Another issue to get the liberals and conservatives working together to further erode civil rights. Liberals (feminists) have long hated that you have to actually be convicted of a crime (as in, evidence, facts, deliberation) before being considered guilty of rape. They refuse to admit that any woman would lie, ever, about this subject, so of course you're guilty, and the trial only "victimizes her all over again." Hence "victim's rights," etc.
And since the subject is sex, which conservatives consider icky and horrible unless it's to your spouse (someone of a government-approved gender), you're guilty to them, too. Conservatives aren't going to come to the defense of an "accused sex offender," and liberals don't want to "victimize the victim again" by giving you a trial, so you're just guilty. So if you're accused by anyone, you might as well go out and rape an orphan, because you're going to jail for it anyway.
Neither seem to posess the skill of suspension of disbelief, a prerequisite for watching a movie.
I have had this problem since my early teens, and it does make movie-watching difficult. I realized how annoying my problem was when watching one of the Indiana Jones movies in the theater. I don't remember which movie it was, but he was of course in some subterranean passage, and one of the booby-traps was activated by one of the sidekicks blocking the sunlight streaming through an opening. Immediately I thought "but what happens at night?" I wish I could turn off that damned little voice. But that little voice is the same one that kicks in when I'm listening to politicians, salesman, or whoever, so I can't really turn it off.
I have grown to be able to enjoy action movies just because they have good cinematography and can get a bit exciting, but once in a while the voice kicks in and it takes me 5-10 min to get back into the movie. But I seem to be one of the few to have enjoyed the movie The Island, and I liked the new King Kong movie, so maybe I'm getting better, though I do admit that I'm geeky enough to have thought, "but mammals didn't develop until the dinosaurs were gone!" so I do have flare-ups.
Terrorism relies on a fossilization of the mind, and a sociopathic dissociation from other people.
I think that's a strong mischaracterization. When you have battleships and bombers and missiles, you use them to get what you want, and call it "legitimate" violence. When your opponent has vastly inferior arms but won't come out in the open where you can easily kill him, you call him a terrorist. It isn't even enough to say that terrorists target civilians -- Nagasaki and Dresden were both non-military targets, and I doubt the US military considers itself terrorist. As far as I'm concerned, "terrorism" is just hand-waving. Once you condone the use of violence to get what you want, you can't make a very compelling moral argument against somone using violence against you to get what they want. But emotive words like "terrorism," combined with a very selective narrative where the civilians killed by your side aren't mentioned, stands in as the closest we can get to a moral argument in the context of an amoral worldview.
You don't have to sacrifice your installation. But this IS a good reason to run any iffy programs from a Virtual Machine, possibly stored in a Truecrypt container. Power off, unmount, delete, and you're done. If you use hidden containers, you don't even have to delete. Of course, if it's a Windows VM, you might want to have a license...
Or conversely, America, a first-world country where many of us don't believe that any job is worth putting serious effort and time into and no one has any pride in the work they do any more because their material toys have become the end all and be all of existance.
Strangely, my employer doesn't "take pride" in how much they pay me. They pay me what they must to keep me coming in. If they could pay me less and still keep retention high, they would. So they pay me as little as they can get away with. Strangely, people like you don't get all hot and bothered over that. That's just obvious. But if I point out the seemingly obvious corollary position, that the point of my work is to keep the money flowing, the suddenly I'm the lowest, dirtiest parasite in the world.
Your philosophical position works out very well for employers, because their end of the bargain is just a cold financial arrangement, whereas our end of it is made into a question that probes the depth of our character, nay, our very decency and worth as human beings.
If they pay us as little as they can, that's just common sense, but if we work as little as we can, then that just says something about our character. Bullshit. Work is an exchange for money, and money is an exchange for work. It's a tradeoff. Find me a financial officer or payroll employee who really thinks they should pay their employees as much as they possibly can, because they take pride in how much they give back, and I'll show you someone who is insane and unemployed. Yes, I realize that we all have to act as if we go to work in ABC Stockyards or XYZ Apple-Polishing because we love it to the depths of our very soul, but that's only because you have to act like a whore to get (and/or keep) the job.
A whore has to eat, but a whore, if they're even remotely intelligent, knows that the sex is for the money, even if they make you feel like you're special. But why would they lie to other whores? That's just stupid. Or maybe you actually believe that the minimum-wage employee at McWorld really, honestly wishes you a pleasant dining experience, and is going to put a bit of their heart into your burger. Do you really think they would make your burger if they didn't need the money? Do you think the guys paving the road in Phoenix, or cleaning out the septic tank, or cleaning up a HAZMAT spill, would be doing these things if they didn't need the money? Yes, they have to do a good job, but only to keep the job.
My work is what I do to get money to live and buy stuff, not a deep reflection on my character. If you're willing to extend that moral obligation to give as much as you can to the employer, as well, then we can talk. But making it a moral obligation on one end while leaving it as a purely mercenary relationship on the other end isn't going to fly.
I think "reasonable expectation of privacy" is inversely proportional to your ability to have sex there, or at least be naked, without getting in trouble. Can a person have sex on your front porch without getting prosecuted for indecent exposure? If not, then that means they have no expecation of privacy, and should not be able to sue (or arrest you) for videotaping them. That seems like a fairly clear-cut delineation. If it's a place where I can walk around naked without fear of being arrested or doing anything wrong, then that must be a place where I have a reasonable expectation of privacy--if not, then I must not have it there.
I suppose nudist colonies may throw a wrench into that, but even then there are probably rules on where you can have sex.
The "after" discussion would provide redundant results.
Are you sure they could manage? Even with the proper pharmaceuticals in place, the degenerative effects of age are considerable. I don't think "filibuster" means what you think it means.
The obvious solution to your concern would be to continue electing Republicans. That way, it doesn't cost you anything, because the cost is passed on to our children and grandchildren. It's immoral to pay as you go. Only liberals balance budgets. Say "NO" to fiscal responsibility--elect a Republican today!
Me, I just vote straight Diebold. I can almost cast my vote without even showing up. A few more years, and we'll be there.
Shouldn't penis size be discussed twice, before and after Jessica Alba and Angelina Jolie are discussed? Things change, you know. And I'd bump "pay increases" down to 5, replaced by "baby oil." Just a thought. Whoa, look out....
Now Indians will have to deal with Indian tech support.
No, justice must prevail. Tech support for all calls originating in India will be rerouted to rural Alabama, Mississippi, and deepest Brooklyn. For your convenience, all helpdesk employees will have a comprehensive binder that covers all congingencies. It will be written, of course, in Hindi.
You do realize, I suppose, that all stories have, by virtue of describing events in the past, already happened? That's not to say we should cover the release of the 386sx processor or anything that archaic, but stories that highlight the unreliability of systems we heavily rely on do raise questions and get the ol' brain-cells moving about. It's a discussion site, you know, and even if the events discussed are more than 3 days old, sometimes interesting points are still made. That would be what we call the point of discussion sites.
Besides, it always mystifies me that people who feel that their time is wasted by duplicate or outdated stories have no problem wasting more of their time, not to mention server space and the time of all the readers, posting "this has already been covered." Do you get karmic cool points for ranting (again) about (another) dupe? What's the payoff? Does it make you happy? I'm not the most fanatically efficient person out there, but it seems petty and, well, stupid to not only dwell on, but to go to the point to complain in writing about the dupe or outdated story, which actually raises the net energy and time spent on this problem that you ostensibly found so vexing. No, I'm not complaining about you, only wondering what the hell you find so moving about the whole issue. Is it just the principle? A matter of pride? Does it bode ill for humanity? What gives?
Re:Yes, because being marketed to is the only free
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Actually, it was more irony that sarcasm, and even so I was trying to explain a worldview I see around me.
Dennis Miller has finally taken his seat at the Algonquin Round Table, only unfortunately for humanity, it was moved to the Star Chamber adjacent to Richard Perle's rumpus room. Even now he's smirking his way through The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, secreted away at his Vegas lair amid stacks of John Birch Society literature, states-rights pamphlets, and sticky Jack Chick tracts. Yes, it's a dark day when the witty ally themselves with the witless, but having the spinal column of that guy who managed to be the last guy to wiggle himself into the packed phone booth, setting the world's record, does play a role here. I don't want to go off on a rant here, but Dennis Miller has as much credibility as Edward Kennedy at a water-safety course. His head is so far up Newt Gingrich's ass that he can smell the chemotherapy drugs Newt's bedridden wife was on when he filed for divorce. It wouldn't surprize me at this point if Dennis Miller was discovered entertaining Mel Gibson with "how many Jews will fit in a volkswagen" jokes as they drunkenly swerve their circuitous way to Rush Limbaugh's house to lift up his stomach so Ann Coulter can "polish the little ditto." But that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
Sociology isn't chemistry, and no experiment of that nature can be as rigorous as one in your field. The point was to test whether power relationships change behavior, and that seems to have been tested. If there is a latent character trait in humans that predispose them to abusing their authority, then that would be relevant even to a professionally-trained law-enforcement group. This experiment would seem to indicate that people will abuse the power given to them, that power relationships will bring out latent cruelty and authoritarianism in anyone. Granted, "power corrupts" isn't a new idea, but the experiment's outcome does serve as a rather dramatic illustration.
Also, professionally-run prisons do face problems with guards using their position to torment people. You're a bit naive if you assume that, because they went through screening and training, there is no gleeful cruelty there. The lesson to be learned from Zimbardo's experiment is not that "it could happen," but, "it will happen" so constant vigilance is the only answer. Power relationships are unavoidable in life, but people must be watched and held accountable, or they will immediately and enthusiastically get out of hand. Take the torture in Abu Ghraib and similar cases. I knew about Abu Ghraib before I knew about Abu Ghraib, because I know that if you put people in that situation, they will act that way. Zimbardo is just the most dramatic illustration of that truth. No, his experiment isn't as precislely controlled as one in chemistry. But it was a sociology study, not a drug trial, and the results are compelling nonetheless. I can understand that, as a scientist, you may object to the methodology, but he was investigating something we already know to be true--power corrupts.
This isn't difficult. The kids were probably malicious little bastards who were, in fact, stripping the branches off the tree. The cops, being the authoritarian "oh-no-you-didn't-just-talk-to-me-in-that-tone" jerks that they are, went overboard, ostensibly to save the poor wittle twee, but really because they wanted to get their jollies by terrorizing some little smartass kids.
Everyone is guilty. Just because I know the kids were being twits and deserved to be beaten with a stick doesn't mean that the cops aren't fascist megalomaniacs who also deserve to be beaten with a stick. Unfortunately for the kids, the cops are the ones with the guns. I doubt that lesson was lost upon the little angels.
Going "too far" is the only way to expand what they can legitimately do. Many people will find what the cops did to be excessive, but they will want to give them the benefit of the doubt because of their job, so they'll defend the cops anyway. Then, what that person considers "acceptable" will adapt to what they've already defended, and the next time it happens, they won't have that initial feeling of uneasiness, and this level of police interference (or whatever you want to call it) will effectively become "normal," meaning it will no longer be objectionable. The bar for what the cops have to do to qualify as "too much" will have raised, and the police by definition get a bit more power and leeway.
It's just like the people who said "if it turns out Iraq doesn't have a WMD program, then I will oppose the war," and when Iraq was found to lack a WMD program, they still supported the war, because once you're in, rationalizations and prevarications are too easy to muster to maintain consistency. You don't want to waffle, do you? On the other end of the spectrum, leftists didn't want to acknowledge the excesses of Stalinism, because they had chosen a side. Loyalty to any party or ideology is incompatible with integrity.
Granted, my experience has been limited to a few traffic stops. Also, I'm white, on top of which I go to great lengths to be polite and act in a respectful way, even if I'm thinking "what the hell do you want from me?" I've found that projecting "I respect you" via my actions and demeanor usually improves my quality of life. Cops are in a position of authority, where they can antagonize you at will and usually get away with it if they don't get too bizarrely over the line.
Feeling as I do that this power relationship brings out the uglier sides of human nature, I'm always sure to let them be the alpha male (or female) so I don't trigger any "I must prove that I'm a badass" reactions. But I'm one of the people who see the implications of the Zimbardo prison experiment in everyday situations, probably to an extent where most people would be rolling their eyes and saying "you're really reaching now."
Yes, because being marketed to is the only freedom
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the parents shouldn't control what their own children eat but corporations are allowed to use mass marketing in every waking moment of a childs life
Well, yes. "Freedom" today does not extend past the right to be marketed to. If no one can make a buck off of you, then you aren't free. Actually I shouldn't say "today," because this has long been the working definition of freedom. Dictatorship before Castro? No worries. Dictatorship under Castro? Tyranny. Neither China nor Russia are strong on human rights, but you don't hear "tyranny!" anymore, because we're making money off of them, meaning they're as free as they need to be. If corporations are allowed to profit from your existence, then you are by definition free, and if they are not, then you are not free. You can't find many models of freedom with any support today that don't revolve around your right to buy stuff.
Saying stuff can be restricted, reading stuff can be restricted, the gender of the adult you can marry can be restricted, your movement can be restricted, your access to a fair trial can be restricted, your ability to sue for redress from government wrongs can be restricted, but if any corporation is blocked from marketing to you or in some way making money off of you, then that is the very freedom for which the forefathers fought, and a great wrong has been committed. All other freedoms are really luxuries.
' "A missile attack from China or Russia is very unlikely," Keating said,
Now that is long-range thinking. I'm sure that neither China nor Russia are the least bit piqued over the U.S. being described repeatedly as "the last superpower." Fortunately for us, the international pecking-order never ever changes, so no one has anything to gain by attacking us. Granted, it's not as if we're disassembling all the defenses, but I'm a little puzzled by the idea that two allies, especially allies who don't really like us, will remain allies for all time. There must have been a pinky-swear I didn't hear about.
I buy many films put out by The Criterion Collection. They aren't all great (The Rock? excuse me?) but they are influential and generally interesting. I've discovered many great movies that I never would've seen otherwise. The Passion of Joan of Arc, for example. Not everything has to be absolutely new to be fascinating and moving. Watch Fritz Lang's M, Lolita (by either Kubrick or Adrian Lyne), or Varda's Vagabond.
You might want to watch fewer movies, and spend more time reading instead. Books take more time, but ultimately they stand up better to repeated readings than movies do to repeated viewings. I have many DVDs, but when it comes to what is near and dear to my heart, they are as straw compared to my library. I'm an introspective person, and I like Ingmar Bergman, but even his most profound movies fail to even hint at the depths of introspection of books by Dostoevsky or Proust. I know that wasn't the original question, but if you're at a loss as to what to do with your time...
In theory, military members have the same rights as all U.S. citizens. In reality, they willingly limit those rights, because everything is subordinate to the military mission. You can't, for example, use your free speech to call the President an idiot, advocate overthrow of the government, advocate an illegal act, or divulge information that would be harmful to OPSEC. So OPSEC is a valid reason to monitor these videos. Also, the military is keen to protect its squeaky-clean image, and so they can't have joyous rock-videos of wanton carnage getting passed around. The generals want their organization to have a professional, dignifiied image, and many members would undermine that immediately if given free reign of self-expression. The generals know that the military's image is central to the public's support of a $.45 trillion military budget and support for war, so they consider that image to be a military asset that should be defended like any other valuable resource.
It's a small handful of people that are giving the US military a bad image
You must have large hands, because far more than five have been indicted already. There are dozens of cases, spanning multiple locations and units. We aren't talking about three or four guys who got a little carried away and were promptly punished by horrified superiors when their excecces were discovered. People have been beaten to death, causes of death forged, bodies hid, and coverups orchestrated by unit commanders and even higher in the chain of command.
This isn't "the military," but a facet of human nature that we don't want to face. People are more bloodthirsty, and have less decency than we want to believe. If you take a random sampling of people and put them in a situation where extreme violence is normalized, where they are patted on the back after killing a lot of people or using "extreme" tactics to extract information, then latent tendencies tend to flower. We take our moral cues from our environment. These guys were put in a situation where brutal tactics were tacitly sanctioned, where their actions were shrouded in secrecy, where they could beat someone to death and still be considered a patriotic, decent human being, and what the living hell did you think was going to happen?
Read about Milgram's experiments, or Zimbardo's prison experiment--when given power, when given the chance to hurt someone along with the feeling that they aren't responsible, indifference to suffering, or even outright cruelty, quickly surfaces. I knew about Abu Ghraib before I knew about Abu Ghraib, because I already know that if you put people in that situation, those things will happen. Any country, any time. They were shielded from public scrutiny, pressured to "get results," violence was winked at, and they were told outright by the administration that the Geneva Convention was "quaint and outdated." If you can't predict what's going to happen in that situation, you have your head in the sand. People are nice when their environment expects them to be nice. If you put people in a situation where they can torture someone to death and still be considered a great guy, then a considerable percentage (not all, but enough) will gladly do so, and still sleep well at night. The issue here is not that I dislike Bush or hate the military, only that I acknowledge human fallibility and the darker side of human nature, and I know that people will act in these ways when put in these situations.
There is an interesting duality there. The military wants and needs adrenaline junkies who love to blow stuff up, and yes, they need people who get excited killing people. There is a kind of human being who loves being able to strafe an apartment building with a machine gun, or a rocket-propelled grenade, and get patted on the back rather than sent to jail. A lot of guys stay in the military because of the adrenaline and the toys.
But the military doesn't want the image of an organization full of borderline headcases. They want the image of a group of skilled, professional technicians who do their job out of patriotism and a love of excellence. This is what drives the marketing. The marketing is aimed at the public at large, and feeds into public perception, which feeds into funding. The image of the military is a Big Deal, which is part of the reason (along with OPSEC) they are monitoring what the soldiers/marines/seamen/airmen post online. It may be true that a lot of military members just love blowing stuff up and jacking people up, but the generals can't really let that cat out of the bag, even though doing so would attract the people they want--the price would outweigh the benefit. If the public starts mentally associating the military with people who get their jollies with wanton carnage, then the squeaky-clean image of the military starts to erode, and support for a $.45 trillion budget might evaporate. Besides, it's not as if those kind of people don't already know that the military is the job where you get to go to distant lands, meet interesting people, and kill them. So the adrenaline junkies already know what the deal is.
Also, they don't want to lean too heavily on the psycho angle. People have to be controllable--their aggression has to be channelable. War is controlled chaos, but the control is a very important component. They aren't just passing out grenades to any glassy-eyed wacko who walks through the door.
It's another classic example of lawmakers restricting a wide spectrum of basic freedoms to fight a single pet cause of self-endangerment.
That's like blaming lawsuits on lawyers, not on the people who hire them. Government by definition will try to expand its scope and power. The problem is when you have a population that is too stupid, or is ideologicaly polarized, or has too short of an attention span, or is too ignorant, to think of it as a problem. The U.S. is a bit strange right now, because the very ones expanding government power the fastest are saying that they believe in small government, even as they expand government. You have a nation of people who are failing to notice the blatantly obvious. Even when issues like the NSA wiretapping case, or torture in Iraq, shine a glaring, flashing, bright light on the issues, people just refuse to talk about it. People just don't deal well with complexity. They can't reason out a position, because they have been cornered into a black and white, good-vs-evil worldview where there is just no nuance to be had. People are discontented, but most of them are going to vote Republican anyway because of abortion or gay rights, so their objections to the deficit, or to Iraq, are irrelevant. But they have to be internally consistent, so once they've decided to vote Republican, they can't really object with any enthusiasm to the wiretapping case, or to torture in Abu Ghraib, or anything else. The same applied to Clinton supporters, and probably applies to politics everywhere, but it's always galling to witness.
The book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini has a great chapter on how people can be made to agree to big things they wouldn't otherwise support by getting them to agree to little things that seem innocuous, and even unrelated, earlier on. Once people are brought on board via their objection to gay marriage or any other social issue, they can be expected to buy the rest of the platform, bit by bit, because they don't want to abandon their original committment. Well, that and the fact that they don't want to be associated with Michael Moore, which I can completely understand.
The right wing makes the President immune from legislative or judicial oversight, making that office immune from the law and shrouded in secrecy.
Hillary Clinton is elected as the next President
A right-wing wacko attempts to assassinate her, thinking she's the antichrist, spawn of Satan, tool of the New World Order, whatever
The right-wing pundits, in a rare moment of PR stupidity, overplay their hand by sort of (though not explicitly) supporting the assassination attempt. Even the Democrats, stupid as they are, manage to use this sanctioning of the attempted assassination of the President to finally cast O'Reilly and Coulter as traitors, rather than the other way around.
The population, horrified that the right wing would sanction the assassination of their President, rallies behind President Clinton and supports her in anything she wants to do.
The only fly in the ointment is Diebold and the Republican "vote counting" machine. If the elections are essentially rigged, with no paper trail or possibility of validation or oversight, then that alone would ensure that no Democrat, and thus no Hillary Clinton, could be elected. At this point things are too weird for me to even guess at what the better option is. I really wonder where this is going to go. I don't see a full-fledged Stalinist dicatorship with people being disappeared in the night for criticizing the President over the water cooler, nor do I predict that even gadflies like Michael Moore will vanish into a dungeon to be tortured to death. My problem is that, even though I don't believe we will have a true iron-fisted autocracy, I actually believe in the Bill of Rights, so anything short of that being honored seems a little sour to me.
I really, really wish the Rapture would just go ahead and happen. That would more or less solve all of these problems. There would still be the normal corruption and megalomania, but adding in a huge, powerful party comprised of people who think they are instruments of Divine Providence really makes it difficult to keep the conversation sane. Hillary may be guilty of believing her own hype, but it's better than her believing that she's hand-picked by God, and that she wants is exactly what God wants.
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And since the subject is sex, which conservatives consider icky and horrible unless it's to your spouse (someone of a government-approved gender), you're guilty to them, too. Conservatives aren't going to come to the defense of an "accused sex offender," and liberals don't want to "victimize the victim again" by giving you a trial, so you're just guilty. So if you're accused by anyone, you might as well go out and rape an orphan, because you're going to jail for it anyway.
I have grown to be able to enjoy action movies just because they have good cinematography and can get a bit exciting, but once in a while the voice kicks in and it takes me 5-10 min to get back into the movie. But I seem to be one of the few to have enjoyed the movie The Island, and I liked the new King Kong movie, so maybe I'm getting better, though I do admit that I'm geeky enough to have thought, "but mammals didn't develop until the dinosaurs were gone!" so I do have flare-ups.
You don't have to sacrifice your installation. But this IS a good reason to run any iffy programs from a Virtual Machine, possibly stored in a Truecrypt container. Power off, unmount, delete, and you're done. If you use hidden containers, you don't even have to delete. Of course, if it's a Windows VM, you might want to have a license...
Your philosophical position works out very well for employers, because their end of the bargain is just a cold financial arrangement, whereas our end of it is made into a question that probes the depth of our character, nay, our very decency and worth as human beings.
If they pay us as little as they can, that's just common sense, but if we work as little as we can, then that just says something about our character. Bullshit. Work is an exchange for money, and money is an exchange for work. It's a tradeoff. Find me a financial officer or payroll employee who really thinks they should pay their employees as much as they possibly can, because they take pride in how much they give back, and I'll show you someone who is insane and unemployed. Yes, I realize that we all have to act as if we go to work in ABC Stockyards or XYZ Apple-Polishing because we love it to the depths of our very soul, but that's only because you have to act like a whore to get (and/or keep) the job.
A whore has to eat, but a whore, if they're even remotely intelligent, knows that the sex is for the money, even if they make you feel like you're special. But why would they lie to other whores? That's just stupid. Or maybe you actually believe that the minimum-wage employee at McWorld really, honestly wishes you a pleasant dining experience, and is going to put a bit of their heart into your burger. Do you really think they would make your burger if they didn't need the money? Do you think the guys paving the road in Phoenix, or cleaning out the septic tank, or cleaning up a HAZMAT spill, would be doing these things if they didn't need the money? Yes, they have to do a good job, but only to keep the job.
My work is what I do to get money to live and buy stuff, not a deep reflection on my character. If you're willing to extend that moral obligation to give as much as you can to the employer, as well, then we can talk. But making it a moral obligation on one end while leaving it as a purely mercenary relationship on the other end isn't going to fly.
I suppose nudist colonies may throw a wrench into that, but even then there are probably rules on where you can have sex.
Me, I just vote straight Diebold. I can almost cast my vote without even showing up. A few more years, and we'll be there.
Shouldn't penis size be discussed twice, before and after Jessica Alba and Angelina Jolie are discussed? Things change, you know. And I'd bump "pay increases" down to 5, replaced by "baby oil." Just a thought. Whoa, look out....
Besides, it always mystifies me that people who feel that their time is wasted by duplicate or outdated stories have no problem wasting more of their time, not to mention server space and the time of all the readers, posting "this has already been covered." Do you get karmic cool points for ranting (again) about (another) dupe? What's the payoff? Does it make you happy? I'm not the most fanatically efficient person out there, but it seems petty and, well, stupid to not only dwell on, but to go to the point to complain in writing about the dupe or outdated story, which actually raises the net energy and time spent on this problem that you ostensibly found so vexing. No, I'm not complaining about you, only wondering what the hell you find so moving about the whole issue. Is it just the principle? A matter of pride? Does it bode ill for humanity? What gives?
Actually, it was more irony that sarcasm, and even so I was trying to explain a worldview I see around me.
Dennis Miller has finally taken his seat at the Algonquin Round Table, only unfortunately for humanity, it was moved to the Star Chamber adjacent to Richard Perle's rumpus room. Even now he's smirking his way through The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, secreted away at his Vegas lair amid stacks of John Birch Society literature, states-rights pamphlets, and sticky Jack Chick tracts. Yes, it's a dark day when the witty ally themselves with the witless, but having the spinal column of that guy who managed to be the last guy to wiggle himself into the packed phone booth, setting the world's record, does play a role here. I don't want to go off on a rant here, but Dennis Miller has as much credibility as Edward Kennedy at a water-safety course. His head is so far up Newt Gingrich's ass that he can smell the chemotherapy drugs Newt's bedridden wife was on when he filed for divorce. It wouldn't surprize me at this point if Dennis Miller was discovered entertaining Mel Gibson with "how many Jews will fit in a volkswagen" jokes as they drunkenly swerve their circuitous way to Rush Limbaugh's house to lift up his stomach so Ann Coulter can "polish the little ditto." But that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
Thank you.
Also, professionally-run prisons do face problems with guards using their position to torment people. You're a bit naive if you assume that, because they went through screening and training, there is no gleeful cruelty there. The lesson to be learned from Zimbardo's experiment is not that "it could happen," but, "it will happen" so constant vigilance is the only answer. Power relationships are unavoidable in life, but people must be watched and held accountable, or they will immediately and enthusiastically get out of hand. Take the torture in Abu Ghraib and similar cases. I knew about Abu Ghraib before I knew about Abu Ghraib, because I know that if you put people in that situation, they will act that way. Zimbardo is just the most dramatic illustration of that truth. No, his experiment isn't as precislely controlled as one in chemistry. But it was a sociology study, not a drug trial, and the results are compelling nonetheless. I can understand that, as a scientist, you may object to the methodology, but he was investigating something we already know to be true--power corrupts.
Everyone is guilty. Just because I know the kids were being twits and deserved to be beaten with a stick doesn't mean that the cops aren't fascist megalomaniacs who also deserve to be beaten with a stick. Unfortunately for the kids, the cops are the ones with the guns. I doubt that lesson was lost upon the little angels.
Of course, Satan too was an angel.
It's just like the people who said "if it turns out Iraq doesn't have a WMD program, then I will oppose the war," and when Iraq was found to lack a WMD program, they still supported the war, because once you're in, rationalizations and prevarications are too easy to muster to maintain consistency. You don't want to waffle, do you? On the other end of the spectrum, leftists didn't want to acknowledge the excesses of Stalinism, because they had chosen a side. Loyalty to any party or ideology is incompatible with integrity.
Feeling as I do that this power relationship brings out the uglier sides of human nature, I'm always sure to let them be the alpha male (or female) so I don't trigger any "I must prove that I'm a badass" reactions. But I'm one of the people who see the implications of the Zimbardo prison experiment in everyday situations, probably to an extent where most people would be rolling their eyes and saying "you're really reaching now."
Saying stuff can be restricted, reading stuff can be restricted, the gender of the adult you can marry can be restricted, your movement can be restricted, your access to a fair trial can be restricted, your ability to sue for redress from government wrongs can be restricted, but if any corporation is blocked from marketing to you or in some way making money off of you, then that is the very freedom for which the forefathers fought, and a great wrong has been committed. All other freedoms are really luxuries.
You might want to watch fewer movies, and spend more time reading instead. Books take more time, but ultimately they stand up better to repeated readings than movies do to repeated viewings. I have many DVDs, but when it comes to what is near and dear to my heart, they are as straw compared to my library. I'm an introspective person, and I like Ingmar Bergman, but even his most profound movies fail to even hint at the depths of introspection of books by Dostoevsky or Proust. I know that wasn't the original question, but if you're at a loss as to what to do with your time...
In theory, military members have the same rights as all U.S. citizens. In reality, they willingly limit those rights, because everything is subordinate to the military mission. You can't, for example, use your free speech to call the President an idiot, advocate overthrow of the government, advocate an illegal act, or divulge information that would be harmful to OPSEC. So OPSEC is a valid reason to monitor these videos. Also, the military is keen to protect its squeaky-clean image, and so they can't have joyous rock-videos of wanton carnage getting passed around. The generals want their organization to have a professional, dignifiied image, and many members would undermine that immediately if given free reign of self-expression. The generals know that the military's image is central to the public's support of a $.45 trillion military budget and support for war, so they consider that image to be a military asset that should be defended like any other valuable resource.
This isn't "the military," but a facet of human nature that we don't want to face. People are more bloodthirsty, and have less decency than we want to believe. If you take a random sampling of people and put them in a situation where extreme violence is normalized, where they are patted on the back after killing a lot of people or using "extreme" tactics to extract information, then latent tendencies tend to flower. We take our moral cues from our environment. These guys were put in a situation where brutal tactics were tacitly sanctioned, where their actions were shrouded in secrecy, where they could beat someone to death and still be considered a patriotic, decent human being, and what the living hell did you think was going to happen?
Read about Milgram's experiments, or Zimbardo's prison experiment--when given power, when given the chance to hurt someone along with the feeling that they aren't responsible, indifference to suffering, or even outright cruelty, quickly surfaces. I knew about Abu Ghraib before I knew about Abu Ghraib, because I already know that if you put people in that situation, those things will happen. Any country, any time. They were shielded from public scrutiny, pressured to "get results," violence was winked at, and they were told outright by the administration that the Geneva Convention was "quaint and outdated." If you can't predict what's going to happen in that situation, you have your head in the sand. People are nice when their environment expects them to be nice. If you put people in a situation where they can torture someone to death and still be considered a great guy, then a considerable percentage (not all, but enough) will gladly do so, and still sleep well at night. The issue here is not that I dislike Bush or hate the military, only that I acknowledge human fallibility and the darker side of human nature, and I know that people will act in these ways when put in these situations.
But the military doesn't want the image of an organization full of borderline headcases. They want the image of a group of skilled, professional technicians who do their job out of patriotism and a love of excellence. This is what drives the marketing. The marketing is aimed at the public at large, and feeds into public perception, which feeds into funding. The image of the military is a Big Deal, which is part of the reason (along with OPSEC) they are monitoring what the soldiers/marines/seamen/airmen post online. It may be true that a lot of military members just love blowing stuff up and jacking people up, but the generals can't really let that cat out of the bag, even though doing so would attract the people they want--the price would outweigh the benefit. If the public starts mentally associating the military with people who get their jollies with wanton carnage, then the squeaky-clean image of the military starts to erode, and support for a $.45 trillion budget might evaporate. Besides, it's not as if those kind of people don't already know that the military is the job where you get to go to distant lands, meet interesting people, and kill them. So the adrenaline junkies already know what the deal is.
Also, they don't want to lean too heavily on the psycho angle. People have to be controllable--their aggression has to be channelable. War is controlled chaos, but the control is a very important component. They aren't just passing out grenades to any glassy-eyed wacko who walks through the door.
The book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini has a great chapter on how people can be made to agree to big things they wouldn't otherwise support by getting them to agree to little things that seem innocuous, and even unrelated, earlier on. Once people are brought on board via their objection to gay marriage or any other social issue, they can be expected to buy the rest of the platform, bit by bit, because they don't want to abandon their original committment. Well, that and the fact that they don't want to be associated with Michael Moore, which I can completely understand.
The only fly in the ointment is Diebold and the Republican "vote counting" machine. If the elections are essentially rigged, with no paper trail or possibility of validation or oversight, then that alone would ensure that no Democrat, and thus no Hillary Clinton, could be elected. At this point things are too weird for me to even guess at what the better option is. I really wonder where this is going to go. I don't see a full-fledged Stalinist dicatorship with people being disappeared in the night for criticizing the President over the water cooler, nor do I predict that even gadflies like Michael Moore will vanish into a dungeon to be tortured to death. My problem is that, even though I don't believe we will have a true iron-fisted autocracy, I actually believe in the Bill of Rights, so anything short of that being honored seems a little sour to me.
I really, really wish the Rapture would just go ahead and happen. That would more or less solve all of these problems. There would still be the normal corruption and megalomania, but adding in a huge, powerful party comprised of people who think they are instruments of Divine Providence really makes it difficult to keep the conversation sane. Hillary may be guilty of believing her own hype, but it's better than her believing that she's hand-picked by God, and that she wants is exactly what God wants.