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yesthattomThe RNC web site lets you send valentines day e-cards that include jokes made at the expense of Clinton and Obama, always in misleading ways.
Basically it is a way to gather email addresses for future campaigning. If you read their privacy policy, they make it sound like they won’t spam but on closer reading what they are saying is that they will spam YOU but not the friend that receives the e-card. However, on receiving the e-card your friend will be encouraged to send an e-card. This makes them a “sender” which permits them to spam *them*. If you think all those “we’ll email you to confirm that your email is valid” systems that are out there, this is just like that... except your friend initiates the process.
Which brings me to rant about what I believe is the fundamental difference between right-wing and left-wing politics. The right believes that the ends justify the means. That is, if you have to do something bad to get the results you want, it’s ok if the result is really really really important. The problem is that who decides if a result is important enough? For example, is it ok to kill a person just to get a really good parking space? No. Society is against that. What about cutting school lunch programs to lower taxes if it means that I’ll be able to buy two yatchs this year instead of one? Hey, if you are rich (and need a second yatch), then the means justify the ends. Hey, if the poor didn’t wanna go hungry they’d vote or something hee hee hee. Stupid poor. Kill thousands of American soldiers in an war for oil? Who cares about ethics, I want my oil. In fact, if the ends justify the means then we can justify any war, any action, any genocide, anything that we want... if we are the people in power.
The truth is that a democracy should serve the majority of the people, not just the people at the top of the power pyramid. The truth is that we can accomplish just as much when we consider the means and the ends. Lack of oil can be dealt with many ways, from spending billions a month on a war, to spending millions a month on energy efficiency and developing new technologies. The former sounds quick and easy (just a little messy), but the latter creates jobs, saves the environment, and can create entire new industries.
However, such a solution would create new industries, not help the dying oil industry that has propped up George Junior.
Another “ends justify the means” technique is to get people upset about something that doesn’t matter so they are distracted from thinking about things that do. What’s so wrong with getting people riled up about gay marriage (30 years ago it would have been “communism”) if it distracts people from noticing that they’re voting for someone that will otherwise at against their own best interest. If we can get everyone in Kansas to worry about gays wanting to get marry, they won’t notice that the politicians are enacting laws that make it difficult to breath the air around us, permit companies to force us to work in unsafe conditions, or insane hours. By the time people realize that two men that I don’t know getting married doesn’t harm me and my wife, those bad laws will be the law of the land. It wasn’t until after the cold war was over that we woke up and realized that 90% of what we thought about the communist “threat” was bogus, that the CIA multiplied the number of tanks the USSR had by 10, that all the “horrors of living in communist Russia” articles in Readers Digest were fake, and that the government actively propped up these false fears because it made tons of money for weapons makers and such.
I’m not saying that the right-wing is the only group that does this, but the right wing is defined by it. If you draw a line where 0 is total fascist government and 10 is a utopian society where everyone is free to do what they want, any kind of “ends justifies the means” activity drags us towards 0. Right now we’re at 2 or 3. We should be closer to 5 or 6. And until we are at 6 or 7, getting dangerously close to 9, I say we can’t afford to support any politicians that are willing to let the ends justify the means.
Basically it is a way to gather email addresses for future campaigning. If you read their privacy policy, they make it sound like they won’t spam but on closer reading what they are saying is that they will spam YOU but not the friend that receives the e-card. However, on receiving the e-card your friend will be encouraged to send an e-card. This makes them a “sender” which permits them to spam *them*. If you think all those “we’ll email you to confirm that your email is valid” systems that are out there, this is just like that... except your friend initiates the process.
Which brings me to rant about what I believe is the fundamental difference between right-wing and left-wing politics. The right believes that the ends justify the means. That is, if you have to do something bad to get the results you want, it’s ok if the result is really really really important. The problem is that who decides if a result is important enough? For example, is it ok to kill a person just to get a really good parking space? No. Society is against that. What about cutting school lunch programs to lower taxes if it means that I’ll be able to buy two yatchs this year instead of one? Hey, if you are rich (and need a second yatch), then the means justify the ends. Hey, if the poor didn’t wanna go hungry they’d vote or something hee hee hee. Stupid poor. Kill thousands of American soldiers in an war for oil? Who cares about ethics, I want my oil. In fact, if the ends justify the means then we can justify any war, any action, any genocide, anything that we want... if we are the people in power.
The truth is that a democracy should serve the majority of the people, not just the people at the top of the power pyramid. The truth is that we can accomplish just as much when we consider the means and the ends. Lack of oil can be dealt with many ways, from spending billions a month on a war, to spending millions a month on energy efficiency and developing new technologies. The former sounds quick and easy (just a little messy), but the latter creates jobs, saves the environment, and can create entire new industries.
However, such a solution would create new industries, not help the dying oil industry that has propped up George Junior.
Another “ends justify the means” technique is to get people upset about something that doesn’t matter so they are distracted from thinking about things that do. What’s so wrong with getting people riled up about gay marriage (30 years ago it would have been “communism”) if it distracts people from noticing that they’re voting for someone that will otherwise at against their own best interest. If we can get everyone in Kansas to worry about gays wanting to get marry, they won’t notice that the politicians are enacting laws that make it difficult to breath the air around us, permit companies to force us to work in unsafe conditions, or insane hours. By the time people realize that two men that I don’t know getting married doesn’t harm me and my wife, those bad laws will be the law of the land. It wasn’t until after the cold war was over that we woke up and realized that 90% of what we thought about the communist “threat” was bogus, that the CIA multiplied the number of tanks the USSR had by 10, that all the “horrors of living in communist Russia” articles in Readers Digest were fake, and that the government actively propped up these false fears because it made tons of money for weapons makers and such.
I’m not saying that the right-wing is the only group that does this, but the right wing is defined by it. If you draw a line where 0 is total fascist government and 10 is a utopian society where everyone is free to do what they want, any kind of “ends justifies the means” activity drags us towards 0. Right now we’re at 2 or 3. We should be closer to 5 or 6. And until we are at 6 or 7, getting dangerously close to 9, I say we can’t afford to support any politicians that are willing to let the ends justify the means.
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no subject
Date: 2008-02-14 02:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-14 02:57 pm (UTC)I like your scale of authoritarian politics. You can see a similar scale that rated all the candidates for President this time around at http://www.politicalcompass.org/usprimaries2008 - an interesting thing to note is most of them still want heavy-handed government, with only Gravel and Kucinich really being for full personal freedom. The rest are, all in all, pretty darned authoritarian and happy to remove rights that are in the way of their social farming goals. I.e., the ends justify the means. I do agree that the Republicans tend to be more authoritarian - even the libertarian Republicans are pretty authoritarian overall since they are really federalists who just want the states to be the source of authoritarianism rather than the federal government. BTW, all my preferred candidates are out at this point, so I get to pick among the candidates for which rights I'd like to lose over the next 8 years in exchange for maybe getting some rights back that the last jerks suspended.
But I really hate to break it to you - there really is not a difference in method between the parties, only goals. The Democrats DO talk about personal freedom much better than all the Republicans except Paul (but let's face it, he's a Libertarian in Republican clothes) and maybe a couple of others (Sununu, perhaps). While you say the politicians of both parties have passed goals-justify-means laws but that the Republicans are defined by them, both have actually passed quite draconian laws since, well, since. Bush's secret wiretap powers abuse and attempt to push the limits of pre-trial citizen imprisonment and abuse with Padilla are just the most recent mess, making use of a very intrusive and freedom-attacking infrastructure drafted and mandated under Clinton in his first two years (with a Democratic Congress), or later by drafting the legislation and submitting it to a willingly authoritarian Congress. Mandatory automated wiretapping infrastructure for all telcos (CALEA)? Democratic Congress & Clinton. Annual calls to outlaw all private use of encryption? Clinton. Attempts to create a completely draconian copyright regime (far beyond even what's going on today)? Clinton's whitepaper on copyright. Now, I admit the Democrats might have had a loftier use for it all than Bush, but if you go building anti-freedom monsters, you shouldn't be surprised when they start, you know, intruding on freedoms.
As for spam, please ask Rahm Emanuel to stop sending me spam based on the street address in my registrar info from 1998, before he even took office. I get about one a week and the unsubscribe didn't work, so it's now permafiltered. Psst - in case it's not clear, that he sends to my registrar-only email address based on a street address that was changed before he even RAN for office means his team bought a spammer database since I wasn't on his predecessor's mail lists.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-14 03:06 pm (UTC)Bill Clinton's first administration was more "right-wing" than many people seem to remember. Bush II is more right-wing than many people seem to realize.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-14 03:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-14 05:20 pm (UTC)It's very disconcerting.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-14 05:24 pm (UTC)