15 Megs of Fame




Diaryland is da bomb I just *have* to tell you how much this all sucks. Who're these other people he's writing about? Who's the freak writing this, anyway? What's gone before. What's going on right now? Where do *you* visit on the web? What're you building right now?


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Another smart-assed remark from Mike
Plunge
23:00:00 on 2003-05-26

I know, I know. I don't write. It's not been at the forefront of my mind, but when it's there, it's there. Add to that that when I am online I'm not really in the mood to write, I'm in the mood to do other things. Most of my time connected is spent at work; ever since we lost a member of our group we've all been very overburdened, and I don't know about my coworkers, but I passed burnout about a month ago.

Well, to help with the being online bit, fighting over the line and all... Marilynn and I took the plunge and ordered DSL. I picked Speakeasy - 1.5 megabit down, 768 kilobit up, option to go to three megabit down if I don't feel like it's fast enough. Static IPs, digging through my memory to set up networking so I can run a server at home on the ol' Athlon box sitting on the floor... it should be an adventure.

Now if Amazon would get my networking equipment here.


Of course, this means that I'll be online more of the full time, so hopefully I can start working on some sites more. Well, that is, until free speech is made illegal or something.

I have a terribly reactionary stance towards something I saw tonight on the local NBC station's news. Apparently, there has been a "Citizen's Academy" where members of the community are pulled in to see how Big Brother spies on its citizens. They're told, flat out in about as many words, that they're trading away their essential liberty for a little security (Ben Franklin is spinning in his grave right about now), and also it's being told to them that this makes them "better citizens" and some of the snippets on TV had an instructor stating that "a group that is interested in changing U.S. policy is considered terrorist in nature." Does this make lobbyists terrorists now? Can we arrest the sons of bitches?

I'm sorry, but the federal government has truly become Big Brother. We cannot be free in a nation where doctors are required to report certain classes of injuries; where schoolteachers are supposed to report the comments of children and idle talk about their families, even though children are impressionable, misrepresent and misunderstand, and are considered unreliable witnesses at best; where people are held in jail and denied counsel, and then when someone sues and the State says that if the person has counsel then the State cannot effectively deny other rights to the user because they will be "given hope". We live in a de facto police state, whether you want to believe it or not.

Is there anything to be done? I look around, I see things turning darker by the day. I hear ironic stories on NPR and other news sources, reflecting what people see as the erosions of their rights, people discuss it all the time, and it's not even considered paranoid chatter anymore. Yet nothing happens.


What I find funny is that when I was writing this, I asked a friend of mine if I should write about the "Citizen's Academy" and then put a link to it. After all, you show up in their referrer logs, you get looked into and harassed, etc. What's truly ironic is that I realized that if I fear getting harassed for what I write in opposition to the system, then the system is truly what should be feared.

I talk to Marilynn about going to live on a mountainside writing and growing our own food and doing something to make a bit of money to buy things when we need to. I wonder sometimes if I want to do that because I feel like in this life I have too much to lose, the game is played too close to the edge. It's all too easy to take away by a spiteful government - I rattle the gilded cage, so they smack my hands with a billy club to shut me up. It's a little dramastic, but one inquiry by the FBI and I'm sure my job would become a lot more difficult.

How many people feel that way? How many people are afraid to speak out because they are afraid of losing everything they have worked for? How many people sell their principles? Is it truly all of us?

Those kids who speak up at rallies and protests aren't stupid - they have nothing to lose in the most literal sense. They may be the brightest of all of us, because Janis Joplin was right - freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose.

restlessmind


Ancient history:
2013-03-01"You'll be stone dead in a moment!"
2007-08-07I covet fuck you money
2007-07-16My own long, dark tea-time of the soul
2007-07-11My internet experience is lacking
2007-07-10Coincidence



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