Spitting in his coffee.
Back a few years ago, before Rush started going deaf and went away and then stopped going deaf and came back, a friend of mine was working in an office near another office where the radio was tuned to Rush’s show. And the people in that other office would listen and laugh and share the better bits back and forth and “Oh, yeah” and “That’s telling ’im” along with him (and I should probably interrupt this ghastly stereotype of an office full of dittoheads and allow as how my own mother listens to him, or did, for a while, because she thought he was funny), and anyway for my friend this was a constant, low-level irritant, as he walked the halls between that office and his own. “He’s just—always there,” my friend would say. “He’s this smugly arrogant, smooth-talking, oily twit, bombasting away in the background with that pompous voice, and he’s there in your day and in your space making your life that much more unpleasant. But you can’t touch him. You can’t tell him to shut up and you can’t call him on his shit and you can’t argue with him. He’s just—there.” And he’d sigh and glower off in the middle distance somewhere. “You just can’t touch him,” he’d say, his hands rising up, fingers curled in a dramatic impotence. And then he’d get this look on his face. “You can’t trip him when he’s walking down the hall. You know? You can’t even spit in his coffee.”
Well, actually, you can. It just takes a little work.
Taking a bullet.
The highly recommended CalPundit put his money where his mouth was on the whole cocooning thing, the echo chamber stuff, and spent 40 minutes he’ll never get back listening to Rush.
It’s a good thing he did. Those who doubt the vast right-wing conspiracy alluded to by Gore (if Krauthammer says I’m crazy, I don’t ever want to be sane!) should note how Rush has picked up on those unbelievable lucky duckies from the Wall Street Journal editorial page. (Paul Krugman lays out some more of the possible logic behind this bizarre assertion that’s seeking traction in the echo chamber: the man behind the curtain is letting his velvet glove slip. —Thanks to Kevin Moore for reminding me to check in with Krugman.) —Following Kevin Drum’s selfless example, then, I held my nose and plunged into rushlimbaugh.com, and saw the numbers game they’re stacking up to follow in the wake of lucky duckies—and it’s not so bizarre, anymore. It’s scary. They’re serious.
Christ. I’m thinking about the anthropic principle and Buffy and Robin Wood, I want to finally get started writing about web comics, which is one of the other purposes of this blog-thing, I want to think about Jo Maguire and Ysabeau and the City of fucking Roses and the crew of the Catalina de Erauso, and this comes along. I’m lazy and tired and no good with numbers and worse with policy—I’m a propagandistic hack, ladies and gentlemen, a glib farceur who can turn a phrase with a twinkle in my eye and a snort up my sleeve. —I can spot a number of places where holes can easily be kicked in this chimerical nest of deeply disingenuous nastiness: note the vague language with which the supposed canard all wealth is inherited is supposedly overturned: “Most of the rich have earned their wealth… Looking at the Fortune 400, quite a few even of the very richest people came from a standing start, while others inherited a small business and turned it into a giant corporation.” (Emphasis added to flag turns of phrase which really ought to be more specifically defined before taken at all seriously.) Payroll taxes are utterly left out of the equations, as they have been ever since the lucky duckies were first drafted. The enormous (and growing) disparity in wealth between the top 1% and the bottom 50% isn’t even mentioned, except in passing, alluded to as if it’s a falsehood we’ve already dispensed with. Stretching the numbers to include the top 50% is a stroke of necessary genius; it allows Rush to reach the vast majority of his audience, and coddle them into thinking they’re rich, they’re targetted by the Democrats, when in fact the Bush tax cuts would barely touch them, and will end up torching public services they depend on—this isn’t a sincere disagreement due to differing views of human nature and a just society; Rush is shafting his own audience of loyal dittoheads and laughing at them the whole time, and—!
But I’m tired. I’m tired of the rank, thug-eyed hypocrisy, I’m tired of the greed no longer even cloaked in a token veil, I’m tired of watching the Mayberry Machiavellis breeze by with a wink and a nod while blowdried newsbots give them hummers in the backs of limousines for exclusive pre-processed infonuggets. I’m tired of the cranky, mean and spiteful things they make me want to say. I’m tired of yelling at headlines and ducking the mid-40s on the cable channels, where the 24-hour news networks hang out. I’m tired of the clench in my jaw and the ache in my fingers and the fizzing anger at the base of my skull and thumping through my veins and even though I know there’s a good fight to be fought, I—
I start whingeing on about myself instead of looking for more. Goddamn. Links.
Anyway. —This is maybe why I at least tend to cocoon. More often than not. Rage and fear, and the Spouse gets worried about the blood pressure.
But if anybody out there has the numbers and a sharp piece of logic, and the time and anger-management skills, could you please fisk this tax-the-duckies bullshit into the oblivion it deserves? —I could use some decent talking points. If I’m going to go pick fights and all.
(“Most people have a particularly strong tendency to ignore views that they disagree with and are presented rudely.” Heh. I can’t even get that one right.)
Sousveillance redux.
This essentially humorous column by Matt Smith has been taken quasi-seriously by John Gilmore and is kicking up a ruckus among the usual suspects. —Myself, I think one participant nailed it when he pointed out that the profound discomfort people are feeling at the idea of posting Poindexter’s personal information is precisely the point.
In related news, Salon has managed to interview a number of computer scientists who, facing the prospect of fat DARPA contracts, nonetheless manage to see some merit in the idea of a Total Information Awareness program. (It’s premium content, so if you don’t have a subscription, click through the little Mercedes commercial for your free daily pass.)
Jeffrey “Frankly, I don’t see any other way for us to survive as a civilization” Ullman, a database expert from Stanford, wrote a rambling piece on Islamic fascists and fundamentalists and warring on terror in the days after 911, including the difference between terrorism and state-sanctioned warfare (terrorists can’t parade their weaponry, a la missiles trooped up and down Red Square back in the day) and a story about the time Osama bin Laden’s nephew dissed his nephew at some toney Eastern college. Salon nipped this quote as a rallying cry of the pro-TIA faction:
Modern technology has given criminals and terrorists many new and deadly options. Just about the only defensive weapon to come out of the developments of the past 50 years is information technology: our ability to learn electronically what evils are being planned. If we use it wisely, we can keep our personal freedom, yet use information effectively against its enemies.
Sounds breathtaking, doesn’t it. We can learn what evils are being planned.
Well, no. We can create massive databases of seemingly trivial information and use it to search for patterns and act or not act on what we find. But how do we know what patterns presage evil? How do we differentiate them from ordinary, everyday activities that fit the (ominously unspecified) pattern? How do we deal with the innocent lives that will be disrupted and possibly ruined by false positives? —There will be false positives. To quote some sobering numbers from Bobby Gladd, a statistician who’s kicked up a ruckus about false positives in the War on Drugs: a pipe-dream TIA that’s 99.9% accurate would still finger 240,000 innocent people. Surely a little disruption in our everyday lives is worth preventing another tragedy, supporters will say; this logic would also have us ban automobiles. More to the point: think of the waste of time and effort on the part of the good folks at the Department of Homeland Security, running down false positives spat out by a clunky, unwieldy database running search algorithms we’re still in the process of, you know. Tweaking.
And hell: how do we define “evil” in the first place? Wave the hand of Potter Stewart over the whole mess and merely know it when we see it? You might want to talk to Greens, nuns and peace activists who’ve tried to catch a plane the past few months before you blithely sign off on someone else’s definition of what it is exactly we’re looking for and trying to stop.
It would be lovely, wouldn’t it? A system that could scan all this trivia and unfailingly find these patterns and bring them to our attention, protecting us from the Bad Stuff before it happens. But putting this system, with its insanely broad sweep, under the control of a secretive branch of the government with a nakedly partisan agenda and the ability to re-write the definition of the thing it’s looking for—
It’s not just un-democratic, un-American, un-free and irresponsible. It’s staggeringly stupid.
(We could, I suppose, call Poindexter, and ask him what he thinks about the abyss gazing back…)
The word for today is:
Sousveillance. —Via Plastic.
It’s a beautiful word and a timely concept and I think David Brin would approve, but I also think it’s only going to work if people come out in droves, cameras in hand, snapping away to prove the point: we have nothing to hide, and we are worried. So enough with the unreasonable, already. —Does that mean that I’ll be out there with them, digital camera in hand, doing my part to swell a trickle into droves? Well, I worry, you know, about safety in numbers and tragic misunderstandings too individuated to make the evening news and the wild-assed hair-trigger assumptions to which some of us seem too ready and willing to leap, these days. So. Um. Ask me later?
Anyway and as it is, I think these guys have a better shot at making a point without massively multiplayer civil disrespect. So jot down sousveillance and keep it in mind, but maybe pencil another word in next to it: agitprop.
Here’s your handbasket, what’s your hurry?
Today is World AIDS Day, which means those of us who like our activism wired, typed, and indirect can hook up with Link and Think. —Myself, I can think of no better one-stop links resource than MetaFilter, who’s doing one of their daily specials to get the word out. For instance, it’s where I found this sobering column from Joseph Riverson, which lays out some decidedly cold equations on what the next hundred years could look like; equations that are a staggering testament to the short-sighted, bone-headed, arrogant stupidity of which we’re capable. Makes me want to pick up a copy of And the Band Played On and start beating people about the head and shoulders with it. Various members of the Bush administration, to start...
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update— Again via MeFi: delfuego posts a link to the first mention of AIDS on Usenet.
Accolades, and a chance to join forces with Bob Barr; also, something of a mission statement.
I don’t see this blog-thing as being a political blog necessarily. I mean, I do try to be PC (politically conscious, that is; “political correctness” is and always has been the shoddiest of straw men), and since I tend to hold more often than not that the personal is political—or was that the other way ’round?—I can’t help but write politically, even when what I’m nattering on about appears to be nothing more than what was on Buffy last night or the sound of Robyn Hitchcock’s guitar. (Or so I’d like to think.) —Cutting through the fog of hazy equivocations: I don’t intend to write primarily about politics, or political ramifications per se; for one thing, so many other people do it much better than I ever could, having as they do patience for such things as facts, reason, and rigorously constructed arguments (I have this weakness for glib misstatements, and tend to start ranting incoherently when allowed to go on too long. Ask anyone) and anyway and more to the point: I just have more fun over here in my corner as a gadfly, raconteur, and freelance paraliterary critic. So.
The political nature of the last couple of posts, then, I blame entirely on the pernicious influence of Barry and his ilk. Alas, a Blog is essential reading—and I’m not just saying that because I’ve known him for holy fuck fifteen years; his blogroll alone is worth keeping onscreen as an endless source of coffee-break–wasting diversions. (Leaving aside his voracious intellect, wicked sense of humor, and all the pretty pictures.)
From that blogroll, then, a new favorite: Jeralyn Merritt’s TalkLeft, an excellent argosy of “crime-related political and injustice news,” whether it’s riffing on what it was that Law & Order guy said, or contemplating the appalling microcosm found within Tabitha Pollack’s terribly contingent release. So, from TalkLeft: a link to the ACLU’s faxblast to President Bush that’ll let you speak out against the odiously un-American Total Information Awareness program. Join former Congressman and perennial right-wing nutcase Bob Barr in fighting the good fight for justice and freedom and the right to enjoy Mom’s apple pie in private.
See? Another descent into glib raillery. Sigh…
To the barricades, lucky duckies!
To a person earning $12,000, the Journal argues, paying 4 percent in federal income tax is notenough to get his or her blood boiling with tax rage. … [A]s fewer and fewer people are responsible for paying more and more of all taxes, the constituency for tax cutting, much less for tax reform, is eroding. Workers who pay little or no taxes can hardly be expected to care about tax relief for everybody else. They are also that much more detached from recognizing the costs of government.
—via Slate. Also, the Washington Post. (Seeing as how I don’t subscribe to the Journal and all, I can’t link to it directly.) You just can’t make this stuff up, folks.
Hypocrisy.
I’m starting to think that when it comes to such programs as Total Information Awareness, supporters must be able to pass the following litmus test:
Would you support the same power in the hands of a Democratic administration?
I imagine very few would. Certainly, as then-Senator Ashcroft makes very, very clear in this article written back in October 1997, our current Attorney General would fail miserably.
But while it’s well and good (and funny, in a black, auto-Schadenfreudeian sense) to scoff at the hypocrisy of the hands-off, smaller-government, conservative right wing currently in power, there’s a deeper and more troubling lesson to be drawn: attacks of this nature on the Bill of Rights and our civil liberties aren’t so much a problem of right (or left); they’re a problem of people in power. “The Democrats have not been strong on civil and constitutional rights,” says Jeralyn Merritt. “The Clinton administration, which we admire for other accomplishments, was terrible in these areas.” (She expands on it hereabouts, but be sure to click through to her 1996 article.) —After all, Bush initially opposed the draconian barrel of pork he just signed into being; it was Congressional Democrats who pressured him into (so enthusiastically) picking it up and running with it.
That said, it’s worth noting the nine nays on Homeland Security:
Ted Kennedy, D-Massachusetts; Paul Sarbanes, D-Maryland; Jim Jeffords, I-Vermont; Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii; Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii; Robert Byrd, D-West Virginia; Carl Levin, D-Michigan; Ernest “Fritz” Hollings, D-South Carolina; and Russ Feingold, D-Wisconsin.
Are your Senators on the list? You might want to let ’em know how you feel about that…
The Mouse Police must never sleep.
Hey! Let’s dabble in something that may well be illegal, soon. Ready? Type this into your handy text editor:
10 INPUT A$
20 PRINT A$
That, my friends, is a piece of software capable of reproducing copyrighted works in digital form. When I upload this page to the web, I’ll be distributing it for free—a civil offense under the Hollings-Disney act, and quite possibly a criminal offense as well. Wasn’t that fun?
This, perhaps, is the most compelling (and most easily sound-bitten) reason to stop the Hollings-Disney act (call a spade a spade, by God: it’s not Hollings-Feinstein; it’s not the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act, an Orwellian doublespeak phrase if I ever heard one; it’s Hollings-Disney—the damn thing practically has mouse ears stamped all over it), but it’s far from the only reason. And the CBDTPA (and the DMCA—remember that one?) is far from the only thing to get in an uproar about. The world of “intellectual property”—which, mind you, is nothing less than speech and thought—is about to get very, very ugly, and these laws and proposed laws are, I’m afraid, little more than the tip of the iceberg.
(Of course, I “stole” the BASIC example from this handy little rant by Declan McCullagh, thereby compounding my crime. See how easy it is to become a thief?)
There is an uproar, at least. It’s nearly impossible to surf the web these days without running into wry, disgusted, alarmed, horrified or just plain furious commentary on the unbelievable scope of the Hollings-Disney Act, and the unmitigated gall of the Disney Five who’ve signed on to sponsor it. The best of these is doubtless Dan Gillmor’s fiery op-ed on our “Bleak Future,” but there’s also the Guardian reminding us of how maybe it’s a sign the Communists won the Cold War after all (one might also point out that the steps Cuba has taken are if more draconian than Hollings-Disney also more likely to be successful); Kevin Kelly’s excellent piece in the New York Times magazine reminding us that what Hollings-Disney is trying to protect isn’t creativity or art but a goddamn business model; Declan McCullagh (again) in Wired, pointing out the unthinkable threat to art, creativity and code at greater length; a Salon piece by Damien Cave, pondering the practicality of the whole idea of unbreakable copy protection in an age of information (back when Hollings-Disney was known as the Security Systems Standards and Certification Act, before it got its creepy Orwellian make-over)—heck. The only piece in favor of this insanity is one in which Michael Eisner, Disney’s CEO, summons forth the ghost of “internet pioneer” Abraham Lincoln. Eisner was drawn to Lincoln, no doubt, because the Great Emancipator also had a habit of smashing reporters who said things he didn’t agree with and trampling on the First Amendment rights of inconvenient presses. —Of course, Lincoln was fighting a war; then, I suppose Eisner thinks he is, too. (The reporter in question is still getting her licks in, thankfully enough.)
So speak out! Do it now! Don’t trust in the statistics that point out that the tech industry brings in 600 billion bucks, while Hollywood accounts for a measly 35 billion; keep in mind that it’s Hollywood, and the music industry, and potentially publishers, media conglomerates, game companies—anyone, that is, who makes a buck off buying or selling art, entertainment and information. (Except, oddly enough, the writers and artists and musicians themselves. The ones who actually do the creative work. —Funny, that.) Also: remember that the tech industry is slow to avail themselves of Congress and politicians, for a variety of reasons—whether it’s that the computer sector has been a frontier for so long, or that it’s dominated by libertarians whose political naïveté sometimes makes pie-in-the-sky progressives look Machiavellian by comparison, it’s true: geeks are out of their league when it comes to world-class schmoozing.
So: write letters. Fax blast. Kick up a ruckus. Here’s a letter I cribbed from shamelessly in composing my own (more theft!), and here’s the handy dandy list of senators, and how to contact them. Let the EFF help you comment to the Senate on the future of digital media distribution, and while you’re there, give them some money.
But: note how the EFF Action Alert points out the possible incremental implementation of Hollings-Disney, even if the act never passes the Senate. (Scroll down to the “Incremental CBDTPA” header.) It’s not enough to stop this act and then go back to sleep. We’ve got to stop it, and the next one, and the next one, and the next… (I’m not so sure I want to go so far as to call for the elimination of the idea of intellectual “property,” but given the abuse copyright is taking in the name of the bottom line, it’s a tempting thought. —Warning: though that particular page is perfectly safe for work, the rest of the site isn’t, really.)
But closer to home, and far more likely: we must insist upon a recognition of the Fair Use rights we all have, and we must insist on their protection. The Consumer Technology Bill of Rights proposed by DigitalConsumer.org is a good start—no matter that I’d rather be called a “citizen” than a “consumer.” Still. Send their fax and make your wishes known. Now. And don’t stop. Boycott Disney, yes, and let them know you’re doing it, and why. Stop buying major label albums. Vote with your dollars, yes—but it’s far more important to speak up, loudly, defiantly, and often.
Whether we like it or not, we’ve all—all of us who write, who read, who make art and take it in, all of us who don’t have a corporation and an assault team of lawyers at our beck and call—we’ve all been drafted into the Mouse Police.
And the Mouse Police never sleeps.
(Or did I “steal” that from Jethro Tull? Oy.)
This time, it’s personal.
Yeah, I know. Two entires in a row with Salon links. It’s so 1999. But trust me. What this guy is saying is absolutely vital.
Just ask my mom.
Which side are you on?
Choose up. The margin in the middle is disappearing rapidly.
On the one side: [a] [b] [c] [d] [e]
On the other: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
Look to your neighbors, step carefully, and watch your freakin’ back.
Some credibility issues.
How seriously can you take an FBI warning about possible terrorist attacks when the talking head on the “newsbreak” says, “Coming up at ten: could Yemeni terrorists be planning another strike? We’ll tell you where in America they may strike—tonight!” —And then, salting their own wounds, the talking head next to him says, “Plus: the Oscar nominations are announced!”
So I’ve just got one question.
Justice Scalia: should a jurist who believes abortion is murder resign, rather than simply ignoring duly enacted constitutional laws and sabotaging a woman’s right to choose? (Actually, I’ve got quite a few more questions than that, you sanctimonious, hypocritical, malicious, thieving thug, but we’ll leave it at that for now.)
Bandwagons of outrage.
I’ve been resisting the urge. It’s sordid. It’s—actually—deeply embarrassing, to any American, whether at home, or on the foreign stage. Why call attention to it? —But some things must needs be bandied about, and I cannot, in the end, resist such bandying. I tried to be strong; I’m weak. I tried to be above such politicking and mud-slinging; I’m below it. Far below. So: the link you’ve doubtless seen a hundred times already across the web: John Ashcroft, our Attorney General, proclaims that “Negroes, Asians, and Orientals; Hispanics, Latins, and Eastern Europeans; have no temperament for democracy, never had, and probably never will.”
No, wait; that’s not it. Here it is! John Ashcroft, our Attorney General, had himself anointed with oil upon his accession to the Senate in 1995, an homage to a ritual used to mark the coronation of ancient Israeli kings.
Actually, that can’t be it, either. Creepy and megalomaniacal as that might seem, I don’t think I meant to make fun of the man for his religious convictions. Oh! Right. John Ashcroft, our Attorney General, has said it’s perfectly okay for some employers to discriminate on the basis of religion.
Hmm. Serious, yes, and it greatly calls into question how fit he is to uphold this nation’s laws, but that’s awfully dense material to plow through. Not neat and flashy and streamlined enough to be a swift and supple meme. Maybe—aha! John Ashcroft, our Attorney General, steamrolls over state laws, despite his party’s commitment to states’ rights.
Oh, but that’s old news. Can’t be right. What on earth—I just had it in my hand before the phone rang and I had to deal with that yahoo from the credit card company—oh! Found it. Right. The thing that’s buzzing all over the net, has people ridiculing our Attorney General, John Ashcroft, calling for his resignation; the thing that’s generating so much heat and outrage:
Half-naked statues in Hall of Justice hidden behind $8,000 drapes.
There. That’s it. I knew it was around here somewhere.
More glaze for your eyes.
Yes: more on Enron. James K. Galbraith, this time, whose basic point is simplistic and charmingly naïve (but idealistic—and I like my politics charming, and naïvely idealistic), but whose angle of attack is commendable. So many conservative commentators (to paint with a broad, broad brush for a moment) have shrugged at the Enron meltdown, claiming not to see any cause for political concern. After all, they say, Enron asked for help, and the administration didn’t give it to them. See? Case closed. But, as Galbraith points out, the point at that point wasn’t to save the company. The damage had already been done, the henhouse already looted, the cash yanked out and socked away—and all with the complicity and willing aid of the Bush administration and the Clinton administration and more members of Congress than you’d ever want in the same place at the same time. The scandal isn’t the illegalities they tried to get away with (though those are horrific, and endemic: “There are a hundred more Enrons waiting to happen,” you keep reading, and no one seems too surprised by this statement); it’s all the crap they managed to get legalized, with a wink and a wad of cash.
At least this much of Galbraith’s Veblenian vision is coming true: there’s a lot of second thoughts out there about the wisdom of applying the brutish volatility of passes for a free market to services that ought to be constant, consistent, and secure, like power (and pensions). —Except, oops, Texas is deregulating its energy market, and another 22 states are tottering in its wake.
Hey. I’m sure California was just a fluke.
The shah always falls.
The ever-erudite Erik Riker-Coleman (well, he always seems erudite over on Plastic) points out an article by Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters, (USA, Ret.), in the Winter ’01-’02 issue of Parameters. It’s—it’s interesting reading: the long-sought goal of stability in America’s foreign policy, it seems, is a sham, a betrayal of our fundamental values, a detriment to our own wealth and power. Shockingly sane, well-argued, clear as a bell, a tad too patronising, though bracingly radical at points, or at least, what passes for radicalism in these benighted times, too fond from time to time of literary excess, problematic in the way of most polemics these days, to wit: how, exactly, do you define “terrorist”?—and curiously objective: what, pray tell, is the “local, organic rate of change,” and how does one measure it, as they say, “on the ground”—but: well worth reading. If only so you can say at your next cocktail party, “I was reading this article in Parameters—you know, the US Army War College quarterly—and it said—”
Note: just because the shah always falls doesn’t mean the ayatollah must always replace him.
It was never about the coffee.
[Being a post made to Plastic.com I wish for some bizarre reason to see preserved, shorn of context, for some small modicum of posterity.]
Once more, someone confuses quantity with quality; what on earth can you say to someone who can only measure worth in currency?
When Starbucks was a tiny coffee shop in Seattle, buying small amounts of coffee to satisfy their local clientele, they could make some claim that theirs was a premium product. But their explosive growth means that they have to buy more and more (and more) coffee. And anyone with any sense at all can tell you that at some point you’re going to run out of good coffee to buy. Your standards are going to decline. You are going to purchase larger and larger lots of crappier and crappier coffee.
You cannot claim to purvey premium coffee when you’re slapping bags of your product on the shelves of major grocery stores throughout the country. There just isn’t enough good coffee out there.
Now: this is true of the explosive growth of coffee consumption in general; even if it were merely driven by locally owned mom’n’pops springing up on every corner, instead of corporate outlets. But with mom’n’pops you have diversity in purchasing, in the source of the coffee, and a greater chance that someone’s going to hit on the right combination of source, process, and service to deliver good coffee. With Starbucks, you get what you get with McDonald’s: the same damn crap no matter where you go, spread into a thin uniform paste across as much of the land as they can reach. And the larger it gets, and the larger its economy gets, the worse the quality will be, overall.
(Have I had Starbucks? Yes. It’s better than Seattle’s Best, which tastes like burnt Folger’s. It isn’t as good as Coffee People. I vastly prefer Stumptown, though.)
You aren’t a true free marketeer, Anonymous. (You rarely are.) A true free marketeer would be appalled by the ways that large corporations use extra-market tactics to bully competition out of the running before their products ever have a chance to directly compete. You, Anonymous, are a worshipper of power, nothing more; you fetishize sales reports and profit margins and box office returns and TV ratings as if they were a magical process, as if, through contagion, their success would rub off on you like some minor mirror of their wealth and power. That’s why you love millions of sales and tax cuts for the rich and box office blockbusters and shoe companies that pay a single megastar more to preen in a couple of commercials than their entire Asian workforce that actually makes their products—even if their aggrandizement hurts you directly. That’s why you sneer at people who try to get something back when they’ve been cut or burned or driven out of business by these giant bullies—you’ve got to distance yourself from their pathetic loss as much as possible, lest it drag you down. Even if in the final analysis you have far more in common with those “losers”; even if it’s shown to you how their cause would benefit you and make your world a better place. You are superstitious and ignorant, knowing nothing of the true workings of what you term the “free market,” and desperate to remain that way.
And you wouldn’t know a good cup of coffee if I threw it in your face.
