Pundits are reacting with gross (but predictable) inconsistency to the Tucson shooting: denouncing all calls for violence – even purely metaphorical ones – only to issue their own calls for violence of a decidedly non-metaphorical sort, in the form of restrictions on free speech or gun ownership or equal protection or whatever.
So far is our political culture in the grip of what I’ve elsewhere called the incantational model of state violence that they cannot even see their own everyday political advocacy as an instance of incitement to violence, let alone consider what role the institutionalised violence they support might play in creating a culture in which freelance statists like Jared Loughner can view firing into a crowd as an acceptable way of addressing their grievances.
The deaths and maimings of the victims in the Tucson shooting are horrendous; but the media’s selective focus on them, while similar but far more frequent massacres by American soldiers and police officers are ignored, is yet another a sign of profound moral blindness.
There was a further inconsistency in Sheriff Dupnik’s blaming the incident on “vitriol … about tearing down the government,” while simultaneously condemning Arizona as a “mecca for prejudice and bigotry” – presumably a reference to the state’s draconian anti-immigrant policies. After all, Arizona’s ethnic-cleansing laws are not exactly the product of anti-government sentiment; on the contrary, they represent government at its most intrusive and virulent. But to the statist mind, the state is such a noble institution that its greatest crimes must somehow be reinterpreted as the fruit of antistatist rhetoric!
One thing that struck me while listening to an interview by a classmate was how he was expelled from a community college essentially for being “weird”. In a recent Democracy Now! interview, a classmate discusses the fact he was ostracized and excluded by others in and out of class, and how he was ultimately thrown out of the school when he made an anti-abortion remark in response to a poem praising abortion. I can’t help but wonder if he would have acted as he did if he had been able to continue his education.
Of course being a progressive radio show, all the guests after that one called for greater government role in “mental health evaluation and support”, which sounds like incarcerating people who “need help” against their will. And of course state officials get to determine who does and doesn’t “need” it.
A brief reminder:
C = corporatism; F = freed market
Left-conflationism = C –> F
Right-conflationism = F –> C
Libertarian-conflationism = – F –> C
Roderick exhibits libertarian-conflationism here,
Roderick sees the equation to be as follows,
Vitriol… about tearing down the government = F
Anti-immigrant policies = – F
In that case it would be the inconsistency he’s looking for. F and – F are an invalid conjunction. However, a freed market is statelessness, not vitriol about tearing down the government. Vitriol about tearing down the government is corporatism. If you don’t think that people backed by trillions of dollars can’t figure out how to channel an irrational emotion about tearing down the government into money-making ventures (that reinforce statism), then you’re absolutely untethered from reality. Here’s the actual equation,
Vitriol about tearing down the government = C
Anti-immigrant policies = – F
Just let me know when we’re ready recognize how this works. Otherwise, we can keep taking the blue pill — going in circles.
MBH:
I don’t understand your equalities. If someone can exploit (typically inconsistent) anti-state sentiment to reinforce corporatism, then anti-government sentiment *is* corporatism? Perhaps the sentiment’s being “vitriolic” is necessary in deriving this equality (using V=G, where V is vitriol and G is shooting guns in the air). But then, corporatists can surely exploit (typically inconsistent) mild anti-state sentiment to further corporatism.
Could you clarify?
As long as you equate government with state you will continue to not understand my equalities. Tearing down the state = F. Tearing down the government does not necessarily = F. It much more likely = C. But that’s not what’s important. What’s important is that Roderick/Charles/JOR/etc. equate tearing down the government and tearing down the state as 100% equal versions of F — a phenomena that depends exclusively on a snap shot picture of the post revolutionary society. And if everyone is frozen entirely still from there on out, they’ll be right. It’s a cryonicists wet dream.
Alas, I’ve given up trying to understand MBH’s equations. Whenever I’d think I’d gotten a term’s meaning nailed down he’d just morph it into something else and I would go around in circles forever; and the connections he’d draw would always end up sounding like trouble in River City anyway.
Except that I advocate the Open Source Ecosystem — something tangible, not fearful, not troublesome, and I’m not concerned with what rhymes with it. I don’t see what’s so threatening about another route to anarchy, other than the fact that it supplants the state’s currency platform with something other than the golden platform Rothbard worshipped. That’s pretty much it, isn’t it?
You seem to be focusing on the wrong aspects of the analogy.
I assume that the suggestion is his free-associations are a bit too loose of associations. Here is a no longer work-in-progress version of libertarian-conflationism.
If it’s a reference to me selling something, I would think Open Source activity is something you’re selling too. So, you wanna sing with me?
Roderick, for the sake of your own internal consistency I hope you’ll read this and take it seriously.
You should rent yourself out as a human pingback service.
I believe the technical term is “connector.” Seriously though, it’s either this or pay $20 to have google outsource my pingbacks.
I’m starting to think that you’ve got a blind-spot here. It’s as if you’ve written off the Open Source Currency Platform as a viable way to (at least) neutralize the state. You seem so cocksure that only the Rothbard — I mean, gold — standard could eclipse the currency platform that you don’t even have to consider another route to a stateless society. I’ve yet to hear why you think the OSE can’t override the current monetary system…
My comments had nothing to do with the Open Source Currency Platform.
I’m not particularly a supporter of the gold standard.
Will do when I get a chance.
Exactly. But statelessness — to my mind — entails the OSCP.
You ask why I’m attacking OSCP. I say that I wasn’t talking about OSCP. In response you say “Exactly.” This is a perfect example of why discussion with you so often seems so hopeless.
No: I ask why you’re ignoring OSCP.
Exactly. Again. That’s exactly my gripe.
How do you think I feel when you don’t distinguish between attacking OSCP and ignoring OSCP. Those are different actions, yes?
That is more likely to be the reason why cognitive patterns must be known and studied . As long as the government and the people dont understand that we have equality unless someone take it away .