Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/1997/10/23/fanatics/
I just back from Quad and classes. There was yet another preacher out today. It was nice and warm this afternoon. Actually, it is still nice and warm this afternoon, as far as I know. The sun came out see, and that’s so valuable in October.
Anyways, this guy was wearing yellow signs on him, saying who all was going to hell. I had a hard time finding anything I fundamentally disagreed with him about, which was kind of creepy, though I didn’t stay long. He was saying the professors and all manner of people were a path to hell and the like, as they were more concerned with their own ends. Yeah, lotta people are missing the point, but I don’t see it as anything particularly terrible, even if it is disheartening at times.
What scares me now though, in retrospect, is the increasing number of these fanatics out there. This year especially, the upswing on our campus, at least, has been tremendous. Did I mention the other day the God Fleet of these guys, actually only a few adults and several younger kids who were carrying huge signs spread out on white sheets damning people to hell. They managed to chase a group of schoolchildren off the Quad by calling their teachers witches and encouraging them to not follow “the system”.
The sense of danger is prolly more from reading The Handmaid’s Tale than anything else, but you ever wonder that these people will continue to attract followers – I mean some of what they say is true, is of concern – namely that people aren’t really keeping their moral priorities straight and all, and that it is a strong negative tendency … I completely disagree with their nutty rhetoric that they see as the solution – basically a return to the crappy days when men were men and women were suitably cowed, and we were all fanatical followers of God and believed in Jesus … but they seem increasingly to disrespect our government, the system, and seem to be advocating that something stronger must be done.
I think any time we see people flirting with the cause of revolution, we need to keep an eye on them … and these people do seem to be getting around …
And no, they’re not popular, but how many Christians in this country? Catholics probably can’t be counted as possible comrades for these zealots, but there are plenty of fundamentalists, anti-abortionists, born-again weirdos, and the great mass of vanilla-flavored Christians that if they ever were nutty enough to put their government where their passions were that things could potentially get really really ugly and bad.
But I do have a great faith in the strength of our government, and it’s ability to adapt and respond to threats, ultimately getting a little better each time in the interests of all.
But then I’m also one of those God-forsaken Atheist Liberals.
And I publish my thoughts openly. the second that Christian Nazi we had on the Quad a few weeks back gets the chance to run the government and conduct public executions of Liberals, I’ll be on the first lists of folks who just gotta go …
If something like that ever did come to pass, it would mark an interesting turn in world history.
This time, it would be America in flames, and perhaps an economically depressed Europe trying to put it straight. Asia too. I wonder how Japan and China would react to a bloody revolution in the USA.
Definitely being overly speculative here, but it never hurts to be aware of possible contingencies.
I’m glad to see my imagination kicking in though. It’s been missed a lot since grammar school and high school
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/1997/08/18/da-chief/
And Chief Illiniwek was the topic of discussion at dinner. I made a remark about the DIA being the same bit of the University that has the offensive mascot, and Brian and Anatoly sprung to his defense.
What, may you ask, is my beef with the chief?
As mascots go, he is in poor taste. Let’s say, hypothetically, that you conquer and pretty much destroy a people. Then you decide to honor that people by taking a symbol of leadership and spirituality, and have one of your own people dress in that manner to dance around at a football game. Honor? That seems disrespectful. I tried to make an argument, what if we were to use Jesus as a mascot? the pope? A rabbi? I implored of ‘toly that if the mascot were Jesus Christ dancing the Macarena and the majority of the 80% Christian population of our country were left a little offended if that might not be grounds for changing our mascot. He conceded that point. My next rhetorical argument was that why then did the same standard not apply when the offended group was an underrepresented racial minority … and he started to sound eerily Libertarian … the sort of attitude that if people can not defend their own, then there is nothing wrong with them getting fucked over.
That is not a positive attitude, might does not make right.
Anyway, I did not dissuade either of them, but I do believe given the food for thought, that our argument may have an effect on them. I was once in their shoes too, thinking that all this Chief-bashing was counterproductive and inspired by over-zealous political-correctness. But as I asked Goth Dan, how he felt about the Chief, he said “I think it’s dumb.” – It’s a mascot, er, a “symbol” in poor taste, that is kept around in large part due to institutional inertia.
And I have a fetish for fighting institutional inertia.
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/1997/07/13/political-pot-pourri/
(Watch out, rant coming forth!)
I met a cool freak yesterday at the Union lab. You see why I like labs? We’re both here now. He’s a self-educated computer geek, and a writing studies sort. You see his web page he’s working on a collaborative writing CGI. I was walking past and saw Perl code, did a double-take, and we started talking.
Well, that’s nice. Yesterday was an errand-running day. I returned library books, renewing one by Frederick Pohl that I haven’t finished with. Then I took the bus out to Jewel, spending nearly $40 on groceries, which is more than I’d wanted to spend, but I made a really good haul, so I can’t complain. I’ll be eating well. I bought lunchmeats, cheese, and romaine lettuce for lunchtimes. I’ve settled on purchasing milk, eggs and bread at local convenience stores though. Perishables I go through quickly see? Anyways, I didn’t skimp on ingredients. The cheese is sliced deli cheese, cheddar and swiss. The romaine lettuce don’t seem so cheap either. I also stocked in some Peanut Butter and Jelly, the old standby.
What else? Some Turkey dogs for Mac & Cheese, some spaghetti sauce, and garlic bread … mm! That’s gonna be good. I picked up some Matt’s Fig Newtons as I like Fig Newtons. They seemed right tasty. I made a rule for myself though that I shall only buy one package of cookies per shopping trip. Their expensive and spoil my appetite for a real meal if I’m reckless. Ah well.
Ran into Mary and Phil, we did a little bowling. I caught sight of Asao there and it messed with my game some. I still missed her. Still haven’t figured her out either. Well, managed to get it off my mind pretty well. She seemed to be enjoying her self pretty much. Hard to tell, of course as I didn’t approach her and she tends not to be too expressive.
So, I been thinkin’ you know … about the American electoral process. It sucks you know? You can run out of money, and have to withdraw from an election. That means that to be elected to public office you have to curry favor with the monied interests, and that’s not representative. That and ya got all these lamers who refuse to vote because they just don’t see any point to it. Whoever wins, the results will be pretty much the same, since the Democrats act like lame wannabe Republicans, or so it sometimes seems. Just this morning I heard that the White House put out some document on their thoughts on the Internet, and it was concerned mainly with how commerce could take place, not so much with the human potential the thing offers. As well, old man Clinton was supposedly defending the Communications Decency Act … sheesh!
I remember in PoliSci 150 with Joe Miller. He talked to us some about Proportional Representation, the idea that instead of winner-take-all you kinda break the political spoils down into a certain number of representatives per party depending on what percentage of the vote they got. Each party could have a list of candidates they’d send, and however many the election entitled them to, that’s how many of that list they’d send to office.
I proposed in class that perhaps any state willing to try could easily enact a scheme like this with their House representatives. Say, Illinois has 30 folks or however many they send to the House of Representatives, but instead of picking those by district, they just throw them all in a big ol’ PR pot and depending what percentage of the state vote their party gets, that’s how many get sent to Washington. Joe got all upset about this it seemed saying that it would be bad for people to not be represented geographically, but the way I see it, it’s more what your ideology is, isn’t it? Especially if you’re an obscure “radical” like Joe.
Anyways, if yer worried about rural representation, then a major party would have to represent itself to rural constituencies for fear that they might lose that constituency to another, possibly third party. This would alleviate voter angst somewhat, I’d think, because partys could fill niche rolls for different ideologies and interests. Staunch environmentalists could vote green, say. Farmers could vote for Farm-interest parties. When you get to Washington then the special interests are more clearly marked based on the popular constituencies, and less on PAC or corporate monies. At least, that’s what I’d hope. To be a successful major party then, one would need to develop a platform that appeals in some rational manner to a wide array of newly-awakened popular political interests.
Well, no-one said I was ever an expert.
Another time, I believe, it was proposed that with technology and all, direct participatory democracy could be achieved. Well, we run into the problems of “mobocracy” and the fact that it take a lot of work to run a government. Well, I’d think to take PR to it’s logical extreme conclusion then, which I would think would be proxy democracy.
See, take mom for example. I’m a politics geek moreso than she is. she has better things to do. Sometimes she’s consulted with me on ways to vote, you know, which candidate? Well, why bother with that, when she could say, just give me or someone else whose judgment she respects proxy power over her single vote? This would maybe work again in a forum like a House of Representatives where at least there you are in theory representing the individual voices of several Americans. I could in turn assign my proxy to another proxy broker or whatever, who I can consult with on his decisions, which might in turn be selecting another broker, or direct representative perhaps. See, this way people have much more encouragement to be involved in the system. Anyone could be their proxy, so it comes more instead of deciding between two bozos more of deciding who your ideal candidate might be .. like shopping for a car. By assigning your proxy to someone you’re stating that you feel confident in the decisions they might make. It’s a far more personal fit than a normal election, so you put more effort, more political awareness and activity, in to making the right choice. At least, one would hope.
In theory, you could then perhaps have several multitudes of representatives – small proxy holders. Well, it might get a bit crowded to implement. Of course, tele-whatever could be used for such folks to discuss the fate of their government, and act accordingly. But if you wanted to be more old-fashioned, you could make a cut-off, say … only the top 38 or whatever number of representatives you want get to go to Congress, with each of those representatives having their votes weighed in proportion to the number of voters they represent, the number of proxies they hold. Proxy holders who don’t have enough votes to make it to Congress have to select their most favored representative to assign their proxies to.
This might confuse the hell out of Corporate America, and other monetary contributers, as the system is very populist, a potential nightmare though, to implement! Imagine the paperwork.
But we don’t have to do this zaniness based on election cycle, eh? You know how a corporation works? Who owns the most stock controls the company, or who owns a significant proportion may sit on the board of directors? Well, say some fool starts making bad decisions, he starts losing his proxies. He makes enough bad decisions he’s outta office. The real power then, gets kinda defused in the larger intermediate proxy brokers who have much control over whether a candidate stays in office.
This also distributes the load of a representatives job. They’re responsible directly to a smaller group of proxy holders who trust them to be doing the job right. They can explain their decisions to this perhaps smallish group, and consult with these “wizened” leaders or whatever, who can in turn come around and address their proxy holders as to why the representative is making the calls he makes. Mr. Representative doesn’t have to commute so much to his district to be in touch with voters, his proxy holders give him the poop. And if they start acting too elitist or anything, of course they start losing their powers.
Fraud becomes much easier though. But then, perhaps, less likely, at least at higher levels, where you have a public trust that the media would be very interested in investigating, no?
Eh, I’m wacko.
NOTE – 19 February, 2002: I’m not the only wacko. And some folks take their own ideas more seriously. If this idea strikes your fancy at all, check out http://www.directrep.org/.
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/1996/06/05/5-june-1996-742pm/
Yesterday was June 4. Anniversary of Tienanmen Square. Also Lionel’s birthday. I saw a very good documentary/movie on Channel 11…very long, but it was all about the student protests and all. I appreciated that they explored all sides of the story … and some of the messages that people had to say. There was this one kinda crazy girl who was a big wig in the protest, it was impressive to see her talking about how she knew there would have to be bloodshed for anything to happen, and how she found it hard to tell students to come and gather when she knew that it was neccessary for them to be attacked. The messages that progress cannot come very well in too large steps … the analogy of the ripe melon, that if eaten in one gulp by the hungry person will cause an upset stomach, but can a hungry person wait to bite at the melon? Which is the right way?
While it put things in perspective, there was still the strong emotional appeal of the whole theme present. China, last great bastion of totalitarian Communist government, a “People’s State” not run by the people, but whose people are eager to stand up for themselves, although they are not suitably educated as to how. I guess the thing that impresses me the most about China is that it has great potential, and has over one fifth of the world’s population. Nearly a billion and a half people who are kind of in darkness.
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