The PROTECT IP act – a new name for COICA with the same uselessness for adult entertainment

By J. DeVoy

I’ve previously written about the futility of federal proposals to further regulate the internet for copyright infringement.  Fellow blogger and colleague Ron Coleman – who participated in a really awesome brief with Marc and I – took note of my prior musings about this topic, focused on the failed Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, or COICA.

I’ve been following the PROTECT IP Act since it was first announced, but write about it now because it has made it out of committee in the Senate.  There’s not much new that I can add to the zeitgeist of discussion and analysis available from numerous sources, such as the EFF and Citizen Media Law Project.  For those interested, the bill’s full text is available here.

Like COICA before it, the PROTECT IP act does nothing substantive to assist the adult entertainment industry.  While the bill could technically assist in taking down sites hosting torrent files, hosted files (file lockers) and even tube sites, the means prescribed in the statute are too cumbersome for the level of wide-scale enforcement needed to combat the tsunami of piracy washing away profits in adult.  Because of the DMCA and ease of piracy, it is ubiquitous, giving rise to automated content-removal services that crawl piracy hotspots and send out DMCA takedown notices en masse - as the task would be insurmountable without automation.

To carry the luxury good thread used in my prior post forward, this kind of strategy may make sense where limiting availability of a Tiffany purse, for example, is an inherent part of the good’s value.  In contrast, content producers want their content to be widely available (evinced by the migration to mobile compatibility, whether on smart phones or tablets), but in a format that must be purchased.  Thus, while this bill is aimed at limiting the availability of infringing/counterfeited content, the market has already provided a cheaper solution for adult, and the PROTECT IP Act misses the mark in that regard.  Indeed, piracy is like a hydra, and by the time a producer has cut off one head using the PROTECT IP Act’s procedures, (at least) three more have emerged in its place.

The PROTECT IP Act, like COICA, also misses the point in terms of remuneration.  Companies aren’t viewing anti-piracy as a source of revenue, but a means to recoup lost sales that would have – and should have – been made absent rampant piracy. (Obviously not at a one-to-one ratio, as some people will never pay for porn, but the proliferation of “free” porn has led some people to land on the theft side of the fence when they otherwise would have purchased content.)  While the Act allows for plaintiffs and the Attorney General to shut down sites, re-opening them is not particularly hard, as both Encyclopedia Dramatica and the trio of online poker sites recently sued all recommenced operations on foreign domains outside of the US’s jurisdiction within hours – even if it took a few days, or even just hours, for the word to spread and traffic to follow it.

If the Act had allowed for producers and copyright/trademark holders to pursue registrars and payment processors for the resulting damages, which would create significant new risks in those fields of law, I would be more optimistic about the pending bill’s ability to make even a dent in the war on content piracy.  Seeing as this did not happen – and probably never will – I have serious doubts about the efficacy of this proposed law in the adult realm, as opposed to mainstream entities like the RIAA and MPAA, for which fighting piracy is the cost of doing business and no monetary ROI is necessarily expected.

It is hardly surprising that Congress, and all of elected government, is an apparatus for handouts to the elite.  The persistence with which Congress is willing to trammel on free speech and expression in such a limited way that benefits only the chosen few with huge content libraries and even bigger war chests, though, verges on shocking.  While PROTECT IP will give powerful trade organizations a new tool to play whack-a-mole with, producers who don’t eat if their content doesn’t sell won’t be able to do much with this act, and certainly won’t be able to recover anything financially with it.  A twenty-something serial pirate in Eastern Europe won’t mind the hassle of losing a few domain names in the scheme of his ongoing piracy enterprise.  If Visa or GoDaddy were potentially on the hook for facilitating their business, though, the practice would end almost instantaneously and, if it didn’t, content producers would be repaid, likely handsomely, in short order.

Osama Bin Laden is Dead — but He Won the War

So says Rogier Van Bakel (and he’s dead right).

Look, I trust that Osama Bin Laden’s death was horrible and bloody and painful (albeit not nearly drawn-out enough), and I hope that I will never eat a fish or a crustacean that contains even one molecule of that vile, mass-murdering thug — my stomach might not be able to take it.

But the maddening truth is, yes, he won. He turned my America — our America, surely — into a nation of mewling pussies who insist that Big Brother must keep us all safe no matter what the cost to our liberties and to our wallets. I’d call that an unqualified victory. Bin Laden and his nineteen 9/11 henchmen even got the U.S. government to be their eager abettor. With one day of pandemonium, ten years ago, he and his ragtag band of sub-human scum burrowed so deep into the American psyche that we screeched for protection, and collectively gave up our virtue like a ten-dollar whore. (source)

Copyright suit over Mike Tyson’s facial tattoo

Interesting copyright issue reported in the New York Times:

In “The Hangover Part II,” the sequel to the very successful what-happened-last-night comedy, the character played by Ed Helms wakes up with a permanent tattoo bracketing his left eye. The Maori-inspired design is instantly recognizable as the one sported by the boxer Mike Tyson, which is part of the joke. (Mr. Tyson makes an appearance in both films, playing himself.)

But S. Victor Whitmill, a tattoo artist formerly of Las Vegas and currently from rural Missouri, doesn’t quite see the humor. Mr. Whitmill designed the tattoo for Mr. Tyson, called it “tribal tattoo,” and claims it as a copyrighted work. (source)

The tattoo artist claims that he owns the copyright in the tattoo and has asked a federal judge to issue an injunction preventing the film from being released. I presume that he took that route because he created the tattoo in 2003, but did not bother to register his rights in it until April 19, 2011. (registration). Since he failed to register his copyright before the alleged infringement (and not within three months of the release of the original on Mike Tyson’s face), he can’t take advantage of the Copyright Act’s most generous gifts to artists — the ability to collect statutory damages of between $750 and $150,000 and the ability to get prevailing party attorneys’ fees. Therefore, his strongest card to play is the hope that a federal judge will issue an injunction holding up the movie from its release next week, costing the studio gazillions of dollars. Certainly, if it comes to that, Warner Brothers will be ready to pay out a hefty settlement to keep the reels spinning.

One of the most interesting wrinkles in this case is how Mr. Whitmill registered the copyright. He registered it as “Artwork on 3-D object.” I guess the “3-D object” is Mike Tyson’s head. Of course, since the artwork is inseparable from Tyson’s head, I can’t see how this case can move forward. Even if it could, I have a hard time imagining that this attempted mugging will go anywhere if the court takes even a parting glance at Fair Use. The use is clearly parodying the original, and could not possibly have an effect on the market for the original. Therefore under Cambpell v. Acuff-Rose, 510 U.S. 569 (1994) and 17 U.S.C. s 107, this case should ultimately fail.

The Magic Underwear State vs. Sexytime

Utah, apparently a hotbed of prostitution, appears to have had some trouble enforcing its anti-solictitation laws. Under Utah law, “solicitation” is defined as follows:

76-10-1313. Sexual solicitation
(1) A person is guilty of sexual solicitation when:
(a) he offers or agrees to commit any sexual activity with another person for a fee; or
(b) he pays or offers or agrees to pay another person to commit any sexual activity for a fee. (source)

That wasn’t good enough for the Utah legislature.

A new law that went into effect this month broadened the definition to include any person who indicates through lewd acts, such as exposing or touching themselves, that they intend to exchange sex for money. (source)

Think about that. If someone “indicates” that they “intend” to exchange sex for money… so much for any productive strippers. For that matter, so much for any first dates.

Of course, lets look at the rationale for the law…

Utah House Minority Whip Jennifer Seelig, D-Salt Lake City, who sponsored the bill during the 2011 legislative session, said she worked with many different groups, including defense attorneys, to iron out legal issues with the law.

The intent is to target prostitutes, especially underage ones who are forced into the sex trade and trained to evade arrest, Seelig said. The arrest would be the first step in helping them get off the streets, she said. (source)

Ah yes, the underage sex slave myth. Every time you see a restriction on civil liberties pushed by someone with a religious or feminist agenda, you’ll find this bullshit at the bottom of the glass of Kool Aid they just asked you to drink.

Fortunately, my First Amendment Lawyer’s Association brother, Andrew McCullough, is fighting the law.

Andrew McCullough, an attorney representing the escort services in the lawsuit filed May 9, said the law is so broad that it could allow police to arrest licensed employees of sexually oriented businesses, such as escort services or strip club dancers, for doing their job.

The expanded law includes language that makes a person exposing their genitals or touching themselves sexually an indication that they are offering sex. Those acts are legal in Utah for private strippers.

“Most girls who touch their breasts are not telling you they’re open for sex,” the attorney said. (source)

Peter Murphy should have stayed in retirement

I owned every Bauhaus album on vinyl back in the 1980s. I am the target demographic for his new album. However, this interview guarantees that I wouldn’t buy his warmed over dreck.

“I’m not ashamed to claim that I’m the last and only star,” says Murphy, now 53, speaking by phone from his adopted home of Istanbul, Turkey. “I totally believe that. That’s how I live my life. People should witness it while I’m still gorgeous enough.” (source)

Jesus, what an asshat.

If that doesn’t turn you off, the sample from the album ought to make you barf.

D.C. Cir. – No Flashmobs in the Jefferson Memorial

By J. DeVoy

Public lands are not necessarily public forums, or so the D.C. Circuit tells us in yesterday’s Oberwetter v. Hilliard, et al. decision. Case No. 10-5078, available here.  Oberwetter and 17 friends conducted a silent dance in tribute to President Jefferson shortly before midnight on an April evening back in 2008. (Query whether the participants were University of Virginia alumni – the appellate record is silent on this point.)  When asked to leave, Oberwetter asked for a lawful reason compelling her to do so.  Oberwetter was then detained – allegedly with excessive force – and subsequently served with citations for interfering with an agency function and, more troublingly, public demonstration without a permit.

The district court dismissed Oberwetter’s complaint for failure to state a claim, holding that she was lawfully arrested for violating the reasonable regulations that govern the Jefferson Memorial, a nonpublic forum reserved for the tranquil commemoration of Mr. Jefferson’s legacy. Oberwetter v. Hilliard, 680 F. Supp. 2d 152 (D.D.C. 2010). The court further held that Hilliard had probable cause to make the arrest, and that he used reasonable force to subdue Oberwetter without injury after she twice refused his lawful orders. (Source at 4.)

Oberwetter’s argument that her activities were not proscribed by regulation fell on deaf ears.  While not a demonstration in the traditional sense of the word, her activities fell within the boundaries of the “communication or expression of views or grievances, engaged in by one or more persons, the conduct of which has the effect, intent or propensity to draw a crowd or onlookers.” 36 C.F.R. § 7.96(g)(2).  Because the group of dancers constituted one or more people, had the intent or propensity to attract onlookers, and communicated an appreciation for President Jefferson’s legacy, there was little question for the D.C. Circuit as to whether it was a “demonstration” within the regulation.

The Court goes on to provide depth to its public forum analysis, and provide more information about the doctrine than most attorneys glean in their two months of BarBri.  Whether public lands are a public forum depend on the purpose it serves, whether by designation or traditional use.  When the government has dedicated land to use for a purpose inconsistent with public expression and debate, then the classification precludes the land from flat classification as a “public forum.”  This is why demonstrations are allowed on the national mall, but not at your local U.S. Courthouse or IRS office.

The D.C. Circuit held that the District of D.C. properly found the area within the Jefferson Memorial to be a nonpublic forum.  As a fact-specific inquiry, the court found that:

As a general matter, the interior space of national memorials has not traditionally “been used for purposes of assembly, communicating thoughts between citizens, and discussing public questions.” Perry, 460 U.S. at 45 (quoting Hague v. Comm. for Indus. Org., 307 U.S. 496, 515 (1939)) (internal quotation marks omitted). National memorials are places of public commemoration, not freewheeling forums for open expression, and thus the government may reserve them for purposes that preclude expressive activity.

Even as part of the National Parks System, the Jefferson Memorial is not automatically a public forum.  The Circuit Court found that National Parks are too vast and varied in nature and contents to be broadly and uniformly cast with a blanket designation of public fora. Boardley v. U.S. Dep’t of Interior, 615 F.3d 508, 515 (D.C. Cir. 2010); see also Lederman v. United States, 291 F.3d 36, 46 (D.C. Cir. 2002) (noting that “some areas within a large public forum may be nonpublic if their use is specialized”) (internal quotation marks omitted); Cmty. for Creative Non-Violence v. Watt, 703 F.2d 586, 599 n.35 (D.C. Cir. 1983) (en banc) (plurality opinion) (observing that the Park Service “need not treat the [National Mall] as a monolithic whole”), rev’d sub nom. on other grounds, Clark v. Cmty. for Creative Non-Violence, 468 U.S. 288 (1984).

Like courthouses and certain other federal structures, the fact that the Memorial is open to the public does not change its status as a nonpublic forum.  While a restriction on free speech is always problematic, if not regrettable, the public forum doctrine is deeply rooted in precedent.  Moreover, in light of recent events – namely the insurgency of unbathed masses in Wisconsin, commandeering the state capitol and subverting the rule of law based on flawed conceptions of Wisconsin’s open meetings law and “human rights” (with collective bargaining for public employees being right up there with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness) – it makes sense to allow essential government functions that occur in nonpublic fora to take precedent over individual speech.  While individual speech and expression is valuable, it is not so valuable that it entitles individuals to stage sit-ins at branch offices of the FDA or other agencies, and impede the operation of agencies that may have no connection to the speaker’s message.

While disheartening, as this decision renders the Jefferson Memorial a nonpublic forum, its conclusion is not necessarily surprising in light of the well-tread public forum doctrine.

H/T: Will.

The die has been cast

By J. DeVoy

Indeed.

Devaluing your competitor’s brand

By J. DeVoy

Trademark law provides brand holders protection from competitors or third parties infringing upon, diluting or tarnishing their business marks, but what happens when the damage comes from the actual market for the brand and the people who consume it?  Every brand has negative connotations; Chevrolet is associated with poor quality and a dysfunctional company that couldn’t exist but for massive government bailouts, Brooks Brothers is perceived to be for old, boring white people, and Ed Hardy is accused to cater to obnoxious douchebags.

Using market forces, these associations can be used to attack and devalue a competitor’s brand without necessarily running afoul of trademark law.  Legally, there is a concept of “tarnishment” within trademark law, which makes it unlawful for a party to cast a trademark in an unflattering light – normally by associating the trademark with unflattering, inferior or unseemly products or services. One example of this is Toys “R” Us v. Akkaoui, 40 U.S.P.Q.2d (BNA) 1836 (N.D. Cal. Oct. 29, 1996), where the Northern District of California held that the defendant’s use of “Adults ‘R’ Us” as an adult website tarnished Toys “R” Us’ trademark by associating it with adult materials inconsistent with the Toys “R” Us brand.  But plenty of harm can be done without direct use of a competitor’s trademark.  Imagine the fallout if Charles Manson were spotted in a Nike tracksuit, or if the Unabomber talked about how cool and refreshing bottled Perrier was when he was living in a woodland shanty.  That kind of damage does not seem to be considered within the ambit of title 15 of the U.S. Code, which governs trademarks.

One recent example involves Snooki, the Jersey Shore cast member who has been arrested, punched in the face, fought with her housemates, and has cried on television more times than I can bother to count.  About a year ago, she stopped toting Coach handbags, largely in favor of Gucci and other purses – because Coach allegedly started sending Snooki the handbags of competitors. (Source.)  Following the adage that your enemy’s enemy is your friend, someone with such a toxic media persona is the enemy of everyone, and can be used to inflict harm upon competitors by associating them – even unwittingly – with competing brands.

The legal academy has also noted and commented on this trend.  Professor Jeremy N. Sheff’s forthcoming article in the Fordham Intellectual Property, Media & Entertainment Law Journal, “The Ethics of Unbranding,” addresses this very issue.  In addition to weighing which ethical system is most appropriate for assessing the ethics of using sabotage to disassociate one’s brand with a controversial figure (e.g., Snooki, Lindsay Lohan) and associate another’s brand with that individual, Sheff offers analysis of this conduct under several ethical systems.  The conclusion: While the practice may be questionable depending on one’s perspective, it is not clearly unethical.

Beyond the scope of federal trademark law, there is the specter of state-promulgated unfair competition statutes.  Even then, though, this kind of conduct should not be problematic.  After all, the brands are not deceiving the public through false claims or unsupportable promises: Brand owners are simply providing a prominent individual with products – though not necessarily their own – that the target can use, or choose not to use, in public.  While there is a calculated effect in this tactic, namely making the competitor’s brand look trashy or too widely accessible to truly be a luxury good, it is ultimately the individual who does the damage by incident of his or her status as a trend-setter, rather than the brand owner engaging in this action and feeding a prominent person a competitor’s goods.

This conduct has some historical precedent.  Substantively, it is no different from Ed Bernays paying attractive young women to walk the streets of Manhattan while smoking in order to implant the idea of women smoking into people’s heads – something unthinkable when Bernays did this in the 1920′s and 1930′s. (Source.)  This worked, in part, to break people’s prior conceptions about women and smoking, and worked to open the tobacco market to women, doubling the potential universe of customers.

Similarly, if I’m a black hat public relations manager for Land Rover, two of my main objectives will be to 1) maintain Land Rover as a luxury brand, and 2) make the competition appear non-elite.  Thus, if someone who will diminish my product’s cachet is using it – and especially if they are using it in a particularly derogatory way, such as driving a 15-year-old Range Rover simply to claim they have one  - it’s my job to shift the blame to someone else.  For example, if Amber from MTV’s Teen Mom, who is awaiting trial for beating her ex-fiance in front of their daughter and on national television, started driving a Land Rover, I’d give her a free Escalade to defuse the potential negative connotations.  Or even if she wasn’t driving a Land Rover, the attention surrounding her and her trial in various magazines and tabloids would justify giving her an Escalade just to take Cadillac down a notch. (A Porsche Cayenne would be too obvious.)  As it’s her choice to drive the Cadillac, the damage done to GM’s luxury brand would be at her hands – even if facilitated by a competitor.

State-by-state analysis of unfair competition laws would be important before running into such a plan at full sprint, but there’s nothing intrinsically unfair or dishonest about giving someone the opportunity to devalue a brand – even if unwittingly.  Moreover, there are no readily apparent problems within the realm of trademark law so long as its the controversial spokesperson’s agency – as opposed to the competitor’s manipulation – that causes the damaging brand association to be made.

H/T: The Last Psychiatrist.

Betas, Online Dating and Anonymous

By J. DeVoy

At the limply beating heart of all things beta is a lack of options.  Anonymous, ever the ingenious amorphous blob of misanthropy that it is, seized upon this and organized an “involuntary flashmob” in midtown Manhattan by using spoofed female dating profiles to lure men into appearing at the same place at the same time. Vice has the writeup.

The entire affair was recorded on camera, and plenty of photos abound.

It’s screwed up to do this to people, but it’s Anonymous, so: 1) we expect this conduct from them, and 2) the only thing injured was pride; this isn’t something that rises to the level of IIED. (Also, good luck if litigious victims go after Vice for displaying photos of them in a public place.)  In a way, Anonymous is providing them a service by giving the victims cause for deep, serious introspection – kind of like Roosh’s Compliment and Cuddle.

A reason to swallow and a reason to spit

In his Valentine’s Day-themed editorial in Surgery News, “Gut Feelings”, Dr. Lazar Greenfield cited to a study that reported that semen has anti-depresseant and mood-elevating effects upon women. He concluded: “So there’s a deeper bond between men and women than St Valentine would have suspected, and now we know there’s a better gift for that day than chocolate.”

So ladies, that appears to favor the swallow side of the equation.

Of course, out come the feminazis, giving us a reason to spit. Feminist groups, who wished to remain anonymous, promised to protest any meeting or conference at which Dr. Greenfield was in attendance. As a reaction to the furor, Greenfield gave up his editorship of Surgery News. That wasn’t enough for the whining minions of cock-haters, so he was pressured to step down as President of the American College of Surgeons as well. (source).

And that just makes me want to spit.

Dr. Greenfield is an internationally respected surgeon. His joke was actually funny — well, unless you’re some dumpy bitch who hates the cock or anyone who possesses one. Then no jokes are ever funny. They are merely an opportunity to destroy a man.

Tribute to motherhood

by Tatiana von Tauber

I’ve been a mother for 13 years now and I’ve changed my mind about it. I used to fear it until I got the hang of it and then somehow I liked it. Of course, in the absence of thought during the like stage I decided to have another baby in my mid 30s. Yes, good ‘ol sex got in the way. I love my children and the meaning of family; however, motherhood is extremely exhausting and with 2 teens and a 5 year old I’m finding challenge in the once manageable balancing act of career and motherhood.

I’ve been thinking about it recently because I lost that balance by moving back abroad. The rhythm was good until it spun too quickly and I fell off. I’ve gotten back up but I see feminism from primarily a “mommy” perspective.

Being a mother changes the deepest set views of what it means to be a woman and to want a career. I’m deeply grateful to what women have done for our freedom to express our womanhood – femininity – and capability but the older and wiser I get the more I love the fact that my husband works and I’m the artistic “trailing” wife (in the expat world) and mother.

Often we don’t give enough credit to mothers. Our society bangs us with the idea that we want children and family but when we have them it’s not always the roses promised but no one usually gives the hardliner truth. Parenting is damn hard and don’t judge it until you have a crack at it. I learned that while I’m thankful for the choice of having babies, it’s a full time job in the sense of constant awareness. My brain hurts. It’s reality we often sweep under the magic carpet.

The energy to create is not equal to the energy to clean up

It’s possible to balance it all but keeping that balance takes a lot of energy and eventually something gives. Women have proven they can have their cake and eat it too but I’ve found that it resembles more of the cake in your face scenario. American mothers too often forget to stop and smell the roses along the way. Like marriage, family is a “for better for worse commitment”. The most common challenge women face is a loss of identity.

My biggest wish this Mother’s Day is for women still searching for that “me” under the “mom” title is to find themselves this year by exploring who they are as women, the dreamers who had visions of self-experience without diapers, teen attitudes and parental responsibility. Redefining that through the transformation of motherhood is the best reward motherhood has offered me. I’ve grown beyond my expectations because I had to. It was part of maternal survival.

Happy Mother’s Day.

By the way

By J. DeVoy

One week ago, I killed Santa.  I’m telling the world now because I just confirmed that it was his DNA.  I didn’t take any pictures, and dumped the body in the ocean before a third party could verify its identity, but just trust me.

[N.B. - I do not doubt that Osama is dead.  As noted in my last post, the special forces teams that took him out are worthy of our awe and commendation; their success is a glowing reflection on our national resolve and resources.  But if you're accepting the Government's official story of any major event - especially its hastily disposed first draft - in the wake of the last thirty years of lies, misrepresentations and distortions, I don't know what to say to you.]

Osama dead; Americans still gripped in fear

By J. DeVoy

With Osama Bin Laden dead for a week and the DNA tests purportedly confirming his demise, it’s morning again in America.  Surely the PATRIOT Act will be repealed, and Obama will channel Ronald Reagan to bust and disband the unionized, lecherous zealots of the TSA.  The NSA’s taps on AT&T’s data lines will be removed post haste, and the no-fly list will be no more.

Nevermind, I was daydreaming of living in a country where everyone’s not a huge pussy.  The special forces operatives who executed this mission have a lot to be proud of, and rightfully so.  Everyone else is a spectator.  And while spectators can feel pride from the stands as the home team wins the game, let’s be honest with ourselves – we didn’t do shit.

Now that the bogeyman is dead, there should be riots in the street.  Why, with the threat of terrorism supposedly removed, are our civil liberties still so gravely impaired?  Why does a total stranger in a quasi-governmental rent-a-cop role provide such stiff (heh) competition to comely young women in the grabbing-my-crotch market?  To the extent Osama was even involved with the September 11 attacks, the problem of terrorism, to the extent it affects Americans, predated and will succeed him for centuries.  There was no way Osama could have been captured alive, either, for fear of what he might have revealed about the CIA, shattering the collective delusion that the government helps us and serves our best interests, rather than creating crises for it to solve – digging ditches to fill them in, creating conflicts to settle with war – merely to justify its own existence.

It’s just the damndest coincidence that these “War on Terror” operations happen in resource-rich, commodity critical nations over and over again.  Afghanistan’s Taliban leadership never would have let an oil pipeline be built across the nation, and they were really screwing up opium production.  Iraq has the world’s second largest proven oil reserves.  Libya has oil, but more importantly wanted to start pricing it in a rival gold-backed currency it was proposing with other nations – and who can blame them – and received a no-fly zone treatment that became predator drone strikes and now full-blown regime change.

War is all about advancing national interests, and it would be absurd to deny this or argue otherwise.  Most thinking people can accept this reality, and oppose or advocate war based on its relevant merits and cost-benefit analysis.  If any one of our leaders from Reagan through Obama would get on television and ask the American people, just as Joseph Goebbels asked the Germans, “do you want total war?” the denuding of civil liberties we’ve experienced in our lifetimes would be understandable as a cost of war.  The benefit would be a resource grab and consolidation that would elevate our standard of living at the expense of everyone else’s, just as war has always been.  That’s honesty – and reality.

But instead, we fight an abstraction, terror, and continue to do so and sacrifice our conveniences for the sake of doing so.  The inmates – those so addled with fear of an imaginary enemy – run the asylum and keep everyone else confined with them, condemned to a hypochondriac hell of begging an incompetent, authoritarian government to save us from things that go bump in the night.  If this is freedom, a life of having white knights, manginas and other useful idiots telling me not go to through the open door, not to take the red pill, and to never question authority, I’ll gladly accept death.  Make no doubt, this is because of other people’s fear and inability to think rationally or control their own lives – and to be egalitarian, we all must pay the price for their failure of autonomy.

This is the natural reaction of a cowed nation.  Flouride in the drinking water makes us timid.  Soy and BPA turn our boys and men – the agents of social change in every revolution, from 1776 to the recent events in the Middle East – literally into women.  We receive the government we deserve, and even if only for chemical reasons, we Americans are a sad bunch.  I’m no better off, due to collective action problems, and can only rant on the internet because nobody will pick up the cause with me.  They’re all watching the news, singing along to “America, Fuck Yeah,” and waiting to see who becomes America’s next Emmanuel Goldstein, for without him, whether presented as Hitler, Stalin, Osama or someone else, deeper cracks rapidly appear in the already shoddy facade of national cohesion.  Where there is not a Bin Laden, one will be created, and nothing will change.  Too many people are incapable of living in a state other than one of being captive to fear, whatever core liberties it costs us.