I attended a local roller derby Saturday (fun? wow!) and was struck at how the singing of the Star Spangled Banner sounded melancholy, like a lament for something lost.

(Which of course it was).

What is the duty of a citizen to remedy this situation? Recognizing that the vast majority of the serfs are pretty comfortable (and brainwashed), and unlikely to join in, means taking up arms is a losing proposition. Quixotic even, in the face of an unprecedented police apparatus.

Which leaves non-violent action. I keep coming back to voluntary poverty - or, in more pejorative terms "Quit buying their shit!"

Reduce your income to below the level at which you pay federal taxes. Buy only recycled stuff. Grow your own food. Throw away your TV. Keep it small and local. Keep it positive.

Abdicate from the corrupt machine and so destroy it, because it requires serfs. Free people stand outside the machine and know it for what it is.

Freedom is earned by individual action. The revolution begins with you.

And we know what happened to the head that uttered these words......

Yup. And all those reporters are free to work somewhere else if they don't get that freedom is what the government says it is. And they're free to report it.

This is similar to our citizen freedoms. Free to worship Jesus in our own way. Free to use pharmaceutical medicine. Free to go to jail if we grow our own medicine. Free to SUPPORT THE TROOPS!

Free to choose our own slavery.

See how easy that is?

If "conservatives" are comprised of traditional patriarchal authoritarians, libertarians, survivalist individualists, white tribalists, high-level capitalist machine operators, paid propagandists, and old ladies suspicious of what young people are up to, and "progressives" are comprised of granola opt-out people, peace movement people, the intelligentsia, organized labor, black tribalists, high-level legal regime operators, and young people making their own identities, I have a question:

With so much overlap, how useful is this dichotomy for any type of analysis?

Here's my take: We should never, ever, ever, again, allow authoritarians take control of the federal government.

And - why is this country so in love with false dichotomies? (divide and rule? makes sense considering the interests of so many "conservatives" are the same as the interests of so many "progressives", and neither's interests are represented by either Party).

I'll give him his (failed) immigration reform proposal. 12 million people outside civil society is bad. He at least attempted to right it.

Oh - too echo another point made above - he was so arrogant in his evil that he radicalized this timid bourgeois conformist.

As an immigrant, I want to shake Americans for their ignorance of how priviledged they are in their material wealth and personal freedom and opportunity. I volunteer at a food bank, and am amazed at the quantity and quality of food, the fat of the land, given away daily. In third world countries, people are already starving, and many more will as our unsustainable food production economy shrinks.

(Famine being the most likely of the Four, followed by War).

I think it is possible that the USA will have to adjust to 50 million homeowners handing the keys to their houses to the banks. What happens then? We're experiencing a preview.......

But starvation in America? No way.

When I have time I try to read the comments since so many thoughtful people weigh in with different perspectives. And a certain amount of heat generated in debate can be productive, if it doesn't descend into defensiveness and name-calling.

But the job of moderator for a comment section that attracts some alienated, demented, or simply stupid individuals to vent without particular hindrance is thankless and tedious.

Is there some way Salon could implement a flagging system like Craigslist, so that the worst offenders, who are (I hope) a small minority, are identified democratically?

Then the moderator's job is easier and supported by the community(such as it is, being virtual and fleshless and all).

Until then, I think the group does a pretty good job of identifying and shunning trolls. But some days they arrive en masse. I suspect some secret organizing cabal winds them up and unleashes them, like evil flying zombie monkeys.

And either Mr. Breitbart is projecting, or duplicitously lying to those who do (project, that is).

Common garden authoritarian behavior. These people should never again hold power over anything more than their keyboards.

I prescribe 250 micrograms of LSD-25 daily for Mr. Breitbart. He may still be a lying authoritarian hypocrite, but he'll know it in technicolor.

Wars are started by "victims" (Gulf of Tonkin; WMD's - need I go on?)

Entire Victim nations enslave and rob

Victimhood confers righteousness

Victimhood is endlessly motivating

Victimhood projects; victimhood rejects

Beck's fans are victims of brainwashing of their own inadequacy.

Fuck what a venal sick society that accords this guy an audience.

http://www.democracynow.org/

When Obama voted for the gutting of FISA, the Obama yard sign came off my front lawn.

Fuck what a country. I just can;t be angry all the time about the federal government. OK - it's predatory, owned by corporate interests, populated by utterly corrupt swine, and sustained by brainwashed retards waving tbags.

I'm a free person and fuck you if you've thrown away your freedom. I have a life and my bread isn't buttered by government. At this point, stealth civil disobedience seems to be the only rational survival strategy.

Thanks, Glenn.

The WSJ apparently subscribe to the same concept of "fair and balanced" as that other Rupert Murdoch organ, Fox News. They seem to have stopped posting comments on the execrable Mukasey/Hayden torture apologia.

Propaganda is as propagandists do, I suppose.

(bamage got through, however - nice work!)