May 24, 2009 archive

On the Unmasking of Demons: Yes We Must

Dr. Bee Z. Bywydd

Thomas Paine’s Corner

Comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable

“If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.”
– Carl Sagan

We are a species of superstitious monkeys, in insectoid mutational phase, armed with mass-incineration weaponry, at the edge of a teeming galaxy. All of us are possessed by demons, a lying Legion of deceptions and delusions. Our Earth has maxxed-out on demonic monkeys and now She’s coughing out storms to flush our fires away.

So we’re all in a Panic. Or running for our lives, shivvering in the deep freeze, slogging through toxic flood waters. Deep in the Voodoo, shite out of luck, over the falls in a Titanic barrel of insane monkeys. Because our society is an onion of lies within lies, all ruled over by ominous wargods and mass-incineration weapons. We chatter on about superstitions and pseudo-news, nearly cut off from any natural identity. Our instincts have been hijacked and most of us are living like serfs in Roman-occupied city-ghettos. Being entrained to think we must kill to get our way. This is “God’s will”?

“There are years when nothing happens and years in which centuries happen.”
– Carlos Fuentes

Americans of certain dying generations will yet argue the righteousness of the mass-incineration of two cities full of innocent humans as “for the good of the nation,” every Hiroshima Day for half a century. Here we can grab the most dangerous demon by the horns. War has warped us all to the core (Corps), now bred for murder on massive scales.

Or shall we insist on another round of robust patriotic chanting, another atomic bomb test, or let’s see what the Bush family has brought us today? Hooray, a brand new AIRCRAFT CARRIER!; bigger than many American communities, named for the “Man who has everything” (according to W, as he commissioned it)- CIA President 41, from his son, CIA President 43. How mind-bendingly metaphoric. Cost more than your children’s education (or imprisonment), but our demons are very happy! More mass-incineration ahead!

Read the whole thing here… (it’s worth it!)

If you've been to DKos today, you've probably already heard about this. But if you haven't, I thought this needed to be pointed out. Right now, at the top of the Rec List, is a diary by flitedocnm discussing something strange going on. Seems that every diary dealing with health care issues, or at least the ones that have tags like “health care”, etc., are being hit with an auto-appended ad.

The ad is from SEIU, and of course is asking to be clicked, and their agenda supported. The problem is, this ad is placed in such a position that it looks like the diarist placed it there intentionally. But in reality the ad is being placed there automatically. It's obvious the ad is being placed there through some programming technique, but what isn't so clear is WHY. Of course part of the answer to “why” is to increase ad revenue, but the other issue is whether the “right or wrong” of this was thought out in advance.

I'm still waiting to see how the site admins, or Markos himself, responds to the complaints about this… and believe me, there are LOTS of complaints, running maybe 95% against. I'm not dumping on DKos, because as of right now it's not clear whether anyone realized how offensive people were gonna find this. I'm hoping they'll come back with, “What was I thinking?!”, and fix the problem. But if it's some new site policy where they can put up an ad anywhere they want, even if it makes it look like the diarist is supporting that ad's agenda, then there's of course a serious problem with that. I feel it's no different than editing the text of a diary or a comment to make it appear that the writer said something he/she didn't. Well, maybe not quite as bad, but still not good… not good at all.

Again, the main reason I'm writing this is not to dump on DKos. It's got a lot of good things going for it, and I don't plan on leaving there anytime soon (if I have any say in it). But there are obviously some issues about that site that get people riled up, and I wanted to give you all a heads up in case this turns into another one.

Of course by the time you read this, it's entirely possible that Markos or someone else will have fixed this, and the whole point of this little rant will become pretty moot. I hope that's what happens.

UPDATE: Just wanted to make it clear I'm not taking a position on SEIU or their healthcare stance. As far as I can tell, they're pretty close to where we want to be (public single-payer option), but not perfect. Regardless, that's not the point. Even if it was Amnesty International, GreenPeace, the ACLU (all of which I completely support), or whatever, it still wouldn't be right to append their ad onto a person's diary and make it look like that person supported the cause, when they may or they may NOT. 

Edward Sebesta and James Loewen would have increased the chances for a positive response to their Memorial Day request of President Barack Obama had they sent him their May 18 letter a few weeks earlier. The letter, also signed by 62 other historians, scholars and researchers, urges the President to break a 95-year-old tradition dating back to when the racist Woodrow Wilson first laid a commemorative wreathe on the Confederate Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery.  

Without offering Obama a reasonable alternative to sending a wreathe, and by giving him less than a week to ponder an alternative of his own, they essentially were asking him to place himself in the role of scab-yanker on a holiday many Americans across the political spectrum view as a time of healing. Breaking this tradition can and should be done. But the proper foundation must be laid first so that white nationalists, remnant Klansmen and secession-loving neo-Confederate liars cannot turn it into a propaganda coup.

That proper foundation should include honoring Confederate dead in a cemetery where their repose is not poisoned by a monument built as shrine to the goals and ideals of the Rebel cause. Whatever side issues were included, those goals and ideals were constructed upon the “peculiar institution” of slavery, a monstrous institution maintained by violence and the threat of violence, and defended by a philosophy of racism epitomized by Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens in his infamous Cornerstone Speech of 1861: