Kyle Reese… and Reinhard Heydrich

hard to believe this was written 8 years ago

I remember watching the original Terminator in the theatre. Twice in a row. Me and my fellow kleptomaniac friend Chris had just stolen a few hundred dollars of art supplies from our art teacher’s husband’s store.

What a couple of assholes. Two of the richest kids in town, stealing shit to escape the crushing boredom of our superfluous existence. After admiring our loot, we both settled deep into our seats and became riveted by Kyle Reese, and his gritty realistic persona of a near-future John the Baptist type of hero.

Joining a resistance in preparation for the coming of J. C. – John Connor – Jesus Christ. That was exactly the kind of apostolic army we were looking to join. Living on the breakneck fringe. Running with zaftig-yet-hard chicks like Sarah Connor and barking orders at them; that felt like real life the way it was meant to be lived.

Our daily mass Wine & Bread tasting New Testament hippie-fest on the Mount of Beatitudes overlooking the Sea of Galilee. The the drunken stumble-bum priests and vacuous guitar strumming eunuch nuns, that was tedious drudgery with nothing of interest to virile young men ready to burst upon the world.

We wanted to graduate from being amateur assholes, into being full fledged regimental alpha male assholes. After all, it was our fellow asshole upper-classmen who we most listened to and most loyally followed. It was the permissive party place asshole parents and adults who attracted our emulation and compelled our attention and admiration.

Even to this day, it’s the assholes I once befriended, like Chris; the assholes I once worked for, the assholes I encountered in charge and in places of power with whom I needed to negotiate with, that I most remember and most benefitted from.

I have come to avoid most men who seem polished and benevolent. The ones who only talk but never really do help you. The ones, who, always behind your back, were working secretly to destroy you, and to keep you helplessly at bay, and locked in your matrix designated place.

Usually, the good guys, who say the right things, who pretend to care about you, and who appear to live virtuous lives, always turns out to be liars, and always serve to keep us enslaved and in our chains.

They are always covering for something sinister and inhuman behind the scenes, that’s what makes them work so overly hard to appear to be of kind temperament and good fellowship. That’s what makes them such cunning and convincing actors.

Fortunately, we are entering an age who rejects these sweater set illuminati. We are now living in the age of naked assholism. The blunt Chinese, the serious Germans, Trump, Jobs, Zuckerberg: We have finally joined the wisdom of the world and its idolization of high achievement assholes.

This is an era of obnoxiousness – the more arrogant and nasty you behave, have more successful you tend to be, and those with whom you surround yourself as well.

Consider the most successful book in the world, with 6 billion copies now sold. The Bible. The Bible is the work of unconscionable assholeness. The Babylonian and later the diaspora Jews appropriated all the ancient literature of the world, renamed its protagonists and characters, and proclaimed all recorded meaningful history to have been in service to their God, and he alone. What assholes!

But really, the world is at her best when the assholes are in their ascent. We have entered a modern age of assholism, mainly because we find the phenomenon and its practitioners so interesting, so provocative, so compelling, or so compellingly repulsive, or sometimes all of those things at once.

I’m not thinking so much of assholes of opportunity like Charlie Sheen and Mel Gibson, or of incidental assholes like James Cameron or Brett Favre, whose assholism only adds a colorful sidebar to an independently impressive career.

There’s little about those people that’s particular to the asshole age, save that in earlier periods the public probably would have been spared the details of the personal tics and twitches that qualify them for the asshole label.

What’s unique to our time is the fixation with certain iconic assholes, who exemplify each in his way the dominant allure of the whole human species. Steve Jobs, for example, was a modern personification of the asshole as achiever, someone whose assholism seems to be inextricable from his success as a leader.

Even the most abusive manager and owner of property wants assurance that he’s on the right track; that his over the top ego is what’s good for the team and good for his investments. He knows, that after all is said and done, whatever his subordinates and dependents may say about him, they’ll be grateful later on, when their wealth and worth stay on the increase in an up and down world.

For some, Jobs fills an analogous role in the digital age. Shortly after his death and the publication of a bestselling biography about him, it was written about Jobs in the Atlantic:

CEOs, middle managers and wannabe masters of the universe are currently devouring the Steve Jobs biography and thinking to themselves: “See! Steve Jobs was an asshole and he was one of the most successful businessmen on the planet. Maybe if I become an even bigger asshole I’ll be successful like Steve.”

And indeed, some observers depicted Jobs’ assholism as a deliberate management style. As Newsweek once put it, Jobs was a “master of psychological manipulation”:

He found that by delivering brutal putdowns of his co-workers he could test the strength of their conviction in their own ideas. . . . He found that many of the most brilliant engineers and creative types actually responded well to cruel criticism, since it reinforced their own secret belief that they weren’t living up to their vaunted potential.

Not everyone agrees with that assessment of Jobs’ skills as a manager; Many insiders says that he was terrible at it, and that success came despite his being a colossal asshole, not because of it. But it isn’t as if there are no advantages to being an asshole, in business or elsewhere. Life rarely makes moral choices that easy for us. When he was preparing “The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t,” Robert Sutton reports he was repeatedly challenged by Silicon Valley leaders who asked him, “What about Steve Jobs?” to the point where he reluctantly added a chapter called “The Virtues of Assholes.” He concedes that judicious displays of irrational anger have their uses—fear of humiliation can be a motivator for employees if it’s balanced with the hope of praise, and a well-timed tantrum can get you a boarding pass at the last minute from uncooperative airport staff. And there are fields where behaving like an asshole offers a clear career advantage, such as professional wrestling and the law.

In any event, few of the people who bought Jobs biography were looking for tips on becoming masters of the universe or pretexts for rationalizing their own arrogance. The stories told about Jobs’ assholism often demonstrate a capacity for irrationality, spitefulness, and petulance that had little to do with any psychological jujitsu: firing a manager in front of an auditorium of people; short-changing Steve Wozniak on a bonus in the early days of their partnership; taking credit for the ideas of others; screaming, crying, and threatening when the color of the vans ordered at NeXT didn’t match the shade of white of the manufacturing facility; and launching savagely into anyone who aroused his displeasure. (I know of one person who says he quit his high-level job at Apple because he got tired of wiping Jobs’ spittle off his glasses.) True, the Patton of historical fact was by most accounts even worse: a full-blown prick, sadist, and suck-up detested by both his superiors and his subordinates. But most of that iconic firebrandery is inextricably interwoven into Jobs’ pathological behavior and is an essential element of his myth.

It says something about Jobs’ assholism that it hasn’t been retouched for public consumption the other heros often are. That has a lot to do with the anti-heroic temper of the times; we demand all the dirt, especially on our heroes. But it also suggests a different idea of what makes these asshole achievers compelling, even to those with no interest in emulating them. Jobs’ tantrums and rants don’t evoke the resolute toughness of a Leader of Men so much as the temperament that we associate with creative genius.

Jobs styled himself as an artist rather than a businessman, the turtlenecked begetter of the cool exuded by the company’s iStuff. That was a credible posture in an age in which people found it natural to compare the launch of the iPhone to the previous generation’s Woodstock, and it seemed to license the prodigal shittiness that goes with being a Bernini, a Picasso or a Pound — or, for that matter, a Robert Plant.

One reviewer of Jobs’ biography compared reading it to “going backstage at a Led Zeppelin concert in the seventies and seeing your heroes wasted, and babbling like babies, surrounded by bimbos.” Indeed, Jobs was a rock star, in a sense that Bill Gates couldn’t possibly be, not just because he was idolized, but because he was one of those people like Jim Morrison, Kanye West and the Metallica guys, whose behavior as flaming assholes is taken as evidence of being exceptional enough to be able to get away with it.

• • •

Donald Trump comes closer than anyone else to being the archetype of the species; crossing genres, he exemplifies all the ways an asshole can capture our attention. He’s in a different league from Jobs, whose assholism is perceived relative to his other achievements — they’d be remembered even if they had been even-tempered and self-effacing, though perhaps not the subjects of a best-selling biography or an Oscar-winning biopic, whereas Trump would have no more claim on our attention than Harold Hamm, Charles Ergen, Dannine Avara or most of the other hundred-odd Americans who have more money than he does.

But Trump is a pure asshole in a way that very few people are ever a pure anything, as one dimensional as the villain in a Batman movie. Everything he says reveals the workings of a hermetically self-referential mind. Trump is type of deep footing upon which you can forge a nation.

Controversial as Trump is in some regards, no one disputes that he’s an asshole, though people have very different reasons for finding that compelling. Some regard him with disdain. Once in the 1980s, Spy magazine made a fetish of his arriviste coarseness with the recurrent epithet “short-fingered vulgarian” (in retrospect, the “Not our class, dear” condescension of that phrase is a reminder of how tricky it is to deride an asshole from above). Others take pleasure in seething at his outrageousness. His presidential foray in early 2011, with its opportunistic rekindling of the birther dementia, briefly made him Topic A not just on the right but on the left—at the Huffington Post, mentions of Trump trail only those of Sarah Palin, who has been playing the game much longer and much harder.

At the time of his possible Presidential run, even his online supporters conceded that he was an asshole, though they either looked past it or saw it as a plus. To some it meant that he was someone who would get the job done, to others that he wouldn’t mince words in letting the world know what an asshole Barack Obama is:

If given the chance, I would have voted for him. The guy might be an asshole but the economy needs a fucking businessman at the helm. He is the right asshole for an asshole job.

I would vote for Trump, precisely because he is a jerk, but a jerk who knows when he’s getting screwed on a deal, and will make sure it is America that comes out on top. Trump may be an arrogant asshole but he says what he thinks. He inspires you to say what you and other people are thinking but are afraid to say it because it isn’t PC.

Trump is so fearless and does not give a damn about what people think about him. Unlike most people who are afraid to speak their mind and say what they really believe because they will be called racist bigoted etc. he just jumps once more into the breach, dear friends, once more.

Trump’s preeminence in this line testifies to his mastery of the mechanisms of publicity. Few in public life understand better than he how engaging assholism can be, both in real life and in its broadcast simulacra. “The Apprentice” epitomizes the genre of reality television built around situations in which people can be abusive to others who have willingly consented to take part in return for money or celebrity. Every episode arcs towards a finale that gives the viewers the opportunity to watch a powerful man acting like an asshole towards his supplicants, dispatching the losing competitor with a brisk, “You’re fired.”

The phrase is supposed to evoke the pitilessness it takes to survive in “the ultimate jungle,” but you don’t actually feel much compassion for the losers. They’ve fought to get there, after all, and any residual sympathy you might have had for them is dissipated in the final boardroom scene where they’re incited to act like assholes themselves, selling each other out in an effort to be spared the axe. And anyway, “fired” here really means “playing a subordinate role in the rest of this season’s episodes.”

There’s none of the vicarious outrage one is supposed to feel upon watching a movie of the week that depicts Leona Helmsley summarily discharging a busboy who spilled some tea in her saucer. These asshole scenarios are reproduced, with variations, across many of the genres of reality television, from “American Idol” to “Restaurant Makeover” to Bering Sea Gold. These capitalistic showpieces show one “the thrill of witnessing real men at peace with their own arrogance”.

In each instance, the format keeps the “reality” close enough to the actual so that the asshole’s behavior is distressing to his targets without ever reaching so deep into their off-the-job lives that it becomes genuinely disturbing to the viewer. They allow us to enjoy the spectacle of social aggression without experiencing any vicarious moral risk, in the same way that “dare” shows like “Fear Factor” allow us to watch contestants attempt to jump from one building to another without any real physical danger. On the contrary, our indignation over the behavior of the designated assholes on the job-search shows like “The Apprentice” and the documentary-style shows like those in the Real Housewives franchise isn’t diminished by knowing how much of it is engineered by the producers or simulated for the camera.

It’s the same suspension of disbelief that makes possible the Comedy Central roasts, in which some celebrity, ideally a high-profile asshole himself, winces good-humoredly as comedians who have never met him take turns making pointed put-downs at his expense. There have been eras that took a far more intense interest in spectacles of cruelty than ours, but none that was so transfixed by watching people act like assholes.

That fascination is fed in equal parts by our fantasies of rock star self-indulgence and the resentments and anxieties that assholes evoke. Both are popular themes in recent cinema. I’m not thinking so much of the innumerable comedies and dramas that feature assholes as their stock villains, but of movies in which the assholes are the focus of dramatic interest. Some of these are tales of asshole redemption, like “Rain Man” or “Minority Report”. Others are mean-girl movies like “Heathers” and “Mean Girls” which also break new generic ground.

Meanwhile, television has made a mini-industry of the dirtbag sitcoms that I mentioned earlier. And one should make a special place for “The Office,” the original version with Ricky Gervais, which created one of the most incisive modern portraits of the asshole’s clueless self-delusion. Gervais’ David Brent elicits contempt and irritation, pity, even affection — a sign not so much of the complexity of the character but of how conflicted we are about the type he personifies.

• • •

Some of these assholes are just old curs warmed over, but others are creatures new to film. “The Social Network,” for example, could have been subtitled “Asshole 2.0.” There are obvious resemblances between Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs as driven high-tech creators, but the character of Zuckerberg created by Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher (which by all accounts is substantially different from the real Zuckerberg) belongs to a different genus of assholes. No one would be tempted to describe him as a “master of psychological manipulation,” as Newsweek did Jobs; he’s arrogant, self-absorbed, and insensitive to the point of near-autism. In the opening scene, he preens and condescends to his girlfriend, Erica, in a Cambridge bar (“You don’t have to study . . . You go to BU [Boston University]”). She tells him he’s an asshole, breaks up with him, and walks out. As if to prove her right, he goes back to his dorm and posts some unflattering and sexist remarks about her on his blog, then, in a misogynistic follow-up, creates the “Facemash” application that allows people to rank the women students for hotness. Later we see him cutting out his best friend, who put up the money for the project, and responding with prodigal snottiness to a lawyer who’s deposing him:

GAGE: You don’t think I deserve your attention. . . .

ZUCKERBERG: You have part of my attention. You have the minimum amount. The rest of my attention is back at the offices of Facebook, where my colleagues and I are doing things that no one in this room, including and especially your clients, are intellectually or creatively capable of doing.

Only in an incongruously mawkish final scene does Zuckerberg reveal a dim awareness of his isolation and loneliness, as he sits alone at a conference table in the offices of his lawyers and sends a Facebook friend request to his former girlfriend, Erica, then keeps compulsively refreshing the page to see if there’s a response. All of a sudden he’s pathetic, and for the first time strikes us as a possible object of sympathy. “You’re not really an asshole,” his lawyer, Julie, has told him, but what the scene really shows is that he’s only an asshole, not an unmitigated shit like most of the other characters — the slick hustler Sean Parker, the supercilious and self-infatuated Winklevoss twins who accused him of stealing their idea.

That last scene put several critics in mind of Charles Foster Kane’s “Rosebud,” and it seems to set the movie in the long line of American stories that show successful figures repaid for their unchecked ambition with loneliness. The scene is obviously meant to leave the audience with the consoling thought that it profiteth a man nothing if he gains the world but loses his soul mate. But there are no real film antecedents for the figure of the emotionally stunted nerd billionaire (a very far cry from Mickey Rooney in “Young Tom Edison”), just as there are no media precursors of the digital culture that seems to many to foster a kindred sense of disconnection and casual meanness. Or at least that’s the perception of many people in the generation of Sorkin and Fincher, who were in their late forties when the film was made. They obviously meant for their Zuckerberg to personify the digital culture, as they signaled in the ambiguous title “The Social Network.”

Shouldn’t we struggle against Facebookistan? Everything in it is reduced to the size of its founder . . . Poking, because that’s what shy boys do to girls they are scared to talk to. Preoccupied with personal trivia, because Mark Zuckerberg thinks the exchange of personal trivia is what “friendship” is . . . We were going to live online. It was going to be extraordinary. Yet what kind of living is this? Step back from your Facebookistan Wall for a moment: Doesn’t it, suddenly, look a little ridiculous? Your life in this format?

But that’s not how people who grew up with Facebookistan see either Zuckerberg or his creation. When you talk to the younger generation about the movie or the social platform website, they acknowledge that Zuckerberg sometimes behaves badly, but they don’t see him as the alien and alienating figure that the media try to make him out to be — to them he’s a routine sort of jerk.

If people have it in for Zuckerberg, it’s more often because of Facebookistan’s privacy policies than any of the wrongs committed by his media persona or movie avatar. They don’t see their walls and profiles as the places where they live their lives, just as one of the many venues, material and immaterial, where they circulate. And they’re quite clear on the difference between friends and “friends.” If they thought Facebookistan was a representation of their actual life, they’d begin to reevaluate things quickly.”

In the same way, I, like other digital natives am not as disturbed by the snark and assholism endemic in the online world, not because the my perpetrations aren’t assholism, but because I fell they’re relatively harmless ones.

It’s a curious feature of the asshole age that the forms of assholism that people find most alarming tend to be those that have less drastic effects on their daily lives. Abusive blog comments are much easier to ignore or shrug off than rude remarks from people standing behind you in the line at the DMV.

Its possible, I am missing something significant. If only for the reason that the more remote and impersonal forms of assholism are much easier to engage in remotely online without rippling one’s conscience too much.

While my virtual activities don’t generally inflict the personal injuries that my real-life assholism can at work, home, or play, it is nonetheless plausible that they are enormously destructive to the fabric of my public life, and therefore something to bring under control, and to do more sparingly.

Time to move to another state, Eric. Or someplace the fuckers are too poor or disinterested to care. But this nonsense is meant to track and otherwise drive (pun intended) you out of your vehicle. Damn them all to hell.

Texas A&M, I am disappoint.

Not surprised at all though. The transport institute is all about engineers figuring out how to most efficiently move around all cars in any place in a day. Few engineers will conclude that getting out of the way is the best means to efficiency, it certainly isnt in the mechanical and civil fields. The idea that most of what they spend studying and tweaking is counterproductive at the very core, is as foreign a concept to them as was the earth being round to people hundreds of years ago.

Soon your insurer will be watching you.

Car Insurance by the Mile Debuts in California
http://www.pewstates.org/projects/stateline/headlines/car-insurance-by-the-mile-debuts-in-california-85899375309

To encourage drivers to sign up for the mileage-tracking programs, insurance companies are offering discounts

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-ZPass

In NY NJ and Pa we have this E-ZPass thing. You get an electronic thingy (called a tag) to keep in your car. The electronic thingy is not needed as the toll plazas have cameras that read your license plates. I have tested this, you don’t need the electronic thingy as long as your vehicle’s plate is correctly registered with your credit card info you are billed normally and the authorities do not send you nasty letters. So the electronic thingy is a back up if the computer cannot read your plate.

If there is an actual toll gate that needs to be raised you need the electronic thingy, although I think the police will raise the gate and let you go if you are registered with e-zpass.

Dear Eric Reese and the Resistance,

Shalom from the future my synchronic sonderkommandos.

Years from now, we all come to realize the wars of 1812, 1861, 1914, & 1939 were all false flags launched to hide the predation and destruction of the banking system.

We learn that Bastiat was right. When goods stop crossing borders, armies start crossing borders – as is now underway. The rise of the TSA was a ploy to prevent wealth or goods from being transferring between jurisdictions.

This time, when they waved that false flag, but we never charged. We went seven suns of sun tzu on their ass. We outwitted and outlasted them. We found reserves of ancient knowledge and courage inside ourselves and then tapped and fracked them to the last ounce.

We decided we are all one people. The Germanic-Anglos. There is no difference between the British, Dixies, Dutch, English, German, Wild Westerners, & Yankees. We stopped being manipulated into belligerent infighting Balkan states.

We recognized the mechanistic cyborgs among us trying to instigate illusions and fear. We learned we are one. We learned how to win the classic prisoners dilemma. We fought back with gambits of our own. We found that by keeping a clear head and firm hand on our reasoning faculty, technology was our greatest friend and their greatest foe.

. . . James Cameron = Captain Nemo . . .
James Cameron is the shit. Writing and directing The Terminator (1984), Aliens (1986), The Abyss (1989), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), True Lies (1994), Titanic (1997), Dark Angel (2000–02), and Avatar. He builds you classrooms and even shows you the answers from the Teacher’s Edition Textbook, you just need to LOOK.

. . . Hunter Killers Are Nothing To Fear . . .

Cool Hexacopter Bomb Drop of Household Objects

Multimadmanable 1 week ago
Whether one wants to admit it or not there is great responsibility that goes with flying RC & multirotor . It bothers me when people who enjoy the same hobby I do make references such as “bomb dropping” & then display the payloads these platforms are capable of hauling. The FAA is taking a very close look at our hobby & the possibility of it being illegalized is very High. My point is videos with titles like this give them ammunition to work with in a court of law.

RobscoRC 1 week ago
You clearly live in the US. I feel really bad for you guys down there having such strict laws on these things. Up here in Canada its the opposite. Companies are springing up everywhere using them for commercial and industrial purposes. Our government is encouraging people to experiment with these machines, and overseas its been like that for 10 years. Its a shame the US government is so afraid of their own people and are falling so far behind the rest of the world. My title remains Bomb Drop

T.G. Sammons that book was made into a great movie in 1977 by Sam Peckinpah about the landser (German grunts) fighting on the Eastern front. Jäger means hunter in German. The local library has a page where you can recommend movies and books for them to purchase. I recommended Cross Of Iron and they purchased it. I would hit reply but it was un-highlighted for some reason, it could be this browser. I use multiple browsers and sometimes copy paste from one to another. Carry on.

DIY RFID

This almost shorted out my mind control chip

There will be a number of ways to defeat these devices. The key to defeating the policy, however, will be massive and widespread refusal to comply. A few hundred people here and there won’t do the trick. We will need millions of people across the country to simply refuse to participate. Ask yourself at what point we are going to stop being sheep and stand up and be people.

FYI– In Texas you are not required to have an inspection, have insurance, or have a license plate if your vehicle is an unmodified/original or restored military vehicle. I have three M1009’s and one M1008. I only tagged one M1009. I drive with the top off — violating the rules.

(See the steel soldiers forum for verification)

Eric,
I live in Roanoke and took my car for a state inspection recently. The mechanic told me they now are required to report to the state at the time of inspection via computer the results. He said a guy brought in a car for inspection without a inspection sticker. The mechanic went online and found out the car had been rejected at another inspection station. He also told me that the state is thinking about requiring other localities to start doing smog inspections like northern Va. He says he could not aford to buy the expensive equipment for the test. The reach and intergrated data collection by the state is growing.

Wait until it’s economically feasible for governments to place traffic cameras on EVERY intersection. We will all become subservient, scared pussies.

After Heydrich was shot, he whipped out his sidearm, leaped from the car and chased his attackers until he collapsed. Hitler was furious that Heydrich was dumb enough to ride around in an open limo. Hitler then commented (I think the source is William Shirer’s “Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”) that even though Heydrich was a mischling (part Jewish), he (Hitler) kept him around because “he (Heydrich) was very good at getting rid of people.” Heydrich’s tacking system consisted of 3×5 cards stored in little boxes, constantly updated.

In the words of Charlie Brown..

[IMG]http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/11/2010/01/charliebrown.jpg[/IMG]

Time to remove all our plates – permanently.

Eric, I think you made a mistake about the tolls being on the I-95 corridor near Richmond. I travel I95 frequently and the current proposal by the state legislature is to install tolls on I-95.

Currently, there are toll stations on the Downtown expressway (195), the Pocohontas and Powhite Parkways. They have installed the Smart Tag readers above dedicated “EZPass” lanes which bypass the toll plazas.

I’m in agreement with you on how ridiculous it is to want to mandate these RFID tags statewide in order to collect $75k more right around Richmond. The true aim is likely to pave the way for tolls on I-95 and to make automatic ticket issuing possible at red lights.

No need for RFID chips in/on tags as all new cars here since I don’t remember when come with on-board computers that can be programmed, as your cell phone, for GPS purposes.

That is why I do not want a vehicle with On Star,reflash your PROM and put a set of V rated tires on it(you dont see the OnStar commercial anymore ,were the cops get the OnStar folks to shut a perps vehicle down)-Kevin

Important question: When do the new black boxes become mandatory? I must buy a new car before then!

Agree MoT. The defecation is going to strike the roto-oscillator in an epic fashion in 2013. Comrade Chairman Hussein the Immaculate Messiah is going to fundamentally transform this formerly great representative republic into North Korea in a fast and furious fashion. Get a gun and some rounds no matter what the caliber if you don’t have one already. It is coming.

Smashing RFID’s makes me feel like JAAAWN CAAAWNNAH!!!

Sweet Jeebus! Either you expat out of this dump or it’ll come to guns a blazin because these fuckers will never stop otherwise. It’s only the fear of attaining room temperature that keeps them in check.

I’m glad to be as old as I am. The US is becoming a 21st Century version of Nazi Germany.

The first thing I did when Chase bank sent me my ATM card was to locate the RFID (the little square outline above and to the right of the “blink” logo) and smacked it hard with a hammer. Dead RFID.

If I had one on my license plate I would hammer it into a broken piece of silicon, just like my ATM card. Don’t stick the plate into a microwave oven because the metal plate would probably ruin your microwave. But, beating the hell out of the chip will break it. “Sorry about that officer but someone must have backed into me and broke that poor, defenseless RFID.”

The dreaded SicherheitsDienst (security service) of NSDAP Germany a sub agency technically part of the SS, ol’ Reinhard took the same route every day around a curve in an open convertible Mercedes. Brave Czech patriots trained and sponsored by the U.K. waited on that curve with sub machines guns and grenades and got Heydrich. He died of his wounds from grenade shrapnel a few days after the attack. The nazis even feared Heydrich and some were happy he passed away. He had dossiers on everyone even Hitler and the first move Himmler made was to check Heydrich’s desk and files. The world might suffer the tyrants for a while but it never lasts.

Yep happened to my passport. Now there’s a outline of the chip on the back cover. 🙂

oops, sorry, didn’t mean to accidentally mircrowave my govt issued id tag.

liberranter, I foresee a huge potential market for RFID spoofing, counterfeit RFID tags and RFID jamming technology. I’ll bet a grey market laser / radar / RFID / GPS jammer / spoofer could easily put set a man up for early retirement (or a vacation at Hotel Graybar). This could get very interesting if enough of the sheeple “bow up” on the system. We’ll see…

I foresee the evolution of new graduate courses in working around this snooptechnology.

I probably sound like a broken record regarding these tracking systems. I’ve seen the end goal for years. It’s been playing out very slowly, but playing out it is.

All the various systems from RFID plates to visual plate scanners cost millions upon millions to implement and operate in every local area. Billions nationwide. The cost of collection will likely far exceed what is collected until new taxes are added to pay for the systems to collect the taxes.

So why is the government going for costly systems that require new taxes just to pay for the cost of collecting taxes? Two reasons depending on the individual government functionary. First, is likely plunder. It’s a lot of money to skim from. Second is the side benefits. The alternative uses of the technology.

The other angle the government has been using is to say today’s electric cars and hybrids have to be taxed, that road tax revenues are declining. The solution of course is tax-by-mile, otherwise known as tracking. The government has already been caught cooking the books on the figures to make this case to the masses. (documented on thenewspaper.com)

They want to track everything and they will keep trying different excuses until something sticks.

Wow! With all that mechanical/electronic automation it should be possible to lay off a multitude of outrageously costly tax supported parasites.

Tinsley Grey Sammons (1936 –)

Ooops officer…I didn’t realized I accidentally scratched the bar code on my plate when I installed it. Sorry, the screwdriver must have slipped

And all those magnets behind my plate are designed to hold it in place in case the screws rust through…with all that road salt you guys are using here.