… some of the more abstract economic notions I could comment about; other more specific issues of doing business I couldn’t. Overall on that front, I think I’m going to refrain from comment, because this sounds like a very shitty situation you’ve been forced into despite immense hard work.
On the other issues raised…
In terms of stuff like the TSA, I care about actions. The action is that they are working and unpaid.
Okay, but they’re only ‘unpaid’ in the sense that most of us are ‘unpaid’ for all of our work until we get our weekly, biweekly, monthly, etc, paycheck.
The action is that they’re clocking paid, not unpaid, time, which will be paid like any other working hour of their career.
They’re not doing this in the hopes that some benevolent force will remunerate them, or out of the kindness of their hearts, or because they’re being forced to at metaphorical swordpoint; they’re doing so in the expectation, like any other wage laborer, that their payment will be delivered at their next paycheck.
It’s a shit situation to have when that paycheck is sent shuffled around, and screws over a lot of people, but it’s not even close to slavery or having one’s labor taken without pay. The only question being meaningfully raised by this entire idiotic and unnecessary crisis is when they get their next paycheck, not whether they will get paid for the hours they’re putting in now.
Until this last year, I wouldn’t have said I thought ObL was meaningfully successful, but with ICE, Flock, Venezuela, Iran, the Epstein files, the million or so homeless in prisons for being disabled, elderly, or unwell, the lack of unbiased media sources, and the way we own nothing now? Yeah, I do not recognize this place any more. There is a vector connecting ObL and all of those elements. At least in terms of political narratives, that one has some teeth IMO.
ICE, sure, ICE is certainly a result, at least in part, of the post-9/11 terrorism mania.
Flock is a result of technological advancement and shitheads (inevitably) trying to take advantage of technological advancement. I don’t really know that it’s meaningfully connected to Bin Laden’s effects on the USA.
Venezuela and Iran have long been conservative targets, and honestly, we’ve done much worse during, before, and after the Cold War. They’re shameful because we should have learned from previous mistakes, especially considering the wide awareness in the popular memory of debacles like Vietnam and Iraq. And unexpected because the administration is remarkably stupid, even by Republican standards.
As for the Epstein files, the unfortunate truth is that pedophilia and rape have been widespread for a very long time amongst the politically powerful, as have been honey traps and blackmail with regards to the same. Never heard the old saying “The two things you can find in a Senator’s trunk which will end his career are a dead girl, or a live boy”? Fuck, man, sexual abuse of minors was rampant on both sides of the Iron Curtain during the Cold War, and before that it was almost universally ignored. I mean fuck, the age of consent in the UK was 10 in the 18th century AD. It’s… not a new development since Bin Laden. Nor limited to the USA or the West. About all that is remarkable is the data trail that has become available to the public, the suspected penetration of international intelligence agencies, and how aware the Justice Department was of the perpetrators - likely related to the penetration of international intelligence agencies. Rapist fuckwits running large sex trafficking circles, and powerful people frequenting them, is a very enduring problem, unfortunately.
The industrial-prison complex is not related to Bin Laden in any way, whether one wishes to regard that as fortunate or unfortunate. It was a pre-existing problem which was not meaningfully provoked or exacerbated by Biden Laden’s actions.
There has never been a norm of unbiased media sources, though certainly some sources at least try, largely those free from private funding. But that’s how it’s always been. Before broadsheets and newspapers, it was either gossip or the ‘benevolence’ of the powerful informing the lowly peons of what little it was judged they needed to know. During the period of broadsheets, it was whatever the interests of the printer were. By the time of newspapers… fuck, “Yellow Journalism” and “manufacturing consent” are terms for a reason.
Despite the rhetoric about ‘owning nothing’ and being ‘happy about it’, home and car ownership rates - both of which are, by far, generally the most expensive objects the ordinary person has - are far above their pre-WW2 levels. And, for that matter, neither showed a sharp contraction in the period of the GWOT.
I don’t know man, I’m not saying you shouldn’t be pissed about all of this, because you are absolutely right to be pissed about all of it. I just don’t know that it shares a root triggering event or exacerbating factor. It’s much more systemic - and systemic across a vast array of cultures and time periods - than circumstantial.
Preciate the time and respectful grounding. There is a heavy dose of cynicism and hyperbole in what I have said. I don’t really feel anything. I’m more of an on/off switch where there is little to speak of on either side.
OsL as an argument is mostly a curiosity about impactful rhetoric… Populism to counter populism, or rather imaginative dreaming of such.
The business stuff, is real and tangible. That does piss me off.
… some of the more abstract economic notions I could comment about; other more specific issues of doing business I couldn’t. Overall on that front, I think I’m going to refrain from comment, because this sounds like a very shitty situation you’ve been forced into despite immense hard work.
On the other issues raised…
Okay, but they’re only ‘unpaid’ in the sense that most of us are ‘unpaid’ for all of our work until we get our weekly, biweekly, monthly, etc, paycheck.
The action is that they’re clocking paid, not unpaid, time, which will be paid like any other working hour of their career.
They’re not doing this in the hopes that some benevolent force will remunerate them, or out of the kindness of their hearts, or because they’re being forced to at metaphorical swordpoint; they’re doing so in the expectation, like any other wage laborer, that their payment will be delivered at their next paycheck.
It’s a shit situation to have when that paycheck is sent shuffled around, and screws over a lot of people, but it’s not even close to slavery or having one’s labor taken without pay. The only question being meaningfully raised by this entire idiotic and unnecessary crisis is when they get their next paycheck, not whether they will get paid for the hours they’re putting in now.
ICE, sure, ICE is certainly a result, at least in part, of the post-9/11 terrorism mania.
Flock is a result of technological advancement and shitheads (inevitably) trying to take advantage of technological advancement. I don’t really know that it’s meaningfully connected to Bin Laden’s effects on the USA.
Venezuela and Iran have long been conservative targets, and honestly, we’ve done much worse during, before, and after the Cold War. They’re shameful because we should have learned from previous mistakes, especially considering the wide awareness in the popular memory of debacles like Vietnam and Iraq. And unexpected because the administration is remarkably stupid, even by Republican standards.
As for the Epstein files, the unfortunate truth is that pedophilia and rape have been widespread for a very long time amongst the politically powerful, as have been honey traps and blackmail with regards to the same. Never heard the old saying “The two things you can find in a Senator’s trunk which will end his career are a dead girl, or a live boy”? Fuck, man, sexual abuse of minors was rampant on both sides of the Iron Curtain during the Cold War, and before that it was almost universally ignored. I mean fuck, the age of consent in the UK was 10 in the 18th century AD. It’s… not a new development since Bin Laden. Nor limited to the USA or the West. About all that is remarkable is the data trail that has become available to the public, the suspected penetration of international intelligence agencies, and how aware the Justice Department was of the perpetrators - likely related to the penetration of international intelligence agencies. Rapist fuckwits running large sex trafficking circles, and powerful people frequenting them, is a very enduring problem, unfortunately.
The industrial-prison complex is not related to Bin Laden in any way, whether one wishes to regard that as fortunate or unfortunate. It was a pre-existing problem which was not meaningfully provoked or exacerbated by Biden Laden’s actions.
There has never been a norm of unbiased media sources, though certainly some sources at least try, largely those free from private funding. But that’s how it’s always been. Before broadsheets and newspapers, it was either gossip or the ‘benevolence’ of the powerful informing the lowly peons of what little it was judged they needed to know. During the period of broadsheets, it was whatever the interests of the printer were. By the time of newspapers… fuck, “Yellow Journalism” and “manufacturing consent” are terms for a reason.
Despite the rhetoric about ‘owning nothing’ and being ‘happy about it’, home and car ownership rates - both of which are, by far, generally the most expensive objects the ordinary person has - are far above their pre-WW2 levels. And, for that matter, neither showed a sharp contraction in the period of the GWOT.
I don’t know man, I’m not saying you shouldn’t be pissed about all of this, because you are absolutely right to be pissed about all of it. I just don’t know that it shares a root triggering event or exacerbating factor. It’s much more systemic - and systemic across a vast array of cultures and time periods - than circumstantial.
Preciate the time and respectful grounding. There is a heavy dose of cynicism and hyperbole in what I have said. I don’t really feel anything. I’m more of an on/off switch where there is little to speak of on either side.
OsL as an argument is mostly a curiosity about impactful rhetoric… Populism to counter populism, or rather imaginative dreaming of such.
The business stuff, is real and tangible. That does piss me off.