âPhenomenaâ is plural, so you want âphenomenonâ here.
Definitely not. âPhenomenaâ refers to âleaksâ which is plural. However, the article âaâ shouldnât be there. Most likely, Cory was writing quickly and was about to type the word âdemographicâ, which is often used as a noun so he popped in an âaâ, but he finished strongly by nailing the leaks-phenomena pair, which a lot of people miss. Donât feel bad - lazy pedants get tripped up trying to burn people on this one all the time.
Howâs that reality distortion field working for you today?
Iâm off to enjoy my âpotato chips as a tasty snacksâ now. Is that a clear enough comparison for you?
Three comments into this thread and still no breakthrough in the âaâ versus âonâ issue. Not surprising to see a âlazy pedantâ right hook early on, but the old âreality distortion fieldâ one-two shows that Vanderburg isnât the pushover many pundits expected. Itâs going to be a long day at the Boing Boing ArenaâŚ
You didnât make the correction I offered. Drop the article âaâ and all is well. The piece Cory is referring to analyzes âNSA leaks as demographic phenomenaâ. My point was that there was no need to imply that Cory, a professional writer, is such a moron he canât catch a plural disagreement. He was merely tricked into dropping an article onto a slippery greek word, which could happen to any of us. Now you enjoy your âpotato chips as tasty snacks,â and Iâll enjoy my âpotato chips as imperialist conspiracyâ.
Crap in a sandwich you people. How about on topic?
The current generation has been taught that employer loyalty does not exist. The next generation - my kids - will know that and also know how to encrypt everything.
The NSA is either going to collapse into itself after all the revelations, or it is going to come out of the shadows and just explicitly spy on everyone. Overt oligarchy vs. Indirect.
I heard people mouthing off this week that DNA was all washed up after the âLess and Fewerâ bout in Manila last year. But any commentator still hoping for an early knockout just got a wake up call. What a flurry. A you-didnât-comprehend-me jab, a how-dare-you-insult-the-author right cross, and a take-your-example-and-shove-it jab-jab-cross.
Itâs anybodyâs guess what Vanderburgâs going to do about that âimplyâ haymaker or âslippery greek wordâ?
It ainât over yet folks.
Shut up old man! Steve and me âs a-scrappinâ!
Not just employer loyalty, but nationalism itself. The corollary of people not being able to expect anything from the government, is the government not being able to expect anything from its people. While anti-entitlement rhetoric has had limited effect on entitlements themselves, itâs dramatically changed the implicit contract young people expect with the nation.
I think it still remains to see how the next generations will solve the individualist vs globalist effects of living half time online. Historically, however, the most powerful anti-nationalist force was not the individualist libertarian, but the globalist socialist. I donât think the âstarve the beastâ types thought out their long game, unless all they foresaw was the pendulum would not turn until after they were gone.
You are onto something there. Maybe Eastern Standard Tribe was onto something after all.
We all grew up in an environment of strong States and clear boundaries. With that came nationalism, borders, patriotism and all sorts of other social norms. It did also come with the expectation that the state would look out for the interests of its citizens. States donât come that way out of the box, but some current states have been operating on a âby the people for the peopleâ notion.
Weakening the state at every point leaves little remaining but a military and other instruments of control (the state having a legal monopoly on violence). But all of that depends on a citizenry that supports the state, explicitly or implicitly through passivity. Treating entire generations as criminals is a good way to ensure that many citizens see no reason to respect the institution of the state.
States as we currently understand them have only been around for a couple of centuries. There is really nothing to say that they wonât be replaced by something else at some point.
When the government stops doing evil shit the leaks will stop. Considering the leaks as a demographic phenomena(on) is sort of like saying that leaks are just a type of espionage where an upset employee sells information for money. They are not. They are precisely the opposite. Leakers like Snowden and Manning released their information for no monetary gain. They released their information because the government was corrupt and violating the Constitution. It does not matter how much job security you provide a patriot, they will still do what is best for the country.
Wow. Deja vu. We covered the essence of these demographic loyalty issues in a Boing Boing discussion thread that occurred 8 to 12 July. In the middle of the discussion we wandered off and discussed how the NSA appears to have systematically eliminated all the traditional sources of loyalty.
The point about contractors having inherently less loyalty to the organization is a good one, and is one more reason to not use them so damn much in national security. Eliminating contractors might be a sufficient solution though as direct employees of the federal government have very good job security.
Iâd also be careful about extrapolating too much about generational attitudes from just the cases of Snowden and Manning, both because of the small sample size and because their cases may not be generalizable. Snowden took the job at Booz Allen Hamilton with the specific intent of gathering info to leak, so it may not be safe to treat him as a typical employee in terms of institutional loyalty. In addition to her misgivings about the war Manning also was in the midst of a huge personal crisis because of her gender identity disorder, to the point that her superiors only sent her to Iraq because there was a severe shortage in her specialty. I suspect that was very alienating back under DADT. The idea is still interesting though.
Whatâs interesting to me, that these articles suggest, is that neo-liberalism, with its deliberate demolition of any source of stability for workers, has penetrated the most critical institutions of the state â and so now, even the guardians of the state are losing their sense of loyalty to it. Thatâs a political-economic system thatâs on the verge of disintegration.
Yup. And guess whoâs writing a trilogy with that very point at itâs core right now?
In a world where employer loyalty doesnât exist, employee loyalty quickly disappears as well.
There are all sorts of rules about contracting that are based on the fear that the loyalties of the contractors would be divided: that they might do things that are in the interests of their employers rather than the government. But the reality is that âbeltway banditsâ donât treat their employees in a way that engenders much if any loyalty, so that fear is mostly misplaced.
Iâve shown a few people your FP piece Charlie; itâs upset several new-age types no end. Iâm still at a loss as to why. One described it as âtwaddleâ so youâre doing something right.
It probably doesnât help that, even if you want to Be A Nationalist Hero, your options arenât so hot, since the implicit logic of the âwar on terrorâ is that we have to pull out all the stops (and do what weâve always done in proxy wars and colonies, and other out-of-sight-out-of-mind kinds of places) everywhere and forever, lest, um⌠something.
With the exception of the most loathsome power-worshipping authoritarians, that isnât a terribly compelling nationalist narrative. Not the good, clean, sort where you can go over the hill, Do What Needs To Be Done, to the Other, and then come home and bask in being the best nation on earth. Just a mixture of overtly-contrary-to-the-national-mythology behavior at home and some farcical foreign policy adventures without victory conditions abroad.
