Thanksverymuch
(@codinghorror, I googled ALL SORTS and that didn’t come up. Clearly, you’ve made this thing too difficult to use. Even for someone clever like me)
You’re welcome.
SupBro?
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Well <sup> and <sub> are just plain HTML. Lots of basic HTML tags work in posts.
Nope. Like I said, too hard even for clever people… 
I see what you did here.
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Excellent. You have been assimilated.
I don’t know about any of that semantic yammering, but expensive garbage and suburban garbage remains garbage, no matter how much one tries to define away urban residential neighborhoods.
Thimk.
Ah, the non-corporate rebel answer to Thibmk.
We need something that feels more holistic. That “i” in the middle, too much individuality.
How about: Thonk
Hmm. Thonk … Thuonk, … Thwank … THINKS (do we need that th, would make it easier for more languages), …
Dystopian novels / movies should be clearly marked as such.
Most of the world seems to agree that 1984 is a dystopia. The British government is known to have used it as an instruction manual.
And then, of course, there is Starship Troopers. A superbly crafted dystopian novel that shows how militarism will lead to an erosion of civilization, to permanent unnecessary warfare and, even if tempered by a belief in personal freedom, to something very much like fascism.
What? Heinlein did not intend it to be a dystopian novel against militarism? But it fits so perfectly with my preconceptions, and director Paul Verhoeven seemed to agree.
The people who work hardest to bring about a dystopia usually don’t see what’s so dystopic about it.
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In other words, “Stop liking what I don’t like.”
You didn’t proclaim like, just a profound ignorance of pleasant, reasonably-priced life in cities. Compared to the inconvenient, boring, but well-marketed self righteousness the suburbs, city life feels like life rather than a car advertisement.
The Starship Troopers novel had one fatal flaw, in that the whole system assumed and depended on constant warfare to keep going. But there was something important in the book that sailed right over the film director’s head: Pure democracy suffers from a moral hazard. Bread and circuses are inevitable when peope can vote their wishes as easily as their needs.
When I look around and see how completely the people’s voice has been managed and massaged, to the point where Sandy Hook galvanized the voting public into… complete inaction… it makes me wonder what a real democracy would do, and if a real democracy is even desirable any more.
Um, the point of a real democracy is that things I consider vital and no-brainers will often NOT be considered either vital or even desirable by a large swath of the populace. If we are going to embrace democracy, unless you are the median voter (and who is?), then we need to accept that most of the time the things that we consider vitally important aren’t to the majority.
We all tend to live in bubbles where we assume that our opinions are mainstream.
But for the most part, they aren’t.
The things that enrage us are often quite acceptable to the electorate. This isn’t a dismissal of people, only an acknowledgement that we don’t live in a society of clones. Politically, we are all a minority, forever. And if we want our values imposed upon the population because we’re always right (I am and I’m sure you are too), then the only way to do this is to remove the right to govern themselves.
If that’s not acceptable (and I hope it’s not!), then we must accept that most of the time, government will not be to our liking. (As I’m likely to find out in the next Canadian Federal election. sigh).
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If that were true for everyone, absolutely everyone, then it would have to be acceptable. What else could be done? But there are those who consistently get most of their wishes enacted, despite screaming bloody murder that they encounter too much resistance. There’s no reason I should let them.
If we’re in a democracy, and they are getting their way, doesn’t that imply that they’re closer to the electorate’s wishes? I’m struggling to find a reason to subvert the democratic will beyond the “I’m right!”, a claim that can be made by every single person and cause on the planet.
In the end, the only proof I can find that I am indeed right and the others are wrong, is my ability to persuade the majority of my rightness. If I cannot, then I may well be right, but I cannot prove it, and thus have no right to impose it upon the electorate.
Of course, typically those who seek to impose their will upon the populace take the weaselly path (which you have not), which is claiming there is no democracy, in which case if we’re going to be subject to arbitrary policies, it may as well be mine (of course, clothed in “the will of the people”, but not subject to actual vote).
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I think it’s pretty clear this democracy is a sham.
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