do something, still in charge. 
Nay.. **more** in charge.

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