My Blind Spot

From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Wed Mar 12 2003 - 00:06:10 MST

  • Next message: spike66: "karma bums"

    Amara wrote

    > Since the Feds can now snoop into U.S citizen's reading habits,
    > I suggest not to use libraries for your reading material. You might
    > want to think twice about bookstore purchases too.

    and Mike writes

    > Anybody who relies on the nationalized banking system (i.e. credit
    > cards) gets what they deserve. Pay cash for your purchases...

    My instincts have always been too trusting. Time and again
    I have always assumed the authorities would act in a manner
    somewhat like how I would act in their position. I have always
    felt something in common with the Russian people or German
    people in just assuming "the authorities" knew what they were
    doing. I've even always had nearly unquestioned faith in the
    people I've worked for---and not once, by the way, has this
    confidence been betrayed.

    Due to this limitation, this blind spot, I can only engage a
    very rational portion of my cognitive powers when attempting
    to assess danger from the government. Of course, I did finally
    become a libertarian, though it took decades, and then it did
    become possible to perceive the tremendously inimical effects
    of a bloated bureaucracy and stifling laws.

    But these effects from the State of California and from the
    Federal Government always felt more like a bumbling intent
    to do good, rather than malevolence. I'm threatened with high
    taxes, when you come right down to it, and little more (except
    a lot of little nuisance laws).

    The heart leads the mind, and so it is only with great difficulty
    even now that I perceive a valid threat to American liberties.
    Do I make the additional mistake of having too thoroughly studied
    true despotisms and totalitarianism, and so just consider myself
    lucky to be able to say virtually anything I please and go anywhere
    I want?

    Do Mike and the others really expect a knock on the door---or worse,
    the door being violently broken in---someday soon when "they" have
    taken over? Why is my name in credit card databases any kind of
    threat to me? My name is on public record in a number of places
    in California; the county land records, the state income tax board,
    the Department of Motor Vehicles. I don't feel threatened.
    Should I?

    Some people who can't think clearly at all and have no sense of
    perspective already consider the U.S. the most repressive tyranny
    in history, the worst imperialist power, and the genocide champion
    of all time. So forgetting about them, who else thinks that there
    is a significant chance that the U.S. will become as repressive
    as China currently is, or Spain under Franco?

    (Remember the astonishment of the Soviet visitor to Spain in the
    1960's when he saw a photocopier in plain sight inside a Madrid
    office building? Such, of course, was absolutely impossible in
    the U.S.S.R., so I'm not asking about the U.S. going Nazi or
    Stalinist---I'm just asking about something relatively mild.)

    Do you expect things to get worse and worse and worse? Do you
    foresee Ashcroft and those like him arresting people for political
    dissent, censoring radio and television?

    Thanks,
    Lee



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Mar 12 2003 - 00:07:37 MST