Here are today’s heroes in action:
Got something to say about your buddy’s arrest? Don’t say it in Green Bay, WI because you might get an ass kicking. In fact, don’t even say something about said beat-down on their Facebook Page, unless it’s in a “beatdown related approved portion” of their page.
In April of 2014 Green Bay cop Derick Wicklund decided to unleash his childhood bully on a guy who dared to say “Fuck You!” to him while he was arresting a guy for the crime of having a beer on the sidewalk. Yesterday, it was revealed that GBPD and some other government agency rubber stamped the beating of this guy.
Green Bay PD would be happy to delete your comment on their Facebook Page too!
GBPD says Wicklund Didn’t use Excessive Force – WTAQ.com
Derick Wicklund Green Bay cop has prompted 14 citizen complaints – Wausau Daily Herald
RE: “Once the older folks are gone there won’t be anyone left who remembers when things were different.”
That’s some scary shit, there.
Especially in light of, “Wisconsin Heroes Beat Down Those Who Dare Not Show “Respect” “
Oops, pardon the double post.
Technical snafu.
But maybe, that needed saying twice?
It is some scary shit.
And how about this:
The rising generation – kids in their mid-teens – have no memory of a time “pre-911.” Before there was a “Homeland.” When people did not have to submit to pat downs, searches of their persons and property as well as interrogation, just to board an airplane. No concept of being free to not buy “health care.” Etc.
For them, this world is entirely normal.
I somewhat agree with your assessment, but I’m not totally pessimistic on this subject. People calling themselves “libertarians” generally are not, but there is a sea change coming that the gubmint cannot stop. Once the economy unravels, the hordes of people who have had it good are going to understand that the gubmint and all its goon enforcers are the enemy. The bread and circuses phase is almost over. NFL war drum pounding will not suffice when TSHTF. When baby is going hungry because mommy and daddy ran out of gubmint handouts, there will be a reckoning…the producers of the world will be going all ant on the grasshoppers. But the reason I am not pessimistic relates to the fact that the real producers are sharp enough to realize what is going on and will survive in large enough numbers to improve their prospects. The grasshoppers will die by the millions. And the goons whose philosophy reflect what you post in your “heroes” section will suffer, rightly, total annihilation.
Let’s hope so, Giuseppe!
I’d much rather there be a peaceful “turning” . . . but recognize such may not be possible.
Dear helot, Eric,
Russian and Chinese authorities have been using the term “new normal”.
But their new normal is nowhere as scary as ‘Murca’s “new normal’.
That’s the way that the thugs work things to bring about the “new normal.”
There was a time when people would have laughed at the idea, for example, that one would actually need a federal identification number just to hold a job, drive a car, have a bank account, or even go to a doctor. Anyone predicting such a thing would have been considered a nut case.
People would shake their heads and say “It can’t happen here!” Of course today virtually all those people are gone and the situation is accepted as “just the way it’s always been” by the current generation.
RE: “Once the older folks are gone there won’t be anyone left who remembers when things were different.”
That’s some scary shit, there.
And you notice, especially as the electronic gadget market grows, there is less and less TALK – of ANY sort?
Can’t discuss religion, politics, race, economics, money; no one has an interest in history, save professors (most of whom I have dealt with, have been ideologues rather than teachers or students) who must ALWAYS be “right.” Even when they’re DEAD wrong. Like saying the Ironclad ship was the CAUSE of the US Civil War, for example – THAT sort of wrong. (Do understand, I made that up to highlight the sort fo “ridiculous” you can hear.)
Between constant immersion in instant gratification, drug-like effects from video games (affecting the brain both from challenge-reward cycles and from over-stimulation of senses), along with removal of older, more-experienced voices by location, age demographics, and other programming meant to distract the older folk… We’re allowing “them” to create a LORD OF THE FLIES scenario… (Russia will have to be the sailor at the end… How pathetic is THAT?)
the unchecked technological growth bubble will also lead to abuses, so… We’ll see where we end up, I guess. 😛
I’m with you on this all the way, Jean.
In particular, “social media” appalls and enrages me. It is the antipodal enemy of genuine social interaction. The facilitator of vapid, vacuous, non-engagement. Zero “face” time with actual, flesh and blood neighbors and friends. It will be – it is – the death of true community.
Did you ever read the Dune series by Frank Herbert?
The fictional future society is premised on rejection of “thinking machines” – of too much got-damned electronic scheisse.
Eric,
ALL of Dune. The prequels as well as the sequels, and both the celluloid versions. (Each had it’s stregnths.)
Of note, our smartphones et al weren’t the “thinking machines,” though the paranoid had issues with even computers as we use. The Machine War / Butlerian Jyhad was against ACTUAL thinking machines – AIs. Artificial Intelligences which had merged, essentially, into one overmind system. Think Skynet, only intelligent. Similar to the robots of the film, “I, Robot.” (I never got through the book, it was too slow even for me. On a pace with Moby Dick.)
I use my smart phone all the time, make no mistake. I’m in IT. I STILL think we’ve gone too far towards avoiding each other, and talk too little. And with “polite society” shying away from anything that would actually help us refine our own thoughts? My brain is “fatter” than I am. Not much left of the college Logic course. But I can’t even find people to TALK TO, let alone INTELLIGENT people to talk to.
And most of the few you might find will be either ideologues (IE, Leftists) or unable to connect the dots: They can tell you ALL ABOUT Chaucer’s meanings in medeival literature, but then can’t relate it to, for example, Dune, or Star Wars, or the themes and trops of Star Trek, or Green Lantern – or, for that matter, compare and contrast effectively with Thoreau.
I am APALLED as I see how much information has been LOST and distorted by those “teaching” others. “Wizard of Oz” comes to mind, a parable of the need for actual, physical money (IE, backed by Yellow Bricks) instead of fiat currency. It’s so well camoflaged, like the old Zen koans – that the meaning is in fact removed, not just hidden. It’s the literal “sound of one hand clapping.”
David Brin’s Startide Rising, for example. The Dune series, taken as a series (the book divisions are more “breaking points” between acts.) 1984 – as in-your-face as it is – is LOST on the modern attention-junkies. And that’s the SURFACE meaning, forget the undertones.
Compare, for example, 1984 to Equilibrium to Sleeper to Continuum to The Hunger games [also as a series], to Divergent, to Idiocracy.
Sleeper was, fo course, Woody Allen, a neurotic idiot – but there are elements of that absurdity which caught on, and compared to even THAT society, we live in Idiocracy. Except in our idiocracy, people won’t talk to you, not because you sound “faggy,” but because they literally have a vocabulary of about 50-100 words.
Gotdammit, a DOG can understand 10!!!!
These people CANNOT understand anyone with more than an eighth-grade vocabulary.
This “social media” is anything BUT, as well. Kendall Jones is a hunter and a 19-year-old who HAD – past tense – a page on Facebook. Facebook removed her page for violating the Terms of Service….
But a page on Facebook calling for her DEATH is PERFECTLY OK…. (Sorry, I lost the link, and can’t find it again from history. 😛 )
I LOVE Tumblr, too. LOTS of free pron. 😀
But useful? BAH!
Twitter? WTF?
Not to mention the games (which I used to love – protable systems were something I always wanted) – but to go from Mario Bros on Gameboy to Candy Crush on my phone? FRIES my brain. Mario was fun, cute, etc, – but there was skill. Candy Crush et al don’t DO squat. You twiddle things to waste time, and it’s (at best) randomized, (at worst) designed to make you lose. (Impossible goals + a big F*CK YOU in the way the pieces fall.)
I didn’t really have the ability to relate to my grandparents; I was … 10? when they were 70-80? Not exactly an ability to understand what’s going on, especially when mom and dad are chattering away about inane twaddle (what most of conversation is, when you think about it – the weather,the news – meaning, literally, “THE NEWS”; movies; music; etc.) It takes hours for someone to get to a single salient point (I stand as an example.)
Too much SCHEISSE period. Too much NFL, NHL, MLB, NASCAR, NBA, olympics – and the converse for women, “19 kids and counting,” “Sister Wives,” HGTV, Lifetime, OWN, et al.
EMPs would only HELP our society. And while I think there would be a “mad Max” or other post-apocalypse world, I think it would HELP us overall – weed out the weak and stupid and unfit (which includes ME), make for evolutionary pressures to stick with “what works.” And only the strong survive? Far better they survive than the “rent seekers” rise to the top – the rent seekers ARE the barbarians from “Mad Max”, mind!
In Dune? The bene gesserit witches. (Not to mention the Emperor himslef…)
Democrats, Capital-C “Conservatives,” Cap-L Liberals, Progressives, Swine of all colors, fascists, Nazis, etc – all useless. All rent seekers. Bureaucrats. No need to actually BUILD something.
At a certain size…? This old saw is the reality:
******
A man walks in to a doctors office with a frog on his head.
The doctor leaps up and says:
“Good grief, how on earth did you get that great ugly thing!”
The frog looks down and replies:
“I dunno Doc, it started out as a little wart on my bottom!”
******
Government in a nutshell. Fear mongering, essentially – where would we be without the thin blue (green) line?
And Ma and Pa Frog are swallowed whole by WalMart, who can undercut prices in Town X by subsidizing the costs across a network of 50,000 stores or some-such, to draw customers away from Ma and Pa “small business.” Leaving the rest of us to pick up the cost NOW, but then – once they OWN Town X – raising prices to ABOVE what Ma and Pa were sellign for. Opportunity to profit, now there’s no competition….
No one talks about it.
It can NEVER happen here….
But the gun raids go on in NY, CT, and I think coming to MD and NJ… Stop and Frisk is still ongoing…. Etc, etc, etc.
And no one will violate “common decency” and talk about it… It’s just NOT POLITE.
{puke}
Dear Jean, Eric,
Count me in on this one too.
That’s why I’ve never gotten an iPhone. I see people with them on the streets, buses, and subways all the time. Heads down, keying in god knows what drivel.
I’m hardly a technophobe. I am after all, using a PC right now. One that I assembled from components selected and purchased separately. I know how to create blogs. I even know how to write HTML.
But the 24/7 constant “Tweeting” others with meaningless trivia is insane.
And some people still unquestionably view cops as the good guys.
Life isn’t a comic book, but if it were, I think cops would be closer to the villains than the heroes most of the time.
When will this country wake up?
I dunno David but it seems the last few months that’s exactly what I’ve watched you do. Come on in boys, the water is FINE!
I’m betting that David finds that comment aggravating, Eightsouthman.
I know I would at that age.
…But then, I didn’t have The Internet at that age, so maybe I’m wrong?
Dang! If Only they had The Internet when i was that age!
I think I’d be really pissed that my fellow classmates, ‘er I mean, coed-prisoners, weren’t as, ‘cued in’ as I was. I’d probably think they were retarded, or something?
Oh wait…
http://api.ning.com/files/7TcBzbi1eXpzpKYgycrQLbmKhwXBSstXql25MWbN2zNQR1nP2dGPy58a*qgo*7*56BwCSP*9jIA2MwsuSYiZw3px*oAnuYfS/tyrant_boot_poster_1.jpg
Somewhere along the way, dire libertarian warnings about a “coming American police state” ceased being future tense and became present tense.
It has come upon us so fast since 9/11, that even many of us who were issuing the warnings decades ago are astonished that our predictions actually came true so soon.
Today we are living in an environment that even the most paranoid of us would have considered crazy, extremist fantasies years ago. Nearly every day the headlines read like something out of a bad sci-fi story. Once the older folks are gone there won’t be anyone left who remembers when things were different.
Dear Jason,
Ain’t that the truth.
Take Operation Northwoods. 1962. JFK rightly vetoed it as sheer insanity.
Yet less than 40 years later, on September 11, 2001, the Bush Cheney regime actually implemented it, on a scale even larger and more callously inhuman.
So why is this happening?
It is not, as many Western “champions of democracy” will predictably argue, a result of some “tragic betrayal of the principles of democracy.”
Rather it is the full realization of the insane illogical “logic” of democracy. It is straightforward cause and effect. You ingest poison, you die. Just because you didn’t realize democracy was a variant of dictatorship that would eventually show its true colors, doesn’t mean the poison won’t kill you. It is what it is. It does what it does.
We are learning the hard way. Alas for mankind, that seems to be the “normal” way.
Ya know, it’s funny – I never thought the frog was helping the scorpion across a pot of boiling water… 😛
http://allaboutfrogs.org/stories/scorpion.html
Key take-away: It’s the nature of the thing. Government WILL. BE. OBEYED!
LAW.
AND.
ORDER.
OUR Order, of course, it’s Just-Us.
I detest the human herds… But I guess everyone knew that already. 😉
Indeed, Jason.
Anyone (excepting Clover) who is in his 40s or older today will surely agree with me that, were it possible to travel back to say 1985 and show a movie theater full of average Americans the America of today, they’d surely regard the show as preposterous, unbelievable, absurd. America is not East Germany, they’d say.
And, they were right.
In 1985.