Does your job own your civil liberties when you're off the clock? Does it own your thoughts, expressed freely, when you're home? Are we saying that the government can't abridge your constitutional rights, but that The Brand can?
And the answer is, of course, that the question is moot:
In the world of associate managers, smart phones, a never-ending avalanche of last-minute boss-has-gotta-have-this projects, +7% unemployment, three applicants for every job and "other duties as assigned", you're never off the clock. You thoughts expressed freely on the internet or in range of a smart phone camera while you happen to be sitting at home, or in a cab, or at a party are part of your public profile that every hiring manager and HR gatekeeper will be gleaning for the rest of your life to find reasons fire you, or not to hire you in the first place.
So unless you're rich, well-connected or have one of the 17 jobs remaining in America with a strong labor union at your back, congratulations, you are now a proud resident of Rand Paul's vision of utopia: a never-ending, no-rules cage match where mobs of desperate individuals are pitted against machines and monied, corporate interests and unregulated capitalism decides the winner.
On the other side, there are people whose minds seem to flee, almost by instinct, from ambiguity to absolutism. These are often good people, with high ideals. But they take a dappled society in a tough situation, like Israel, and they want to judge it according to black and white legal abstractions. They find a crime or an error and call for blanket condemnation (these people tend not to apply this standard to themselves).
The American commentariat is gravely concerned. Over the past week, George W. Bush has shown a disturbing tendency not to waffle when it comes to Iraq. There has been an appalling clarity and coherence to his position. There has been a reckless tendency not to be murky, hesitant, or evasive. Naturally, questions are being raised about President Bush's leadership skills.
Meanwhile, among the smart set, Hamlet-like indecision has become the intellectual fashion. The liberal columnist E. J. Dionne wrote in The Washington Post that he is uncomfortable with the pro- and anti-war camps. He praised the doubters and raised his colors on behalf of 'heroic ambivalence.' The New York Times, venturing deep into the territory of self-parody, ran a full-page editorial calling for 'still more discussion' on whether or not to go to war.
You notice these people because you rarely see them taking the perspective of people they dislike. They don’t acknowledge that even the most humane projects often involve error, fear and sin along the way.
In certain circles, it is not only important what opinion you hold, but how you hold it. It is important to be seen dancing with complexity, sliding among shades of gray. Any poor rube can come to a simple conclusion -- that President Saddam Hussein is a menace who must be disarmed--but the refined ratiocinators want to be seen luxuriating amid the difficulties, donning the jewels of nuance, even to the point of self-paralysis.
Ten years ago, Mr. Brooks wasn't just some marginal, wingnut blogger building a rep by finding new ways to call people like me a traitor: he was, as Greg Mitchell points out already "...serving as senior editor of the most influential pro-war publication, The Weekly Standard." And as the Senior Editor for The Weekly Standard, beating the shit out of Liberals and carrying water for the Bush Administration were duties Mr. Brooks pursued with gusto, and for which he was richly, richly rewarded.
Ten years later, Yale's Professor of Modesty and the winner of Allegheny College's 2012 Prize for Civility in Public Life has not apologized for any of the horrid and horribly wrong things he said. Not apologized, modified or walked-back a word of it. Since his colleagues are all in on the scam, he has no fear that any of them will ever ask him any embarrassing questions, and on the extraordinarily rare occasion when a member of the general public was rude enough to ask him about his public record, he simply denied ever saying any of it and moved on.
Thus liberated from any fear of accountability and borne aloft by vast, unearned wealth, Mr. Brooks now floats above mere humanity, spinning out one asinine economic and cultural theory after another, radically revising history whenever the need arises, freely contradicting himself as he pleases, and always
twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom!
UPDATE: For the record, I posted the above shortly after midnight this morning. 12 hours later, Mr. Piece arrived at the same party wearing the same dress, bearing a letter from the New York Times legal department scolding him for Fair Using too much of Mr. Brooks' terrible, terrible Monday column. Speaking for Mr. Pierce, Irish Setter Moral Hazard responds:
...In the future, he [Charles Pierce] has promised to quote directly only the most clearly incomprehensible parts of Mr. Brooks's work, or those portions that appear to have been written by the forms of artificial intelligence described by Master in an earlier column. For example, in today's column, one might quote this passage...
The failure to deal with ambiguity is one of the great disorders of the age. It's a flight from reality.
...and then cite the following passage from antiquity...
"In certain circles, it is not only important what opinion you hold, but how you hold it. It is important to be seen dancing with complexity, sliding among shades of gray. Any poor rube can come to a simple conclusion -- that President Saddam Hussein is a menace who must be disarmed--but the refined ratiocinators want to be seen luxuriating amid the difficulties, donning the jewels of nuance, even to the point of self-paralysis.
...for the purpose of pointing out that Master has retired the House Cup for fatuous front-running.
...who must now find his way through the world with naught but his multi-million dollar duck hunting accessory empire and (I presume) his future prospects as Senator from Louisiana to fall back on.
And you can quack-quack-quack all you like, but you will never tempt me into giving a damn about any part of this story.
You can't quite see the Chicago skyline from my mom's back yard, but its presence -- the massive gravity well of Chicago's culture and commerce -- shaped so much of my late childhood and adolescence.
It was so big, you see. So damn big. It went on and on forever.
And so loud.
It was the place where nearly all the men of our village went off to in the morning: they jammed themselves into commuter trains that whooshed away to the Big City, there to do incomprehensible grown-up things, while their wives stayed home, kept house, had babies, made sure the library hummed, and drank.
Much of our teevee came from there. All the radio. All the weather. All the news, written in that distinctive Chicago style. Chicago in those days took its meat-and-potato public spectacle pleasures in sports, food, newsprint and radio, which is why, just to be heard over the din of the 'el' and the roar of the trading pits, the lords and ladies of food, sports, morning radio and lurid tales of gangsters and corrupt pols had to be larger than life.
For all his faults, Uncle Lar rode with the best of them.
It was fairly popular. People liked the rhyme and loved the graphic.
Then, as near I can figure, a short time later some clever dog thought that the graphic -- ingenious as it was -- had one major flaw: my signature.
Today, my defaced original artwork showed up at Wonkette.
A little detective work revealed that my defaced original artwork was up at Mike Malloy's site as far back as 2010 (not that I think Mike had anything to do with it.)
I'm one of the last single-shingle sites out here. There are no interns. There is no research staff. There are no other writers. I make my own original artwork, write and edit my own essays and do my own research, and since I do not have ads or "sponsored content", my only source of revenue from this site comes from irregular, voluntary and much-appreciated reader contributions.
Since I don't have a byline in any newspaper or magazine anywhere, and am rarely linked by any large website sites (even the ones I haven't pissed off :-), exposure and word-of-mouth are my only means of increasing my readership.
Borrow my art and words as you wish. But deliberately scrubbing my signature off of my work is unacceptable:
Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something, nothing;
'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him,
And makes me poor indeed.
UPDATE: Being mensches, the good people at Wonkette emailed me a nice note and kicked a few bucks into my tip jar.
Take a few minutes to re-read Lester del Rey's 1938 SF classic, "Helen O'Loy":
Two young men, a mechanic, Dave, and a medical student, Phil, collaborate on modifying a household robot, originally meant only to cook and clean. They are more successful than they intended; despite the robot's household programming, it develops emotions. The robot, named "Helen O’Loy", falls in love with Dave. Dave initially avoids her and rejects her advances, but after some time he marries her and they live together on his farm...
Or spin up the ancient VCR and watch "The Lonely":
Or look up the true story of ELIZA:
ELIZA is a computer program and an early example of primitive natural language processing. ELIZA operated by processing users' responses to scripts, the most famous of which was DOCTOR, a simulation of a Rogerian psychotherapist. Using almost no information about human thought or emotion, DOCTOR sometimes provided a startlingly human-like interaction. ELIZA was written at MIT by Joseph Weizenbaum between 1964 and 1966.
When the "patient" exceeded the very small knowledge base, DOCTOR might provide a generic response, for example, responding to "My head hurts" with "Why do you say your head hurts?" A possible response to "My mother hates me" would be "Who else in your family hates you?" ELIZA was implemented using simple pattern matching techniques, but was taken seriously by several of its users, even after Weizenbaum explained to them how it worked.
The question of what it means to be sentient and who does (and does not) count as "human" has always been central to SF. And once you add in loneliness and the human need for love, complicated questions about the true nature of an artifact we ourselves created -- Is it merely mimicking sentient behavior or does it somehow really understands me? Does it really really care about me? -- immediately arise.
Her might very well be a fine new movie.
It is helpful to remember that it is also a very old story.
* Ms. Mr. Bunny left this in the comment section of an older post. I thought it deserved a wider audience:
I've been meaning to write to you about this for some time. I'm an employer (I own a small manufacturing company) and I have a different perspective. Our company has found that when we hire older employees they require substntially less training, are, generally, vastly more reliable, have already established a strong work ethic and bring with them all kinds of outside thinking and processes which have improved our productivity, We pay a living wage, health insurance and a full benefits package. In the last three months we have filled three positions and all of them with people who were long-term unemployed because (and I REALLY can not figure out why other employers can't figure this out) the long-term unemployeed are happy to have a good job and come to work every day dying to make a difference and build the company. All the way around it's a win-win deal.
Now, I understand that my company is the exception but I can't figure out why this is the case. Because we hire incredibly skilled, experienced people who show up every day with their brains engaged, we have been able to become dominant in our market, export more than 80% of what we build overseas and soundly beat back foreign competition. As best I can tell, we have just been using common sense, entrepenurial drive and capitalism. Despite the fact that I am a progressive, we have not been operating as a social services organization. We are a business and our goal is to make money.
Here is what I have been thinking lately however. I think that the Dems, as well as Netroots/DKos etc, need to speak to and organize small business. Small business NEVER benefits from the austerity-based monetary policies of the GOP. I listen to progressive internet-based radio all day (The Professional Left is my fav) and I have to say that the constant pounding by the left on "business" and "corporations" is off-putting. It is one thing for the left to be pounding on BIG business and BIG corporations. That is well-deserved and much needed but when we are all grouped together a serious opportunity is lost. When we, and by "we" I mean "progressives" fail to distinguish between my company and Boeing, we are failing in a variety of ways. We are failing to speak to a large group of voters, we are failing to dynamically promote and encourage "best practices" in a manner which will support the overall goals of the progressive movement, and we are failing to shine a light on and support those small companies who are doing right.
Anyway, that's my two cents. I would love to hear your thoughts.
My thoughts are this: I agree with you 100%.
There is so much to be gained by re-establishing a mutually advantageous and respectful relationship between the labor, small business and the political Left.
I am very familiar with places where these relationships have been made to work.
I am incredibly frustrated that I am no longer in a position to help build and nurture them.
