The Maelstrom of Violence

[pbrower2a]

(01-28-2021, 01:11 PM)mamabug Wrote:

(01-28-2021, 06:03 AM)David Horn Wrote: If people are going to risk everything for short term gain, it's not likely that anything short of martial law will stop them from being stupid.

This, right here, is why nobody in this country can have a reasonable conversation.  

This year has convinced me that my optimism about humanity is completely misplaced.  99% truly are sheep who just want an easy slogan to bleat that makes them feel safe as well as morally superior, because thinking about complex issues and weighing differing risks is *hard*.

I had a horrible nightmare last night... mercifully I woke up. It was much like 1984 except that the social order was overtly plutocratic, and the system worked by ensuring that there was nothing on which the common man could spend his money except on vice, and that was fully commercialized and monopolized. People survive only so long as they are useful to the system, after which time they die of heatstroke, cold, or hunger... or are killed in particularly nasty ways (think of Roman circuses) if they turn to crime -- including political dissent as well as robbery-murder. Supposedly Akirema  is libertarian, but the social stratification is so rigid and severe that freedom is a commonly-used word that means little (except as sybaritic indulgence for elites). 

Heroin, meth, and pornography (including child porn) are readily available, but classical music, high-quality art, academic inquiry, slapstick comedy, and witty or piercing drama are as illicit in Akrema as are heroin, meth, and child porn in our world. (For someone with an IQ in the 120's or higher, that would be Hell!) Beauty contests are commonplace as entertainment, but 'winners' get introduced into 'high-class' prostitution. Newspeak is the norm, but there is enough more linguistic fraud that one can innovate without touching Orwell's language -- or that of the polished experts in Hitlerland and Stalinland. Poverty is plenty, stupidity is wisdom, and thought is crime... I think those are adequate spoofs of "War is peace, freedom is slavery, and Ignorance is strength" from 1984. Things are made, but but even the gadgets have limited lifespans as they are all intended to die for lack of some critical 'support' or simply 'expire' in due time so that people have to buy new and with a hefty price tag attached. Your computer makes it easy to play on-line slots or do sports betting, the dumbest of gambling possible. Or you can bet on the stock market (buying options but not stocks) to day-trade in a crooked casino in which insider trading and pump-and-dump scams are the norm instead of ways to go to prison in America or a death chamber in China. There are plenty of ways to die young... and nobody really cares.