Don't die with tubes up your nose - or, the trouble with vicarious justice

[Bells]

Thread title got your attention, right?

Well it got mine too! It was in a TXT file i got with a movie i just downloaded (let me explain it...)

So, i saw this clip on youtube

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Now, i thought to myself... "well, this seems like an interesting movie. Might be worth a watch!" So, i look it up, it's the 1984 Movie "Tank". Kinda hard to find, no DVD release in my country as far as i can tell...

So, i downloaded. Found a decent torrent to check it out. To See if it's actually any good or an interesting flick.

In the download folder i got the movie, and a second folder called "Why everyone should drive a tank through the police-station". Now, that certainly got my attention... just for the sheer "what the crap" reaction.

So i click on it, and inside there are a couple of links (that i dare not to click) and the above mentioned TXT file, plus a PDF for an ebook called "Overkill - The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America - Radley Balko". Which i can upload to mediafire if anybody here wants to read (it's under 2mb)... i honestly not going to even bother with it.

Inside the TXT there was the text below, copy pasted as is from the file.

> The problem with resistance to government (peaceful or violent) is
> that the infrastructure for such resistance does not currently exist.

Assholes aren't exactly rare on this earth; how difficult do you think it would be for you to devote a few moments of your time, near the very end of your life, toward locating a particularly onerous specimen and exercising your own individual judgement in regards to its continued ability to breed or breathe?

"Infrastructure"? You have hands, don't you? Your hands could hold all sorts of dandy gadgets, including but not limited to these: gun, knife, screwdriver, dynamite, syringe, maul, tiny black box with a big red button, claw-hammer, nail-spiked 2x4, chain-saw, Scottish claymore, aluminum baseball bat, wheel of a Chrysler as-big-as-a-whale.... Use your imagination! Be creative in your final moments!

Don't die with tubes up your nose!

---------------------------------


If 99% of people are basically good, why is it that the 1% who are evil invariably end up controlling your life?

Answer: Because you sit on your fat, plush-bottomed *ass* and don't do anything. Ever.

Oh, you'll put up a lot of HOT TYPE on the internet, and you'll vote early and often for one of several of your local political delegation's pre-vetted lying scum-weasels, and you'll submit scalding letters to your newspapers and congresscritters, and you'll put bumper-stickers on your fucking car and tape editorial cartoons and articles up in various places -- and through it all you'll indulge the pretense that you're "fighting for your rights" or some other similar self-delusionary horseshit. But that's not really true, is it? You're not "fighting" *at all*; you're just blowing stream though sanctioned pressure-release valves until your righteous, boiling-over rage has sputtered down to a low, harmless simmer. The actual truth is: You're a human sheep who does nothing but bleat. Meanwhile, the slimebags know, as Mao trenchantly observed, that power comes from the barrel of a gun. The power to regulate every square centimeter of your life from cradle to grave, taxing and fining you every millipede's step of the way, with implied threat of "dynamic, forced entry" leading to prison or worse backing it all up.

No medieval monarch dared tax his peasants more than 10% lest the whole realm go up in revolt; but today, when one and all are being annually, anally gouged to 40%, 50% or even more when all the hidden levies are accounted for, of the productive capacity of the one and only life they'll ever life, what do they do? Fight? For *real*? Perish the thought. Real fighting, as the FCC-regulated news is all too happy to incessantly remind, is a messy, sordid business with personal risks. So, much better to head off to that great Opiate of the Masses. Religion? Please.... We're talkin' 'bout MOVIES and TEE-VEE! Where justice can be obtained vicariously! That, and video-games and recreational drugs and so many other wonderful new techs which enable avoiding REALity entirely. (And, if you avoid enough reality, you may even come to formulate tendentious logical fallacy-laden philosophical defenses of tyranny such as: "It's better to be a slave in paradise than a free man in a Hobbesian jungle," or "Cops have a tough job!" or "If you don't vote, you can't complain!" or "The 'social contract' obligates you to pay through the nose to finance the shit I voted to fleece you for!" ...well, OK; I stretched out that last one a bit, but you get the general idea.)

What is "vicarious justice"? It is the "good feeling" you get when you watch entertainment like "Tank" when the bad guys (fictional) get their just reward at the end? Wahoo! Yeehaw! That felt *good*! ....but the problem with vicarious justice is that it *isn't real*. REAL bad guys get away REAL outrages, and people who might otherwise be >this close< to doing something REAL in return....instead meekly head off to seek justice vicariously.

Enjoy a film like "Tank" -- but keep your eye on the REAL-deal ball: Your life, and the demands other people place upon it without your explicit consent, and what you intend, if ever, to REALly do about it.


So, all and all, i haven't watched the movie yet... if any of you have, i dont mind spoilers, so talk about it if you feel like it. I just thought this was... well... just so unexpected that i might as well share it.

i'm not exactly sure what to make of it... i was just sort taken by surprise, was not expecting that. at all.

[CABAL49]

Let's build our Libertarian Utopia WOOOO!

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4iwhaTGDK1rwcc6bo1_500.gif

[walkertexasdruid]

Isn't Smarty working on a workers revolution over there in the UK?

[Professor Smarmiarty]

I'm working on not dying in the street.
Fun fact from recent experience- if you are homeless you can't file a police report in England, even if you sleeping on someone's couch. They all like "you gotta have a recent bill for your address or we can't help you". Oh and you need like 2 forms of photo id.
In Scotland you don't need shit- except maybe write your name down on a bit of paper if its tricky to spell.

[Meister]

Bells don't go blabbing about what you get up to with your movies and internet like that. No one needs to know that you did anything but get a movie and the guy who sent it included a little extra.

[Amake]

Wait, so if you like set a hobo on fire and post a video on youtube that's fine in England? I'm guessing not but where exactly do they draw the line of what you're legally allowed to do to people because they are homeless? And if we should interpret it in any other way than the law trying to encourage homeless people to stop existing.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Well somebody else could file the report in that case. You can commit crimes against homeless as long as their are no witnesses.

[walkertexasdruid]

I guess times are rough everywhere. I hope things get better for you, Smarty.

[Magus]

I hope you found a nice cheap hostel at least, Smarty. I'd hate to think of you posting these things on your laptop while sleeping on a steam vent. Or have you been visiting the internet cafe everyday?

That is pretty screwed up--a police report should just be a police report, shouldn't matter the nationality or residential status of who is filing it. If a random foreigner visits and gets mugged or something, they can't file a police report? Idiotic. They won't even let you put the address of your home in New Zealand or something?

Anyway, the problem with that little spiel there are numerous: 99% of people are probably evil, not 1%, so he got that backwards. I assume he is defining evil as "unknowingly selfish" or something, or hell, actively selfish. I'd go with that for 99% of people. He then turns around and advocates spree-killing, as long as it's when you're terminally ill and have nothing to lose (the most cowardly spree-killing in an already cowardly act). It's also the same mentality people who bomb abortion clinics have--I've watched documentaries where they've interviewed these people. Their goal is not actually to get abortion outlawed, since blowing people up doesn't exactly accomplish that. Their stated goal is to kill as many people as possible.

What's even worse is these people aren't even delusionally advocating ultra-violence in regards to something they can be spiritually fanatical about--they're advocating mass murder in the name of lowering federal taxes. What's laughable is, 99 times out of a 100, they want the federal tax replaced with a national sales tax, which is regressive and would inevitably cost most of them MORE money in taxes. But you know, let's ignore that and complain about the interstate system and social security, since those are the things that have been created with taxes. Better abolish the interstate system and replace it with turnpikes--turnpikes have THREE lanes, and the rest stops only double the price on goods, so clearly this shows that privatization is superior to public works!