Happy 5766!

And another year rolls round.

May this one be better than the last and bring peace, happiness, and fulfilment to all.

Are We In an Oppressive State?

Avedon Carol kindly responded in the Comments to yesterday’s post citing Jon Stewart about why so many Americans are so uninvolved with politics. Her thoughts:

There’s also the part where in an oppressive state, keeping your head down is the only protection you might have. Such a state will go after its enemies. If your first allegiance is to your family or to your own survival, the last thing you want to do is draw the government’s attention to you by criticizing them.

Seems to me that this POV is part of the disconnect between many left-leaning bloggers and that vast swathe of America that gets them so riled up. If you buy into that point of view, you’d have to be a person who believes that America is today a neo-Fascist state with such tight command and control over our daily lives that the average citizen rightfully fears the repercussions should s/he speak out against the state. I seriously doubt that mindset pervades Middle America today. Hell, even I don’t believe it.

Yes, I’m aware of Gitmo and situations like Jose Padilla’s, and the super-secret monitoring devices the NSA has that can read all our emails, and the provisions of the Patriot Act, and I am concerned about the state of civil liberties in America today. And who knows? It might even be possible that somebody in a back room in Washington DC is putting me on an “Enemies of the State” list because I’ve expressed my opposition to the war in Iraq.

But it seems to me that a left-leaning blogger like me is much more likely to run into trouble in the workplace because of my blog than any other possible outcome. I don’t see anything going on in America today that makes me feel that my own physical security is in any way at risk by the state for my point of view.

There’s a passage in the William Gibson novel “Pattern Recognition” that bears repeating here:

Win, the Cold War security expert, ever watchful, had treated paranoia as though it were something to be domesticated and trained…. he wouldn

Score One for Jon Stewart

Really nice profile of The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart over in the Guardian today. Here’s a snippet:

If the parties and the media serve the country so badly, why do Americans put up with it? “Because for the majority of Americans life is pretty tolerable,” says Stewart. “It’s very hard to organise reasonable people with moderate views. Reasonable people with moderate views don’t usually light their torches and head out to town with pitchforks shouting, Be reasonable. Shit has to get really bad before people stand up and take notice.”

There’s a lot of folks on dKos and other left-leaning blogs who don’t understand why most of America seems unwilling or unable to get angry the way they are angry. They tend to write those people off as “sheeple” — too stupid or too cowed to take action. Stewart sees another aspect. I tend to agree with him.

Friday Cat Blogging: Welcome Bear!

There’s a new member of our household!


When the time came to send Marcus back to the SPCA, we couldn’t bring ourselves to let him go. So this week we went through the adoption process, got him neutered, and now he’s ALL OURS.

He’s still quite scared of strangers, although hopefully that will change over time, but he follows us around, jumps on any available lap, purrs and plays happily, and is generally a sweet, loving cat. His permanant name is Bear, and we couldn’t be happier that he’ll be spending the rest of his life with us.

As you might expect, since he’s been here a month already, Tommy and Gimi aren’t complaining at all.