Children's Heroes Don't Have To Be Evil

In Anglo-American culture, you've got Tarzan. Tarzan is the Big Man of the jungle, hence a Narcissist. Then you've got Conan the Barbarian who became Conan the Destroyer. He's a Psychopath pure and simple. Both of these characters and culture heroes are Evil with a capital E. But it doesn't have to be that way.

In Francophone culture, you've got Rahan, son of the wild ages. He's a communist who epitomizes everything that it means to live for 'Liberté, égalité, fraternité'. He's a discoverer, inventor, explorer, altruistic and selfless. He is Good.

Rahan goes around with a bear claw necklace each of whose claws represents an ideal and universal principle he lives by. Courage, loyalty, generosity, resilience, wisdom. And then he eventually adds another, curiosity. If Conan did the same thing, they'd be named Rape, Loot and Murder.

Culture heroes are pure propaganda. And whether it's Rahan or Once Upon A Time, the propaganda is shameless. The only difference in that regard between Anglo and Franco propaganda is that Anglos propagandize Evil and Francos Good.

Self-Abasing American Democrats

I just went to DailyKOS and they had a popup begging all their members to abase themselves before Obama's munificence. Some kind of "thank Obama for standing up for gay rights" crap.

Well, isn't POTUS their servant? Wasn't he fucking elected?! If these people had a trace of self-esteem, they would be saying "pat Obama on the head for doing a minimally decent job". So not "thank you" but "good job".

Instead, you've got self-abasement. Instead, you've got craving for abuse, for being beaten, for being made to feel worthless. And this towards the asshole that has more state secrets and stomps on whistle-blowers worse than GWB!

Not that he really matters because he's a gutless figurehead, and he will straightforwardly admit this if you ask. But that's besides the point, the point is the self-abasement. Which is reprehensible and disgusting.

Why? Because self-abasement isn't something that slaves do. Real slaves (think Roman empire, not Uncle Tom) were kind of matter of fact about their slavery. Slavery was just a fact of reality. Nowadays, servitude and being an employee is just a fact of reality.

So if self-abasement doesn't come from Submission and it doesn't come from Passivity then where does it come from? Well, who does it? Adjutants, boot licks and shills. Right-wing authoritarians, narcissists, and psychopaths, respectively. IOW, Evil people.

That's right, self-abasement is something EVIL people do. And DailyKOS, supposedly the province and refuge of American Democrats just told everyone "hey, I'm Evil, why won't you be Evil too?" in an obviously demeaning, dehumanizing and SELF-ABASING way.

And what kind of message is this sending to Obama? Let's assume that he ever receives this message (he won't) and let's further assume that it has any kind of impact upon him (it wouldn't). Then what kind of impact does saying "Hi, we are your supporters and we are EVIL!" going to have? What kind of impact does saying "We are not worthy of you oh great saviour as we are the scum of the Earth" going to have?

If the miserable goatfucker weren't already thoroughly vile and Evil, he would become so. He would also become even weaker, more gutless and totally spineless than he already is. Because in my experience, lowering yourself before others only encourages them to join you by lowering themselves. If you want to raise people up you have to challenge them. Usually the result is intimidating and cowing the fuck out of them, but that's a positive result for an elected official. And double plus good for an American elected official.

Why Japanese Grovel Before Judges

First, a description of the phenomenon. Someone commits a crime or misdemeanor, let's say for example they steal a bike to get home while they're drunk. In Japan, that crime will actually be investigated and solved by community policing. So the law-breaker will be dragged to the police station and there they will grovel and promise to never ever do it again. So the police get him to sign a confession and a promise he'll never do it again, he may or may not go before the judge, and then he's let off the hook completely. No sentence, no conditional sentence, no probation, just off the hook.

WHY? Are the judges and/or police naive or stupid? Far, far from it. The law-breaker has been sentenced to rehabilitation, the groveling WAS the rehabilitation, and so the sentence didn't even need to be issued before it was served and done with. And why do Japanese law officers consider groveling to be rehabilitation? And why do they consider it to be EFFECTIVE? Well, it's because Japanese are all submissives and are TAUGHT to be submissives. It's what their society targets with childrearing mode 4 as its ideal citizens.

So on the one hand, an act of abject submission indicates that the cultural indoctrination took and took well. Thus, it's not necessary (and may backfire) to treat this ideal citizen badly for a tiny little failing. Forgive and forget is better. And on the OTHER hand, they know damn well that greater than 99.5% of their citizens are submissives or passives (submissive not to individuals but to the overall will of society) so the rehabilitation is going to be successful in 995 cases out of 1000!

Japanese society isn't merely childrearing mode 4. It doesn't just target Submissive Lawful Evil in practice, it actually expects its citizens to be Submissive Lawful Neutral. Which is unrealistic but it's what it expects. That is what it ASPIRES for its citizens, that they not be Evil despite childrearing that reinforces it. In Anglo-American countries, the expectation is reversed. Society expects people to be Evil, considers Evil to be desirable even, but expects them to not be Submissive.

In both cases, you've got Sincere Backwardsness. Like George Lucas sincerely pushing the idea of monarchism in Star Wars. Or JRR Tolkien sincerely pushing anti-Industrialism. Or Robert Heinlein sincerely pushing Fascism. The difference is just that the backwardsness pushed by Anglo-American societies is EVIL whereas in Japan it's SUBMISSION.

Character Alignment: US Democrats

I just read an interesting little tidbit that shed some insight on Democrats in this discussion of Right Wing Authoritarians.

What do young people get for joining Democratic political causes? Scrutiny. What do conservative internes get? Adventure and the very real possibility of advancement. Unfortunately, most liberals are not even willing to consider an opinion until the speaker has become famous. Grover Norquist's ideas had much of their power BECAUSE he was unknown, and the clever Republican 'stealth mode' was able to capitalize on them to the fullest - because they were effective ideas, and not because he was important-enough to be worth listening to.

Fundamentally, Democrats seek unity whereas Republicans seek separation and division.

Here this fellow says that Democrats worship hierarchical authority, or at least their Character Alignment is Lawful. And well, Democrats are definitely not Chaotics. They hate political activists and protestors almost as much as the Republicans do.

But Republicans worship hierarchical authority TOO. They're right-wing authoritarians mostly and Lawful Evil primarily. So what does that make Democrats? Well, they're not Good, not even remotely. I'm thinking they might be Lawful Neutral?

And Lawful Neutral looks simultaneously more purely hierarchical and yet ... yes, definitely more Cattle-ish. As the entire * Neutral band of Character Alignment is NPCs, insects and cattle. The Lawful Neutrals are tools and slaves. That's the Democrats pretty much.

The Republicans are of course monsters. Not complete monsters, but monsters.

Dexter

Today I explained to someone that the reason I hate Americans being fat is because it's directly connected to their encouraging universal psychopathy (automobiles) and abuse of children (forced eating). The connection's pretty weird but also pretty solid. It's hard to be neutral and blasé about a symptom that a nation is evil. And that's exactly the word I used too: evil.

Normalizing Insanity

And that was before I learned about the show Dexter on American television. The existence of that show is just the 57th piece of confirmatory evidence I have that yes Americans are evil to the core. (The 56th piece of evidence was '24 hours' which publicly advocated torture.) Put in clinical terms, the whole ridiculous notion that there exists in a healthy society a proper place for a psychologically unhealthy individual is empirically wrong and appallingly stupid.

In modern society, the proper path for a schizophrenic isn't to become a shaman, prophet or priest, it's to take anti-psychotic drugs and to cease having psychotic episodes. Nor is it the proper path for those prone to uncontrolled violence to become soldiers and police, far better for them to take all their vitamins so as to curb their violent impulses. Nor is it proper for psychopaths to become vigilante killers, rather it is proper for them to die. (We'll worry about their lives when there's a method of treatment or incarceration that doesn't just increase psychopathy.)

Encouraging Evil 

I have to say that it greatly disturbs and appalls me that there exists any nation on this planet that thinks making a show like Dexter is a good idea after the experience of Stanley Kubrick with making the film A Clockwork Orange only to then immediately pull it from all theaters because of copycat crimes. You can bet your ass the makers of Dexter don't have the slightest twinge of guilt over the murders they've inspired.

There's a reason why Canada routinely censors news and trials of murders and suicides. Because it inspires copycats and apparently there's just enough morality, decency and concern for human beings in Canadians to not want to be responsible for people dying. That's not very much decency you know. Yet even this fucked up Anglo country manages to easily pass this very, VERY minimal standard. Not so the USA.

Pretending Evil Is Banal

You know what the USA reminds me of? Rwanda just before the genocide, where everybody (including the aid agencies) kinda thought it was perfectly normal for the airwaves to be saturated by calls for the murder of Tutsis and people were distributing guns to anyone and everyone who wanted one. No, the USA isn't as bad as Rwanda and never can be. BUT the same cognitive dissonance and blatant disregard for the entire concept of evil is right there.

I want to be very specific though. What disturbs me isn't the psychopaths, the serial killers, and the violent criminals. What disturbs me is everyone else, supposedly possessed of empathy and human decency and the slightest bit of common sense, blithely going along with them without even blinking. It disturbs me that they ... just don't care. It disturbs me that it doesn't disturb them. It disturbs me how most of the population seems to act like psychopaths.

The Displacement Effect

Then again, I buy that pornography decreases actual sex by displacing it. I buy that rape porn decreases actual rape by displacing it. I buy that violent movies displace violent crimes. I buy that child porn displaces actual molestations of children (measured empirically). I have problems buying that a show about a murderous psychopath like Dexter satiates and displaces the desires of actual murderous psychopaths. Or maybe not.

Apparently, Dexter has ratings of 3-5 million viewers. Which is 1-2% of the American population. And as if by some coincidence, the USA has 2% psychopathy. If that's true, IF Dexter's entire viewing audience are psychopaths. And more importantly, IF all the longitudinal studies showing that young children raised on television grow up to become much more violent adults, IF all those studies are wrong THEN there's only one thing left for the USA to do: legalize child porn.

Except that argument doesn't work. You see, young children have no sexual desires so they won't seek out or watch child porn of their own free will. Young children do however have much less developed empathy and morality, so they will seek out a show promoting psychopathy like Dexter. So logically, a show like Dexter is much more dangerous to society than child porn can ever be.

So the argument goes the other way instead, if child porn is an abomination then everyone who participated in making, distributing, or even watching Dexter ought to go to jail and be publicly reviled. I'm okay with that.

Actually, it sounds like a fantastic idea.

It'd Take A Dictator To Fix The USA

I think I could fix the USA if I were POTUS and were allowed to order just 10,000 to 20,000 assassinations. Following is a fairly comprehensive list of what needs to be done. I came up with 84 items off the top of my head:

1. get rid of all prestige military projects like F22 "raptors", aircraft carriers, destroyers and stealth bombers
2. pull out of military commitments
3. get rid of all energy subsidies
4. all agricultural production subsidies
5. ethanol and "renewables" mandates
6. make energy subsidies illegal
7. order all states to claw back their past subsidies
8. put a moratorium on highway construction
9. switch all transportation funding to trains
10. fund a vast high speed train network using sovereign debt
11. fund city-owned fiber-optic networks
12. claw back the billions given to telcos for this purpose which they never used
13. condemn, dismantle and return to greenfield status any shrinking cities like Detroit
14. reduce and repeal the laws underpinning the nuclear regulatory commission
15. use sovereign debt to fund a fleet of nuclear power plants
16. get rid of the federal reserve assholes
17. get rid of the interest on federal reserve held money, holy fuck that's despicable
18. claw back all money spent on the finance industry
19. destroy the big American "banks", not just "let" them fail
20. guarantee small retail banks
21. use sovereign debt for building coal to liquids and gas to liquids plants
22. put a moratorium on ALL greenfield private property construction
23. kill speculation on land by a land value tax
24. kill currency speculation by a currency exchange tax
25. kill wall street by making publicly traded corporations illegal
26. kill the finance industry by nationalizing the deed lookup company and making illegal all the shenanigans
27. encourage cooperatives and credit unions
28. force aristos' vehicles, the "civil society" to disclose at least 95% of their fundings' sources
29. put in a punitive tax rate
30. put in a punitive inheritance tax
31. repeal tax-free status for charities, trusts and religions
32. cooperate on money laundering and tax havens
33. end the war on drugs, institute sin taxes for marijuana, heroin, cocaine and ecstasy
34. recognize marijuana and ecstasy as first-line medical drugs for persistent nausea and PTSD
35. institute wholesale taxes, repeal sales taxes
36. keep services taxes
37. end all paroles - commute all past sentences accordingly
38. end all prison labour
39. end copyright
40. end patent law
41. pardon any offenders of copyright and patent law
42. institute clawbacks for copyright violation verdicts in favour of media companies
43. move to a scandinavian model for prisons
44. deprivatize prisons
45. repeal all surveillance
46. institute transparent government
47. fund a negative income tax with a livable floor
48. end the welfare bureaucracy
49. institute and fund parenting places to teach best practices from pregnancy on up
50. criminalize the beating of children, with no exceptions or allowable defense
51. depoliticize FEMA
52. refloat New Orleans by injecting seawater into the petrol reservoir underneath the city, charge the oil companies that have emptied it sinking the city
53. end all bioweapons research
54. dismantle the CIA
55. declassify and release all its files
56. repeal the national secrets act 
57. sign the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
58. turn over highest jurisdiction to European Court of Human Rights
59. submit to the International Court of Justice
60. unilaterally relinquish the USA's seat on the UN Security Council
61. submit to the International Criminal Court
62. consent to the judgement against the USA in favour of Nicaragua in the International Criminal Court, pay reparations for waging war without ever declaring it
63. turn over all present and previous US state officials and members of the CIA who have international warrants pending for war crimes and crimes against humanity
64. cut off all aid to Israel, embargo it
65. condemn its Apartheidal national fascist regime
66. normalize relations with Cuba
67. invite Cuban doctors to teach and practice preventive medicine
68. deprivatize all emergency services like ambulances
69. fund universal single payer health care
70. buy and order a comprehensive survey of the effectiveness of all medical treatments and practices
71. make second best more expensive practices illegal
72. break the balls of pharma, use generics wherever possible
73. make it a criminal act to glorify psychopaths or narcissists
74. institute and fund universal mandatory HIV testing, make sure non-disclosure of status to sex partners counts as attempted murder
75. institute mandatory testing for psychopathy for anyone in a position of authority, make them pariahs on failure
76. pull out of ITER
77. end NASA's manned space programs, dismantle the space shuttles, fire NASA's top directors
78. turn over the International Space Station to the Europeans and Russians
79. permit the leasing of nuclear explosives for the purpose of space launch from remote regions
80. make the possession, production, importation and exportation of any gun shorter than the longest hunting rifle everywhere illegal and revoke all licenses
81. give police the power to make random searches for guns with only the possibility of arresting for gun, ammunition and explosive-related offenses on such a search (not even finding a dead body would count)
82. dismantle SWAT teams, drug units, and other ineffective specialized units (homicide?) everywhere
83. outlaw fascist parties and cults, have the FBI crack down on them
84. condemn waving of the flag as fascist
85. institute comparative religion classes in all schools
86. institute comparative history classes in all schools (Russian vs German vs American history in particular)
87. publicize the truth about the Russians beating the Nazis, not the Americans
88. cap the maximum size of schools at 200 students, make hall passes and other totalitarian practices illegal

Alternatively, I could institute sortition and let all of the above follow as a natural consequence. Of course, this gradual way would result in a greater total number of deaths since the status quo is quite deadly. 

But even without any of the above, I honestly think the world would be a better place if I got the option of assassinating all:

1. American state and federal congressmen, senators, and judges
2. preachers and televangelists
3. economists everywhere
   
4. American CEOs and board members
   
5. corporate lawyers
6. bankers at any of the big fake-banks
   
7. prison guards
8. air force pilots
9. celebrity journalists and media owners
10. directors of wealthy American charities or other "civil society" organization

I would also add American cops, criminologists, doctors and all anthropologists to the list, but those are less clear cut so there's much less of a benefit to humanity from killing them.

Note that I would not NEED to assassinate every single one of them. Just start with killing 100-100-100 congressmen, preachers, and economists on the first day, then kill the most prominent and annoying 20-10-10 each and every day. That's a solid year of death, more than long enough for absolute terror to settle like a fog on those professions and for their evil practitioners to bug out like the rats they are.

So you see, yes I really could fix the USA if I was POTUS and could arrange the assassinations of 20,000 people with impunity. Whether the USA could survive the blowback and hysterical panic of my fixing it is a totally separate question. And one I haven't got an answer to.

There is an awful lot of schadenfreude stored up in ordinary Americans so I think they would go for it. I think China would love it and the Saudis would hate it. Saudi Arabia would no doubt sponsor more terrorists to attack the USA in retaliation.

Billionaires would try to flee of course but I could always have them assassinated, or even make an example of the first twenty. By which I mean, wait until at least twenty leave then have them all assassinated at once to make sure a clear message is sent.

Obama Is Worse Than Stalin

In the USA, millions of oppressed people are starving or dying from lack of access to food, drugs or medical treatment.

In the USA, public hygiene and anti-poverty measures to save the oppressed underclass from runaway plagues such as tuberculosis, MRSA and HIV are non-existent.

In the USA, citizens' private communications are under constant 24 hour surveillance.

In the USA, citizens can be stripped of all of their possessions for having listened to a song.

In the USA, Imagine by John Lennon is censored because it is illegal to imagine a world without christofascist religion.

In the USA, the laws as written never matter, only your connections to the ruling class and the Party.

In the USA, the rate of incarceration quadrupled over the last thirty years, even as the rate of violent crime halved.

In the USA, 2.3% of the general population were either incarcerated or under some form of limited release. Under Stalin in 1951, the Gulag system held 1.4% of the general population.

In the USA, police torture of prisoners is protected by the State.

In the USA, most prisoners are in prison for political crimes like smoking grass (made illegal because it represents lack of ambition and treason to the Mexicans).

In the USA, and unlike in civilized countries such as China, Kenya and Serbia, prisoners are stripped of their every last political right.

Not that it matters since vote rigging makes voting meaningless, in the dictatorship that is the USA.

Not that this matters since bribery is officially permitted, in the third-world dictatorship that is the USA.

In the USA, prisoners are forced to work as slaves, just like in the Gulag system.

The big difference is that Stalin's Gulag system was dismantled almost immediately after his death, after 30 years of life. The USA's prison system has already had 30 years of growth, has been institutionalized, and so seems set to be dismantled only after the position of POTUS is dismantled.

The other big difference is that Stalin lived and ruled back when fascism was openly espoused and practiced by every advanced country, when fascism was normal. Today, the USA is a fascistic totalitarian dictatorship when democracy is normal.

Obama is POTUS and POTUS is worse than Stalin, therefore Obama is worse than Stalin.

"Jimbo" Wales' smarmy smile

[Nov 13: somebody obviously talked to his publicist since the photo-advert has been changed to something more open and less freakish]

Have you seen "Jimbo" Wales' face on that donations advert in wikipedia? What does that facial expression say to you?

It says to me

• "I hold you in contempt"
• "I am your superior and I condescend to smile to you"
• "although it's more of a smirk"
• "give me money you peon"
• "I want money for my 6 figure salary"
• "give me money so that I may continue to look down on you and dismiss you, the people who made wikipedia, in favour of the bootlicks and lickspittles that lick my arse and kick you down and spit on you"

And of all things, it says this to me most loudly:

• "I am uncomfortable treating you like human beings or as if I cared what you thought in any way, shape or form. because deep down I despise you"
• "except not so deep down I guess"

The more I think about it, the more his smile says to me. None of it good. Given he's ostensibly begging inferiors (and he does consider us all to be his inferiors, people of absolutely no consequence) to give him money, yeah he's not very comfortable with it. It'd be kinda like a millionaire begging for money on a street corner.

And before you bother, yes it is a fact that "Jimbo" Wales holds mere wikipedia contributors (let alone readers) in utter contempt. He holds his fellow co-founder of wikipedia in enough loathing to try to write him out of history. The only people he likes are the cultish assholes and power-mongers who routinely lick his arse. Those are the ones he calls "top wikipedians" and claims "create 90% of content" a claim which is factually ridiculous on its face.

An empirical analysis has determined that 90% of content that survives is made by transients who never bother making a second contribution. Jimbo's cherished "top contributors" are responsible only for transient edits to category names that happen to affect thousands of pages simultaneously. These cherished "administrators" of Jimbo's (jackboots is more accurate) are responsible for all those loathesome [citation required] tags littering Wikipedia like so much garbage.

So yeah, apparently Jimbo's incapable of dealing with anybody else as an equal. His partner he backstabbed and the transient people Wikipedia depends on that don't need him in any way he dismisses entirely. Only lickspittle / jackboots get any recognition from him - those smegheads get catered to by Jimbo's exquisitely tailored totalitarian monarchy. So yeah, getting put into a position where he is the inferior would raise that hated banner of equality he dreads.

I might as well declare here that I despise everything that Wikipedia stands for: mob rule, group-think, liberal bourgeois orthodoxy, a combination of false authority and politically correct blandness (the so-called NPOV), truth by consensus (wikiality), clique-ishness, and fascistic oppression of dissenters. I yearn to see the day when Wikipedia will be torn down and destroyed and its top "wikipedians", SchutzStaffel to a body of lies, are hunted down and killed like the Gestapo members they actually are.

The British

This is me so you know not to expect your everyday rant. But ever wonder how the British like to proclaim the superiority of their nation? That's so ludicrous. And at the same time, they whine that the only villains it's okay to bash on in Hollywood are English. Well, let's examine that.

The British are psychopaths. Literally, their national identity is the psychopath, exactly like the American national identity is the narcissist. They plundered and slaughtered their way around the world for centuries and are still proud of it. They exterminated whole nations of natives and they've oh so conveniently forgotten. They feel no guilt at all for anything they've done. Hell, even the Americans feel guilty about exterminating the Amerinds. So as fucked up, vile and evil as the Americans are, they're actually an improvement over the British!

And let's look at their filthy right-liberal / capitalist ideology. A dysfunctional psychopathic ideology that promotes traders and masters over people who produce anything and human beings. You'd think that industrial production would matter most in an economy since it's one of two key defining concepts of 'economy' (the other being consumption) but no. And they have the gall to claim they're a democracy. No wonder their country's so fucked up. No wonder all Anglophone countries are way more fucked up than even moderately advanced European countries like France. Britain, Australia (that bumfuck colony), Canada (Stephen Harper's fascists?) and of course Crazyland (aka America) itself.

But hold on, there's more. You see, there's the question of why they're so fucked up. A lesser person would leave it at their being fucked up, claim it's their "national identity" or whatever. Bollocks. Let's turn out heads to deMause's theory of childrearing modes. These modes are: Infanticidal, Abandoning, Ambivalent, Intrusive, Socializing, Helping. For some calibration, Canada is mainly in the Socializing mode. America is half and half stuck in the Intrusive and Socializing mode. Nazi Germany was in the very early Intrusive mode where they ruthlessly beat their children into blind obedience to parents. And then in the 1960s, Germany underwent a wondrous metamorphosis, going from early 4th to late 5th socializing. No wonder I love Germans. They fucking EVOLVED. In a single damned generation. They evolved more in 20 years than America evolved in 200 years.

So where does Britain fit into all this? I'm so glad you asked! Well let's take a look at some quintessential British children's literature you may be familiar with. In Harry Potter, the constant running theme is that the children are, yes abused but forget that for a moment, supposed to be exactly like their parents, follow in their footsteps and all that rot. In the Weasley's case, they're dominated by their verbally abusive mother. You know, they're chattel to their parents. Parental love is conditional on the children being Just Like Them.

The other example is Doctor Who, specifically Season 2 where Rose is sent away. The Doctor goes to all the trouble of reuniting Rose's family so he can fob her off on them. Touching eh? That season was full of the nauseating 'family matters more than anything' theme. But it's not just that. At the beginning of the two-parter that ends with Rose unwillingly stranded with her family, her mother Jackie complains about her daughter's travels. And her complaint isn't that they're unsafe but that her daughter will grow apart, become an alien in mentality, even if remaining homo sapiens in biology. Jackie Disapproves because her daughter's going to be Different from her. So let's strand Rose in an alternate universe without a time machine, problem solved!

Yeah you guessed it, well assuming you know the childrearing modes well enough, Britain is stuck squarely in the 4th childrearing mode where they beat children to Make Them Obey. The UK under Tony Blair had more than a hundred human rights condemnations by the European Court of Human Rights. Tony Blair actually formally defended child abuse to the European Court of Human Rights! What breathtaking evil. It's like fundie camps in the USA or even "gay therapy". Point is, the British consider their children to be their chattel property, theirs to use and abuse. And it's not likely to change so long as the British see themselves as #1. America stagnated for 200 years, Africa has stagnated in the infanticidal / abandoning / ambivalent modes for millenia. What Britain really needs is to be conquered. I'd almost wish the Germans did it except I love the Germans too much to put them through that. Think a little about how the USA imported slavery from black Africa and Nazis from post-War Germany and you'll see what I mean.

The best part is that the British think they're superior to the French, right? Oh man. Yeah right. Actually, I have precious little data on which to nail French parenting. What I know of it's pretty damned harsh. Verbal abuse, if not physical. Unreasonable expectations of children. But then I remembered the wonderful children's series Once Upon A Time on which I grew up. It taught a whole generation about human history, human biology, the age of exploration, age of invention, and more. And it ended on an odd note, a science-fiction future that was pure propaganda and social engineering. And that's important because the French really accept social engineering. They accept the needs of society (as exemplified by the State, and specifically Engineers) over the individual. And all of that verbal abuse and unreasonable expectations of children is aimed at meeting the needs of society, which puts the French squarely in the 5th Socializing mode of childrearing. And it makes sense, I'd just forgotten how harsh Benjamin Spock's dictates really were.

So yeah, Germany is late 5th, France is early 5th, and Britain is mmm let's call it late 4th. Bottom of the pack all the way baby! I mean hell, even the Chinese have managed 4th mode, and a couple centuries ago they were infanticidal. Gotta love those Chinese, they're evolving.

Pet Peeve #731: Liberal => Left-Wing

This one doesn't bug me so much when average Americans or even Canadians do it. I don't expect much from eager citizens of the most brainwashed country in human history. And I'm not excluding North Korea or goodness forbid slave-holding, slave-killing, totalitarian, communist, fascistic Sparta from the running either. I mean, how can you not give the prize to the nation that invented propaganda and inspired Goebbels?

Well, it still bugs me when otherwise educated, genuinely cosmopolitan people do this liberal == left-wing crap. Anglophones' comprehension of politics would be much enhanced if they accepted that liberals are right-wingers BY DEFINITION. They are so not just in, say, British Columbia but EVERYWHERE. They are so in Russia. They are so in France. They are so in Germany. They are so in Canada, at the federal and provincial levels. And they are so in the Naziesque USA.

Right-wing and left-wing have standardized, well-understood definitions in political and international science. A left-winger is someone who believes in social justice, or something else, as the key economic organizing principle. A right-winger is someone who believes in capitalism. A centrist is someone who’s agnostic to economic ideology.

By this internationally understood standard it’s clear the NDP are centrists, that there is no left-wing party at the federal level in canada. And that the USA is about as politically balanced as 1940 Germany.

The other meaning of liberal is of course the term of abuse used in the USA. This term of abuse has as its meanings (both original and current) ’sexual liberal’. Which basically means “fags, homos, and nigger fuckers”. US Democrats are conservatives who happen to be fags, homos and nigger fuckers.

To see why, you have only to note that the common french word libertine translates into the esoteric word ‘free-spirit’. There’s obviously a lacunae in the American culture, one that was filled by ‘liberal’. This becomes obvious when you consider that Americans despise others’ sexuality. So the correct translation of libertine into the American language is NOT free-spirit but liberal, with all the attendant scorn.

Getting back to economics, if you want to look for economic liberals in the USA, look no further than redneck country Texas. Where free environmental laws allow every coal-spewing power plant to pollute and every citizen to die of arsenic and mercury poisoning. That’s liberalism!

Sigh. At least in European countries, socialism and communism are well-enough defined that liberalism has some meaning against it. In the USA, the only political parties are the Corruption Party and the Antedeluvian Corruption Party. To claim that one or another is more or less liberal than the other is ludicrous. Conservative? Sure. Fascist? Oh yeah. Anti-Left? Yeah. But actually liberal? Hell no.

So you see, liberal doesn’t even have any well-defined meaning in the USA. Other than of course as a term of abuse. And your attempt to pretend that there exists a left-wing in American politics (other than the lone socialist senator from Vermont) just to avoid facing the fact you live in one of the most totalitarian and autocratic nations in history is a joke.

Finally, there are more left-wing conservatives (and there are plenty) than there are left-wing liberals. Except of course the self-subverting seriously confused puppies of Moderaterna in Sweden.

Reply to a Tree Hugger's Change of Heart on Nuclear

Here is my reply to Geoff Russel's 'Rethinking Nuclear'. For obvious reasons, it will disappear from Geoff's site.

In order to reduce the USA's CO2 emissions by just half, carbon has to be completely eliminated from the power generation industry. Carbon can be eliminated from power generation quite easily by adopting nuclear power plants. It can be eliminated at a massive profit, with the side-effect of freeing up most rail transport capacity from coal transport, thus making railways a viable passenger transport again. It cannot ever be eliminated by any combination of solar, wind or other ambient (what you mistakenly call "renewables") power. The sun doesn't shine at midnight and the wind never blows throughout the night.

These are simple and obvious facts. Renewables are a very bad technology if your goal is to decarbonize the power industry. You claim to have that goal. And if you do not then you are an idiot. But having that goal, your proposed solution is an epic failure. Thus you are an idiot.

It's worse than that. You seriously propose a politically non-viable perfect solution (IFR) against a semi-viable good solution (Gen III). That makes you an idiot squared.

It's even worse than that. For decades, you have been mindlessly railing about the "risks" of nuclear power out of a puerile hatred of big business. In all of that time you didn't give a flying fuck about the millions dying from poverty, the lack of electrification, and the lack of industrialization. Fuck no, you loved that they were dying.

You said it yourself, the only thing that changed the game for you is another hysterical paranoid threat to your personal survival, the threat of global warming. Because nobody (big business) and nothing (nuclear) can ever be allowed to ameliorate and better the world unless YOUR fat white elite ass benefits. You are a despicable scumbag and an idiot to the third power.

And that's not even the worst part of it. Because you see, the worst part of it is that you are a lying fucking HYPOCRITE. You go out of your way to accuse and condemn Howard & Zwitkowski of craven selfish cronyism. Craven selfish cronyism which you engage in yourself!

You are an abomination to all that is good. You are a blight on this planet and in this universe. You are an offense to morality. You are a stain on moral humanity.

My most serious proposal for how you personally can better the world is this. Shoot yourself. Put a bullet through your head and spare the world of the misery of having you in it. That is how you can best help save the world. By removing your miserable awe-inspiring idiocy from it.

I'm reproducing this comment on my blog since idiots, lacking the capacity for a rational response, do idiotic things when the offensive truth is pointed out. But hey, the notion of the unvarnished truth being offensive is exceedingly offensive to me.

Low Trust In Crazyland

Trust is what distinguishes an advanced modern country from a third world hellhole. So just how much trust is there in USA? We shall see.

There's a saying in most countries that people "should know how to live together". Not so in the USA where people "should leave each other alone" because obviously people can't live together without raping, looting, stealing, murdering or otherwise hurting each other. People just ain't trustworthy, doncha know?

Going on, the only trustworthy institution I can think of is firefighters. Period.

• banks, thieves.
  
• media, mind controllers.
• news media, propagandists.
• police, murderers.
• army, mercs for the Saudis.
• air force, psychopathic serial killers.
• navy, utterly fucking useless.
• marines, invaders.
• government, dictators & genociders.
• CIA, Cocaine Import Agency.
• cities, no man's lands.
• urban planners, destroyers of cities.
• real estate developers, raping cities.
• streets, for hookers and gangsters.
• highways, broken down and ugly.
• prosecutors, witch-hunters.
• judges, power-hungry legalistic morons.
• lawyers, avaricious hired thugs.
• strangers, pedophiles.
• blacks, niggers.
• whites, klanners.
• managers, fascists.
• CEOs, psychopaths.
• utilities, for-profit (unreliable and expensive).
• doctors, avaricious butchers.
• programmers, unfeeling autistics.
• Big Oil, destroying the planet.
• Big Auto, turning citizens into zombie psychopaths.
• stock traders, evil incarnate.
• agribusiness, GMO corn brought to you by Monsanto.
• restaurants, McDonald's.
• red traffic light, drive over a pedestrian to your right.
• traffic rules, feel free to murder cyclists.
• physicists, nuclear weapons designers.
• engineers, bomb makers.
• universities, for the rich.
• daycare, for the rich.
• healthcare, for the rich.
• churches, megachurch preachers.
• religious people, fundamentalists.
• Congress / Senate, the puppet theater.
• White House, evil overlords.
• philosophers, useless fairies.
• neighbours, middle class robots.
• humanity, to be exploited.
• human rights, what's that?
• law, by divine rule.
• ambulances, for profit / thieves.
• hospitals, get your unnecessary surgery with a free epidemic!
• pharmacists, drug peddlers.
• water company, Evian!
• sewer company, you really don't want to know.
• mass transit, for the poor.
• cars, expensive and stultifying.
• high school, concentration camp.
• prison, slave camp.
• welfare, for ghetto members.
• stores, Wal-Mart.
• small stores, wannabe Wal-Mart.
• airlines, vastly inferior to rail.
• art, Hollywood.
• philanthropy, control of fortunes from beyond the grave.
• charity, feudal patronage.
• history, USA number 1!
  
• reality, USA number 1!
• sociology, tops & bottoms .
• psychology, act first then think.
• culture, destroy your neighbour.
  

Name me a single fucking institution other than firefighters that functions adequately in Crazyland.

In Canada you can trust firefighters, ambulances, welfare, healthcare insurance, the intelligence agency, human rights, prisons, humanity, religious people (everyone's a liberal christian in Ontario), scientists, utilities, blacks, whites. And you can sortof trust the news media, judges, high schools, hospitals, mass transit, streets, cities. Police are only wanton thugs instead of wanton murderers.

In other words, in Canada you have a whole order of magnitude more trust. In Saskatchewan you can trust government, the cable / broadband company, and stores (which are coops). In Quebec you can trust government, pharmacists, daycares, and the media (much of which comes from France). Saskatchewan / Quebec are at the upper end of mid trust. They're about like New Zealand, I think.

So Canada, New Zealand, and to a lesser extent the UK and Australia, are mid-trust countries. Western Europe is at the low end of high trust. Northern Europe is at the high end of high trust. And the USA is on par with China and Italy: low trust. Lower than low are no trust and negative trust. Because yeah, it gets a lot lower than the USA, but nobody on the internet is going to live in a third world hellhole so we aren't interested in that part of the spectrum. For our purposes, the USA is low trust.

Oh Nos, Wage Inflashun !!

There's been some worrying about wage inflation happening in odd places like Oklahoma. Let's straighten it out.

Wage inflation is good, asset inflation is bad. Wage inflation benefits workers at the expense of non-workers while asset inflation benefits property owners at the expense of the poor.

Of course, to the Fed, pundits and right-wing economists, who are all shills to the overclasses, it's the reverse. This is why a housing bubble is not considered price inflation, but wage inflation is the work of Satan and must be combatted forthwith. Forsooth!

What's Been Going On

Contrary to popular opinion, any recent price inflation is not a direct function of the asset inflation that's been going on. It's rather a minor side-effect of the means by which it was achieved. Using lots of easy and unregulated credit for asset owners.

Other means of inflating assets exist which would have no effect on overall prices. One is increasing competition for assets, say by moving to a double-income family model which restricts free time and mobility (of commutes) thus artificially narrowing options for workers.

Another is decreasing density which decreases the total number of possible homes within the commuter's habitable area. This is just decreasing supply of homes by squandering very scarce land to build them on. It also contradicts the claims of suburbia advocates who say they are providing affordable homes.

Yet another means of inflating assets is to re-price the assets out of the hands of the locals by, for example, opening up assets to ownership by rich foreigners. Needless to say, sharpening wealth disparities helps this process along.

What Hasn't Been Going On

A final way to cause asset inflation is restrictions on their formation, say if there is a timber or brick shortage for housing. Squandering land would be a special case of this. About the only asset inflation which a sane economy should ever worry about is that caused by resource shortages.

There is a good way of dealing with resource shortages, it's to slow down the economy by scaling back legal working hours. This spreads the pain uniformly instead of concentrating it among borrowers (ie, everyone but the smart rich) as is done by hiking interest rates.

But this is irrelevant because it is the only cause of asset inflation we are NOT seeing, except for land squandering. So basically, all the current causes of asset inflation are the product of an insane society with an insane economic and financial system.

It's Been Going On For Decades

So I hope you see what's been happening. For decades there has been asset inflation without price inflation. Due to the political class being shills to the rich. Recently this asset inflation has been put into overdrive by madmen willing to endure price inflation. What's important to note is that it would take decades of wage inflation to redress the social balance and see a modicum of justice.

Oh yeah, and when someone like Milton Friedman says something astonishingly idiotic like "Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon." what he's really saying is that he doesn't give a damn about the allocation of wealth between rich and poor. Which he wouldn't, being a right-wing shill.

Right-libertarians, aka Propertarians, aka Market Fundamentalists, aka Satanists

Or, There Is No Such Thing As "Anarcho"-Capitalism

"Anarcho"-capitalists believe that property rights should trump human rights. They believe that human beings have no rights at all and that property, THINGS, have all the rights. They have no conception nor any desire for justice. They are also fixated on inanimate objects rather than human beings. And they fetishize the ownership relation, believing that all things should be owned / anthropomorphized. They are mentally ill and they are extremely repellent.

In "anarcho"-capitalist philosophy, a person is a thing to be owned. They will cheerfully admit this except they will give you a song and dance about how people should own themselves. The only problem is that ownership is distinguished from possession precisely in that you can sell, lease and destroy an owned thing. So a person who owns their body (as opposed to possessing it as their human right) is by definition capable of selling it. So "anarcho"-capitalists literally believe in slavery.

This should not be any kind of surprise to you since the "freedom to contract" (ie, absolute bindable contracts) is literally nothing more than the ability to enslave your future self to the word of your present self. You could contract yourself out for a billion years of labour as the scientologists do. Or you could enter into a contract you later find despicable because your values were fundamentally altered in the meantime. The propertarians care not because they have successfully enslaved you and they expect you to be obedient.

In fact, the logical extension of the freedom to contract is that you can abduct and kidnap someone, rape and torture them until they break, and then have them "freely" sign a contract which retroactively legitimizes what you did to them by declaring themselves to be your slave. After all, physics does not recognize a difference between future and past, so why should contracts? If you can enslave your future selves, then why not be allowed to enslave your past selves?

Propertarians love slavery. Their "freedom of property" is enslaving all humanity to objects, things. Their freedom of contract is nothing but outright slavery. And even their "owning yourself" is just their attempt to hide their love of slavery in plain sight.

"Anarcho"-capitalists, right-libertarians, market fundamentalists and satanists ARE SLAVERS.

And if you are not repelled by them then there is something deeply wrong with you.

Oh and I call them Satanists because the Satanic Bible was in fact inspired by Ayn Rand. And because it's really all the same thing, right-libertarianism being about the legalisms of egotistical shitbags while satanism is the rituals of egotistical shitbags.

How Americans Created The Totalitarian State

Americans have this ludicrous notion of "individual sovereignty". Now, in reality, that's the place Americans don't live in, it's easy to see how absurd this notion is because collectives of all sizes are absolute necessities.

You need cities to suppress suburban sprawl and manage utilities. You need city districts to counter the city's tendency to raze neighbourhoods for highways. You need food coops for decent non-toxic food. You need unions to manage employment insurance. And so on.

But with the Americans' toxic doctrine of "individualism" there is no room for these collectives. Now of course, if a rational response to collectives needs are suppressed then the need for collectives won't just go away. No more than the need for sex and liquor goes away just because Americans are prudes. Rather, the need for collectives re-emerges in some kind of fucked up manner.

And that's how American "individualism" has created the totalitarian state. So for all the Libertarians out there, for all the "small government conservatives out there" you created the totalitarian state you fucking imbeciles.

George W Bush is the new Hitler

It's official folks, GWB is the new Hitler. A variant of Godwin's law has just been made for him.

1984's Oceania in 2007

I've often said that totalitarianism and authoritarianism are fully in line with the history and ideals of the USA. The reason Americans don't see this is because of certain other history and ideals of the USA. The history of propaganda and brainwashing.

The USA is an Orwellian nation so just about every single word in Americans' political vocabulary has been twisted and redefined in a way that makes the USA look better. Political words, as Americans know them, are out of line with their meanings as understood by the rest of the human species. They are useless for meaningful communication and only serve to glorify the USA.

So for instance, in the English language 'authoritarianism' means obedience to others' will. In the American language it means something quite different. It means collectivism. Thus, private property which is everywhere regarded as a deeply authoritarian and indeed totalitarian concept, doesn't raise an eyebrow in the USA. Meanwhile, collective endeavours like single-payer healthcare or mass transit or firearms regulations are regarded as "authoritarian" in the USA.

Going on, freedom (redefined as power), democracy (plutocracy), patriotism (fascism), liberty (egotism), free speech (apathy), human rights (civil rights). That last is an interesting one. As everyone should know, and a few people do know, the USA is one of a very small number of nations on this planet that refuses to even so much as recognize human rights. Americans buy into an obsolete and discredited 17th century theory of "natural" rights which none of the rest of the world believes. So-called "natural" rights are gibberish whose "justification" is a primitive State of Nature (ie, anti-civilization).

Furthermore, the American word "liberal" has no analoguous word in the English language. Everywhere else, classical liberals, neo-liberals, and just plain old liberals are right-wingers. Liberalism is an inherently right-wing ideology. As a result, American "liberalism" corresponds to no word in the real political landscape ... except for the term anti-fascism. So if Americans spoke English they would have to admit that their country has been on the brink of fascism continuously for many decades.

Another good example is the USA's being the only country hypocritical enough to use "free speech" as a code word for "end of conversation". How many times do people ritualistically say "I disagree with what you say but will defend with my life your right to say it" when they really mean "I don't give a fuck about what you say, it's never going to change my mind"?

The USA's attitude towards human rights far surpasses hypocrisy. It's a blank stare of non-recognition. Americans don't even comprehend the notion of universal human rights. And when they are told the human rights, they object that "those things aren't human rights!"

The Americans' use of NewSpeak instead of English is itself evidence of a deeply authoritarian culture. Admittedly, it's impossible to say this within NewSpeak errr American so we have to use English! So in the English language, it is fair to say that the USA is a deeply authoritarian culture and has been so since the Great Awakenings which have turned Americans into a nation of total control freaks. The current fad towards overt despotism was begun more than a century ago, not a few decades.

Americans vs Human Rights

Americans talk a lot about "rights" and how the USA is a "free" country. Of course this is completely absurd, but we will here plumb the depths of the absurdity.

What do people mean by rights? Well, everywhere in the world, everywhere worth living anyways, by 'rights' people mean human rights. And by human rights they mean something like what has been codified in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. So far so good.

Now what's interesting is that the UDHR has no resemblance whatsoever to the American Bill of Rights. And when presented with the UDHR, Americans will usually proclaim that these are not human rights. It is thus obvious that a mistranslation has occurred. Americans mistranslate human rights into their local concept of civil rights.

Natural Rights

It's important to appreciate that human rights are a 19th century invention. They were invented by the European communists and anarchists as part of their rejection of capitalism and private property. It is obvious that human rights are incompatible with the American religion of capitalism. But that's no problem to Americans.

It's not a problem because they can fall back on an obsolete 17th century theory of so-called "natural" rights. This theory has very distinctive features which mark it as fundamentally different from, and incompatible with, human rights theory. The key distinction is between so-called "positive" rights and "negative" rights. A distinction which Europeans, among other people who believe in human rights, almost universally consider to be incomprehensible gibberish.

It is known that there cannot be any meaningful distinction between "negative" rights and "positive" rights since the distinction is a mere linguistic trick. Most "negative" actions, even neglect, can be thought of as positive avoidance.

And in any case, there exist "positive" rights which must be fulfilled for the continuation of civilization. One of them is the right of an infant to be fed and attended to, including having eye-contact, without which the next generation would all grow to become psychopaths and civilization would instantly collapse.

But this shouldn't come as any kind of a surprise since the framework of "natural" rights is predicated on a state of savagery and not civilization. The wishes of wild men in a State of Nature defines "absolute" rights, and the wishes of government defines "civil" rights. The first is contrary to civilization, and the second is ... contrary to civilization.

Propertarianism

But there is another ideology of rights common in the United States which denies all rights to human beings. All. Rights! This ideology is Propertarianism. Also known as Satanism since its adherents' ideology of egotism comes right out of the Satanic Bible. Also known as market fundamentalism since its adherents have an unvarnished adoration and worship of so-called "free" markets. Also known as right-libertarianism since its adherents have managed to steal and coopt the anti-capitalist label of 'libertarianism' from the anarcho-communists.

Propertarianism is an anti-human ideology. Literally anti-human since it assigns no rights whatsoever to human beings. In the Propertarian philosophy, all rights are assigned to property. This is why they talk of property rights. Human beings may or may not have property depending upon whether or not they are Owners. If they are Owners then they have the rights, property rights, which come with the property. If they are not Owners then they have nothing.

Propertarians claim that human beings have rights but what they mean is that human beings are objects which makes them property. Thus human beings have rights as property. Including the right to a master. Libertarians claim this master is by default "yourself". But only by default since you can always "freely" sell yourself to another. This is standard right-libertarian philosophy, followed by right-libertarians to greater or lesser extent.

Moreover, this doctrine of humans-as-property is made evident when it is contrasted against what the opinion of the rest of humanity. Because the rest of humanity rejects the notion that humans are objects that can be owned at all, even by "yourself". Not least because if you could own yourself then you could sell yourself (turn over possession of your body for another mind to run) except this is literally physically impossible, which reveals the notion as absurd nonsense.

It is clear that right-libertarian philosophy is organized around things, not around people. This is why there is no room for justice in right-libertarianism because things don't care about justice. What's more, the imposition of an owner onto every object is the manifestation of a psychological problem very similar to magical thinking. Because right-libertarians essentially personify objects. And correspondingly depersonalize human beings.

People in the Autistic spectrum seem to do that and it explains why right-libertarianism is so common among people with Asperger's syndrome. The originator of Thatcherism was an Asperger's sufferer.

[The reason magical thinkers and autistic people both support propertarianism are interestingly opposite. Magical thinkers support property rights because it simplifies abstract relations. There's no need to reason about human rights when you have property rights.

In contrast, autistic people support propertarianism because there's no need to synthesize messy human concepts. They're able to reduce all human-object relations down to 'is owner of'. Sure, they could reason about those concepts, but they can't create them in the first place.]

In any case, it is clear that right-libertarians must be mentally handicapped since their ideology has no connection with reality. There exist so many counter-examples of it that it is trivially disproved by looking around oneself. Right-libertarians would be easy to dismiss, to the psychiatric hospital, if it weren't for the vast reservoirs of magical thinkers who have lapped up portions of their ideology.

And now we have come full circle to Americans. Because Americans buy into the ideologies of Propertarianism and Natural Rights (and also Capitalism and Individualism) it is unavoidable that they are extremely hostile to Human Rights. And that is why the US government violates human rights on such a consistent and extreme basis. Because Americans. Hate. Human. Rights.