[ExI] The Total State

[Samantha Atkins]

On May 31, 2008, at 5:01 PM, Lee Corbin wrote:

> IN the earlier flds thread, John Clark wrote
>
>> Amara writes
>>
>>> I found the State of Texas' actions to be a mind-numbing
>>> expression of among the worst of the U.S.' aggressive
>>> against-its-citizens, police-state, government-imposed
>>> purity criteria actions
>>
>> A bit of verbal inflation here. If the USA is a police state then
>> you'll have to invent a new word to describe North Korea, and
>> all that can get tedious. And you're being unfair to police states.
>> Totalitarian regimes have worked long and hard developing evil
>> into a high art and there you go cheapening their image by
>> comparing them to the wimpy actions of the USA.
>
> Masterfully said.

The US is effectively a police state.  It incarcerates more people on  
both an actual an per-capita basis than any nation on earth.  That  
there are worse pest holes with less freedom has nothing to do with  
it.  Police State != totalitarian.

>
>
>>> and it added to my long list of reasons why I shouldn't be
>>> living in the  U.S.
>
> Well, every country has its problems (for any given one of us).
> Even the enlightened countries of Europe, e.g., Italy, pose
> their own obnoxious and disagreeable problems for some people.
> Alas, on the globe the realist sees only real countries, no ideal
> ones.

Italy sucks.  Ask Amara.  :-)

>
>
> Amara goes on to write in this thread r'chere
>
>>> A bit of verbal inflation here. If the USA is a police state
>>
>> Brief references:
>>
>> 1)
>> The Road to Serfdom by F.A. Hayek
>> (a primer on the making of The Total State. The US is right on  
>> track.)
>
> That sounds *exactly* correct to me. It's very sad, but very true.
>
> I wonder what countries, however, are not headed down this path?
>

Is this the right/best question to ask?  How about, "How can we get  
off this path and back to the more of the freedom we in this country  
wish to enjoy?"


>> 2)
>> http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/20797485/chinas_allseeing_eye/1
>> China's All-Seeing Eye by Naomi Klein
>> With the help of U.S. defense contractors, China is building the
>> prototype for a high-tech police state. It is ready for export.
>
> Thanks for that too.  Yup, things are bad all over, no lie.
>
> (Though we must be careful to be objective about this
> and realize just how wonderful it is to be living in almost
> *any* industrialized modern nation, compared to living
> in 1950 anywhere at all.)
>

Ask those locked up for victimless crimes just how wonderful it is.   
In 1950 there was substantially less government interference in  
everyday life and government was substantially smaller than today.

And in this so enlightened and modern country, in the heart of Silicon  
Valley even, what passes for consumer broadband is so s-l-o-w I can't  
even watch a google video.   You would think it isn't the 21st century!


>> 3)
>> "The Best Prisons that Money Can Buy"
>> http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/2006/02/index.html
>
> The U.S. is such an incredible outlier on that graph!
>
> But there is a simple explanation. Now, since we are
> talking about the prospect of becoming a police state,
> let me indulge in (and exult in) a little bit of hate speech
> and thought crime (while I still can get away with it).
> I hope that no one on this list gets too upset.
>
> Consider that in California prisons, the highest representative
> ethnic group is Hispanic. And blacks are nearly a third also.
> In order of size, are Hispanics, whites, and blacks.
> (Where is the Asian contingent, one wonders.  Maybe
> they're in charge, and everyone else is being discriminated
> against?)
>
> Also, as everyone knows, half of those incarcerated in
> American prisons are there for drug possession.
>

No one should every be imprisoned for what they choose to put it their  
own body in any country that remotely claims to be free.

> So, if you subtract half the inmate population who're
> there on drug charges, and then subtract the minorities,
> the U.S. stats resemble the stats for the enlightened
> northern European countries exceedingly well. Which
> is true simply because that's where they came from.
>

You cannot do any such subtraction until you let the people out of  
jail and erase many of the idiotic laws that put them there.


- samantha