You'll stand by your point, colorful metaphors aside?

Obi, you just typed out a metaphoric anecdote - a pair of them, really. You made no point.

What obiwan is saying - as preposterous as it sounds - is that there is a hierarchy of needs, and civil liberties do not come first psychologically speaking. If it was "Starve or submit" then someone would gladly eat.

He said it earlier. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Google it.

I'd rather starve.

And the fact that various CEOs say behind closed doors that they are scared shitless of Occupy Wall Street confirms that I'm not the only one that would starve first.

"So, Obi, if it were 1954 and the civil rights movement was ongoing, you would think it unimportant given the fact that economic conditions where you lived were bad?"

The better part of myself wants to say I'd care.
Because we should all care--we SHOULD all be able to care about this.
But there is a limit to one's capacity to care...you don't care about every injustice equally...

If I was truly destitute and couldn't get a job in 1954, I wouldn't hate blacks, but likewise, I wouldn't be standing in any marches while I still had to stand in unemployment lines.

"If the USA was locking up Japanese civilians during WWII, you wouldn't care until the job market improved?"

Again--
If I had a job, I'd care (and given that's it's WWII...soldier or manufacturing...I'd have work. They pretty much wanted everyone they could get.)

But if I was a cripple with one leg and couldn't work and was penniless in the gutter somewhere...well, what's the remote (however horrible) suffering of the Japanese (let alone the Jews) when I 1. Have my own immediate problems and 2. Can't do a damn thing to help either party anyway?

"Matthew Shepard was tortured to death in (checking) 1998. The economy was pretty good in 1998, so I guess it bothered you, but it wouldn't have last month?"

I refer you to the above two instances--ask any bum on the streets of San Francisco as they sleep there in old bags at night if they really and truly care that Trayvon Martin was (probably) murdered, or if they care about Snowden or Manning?

And as much as I like Donne (and Hemingway)--

"My position couldn't be worse. A social revolution might land me on top. Of course I'm selfish. It seems to me I've been a fish out of water in too many worn-out systems. I was probably one of the two dozen men in my class at college who got a decent education; still they'd let any well-tutored flathead play football and *I* was ineligible, because some silly old men thought we should ALL profit by conic sections. I loathed the army. I loathed business. I'm in love with change and I've killed my conscience...I simply state I'm a product of a versatile mind in a restless generation."

--Amory Blaine, "This Side of Paradise" by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

A revolution might land me on top.
Until then, I'm stuck job hunting on the bottom.
You Say You Wanna Revolution?
Well, you know...
We ALL wanna change the world...

Give us this day our daily bread (or a job) and I'll be first in line.

"I'd rather starve."

Easy to say when not actually faced with the choice--

Starve or Submit isn't Starve or Quit--

Starve and you die 1940.
Submit and maybe after 4 or 5 unspeakable years of hell in Auschwitz you get to live...

And see Israel established by David Ben-Gurion.

(We'll ignore for the moment the good vs. bad there...but suffice it to say for many Holocaust survivors it WAS at least something after the Nazis...)

So... basically...

If you have a job, and you have plenty of money, and you are very well off, you should be able to question the government and you should be annoyed by its wrongs.

But if you have no job, no money, and are living "in the sewers" and the government is consistently trying to fuck you over by playing right into the hands of the wealthy, which you ARE NOT, you should just submit and let it go because, well, you don't want to risk all your vast treasure trove of nothingness to make your life better.

I see the logic there.

Who starts the Revolutions, bo_sox?

Were Jefferson, Franklin, Washington, Adams, any of them (save Paine) poor?
Was Robespierre poor at the time of the French Revolution?
Was Lenin at the time of his?
Was Mao at the time of his?

You HAVE to be wealthy to launch the revolutions you want.

We've somehow gone almost 40 posts discussing government control and citing literature without dragging up everyone's amazing-if-overused example, "1984"...

So...

Do the proles rise up in Oceania?
"If there is hope, it lies in the proles," for sure...
But what's one Party slogan but "Proles and Animals run free?"
Who are the Party worried about but the middle class, ie, the Outer Party and Winston?

When you have no job and no means of starting anything...
You're like a huge bundle of timber--
You can become a massive blaze and scorch the world around you and remake it...
But SOMEONE has to spark that blaze, and the timber is never sparked on its own.

Or, out another way, answer me this--

Suppose I can't get a job with health insurance by the time I need it.

What then?

I need my seizure meds and infusions...

Do I really and honestly care about the scope of the federal government vs. Libertarianism vs. Liberalism vs. Conservatism vs. Who Cares What Else when I can't even afford the medication I need to live without possibly-crippling seizures?

Flip the coin--

Guess how many starving Africans are going to bed tonight REALLY saying to themselves "Oh wow, those poor Americans, their civil liberties are being trampled on, I have to do something!"

They have a few more pressing matters on their mind before they can even start to worry about their OWN civil liberties, sad to say.

I actually haven't read 1984. It's on my list.

And, uhh, Samuel Adams was dirt poor. He might as well have literally been living in the sewers. He just had a brain.

So you have three rich guys and two poor. Suggests to me that the great revolutions are not based around money but around an idea. That's what bound those five (and others) together. Sure, money helps, but not always necessary.

Obi, if you can't afford health insurance, you will be voting for the guy that offers you free health insurance. That will be what you vote on, not libertarianism/conservatism.

And straw men don't help you on this site, though I understand you use them a lot so I'm talking to a brick wall I guess.

voting is pointless...it's a scam...grow up bo_sox. Your naivete is pathetic!

the whole process is meant to give the people the illusion of choice and freedom...but that boats sailed a long time ago.

Voting under the electorate system for President is. Voting for my district Congressman and my local Councilmen or state Representative is not pointless.

"And, uhh, Samuel Adams was dirt poor. He might as well have literally been living in the sewers. He just had a brain. So you have three rich guys and two poor."

Alexander Hamilton, Nathaniel Greene, John Jay, James Madison, Paul Revere (reasonably well off for a silversmith)...

And plenty more where that came from.

Revolutions begin with a discontented middle to upper-middle class...not rich enough to be happy or progress in life, but wealthy enough to afford an education and the initial resources to organize.

"Obi, if you can't afford health insurance, you will be voting for the guy that offers you free health insurance. That will be what you vote on, not libertarianism/conservatism."

And I do, but the health insurance is one side of it--and there are plenty more.

You need employment before you can fully be active in society.
I'd almost argue that's another reason revolutions start with the middle-class--
THEY organize and mobilize the lower-classes who are out of work and need some sort of outlet, some way to be active and change their situation.

You need a job.

I can debate and care about all of these high-minded ideals on an intellectual level, sure--

But on a practical one, you need a job first.

Can't take action for or against goods or evils without one...
Can't stay healthy often times without one...
Can't progress in life without one...

Again, Maslow--adapt it for Social, Economic, and Political factors and "Job" is right there at the bottom where "Physical Needs" are on the base of the actual Pyramid...

Probably because the two go hand in hand--you need a job for the food, clothes, shelter, house, and so on at the base, and all that comes above that, be it Emotional Fulfillment or Psychological Fulfillment or Self-Actualization and so on, all that stems from that base.

You need food to self-actualize as much as you need a job to fully be able to practically (rather than merely intellectually) place civil liberties first.

What's the alternative--it's better to be free and starving than in a well-fed cage?

We all might want to pick "free and starving," it's the more poetic and noble-seeming of the two...but realistically, most people WILL choose well-fed and the cage.

You CAN escape a cage someday.

You can't if you've starved to death out of poetic stubbornness.

Obi, what is all this revolution talk? You said you don't care about human rights abuses because you're not happy about your job situation. Besides being strange to the point of bizarre, can you understand why people might find such an opinion rather distasteful or even loathsome?

"Voting under the electorate system for President is. Voting for my district Congressman and my local Councilmen or state Representative is not pointless."

Why is that any different? They don't represent you, they represent the corporations they work for...our Republic has been taken over, and a thin veneer of its former freedoms left in place to delude the masses into believing that they are free.

I sincerely think that anyone who claims to have a clear cut, and unequivocal point of view on this matter is not thinking straight (nor sufficiently).

It's a sign of the times that we need something like WikiLeaks. And it's not a good sign... it's not one that screams progress in our civic rights and fundamental liberties, it's not one that says our 'representative governments' are working.

It's not a sign of the times that someone like Manning would "burn" for this. Obi almost has it right: your position in society is indeed important, and always has been, if you're going to play whistleblowers or revolutionary. But the point is not that the higher up you are in the food chain, the more of a right you have to play those roles. The point is rather that the higher up you are, the more you stand a chance of surviving your involvement in such activities. There is no 'right' to act in these ways. And the government is indeed quite justified in punishing those who do. Civil order, for one, requires punishment in such cases. But the wealthy and powerful do have the means to avoid punishment (or, at least, the means to make them less severe). They have this, not out of justice, but out of civil economy if you will: that's just how we do things, how we've done them, for a long time. Not out of necessity, not out of justice, but out of some weird and possibly sick kind of Darwinism that I hope we evolve out of some day.

So what am I saying: Manning was right to act as his conscience dictated. And it took some serious courage to do so. And I think we needed it to happen, as a society (make that a world society). But he was acting against the law, and as much as some would like to call him a hero (I'll resist doing so, but that should not mitigate how I value his courage), the tribunal was quite right in recognizing him a traitor.

I could feel for Manning if he weren't so reckless in the way he went about it. A mass dump of data that put intelligence operatives and soldiers lives on the line is irresponsible. Had he gone through the documents himself and released them over time, much as Snowden has done, then I culd say "whistleblower worthy of some protection, although still guilty". But they way he did it with a massive dump reminiscient of something Anonymous would do was reckless and irresponsible and he needs to pay without whistleblower protections for it.

I don't think that this should be about feeling... neither for Manning, nor for justice. I think it's an occasion to think about why this is happening, why kids who lack the knowledge to parse through the documents they dump are the ones acting on the intel, why it is we need WikiLeaks (and we do, we really do...), why it is that a lot of brilliant people can find a way to justify the actions of people like Anonymous... Manning will get what legal justice says he deserves, but we, on the other hand, will get what we deserve as well if we can't find some answers to these questions, and it will be much worse than what Manning has to face. And while there is legal and social necessity in Manning's case, there's none of that in ours: it's all up to us... no set of rules can tell us what we ought to do from here on in.

@Draug Do you think Snowden's a traitor as well then? Or does he get legitimate whistleblower status cause he's been a much more careful in what and how he releases info.

The definition of whistleblower does not cover his case as legally the term only applies to corporate whistle blowers. There again an unequivocal position seems impossible to hold.

Note : I was very surprised to hear that the definition of whistleblower only applies to corporate cases. Originally my position on that case was a lot less nuanced

I thought it applied to federal cases as well, with gross negligence, etc.

@bo - the point obiwan and myself are making is that if you're working two jobs to make ends meet and to feed your kids, do you really care about anything political, or just what will make life more bearable?

The idea of civil liberties and privacy has evolved as our living standards have. The less things of necessity that we have to worry about (food, shelter, etc) the more time we have to devote to causes such as politics, civil rights, etc.

Also, John Adams was filthy rich and he was a much bigger mover in the Revolution than Samuel.

@CF - Snowden's case is very different. As a NSA contractor, he swore an oath of secrecy. He also had the ear of congressmen. So I commend him for not doing a mass release, he broke his secrecy oath and should have done so using the chain of command.

And while I would have more sympathy for Manning, he still broke the chain of command and should have taken his issues through the CoC before going public making him a traitor either way, just a more sympathetic one had he not just dumped shitloads of info to Wikileaks.

In short, both are traitors for going public without at least trying to go up their respective CoC's. Snowden had some powerful people in his CoC and Manning acted completely irresponsibly and cost American lives for which he should have to pay.

Goldie....shouldn't you be off injecting mod comments in the global chat of people's games???

Snowden / Manning...

It's strange that there are a group of individuals that will scream their head of bloody murder because they think the government is listening in on their phone calls (which they aren't....)....and yet these same people think traitorous jackases like Snowden and Manning....who took private information and released it to the public...are heroes.

Uh...so....if the Feds were not privately spying on you, but were instead releasing all yoru private info to the public at large, woudl you suddenly think the Federal government is the most heroic institution ever?

HAve a little bit of consistency, people.
If the Fed's are unethical and invading your privacy, then Snowden and Manning are the worst forms of traitors...who first willfully worked gathering intelligence, and then released private info to the public, instead of addressing these issue privately via Congress.

These two should both be hanged until they are dead, dead, dead...

(along with the majority of Congress that authorizes the unConstitutional spying on Americans...)

Sigh...I suppose so.

goldie.... :) if you could, I'd really like you to modify a move or two of my opponent...that's within your perview, right? Nobody will be able to prove a thing...