Conspiracy Not Required

The slow steady erosion of personal freedoms, the increased acceptance of 'security measures', the diminishing life of our Republic:  these changes do not have to be a result of some huge conspiracy by the power brokers of the world.  They can happen gradually, a social evolution that simply makes it seem necessary, advisable, probably a good idea.
In 1977, Jerry Mander wrote a brave and good book called "Four Arguments For The Elimination Of Television".  Of course, the hoped-for elimination never occurred, nor will it.  Still, it is a useful book to read if you are one who senses and regrets the losses our nation has suffered in the past six or seven decades.

Mander cites the movie Solaris as an example of what may be the future.  He speaks about the Soviet version directed by Andre Tarkovski, not the 2002 version directed by Steven Soderbergh.
In Solaris, technology is used "to produce autocracy not so much deliberate and conscious as it is evolutionary.
"As technology has evolved, step by step, it has placed boundaries between human beings and their connections with larger, nonhuman realities.  As life acquired ever more technological wrapping, human experience and understanding were confined and altered.  In Solaris these changes happen in a nonspecific order over time, until people's minds and living patterns are so disconnected that there is no way of knowing reality from fantasy.  At such a point, there is no choice but to accept leadership, however arbitrary. 
"Such leadership may very well not plan its own success.  It emerges organically at the moment when human experience has been sufficiently channeled and confined.  In this cultural analogue of mass sensory deprivation, simple, clear statements assume a greater authority and profundity than they deserve.
"Whoever recognizes that such a crucial moment has arrived, that people's minds are appropriately confused and receptive, can speak directly into them without interference.  The people who are spoken to are preconditioned to accept what they hear, like the Solaris astronauts...."
Mander goes on to say "Technology plays a critical role in this process because it creates standardized arbitrary forms of physical and mental confinement.  Television is the ideal tool for such purposes because it both confines experience and implants simple, clear ideas.

"Seen in this way, a new fact emerges.  Autocracy needn't come in the form of a person at all, or even as an articulated ideology or conscious conspiracy.  (italics mine)  The autocracy can exist in the technology itself.  The technology can produce its own subordinated society, as though it were alive, like Solaris"
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On fatalism

The worst type of fatalism is the elegant kind dispensed by the wealthy upon the poor.
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Paul Krugman deceives, Part 1

A recent column by Paul Krugman left me asking a question of myself.  Is Mr. Krugman trying to deceive his readers or is this just one more superficial column written to meet a deadline?
The column is an attack on Ron Paul's views on economics.  The core principle of that view is the concept that printed money must be backed by gold. Mr.  Paul is opposed to "fiat money" or "monetary expansion" as practiced by the Federal Reserve since the early 1970's when the gold standard was abandoned.
Mr. Krugman points out that the "Federal Reserve doesn't actually print money (the Treasury does that).  But the Fed does control the "monetary base," the sum of bank reserves and currency in circulation. (italics mine)   So when people talk about Mr. Bernanke printing money, what they really mean is that the Fed expanded the monetary base."
I conclude this means that the Fed, using reserves and currency in circulation, i.e., existing, already printed,  "lends large sums to banks as well as buying a wide range of other assests in a (successful) attempt to stabilize financial markets, in the process adding large amounts to bank reserves.
Did you get that subtle tail of 9 words tacked to the end: 'in the process adding large amounts to bank reserves?'
Mr. Krugman ends the paragraph with this:  "The combined effect of these actions was that the monetary base more than tripled in size." 
I know that Mr. Krugman is trained in economics.  His work is recognized and read around the world.  Indeed, he has won the Nobel Prize for Economics. So why doesn't he explain how the Fed, without printing more money, can triple the size of the monetary base?
I conclude that Ron Paul is correct.  The monetary base is 'expanded' by fiat money.  Fiat is a latin term which means "let it be so."  Mr. Bernanke, finding the Fed needs trillions of dollars to stabilize the economy, says "Let it be so" and, magically, money is 'loaned', 'sent out', or 'transferred' as required or needed.  Thus the monetary base is expanded.
My dictionary defines 'expand' as "to increase dimensions of; cause to swell or distend." 
It then cites a quote from Virginia Woolf as an illustration:  "One's perceptions  blowout rapidly like air balls expanded by some rush of air."
How appropriate.
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Quotation

"When a man can't piss in his own front yard, he's living too close to town."
                                                    
                                                                                 Edward Abbey
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Why hazing?

I do not understand the need nor use of hazing.   Never did.  As a child I read about hazing in books (Tarkington?).  Usually it was mild fraternity hi-jinks.  Still I thought it stupid and an assault on one's self-respect.
There are two instances where hazing or its equivalent is purposeful. 
The first is Basic Training for military service.  The purpose is to break down the individuality and personhood of each enlistee, resulting in people ready to accept orders without question.
The second is the initiation rite of different tribal cultures, such as the native American Indian.  These are rites overseen by a shaman and with a purpose benefitting the tribe and the individual together.
Every other version of hazing is just stupid human behavior which occasionally results in physical injury or worse, i.e., manslaughter.
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A Good Laugh is hard to find

An Observation

A superpower is the antithesis of conservatism.
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