Pulling Shit Together

[mindwalker_i]

I've been thinking a lot about surveillance, its use on Occupy, global climate change, and just the overall bullshit coming from Republicans, and I have a theory as to what's happening. They know climate change is happening and they know that admitting it could damage the companies that contribute to them the most: oil companies most of all. They also know that the obscene levels of inequality hurt the economy greatly, but again doing anything about it would hurt the people who contribute to their campaigns. Not doing anything about rising inequality will eventually lead to some form of revolution. They're putting that off as long as possible and hoarding money and power to them and their gang members as much as possible before revolution happens. As for climate change, it's the same thing. Hoard as much as possible so they can "weather" the disruptions as comfortably as possible.

This is in sharp contrast to the idea of actually trying to fix the problems. Fixing inequality would go a long way to stabilizing society and the economy, but would still leave climate change as a major problem. Keeping the power base by whatever means necessary is they way they're going to deal with it, and the rest of us can be damned. Once the shit hits, we and everybody will do whatever we can to stay alive, and if that means becoming serfs to whoever has resources, we'll do that and consider ourselves lucky to have somewhere to go.

Surveillance plays a big part in this, in that knowing where people are agitating will likely provide crucial information to help them crush any uprising, thus making it easier to survive the riots that are inevitable. Occupy was practice. And yes, I know occupy is dead, AND THAT'S THE FRIGGING POINT! Having people rising up against the rich/powerful is the biggest thing they have to worry about - always has been, but is especially so now.

$0.02

[Narkos]

1. Conservatives: Deontological

Liberals: Utilitarian
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/06/23/morality-study-finds-conservatives-show-a-general-insensitivity-to-consequences/

[woo me with science]

2. "coming from Republicans"?

Still this willful, blind, partisan delusion that this is coming only from Republicans?

STILL?

Your OP's point about the real purpose of the surveillance - protection of the corporate state from its victims - is well taken, but let's be honest here, for dog's sake. The spying, the massive surveillance state, the police state tactics and assaults on the Constitution, the targeting of Occupy, the looming Keystone pipeline, fracking, gutting of environmental protections, sale of the Gulf of Mexico....They may have started out as Republican policies, but now these assaults are coming from corporate Democrats and our own corporate Democratic administration...aggressively so.

You cannot solve a problem until you are honest about it. Our problem is corporate purchase of our government, BOTH parties, to create a corporate authoritarian state, and the Constitution is being dismantled in the process. Both parties, at this point, are aggressively complicit.

And...Occupy is not dead.

[baldguy]

4. But if your starting point is "Obama = Bush", then you're not being honest.

If you do nothing but spread Greenwald's libertarian lies, and Alex Jones' freaked out ideas, and sing the praises of Ron Paul and Jesse Venutra, then you're not being honest.

America - and DU - has too many of those people.

[woo me with science]

5. Oh, please.

Give it up already.

[mindwalker_i]

7. I dfefinitely wouldn't say Obama = Bush

I think Obama is trying, and he probably found out about the surveillance stuff when getting into office. Or he found out how extensive it was. It's even possible that he felt like if he killed the massive surveillance and then something happened, it would have seriously bad repercussions.

Regardless of all that shit, it's still wrong to have massive surveillance. And the programs have definitely been used far and beyond terrorism, if that was even the initial idea.

[mindwalker_i]

6. Yeah you're right, limiting it to Republicans is not right

There are probably a lot of different groups (blue dogs) that are part of it.

[patrice]

3. I'm not so sure as to how your whole scenario will play itself out, but I do agree that we are in a

phase at present in which Republicans highest goal is not to fix anything or make anything else better for the future. They have one goal, base building; by being so incredibly extreme and obstinate and ir-rational, they intend to identify (by any intelligence means available, government AND private) and then support, with the good jobs and good health care deals and good investments, their most obdurate, stone hard, obedient, and absolutely consistent and reliable political base. It's the only thing that makes sense of all of their insanity not resulting in completely zeroing them out. It's a strategy for creating something rock hard, completely ir-respective of the issues and yet obedient, to build itself back on in the future.

[mindwalker_i]

8. There was a post earlier about children being arrested

for things like spraying perfume on, or stupid shit like that. Then there's also the story about the guy who wrote anti-big-bang messages in chalk and is getting 13 years in prison. I'd say that goes back a lot further. Fry's started checking receipts, like, 15 years ago, which they have no right to do. Lots of people still just go along with it, which I think is a big mistake. Then there's the TSA grabbing your ass without any reason - no, it's not about preventing terrorism no matter what they say.

It's conditioning people to "respect" authority. I'm pretty sure global climate change is seriously going to fuck up society on Earth, and having us all compliant with the wishes of the rich would certainly help them when it happens.