A Grand Unifying Theory of the Ole Perfesser
The good Dr. Edroso writes about the Internets phenomenon that is Glenn Harlan Reynolds:
[Reynolds] is a fairly doctrinaire conservative, with just a little socially-liberal trim added to differentiate him from the currently overstocked pool of Bill O’Reilly impersonators. The Perfesser tumbled early to right-wing market realities: for example, that while Rush Limbaugh’s politics was a factor, it was his self-presentation as a callous, self-satisfied douchebag that reminded suburban burghers enough of themselves that they made him a god. But the crafty Perfesser has aimed slightly higher: between newsy bits, he rattles on about high-end coffee-makers and hand dryers and cars, portraying himself very convincingly as exactly the sort of shopaholic dink he wants to draw to his site. They’re a demographic bonanza, after all — moneyed, acquisitive, and fundamentally insecure.
This persona requires another innovation on the Limbaugh formula: while Rush’s white dreamers of disenfranchisement relate well to authority, the Perfesser’s target auditors are a little more urbane and feckless. So while rightwing politics must stay in the mix — one cannot dispense entirely with authority, nor with the narrative of liberal betrayal, lest the audience drift away — it must be a cooler version of rightwing politics, less beefy-faced and sweaty, more accomodating to people who, in the depths of their soullessness, really just don’t give a shit about anything except their own personal comfort and primacy.
Basically, yeah.
Reynolds is the type of “libertarian” who defines liberty as “my right to own and use a buncha cool stuff.” All other liberties- such as, say, habeas corpus or the right not to be tortured- can be shrugged away with a “Hey, I’m against it if they do it to American citizens, and besides, the folks who are really to blame here are the ones who opposed torture from the start! Heh.”
I’m not sure if I’ve ever discussed my Grand Unifying Theory of the Ole Perfesser with y’all, but it basically amounts to this: the Perfesser’s goal is to doze through life by sedating himself with as many gadgets and technodoodads as possible until that glorious day arrives when he’s finally able to download his brain into a robot body and blast off into space (preferably with some of his robowhores in tow). And if any folks- whether they’re envirohippies who want to ban his gas-guzzling SUV or Muslamonazis who want to homicide-bomb his collection of iPods- try to interfere with the Perfesser’s right to be a lazy shit, then they must be… dealt with.
This burgeoning technodorkofascist movement doesn’t yet have an official slogan, but I think a good one would be: “iVolk, iReich, iPerfesser!”
“iVolk, iReich, iPerfesser!�
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!
And that photo certainly has overtones of Borg, or Cybermen. I expect him to yell, “Upgrade or be deleted!” at any moment.
The most awesomest thing about the Ole Perfesser is that I don’t think I’ve ever encountered him outside of Sadly No! and a few other blogs which ridicule him.
I am Locletus.
Memory banks unloading
Bytes break into bits
Perfesser Corncob’s in trouble and he’s scared out of his wits
Guidance systems break down
A struggle to exist
To resist
A pulse of dying power in a clenching plastic fist
one zero zero
one zero zero
one — s.o.s.
It replays each of the days
A hundred years of routines
Bows its head and prays
To the mother of all machines
In the Reynoldian InstaFuture, Ann Althouse will have her brain and personality downloaded into a Robo-Toaster Strudel. Uh, again.
He pays attention to me and that’s what counts.
the guiding principle for libertarians has always been: me, me, me, mine, mine, mine, gimme, gimme, gimme.
I think he’s a selfish, insecure, middle-aged schlub. Awkward, untalented baby boomers with huge egos piss me off. Fawning over powerful authoritarians is a vicarious thrill for this American breed.
But seriously, give the Perfesseroid a TV, a computer and a Real Doll and he’ll be set for eternity.
You’re all forgetting the most important thing, which is that his brother’s rock band just did a commercial for canned chili! Does Matt Drudge give you this kind of hard-hitting political commentary? Did the so-called intellectual giant Victor David Hanson’s brother record a chili commercial? I think rather not.
the guiding principle for libertarians has always been: me, me, me, mine, mine, mine, gimme, gimme, gimme.
Libertarianism, otherwise known as Politics for 12 year olds.
Reynolds is the type of “libertarian� who defines liberty as “my right to own and use a buncha cool stuff.�
You know, I’ve been thinking for years about how to define the kind of neo-adolescent Libertarian that gives me the creeps, and here you’ve done it in a single sentence. Kudos.
“Libertarianism, otherwise known as Politics for 12 year olds.”
Well, I said 14-year olds, but reasonable people can disagree, etc.
I said this last year and was gently chid (?) by Retardo, but again:
To me, (the perhaps extreme, Rand-fan form of) libertarianism is the outlook of a smart teenager, who can understand abstractions and see them at work “in the world,” but who has zero experience with adults other than his parents and teachers, zero personal existential history (ie, zero awareness of his own unconscious assumptions and proclivities, and how wrong they can be), and zero significant experience of other people’s subjectivity.
Oh, and zero knowledge of history–social, economic, cultural, etc.
And, finally, a teenager’s sense of compassion and empathy, which approaches zero except in the v. neurotic. I think the deal they’re prepared to make with “society” is, “Look, no rules. Let everything and everybody sink or swim on the merits. I can deal with that! Can’t you?”
(admittedly, I’ve always like Bob Black’s definition: “A Libertarian is a conservative who smokes pot.”)
I feel absolutely certain that the Perfesser’s gadget posts exist solely in an attempt to get himself onto the free tech gravy train.
“And I’d be a Libertarian, if they weren’t all a bunch of tax-dodging professional whiners.”
— Berkeley Breathed
I once tried reading some of that Atlas Shrugged and it was the most absolutely trite, stream of consciousness claptrap that I have ever encountered in a book which I had heard of other people reading.
The notion that there would be an ‘Institute’ in her name, and whose representatives I have to hear like every two days on Thom Hartmann’s show, was inexplicable to me until I began to understand how deeply, deeply stupid our political leadership in this country really is.
Jeesh, most utopian arguments at least try to provide the listener / reader with *something* which seems appealing. In libertarianism, there’s nothing.
Libertarian: ‘I have a model of society entirely based on not having people come together for governments and everything will be evaluated as an economic efficiency and transaction. Aren’t you interested?’
Me: ‘Hmmm, why do I want to live in the hellish society you describe? It would be manly, or something? Are you nuts? Is this some sort of joke? Did you watch Star Trek and see the Ferengi dudes reducing a whole society to economic transactions and say, hey, I’d like to be like *those* guys?’
And all this time, I thought he was compelled to his schtick by his Spartan diet of boiled peanuts and fried Twinkies.
I feel absolutely certain that the Perfesser’s gadget posts exist solely in an attempt to get himself onto the free tech gravy train.
I saw a clip of Reynolds narrating a flying camcorder sweep of a Saturn Aura, aka the Vauxhall Vectra hack job. I thought Glenn was getting paid on the side to pimp the car. Maybe to add some underground cred to GM’s unimpressive line-up. Still, he is dumb. Maybe he thought the Aura was rad.
From Edroso’s post:
I believe it was the noted centrist blogger Karl Marx who once said, “Boob blogging repeats itself, first as farce, second as dementia.”
final, gruesome throes of dementia
I read that post and the comments. It’s like watching racing for the accidents.
Remember when all these fuckers, back in ’98, wore khakis and blue button-down shirts to work, had messenger bags and those moronic fucking goatees, hung out in winebars, subscribed to Wired, shopped at The Sharper Image, day-traded, smoked huge nasty cigars, and had to hide their racism, classism, sexism and utter shittiness as human beings behind a thin veneer of DLCesque liberalism? Man, those were the days…
Anne Althouise was just jealous of all the attention Pammalamma DingDong was getting.
Good God, teh l4m3, you’ve just described the entire city of Sunnyvale…
mikey
I mean no disrepect to the writer but I fail to see the link to the Instapundit show how he supports torturing non-citizens. The reason I point this out is becasue I read him regurarly and when the topic of torture comes up he argues against tortue in nearly all cases including non-citzens. I clicked on the link hoping to see an example of him arguing in favor of torture but failed to see anything.
If you could direct me to the actual words that would be great.
Call me a Pavlovian dog, but every mention of Sunnyvale makes me hear the Pete Ellis Dodge jingle (“Pete Ellis Dodge, 1095 West El Camino Real, Sunnyvale”) in my head and see the little dot bouncing over the words.
Well they were in S.F., San Mateo, and Oakland, too, mikey. I think now they’re an endangered species.
If I had more time, I could get into greater detail about the Perfesser’s passive-genocidal attitude toward torture, but I’ll summarize his basic MO as follows:
1.) State that he is against torture on principle.
2.) Look the other way when the GOP passes a bill that makes it easier for the government to torture people.
3.) Only link to criticism of said bill when the criticism bashes Democrats for not opposing it strongly enough. Also, don’t actually comment on the linked piece’s subtantive criticism of the torture bill, but rather affirm that passage of the bill is “disaster for the Democrats” who didn’t do enough to stop it, while apparently leaving the Republicans who actively supported it unscathed.
4.) And here’s the best part- actively place the blame on the torture bill’s passage on people like many liberals and (to his credit) Andrew Sullivan who were up in arms about it from the start.
Basically, the Perfesser never comes out and explicitly endorses torture, but, like with his passive-aggressive attitude toward genocide, he plays enough lawyerly word games with the issue so he can say some pretty scary and extreme things but still leave himself an out.
You can see this sort of intellectual shell game in its purest form when the Perf states that he’s not responsible for the veracity of bloggers whose “reporting” he promotes. While technically true, the guy sure does link to a lot of sketchy-assed people who reliably pass on bullshit stories that happen to conform to his biases. All of which is well and good, but once you get burned by some of these guys a few times, you’d think that you’d stop linking to them. Not the Perf. It’s just who he is.
It’s a pity that this society doesn’t actually exist because there is little doubt that nobody would ever pay Ole Perfesser for anything he has/does/thinks of. He wouldn’t even be important enough to be first (second, ever) against the wall when the revolution comes.
That’s pretty true of most of the libertarians. In fact, here is the point illustrated beautifully (link originally from Ezra’s place I think)
As the father of a child who turned 14 yesterday, I think liberterianism is probably the philosophy of 13 year olds, nicely splitting the differences expressed above before we have a left wing schism here. A reasonably socially developed 14 year old has a little more empathy than the ole perfesser and his dimwitted ilk.
The only “freedoms” I’ve ever seen these libertarians worship is the freedom to economically exploit other human beings, despoil the environment, and generally be a free rider on society. They are always arrogant enough to assume that they will be the exploiters rather than the exploited. The kind of people who were cheering Circuit City the other day for laying off its workers and cutting their wages. Who the fuck roots for this sort of thing?
tehl4m3 (catchy moniker there) that was a great description of these clowns. The fucking goatee of liberty.
Egads: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17932423/
Shots fired at CNN building
As I go through life, one thing is clear: If I meet someone and he* identifies himself as a Libertarian or a Rand fan, sooner or later he will do something to prove himself to be a total and complete asshole.
*They’ve all been men so far.
Remember when all these fuckers, back in ‘98,….
We all do, teh l4m3.
And then 9/11 changed everything, making it ok to be a straightforward pants-wetting authoritarian.
Still I suppose I’m guilty of lookism. Oh, and tribalism: “black hoodies and chuck ts VERSUS the Merrill Lynch noodge who dresses like a Kinko’s IT guy!”
I would like to point out that I was ass-deep in Silicon Valley during the nineties bubble. I continued to be the same large, longhair, jeans/leather wearing, bigass moustache (my GF called it a “fireman’s moustache) having, cigar hating attitudinally challenged curmudgeon I’ve been since, well, the late eighties at least. But I was happy to scoop up some of the venture money that they were spreading around with leaf blowers…
mikey
Nobody picked up on my Glenn-Reynolds = Team Rocket theme from yesterday, which means that either it was stupid, or I am the only one here who spends a substantial amount of time with second-graders. Japanese pop culture does a good job of ridiculing antisocial mad perfessor types, and we should learn something from them.
Little did I know that a mad law professor would be so much more insidious that the the standard mad chemistry professor. Maybe the mad law prof is a peculiarly American phenomenon.
Actually, that Team Rocket comparison was brilliant. I will use it in el futuro, hopefully with some photoshop ‘elp.
Aw, shucks, Mr. Bradrocket!
Tsk, tsk, tsk. All those cool user-contributed GlennBot images and you didn’t re-use any of ’em?
Xenos,
I, too, thought the Team Rocket analogy was brilliant, but I didn’t compliment you because it also produced a flashback to the days when that infernal show was on my TV every day and my son was obsessed with this silly Japanese phenomenon. There are actually benefits to having a teenager versus a toddler.
In fact I now imagine Reynolds saying “heh, indeed” in the fey voice of James of TR.
I was a libertarian at around 14. Then I tried to read Atlas Shrugged, and I changed my mind. Bad writing is one thing, but what the hell was the point? Granted, I gave up pretty quickly, but jebus englebert humperdink fuckin christ, what was the damn point?
…my son was obsessed with this silly Japanese phenomenon. There are actually benefits to having a teenager versus a toddler.
Hold it right there, buster. Just be thankful your son isn’t a teenage anime fan. That could lead to all sorts of gawky, pubescent fanaticism.
I made the terrible mistake of bedding a Randroid girl back in the late ’80s. I will omit details, but I do want you to imagine any kind of intimacy with someone to whom self-absorption was a religious observance.
Eeeesh. I’d almost forgotten that. Time to start drinking.
Just be thankful your son isn’t a teenage anime fan.
I own a four-year-old anime fan. Yes, OWN.
Selfishness as the true morality? Lack of empathy? No social constraints? Personal comfort? Makes perfect sense to me. So long as I don’t have to grow a goatee.
Or wear those damn Khat-kis….
mikey
Right now, I’m wearing a blue button down shirt, khakis, and have a goatee.
I’m feeling a lot of shame here.
Also, I like wine, but there aren’t any wine bars around here.
I’ll have my desk cleared out by noon =(
Feh, at least I’m not one of those giant cheesy mustaches that think they’re all like fireman-y and shit…
Hey now, it’s only cheesy after pizza…
mikey
the Ole Perfessor, if he paid any attention at all, would no doubt be flattered that you wet twats suspended your circle-jerk to expound on him.
“Hey now, it’s only cheesy after
pizza1983…”Fixed.
(I kid, from love. always from love)
I made the terrible mistake of bedding a Randroid girl back in the late ’80s. I will omit details, but I do want you to imagine any kind of intimacy with someone to whom self-absorption was a religious observance.
Been there. My second or third college girlfriend, I can’t remember which, introduced me to the concept of Objectivism and “made”* me read Atlas Shrugged. I was fairly politically naive going into college, rolling as I did just off the turnip truck, and libertarianism/objectivism had something of an appeal to it. However, once you got past the decent start, it cut me that most Objectivists (including the founder, apparently) used the ideology to excuse their being complete selfish assholes.
The girl herself wasn’t as bad as some as I’d meet later, but she definately had a “poor people deserve it because they don’t work hard enough/aren’t morally pure enough” going on, which was funny as hell because the poorest person she’d ever gotten to know well was me. Her parents both pulled down six figures a year each, and she’d gone to private school and had never worked a day in her life.
We broke up or, actually, she dumped me and I didn’t argue. She felt that I didn’t sufficiently “challenge” her and I was tired of her talking shit about my blue-collar relatives being “useless and replaceable” when it was obvious she didn’t know sheep shit from wild honey about the topic. I saw her right before graduation. Apparently she found God.
Hellfire, that’s been ten years. Can’t for the life of me remember her name. Hope she’s doing well as she can be, bless her heart.
* It’s not by design, but I’ve always “made” a romantic partner read one of my favorite books while she “made” me read hers (or at least one I/she hadn’t read). I “made” her read Huck Finn. Twenty years old and she’d never read any Twain. Can you imagine?
Oh Nim. Way to make me feel bad.
But that’s okay. Dressed like that, I’m sure you’re all ready for a lay-off!
ZING!
Okay, now I really feel bad.
Teh teh’s off the blogroll!
Reynolds is the type of “libertarian� who defines liberty as “my right to own and use a buncha cool stuff.� All other liberties- such as, say, habeas corpus or the right not to be tortured- can be shrugged away with a “Hey, I’m against it if they do it to American citizens, and besides, the folks who are really to blame here are the ones who opposed torture from the start! Heh.�
Yep, that pretty much sums it up. Discussions of the Ole Perfessor always remind me of a certain unapologetically neocon aquaintance of mine who is always trying to convince me that the Perfessor is really just a cuddly-sweet centrist. Not a conservative, not a libertarian, not a “right of center” character, but a centrist. Ugh.
I’m also reminded of this slightly chilling Australian video parody–it hits pretty close to home for reasons which will soon be obvious….
You meant teh blogroll, J— ?
Oh, “Atlas Shrugged”.
I managed to get into my forties before reading that iconic expression of teh human spirt. In my early teens, I had a narrow escape – as a bookish, bright and socially inept boy of thirteen, I picked up a paperback of “Fountainhead” at the library. In some branches of the multiverse, I devoured it and became an utterly insufferable prick for about a decade. In this one, I got to page four or so, and realized:
1) This book will be all about Howard Roark.
2) Howard Roark is an asshole.
3) I do not care to read a book all about such a person.
Reading AS as an adult was an interesting experience. Despite my best efforts, it warped my mind like a neutron star warps space/time, and I became somewhat. . . strange for a few weeks. I found myself imagining AS slash fanfic (not writing it, mind you, just imagining what it might be like). I finally purged myself (lots of Lord Dunsany and Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith helped), but I can’t even imagine what it would have done to me in college.
On a sunnier note, my eldest son introduced me to Team Rocket – he was somewhat offended that I kept rooting for them to win.
I believe I should be struck from the blogroll only if I feed a false story to Gavin about a Michelle Malkin fan who spit on Cindy Sheehan as he snowballed Glenn Reynolds while the latter was defecating on a burning 8X10 glossy of Noam Chomsky.
Which actually really happened.
NOES!!1! JUST KIDDING!
Or am I…?
teh l4m3, I think I read about that on the innert00bz somewhere…
P.S. The youtube moerex posted is pretty good!
You meant teh blogroll, J— ?
I’m off teh blogroll!
Score another win for the self-purging blogosphere.
Does anyone here who wants to dump all libertarians into the Rand (who was not a libertarian at all) or Reynolds (who isn’t, either) category read Jim Henley or his co-bloggers, Thoreau and Mona? I realize that challenging your preconceptions with things like libertarians who believe in universal health care might be frightening, but give it a whirl.
Speaking of ol’ Ayn Rand and women…when I was in my mid-twenties or so I actually broke off a budding relationship with a woman precisely because she insisted not only that I read The Fountainhead, her fave book EVAR, but also because she insisted that I reminded her of Howard Roarke. Egads.
As I recall, not long after that I was chatting up a gal in a coffeeshop when she started singing the praises of Ms Rand, and it suddenly seemed to me that there was some sort of syndrome going on.
(Have I mentioned that this was approx 1997 in San Francisco? Makes more sense in that context.)
Anyway, not long after the coffeeshop incident I was talking to yet another woman who I had a bit of a crush on at the time–she was quite obviously not an Objectivist by any means–and when I jokingly asked her to “save me from these Ayn Rand freaks” something in her softened and we ended up dating for awhile. So it works both ways, I guess….
Rand (who was not a libertarian at all) or Reynolds (who isn’t, either)
Is this kinda like a “you’re NOT a Christian” thing? Anyway, Jim Henley seems like a funny guy, although Ayn Rand would probably prefer the Marx Brothers.
I, Ann Althouse, have just noticed that The Editors, if that’s their real name, of the semi-popular blog The Poorman, have decided to further the Democrat Party conspiracy against me, Ann Althouse, by posting supposedly drunken videos of, among others, Orson Welles, Crispin Glover, and someone named Shane something-or-other who is apparently some sort of singer.
They think that these videos will embarrass me, Ann Althouse, who they have repeatedly accused of drunken vlogging in an effort to discredit my leadership of the moderate wing of their party.
Since I, Ann Althouse, did not rise to the bait, they’re now featuring pictures of the supposedly drunk Mr. Welles in their banner.
Well, it won’t work. I, Ann Althouse, understand that these vicious prudes in the left of the blogosphere are being terribly unfair to Messers. Welles, Glover, and Shane. They seem no more drunk to me, Ann Althouse, than I, Ann Althouse, seem to my fan-boys.
You, The Editors, and your unscrupulous vicious fellow vicious people, are the ones who are embarrassed by this attempted character assassination!
Did I mention that I, Ann Althouse, still think of myself as a red head? My sister was always the blonde!
Holy shit, she’s right. It IS all about her.
I’m writing a book, and was going to title it “Narcissus and Althouse.”
Then I realized teh title was redundant.
Any suggestions?
Since I’m only slightly more mature than my son, I could probably deal with the Anime thing. Come to think of it, that Trixie girl in Pokemon was pretty hot. Damn, I’m channeling Derbyshire again.
I knew a Randroid girl in college too and I probably would have changed my name to Howard Roarke if I could have bedded her. I might have hated myself in the morning, but an excess of self respect isn’t all its cracked up to be.
This is the part that gets me about Reynolds’ post (I apologize if someone already brought this up):
“I’ve never felt that degree of attraction to, or affection for, Bush — you never saw the kind of praise for him here that you once saw for him elsewhere.”
Isn’t this the guy who wrote that infamous passage about how GW is an unappreciated genius? Or am I mixing up my wingnuts?
I realize that challenging your preconceptions with things like libertarians who believe in universal health care might be frightening, but give it a whirl.
Gee, after such a pleasent invitation, I don’t know how I could resist. I like a lot of Henley’s stuff, but I swear to Elvis, I will never figure out how you guys expect to really convince anyone not already given to your worldview to pay much attention to you when your sales pitch never fails to come off as incredibly smug and churlish. It’s either that or the whole “Ya know, we Libertarians would be you filthy commies’ Best Friends Forevah if you would just give into everything we want inre: tax thievery and our goddamn guns by meeting us halfway, oh dear, you’re throwing away a potential ally by insisting on government interfering at all with saintly corporations” thing. It’s like the entire political world is supposed to drop everything it’s doing and fluff y’all’s pillows or something.
Do y’all do this sort of thing to conservatives? What’s the unholy bargin you try to get them to make, what do they have to give up to court y’all? It’s damn shame, too, because libertarianism (big “L” or no) does have a lot of really good if, to be quite frankly, blatantly obvious ideas (“Durh, government should be as small and efficient as possible while still serving the people as best as possible, duh-dahr”.) But invariably, one of y’all will say or write something (rarely do, though) and it makes me think, “Man, that guy’s an asshole. Don’t let him run shit.” And ya did it right off the bat, too. “Oh noes, Lefties! I will blow your minds with a libertarian who doesn’t think like another libertarian on one specific topic! Since all you lefties obviously think alike, TOTAL DESTRUCTION OF YOU MIND!”
Bah. Go ahead and tell me I’m a big government-loving socialist who wants government to run everything and loves government so much I’d marry it. Go ahead, get it out of your system.
RubDMC, maybe “Althouse and Althouse”?
P.S. Bettencourt, that might be AssRocket you’re thinking of.
Why is everyone picking on Librarians, alla sudden?
Yes, I would guess the George the Genius thing is coming from Hinderaker. Reynolds, for his part, sees genius in Lileks.
Gosh, Matt T., that was so, like, awesome. I am in awe. You gotta date for the prom?
Xenos, I loved the Team Rocket reference, too.
I’ve turned the corner on the lesser professor because I ooze empathy from every pore (and, yes, it does get messy sometimes), and I actually just feel bad for her. Yes, she filters everything through the prism of herself, which is why she’s so anti-woman and explains the 911/security thing, and why she pushes everyone’s buttons so much. But these debates that are not about any real issue (*cough*whether that mosque was actually destroyed or not*cough*) just get so fucking tedious. Can we stop now?
OT
Re: the Iraq war in general
(also see this post)
Ever since the months prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, there have been a few reports in the newspapers that the Central Intelligence Agency was casting aspersions on the intelligence the White House was relying on to justify the war. The CIA has never given a position on whether the war is needed or justified or said that Bush is wrong to go to war. But doesn’t it seem much more likely that the CIA is an extremely right wing organization than a left wing one? After all, even if the people working for them and at least a lot of the leadership really wanted a war for their own reasons, there are a lot of reasons for them to not want to tie their credibility to what they know is faulty information. They and their personnel, present and former, could use other means of promoting the Iraq war, and still be motivated to make the statements in the media. If the CIA got behind faulty information, they would have to make a choice between whether they would be involved in scamming the American people and the world once the military had invaded Iraq and no weapons were found- so: 1) Imagine the incredible difficulties involved in pulling off a hoax that weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq. Imagine all the people you would have to be able to show the weapons to- the inspectors from the UN / the international community, the American press, statesmen, etc. Then imagine the difficulties of substantiating that story to people who would examine it- the lack of witnesses to a production plant that made the weapons or to transportation operations or storage of the weapons during Hussein’s regime of them. 2) If the story fell apart upon inspection or the CIA tried not to hoax it at all, imagine the loss of credibility they would suffer. The CIA, it is safe to bet, does not want to be known to the American people as a group that lies to them to send them to war. Even within the CIA there could be disagreement among people about how involved they should be in promoting the war or the neo-con agenda more broadly, so the CIA would have to worry about lying to and managing its own people after trying so hard to get them to trust their superiors in the agency, and perhaps there simply might be too many people in the agency who knew enough about what was going on in Iraq to know if someone was deceiving people to promote this war.
So there is a lot of reason to be cautious against being seen as endorsing what they knew was false intelligence even if they were very strong supporters of going to war.
lots of Lord Dunsany and Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith helped
Which is all very well — but you never know when an Ashton Smith flashback will strike, and leave you littering the conversation with words like cresset and embrasure and catafalque.
[examples picked at random from The Colossus of Ylourgne]
Not to be a wet blanket, but Dorks like the Perfesser often end up with kids who become addicted to oxycontin in part because their lives, as proscribed by their parents, are so numbingly meaningless and shallow. cf. “You’re a Lonely Little Girl” by the Mothers of Invention.
You’re a lonely little girl.
But your mommy and daddy don’t care.
The things they say just hurt your heart.
It’s too late now for them to start
To understand the way you feel
The world for them is too unreal
So you’re a lonely lonely lonely little girl.
All your children are poor unfortunate victims of lies you believe.
A plague upon your ignorance that keeps the young from the truth they deserve.
FZ — 1968.
I own a four-year-old anime fan. Yes, OWN.
I
ownam a 39 year-old anime fan.That reminds me…. Oh goodie, Death Note 25 is out!
I was lucky and became a Wilshean Libertarian early in life.
Libertarian socialists believe that all social bonds should be developed by individuals who have an equal amount of bargaining power, that an accumulation of economic power in the hands of a few and the centralization of political power both reduce the bargaining power—and thus the liberty of the other individuals in society. To put it another way, capitalist (and right-libertarian) principles lead to the concentration of economic power in the hands of those who end up owning the most capital. Libertarian socialism aims to distribute power, and thus freedom, more equally amongst members of society. A key difference between libertarian socialism and right-wing libertarianism is that advocates of the former generally believe that one’s degree of freedom is affected by one’s economic and social status, whereas advocates of the latter believe that freedom is essentially freedom of choice, or freedom of action. They would argue that even a poor, low-status individual is entirely free in a libertarian society in the sense that she has complete freedom to do whatever she chooses with those possessions and resources which she has.
Libertarian socialists believe if freedom is valued, then society must work towards a system in which individuals have the power to decide economic issues along with political issues. Libertarian socialists seek to replace unjustified authority with direct democracy and voluntary federation in all aspects of life, including physical communities and economic enterprises.
Like other socialists, libertarian socialists believe that objects should be held communally and controlled democratically; the only exception being personal possessions. Whereas “private property” grants an individual exclusive control over a thing whether it is in use or not, “possession” grants no rights to things that are not in use. A property title grants owners the right to withhold their property from others, or, if they desire, to require payment from those who wish to use it. “Possession,” on the other hand, is not compatible with this form of “exploitation” or “extortion”. Possession amounts to the right to use, rather than own, for oneself.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism
Hey Doug:
Promises mean everything when youre little
And the worlds so big
I just dont understand how
You can smile with all those tears in your eyes
Tell me everything is wonderful now
–Everclear
I’m basically a libertarian socialist. Of course, I guess that makes me guilty of wanting to have my weed and smoke it, too.
All you libertarian socialist’s are within a hair’s breadth of anarchism. Better watch it. Don’t make me get out my Political Compass quiz.
Those nice, idealistic anarchists better not come crying to us when they trigger the revolution and, all of a sudden, militias and anarchists are duking it out in the streets with AKs. It will be like 1980’s Lebanon. Wee! Of course, Israel was the instigator there.
I think we’re off track. This was supposed to be about the Glenndroid.
I’m looking for Islamic Atheists Anonymous. Can any point me in the right direction?
My apologies. I think ifthethunder is right, it was the Rocket who wrote that unforgettable “It must be strange to be the smartest genius in the whole wide universe like GW” post, not the Perfesser. I only realized this when I was between computers. I rarely post, and I’m already spreading misinformation like those “Michael Ware the Heckler” posters on the right. The shame may never leave me.
The shame may never leave me.
C’mon, it’s nothing next to the shame of Extreme.
“Perfesser Glenn Reynolds, for one, looks forward to a near-future in which exists ‘individuals with powers that would have been until recently regarded as doglike.'”
Glenn with powers almost doglike
[…] esteemed colleague, F. Brad Fitzaltrocket, takes a stab at the Grand Unifying Theory of the Ole Perfesser and jots out the following equation: This burgeoning technodorkofascist movement doesn’t yet have […]
But invariably, one of y’all will say or write something (rarely do, though) and it makes me think, “Man, that guy’s an asshole. Don’t let him run shit.�
Yup, the older I get, the more I appreciate the fact that most libertarians over the age of 18 are too lazy, or unambitious, or whatever-the-excuse-of-the-week-is, to actually commit most of the stuff they talk about accomplishing. Because, after all, one Alan Greenspan is probably as much libertarianism as the national economy can survive (assuming we survive the aftereffects of that little objectivist’s evil dreams). Bad enough we have to listen to their ever-various & never-changing Unified Theories of Everything, without having to clean up any more of the disasters that follow the rare instances where they actual implement some of their Dorkschemes.