Alright. Here’s how it works. It order to be rich enough to dream of fighting the United States, you have to become the United States. Of course, by that time you won’t want to fight the United States. You don’t want to become the United States? Not to worry: plenty of room on the ash-heap of history.
— Lou Gots
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman says he believes the United States needs a “mega-Watergate” scandal to uncover a far-reaching right-wing conspiracy, going back forty years, to gain control of the U.S. government and roll back civil rights.
If only it were true!
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John Perry Barlow, however, was mysteriously absent—last we heard (and this is hearsay—Barlow was apparently SMSing members of the crowd) he was running from police after one of his “guerilla dancing” protests.
Probably hauled off the gulag on President Bush’s ranch in Crawford for the high political crime of dancing near a Republican.
In my day, protesters were mostly bearded, lithe and sensitive. Now they are bearded, fat and smug. Back then, demonstrators had firehoses directed at them, not fawning television interviewers. Did you see those jolly marchers in New York, staging their anti-Bush carnival of absolutely safe, no-risk, self-congratulatory dissent?
When we marched against the Vietnam War, and the young men among us publicly burnt their draft cards, we could expect real punishment and victimisation, not lionisation by the Cannes Film Festival. The draft-defying men were committing a federal crime and risking imprisonment. Some of them had to live in exile in Canada for years - a truly awesome punishment - as the price of their youthful conscience.
This is a wonderful capture of the faux-oppressed dissenters, who when criticized in public consider themselves brothers in suffering of inhabitants of a gulag.