The graphic design of MAGA will be studied at some point. I think it has the effect of looking like some “Everyman” did it themselves. Who’s to say whether this effect is intentional psyops or just the result of distancing themselves from people who actually practiced and studied an art, trade, or discipline, but this shit worked on a certain slice of the population pre-MAGA, too.
I mean, they already have a rootkit, a few worms, and a half-dozen viruses running in their wetware. Why not go ahead and install a few crypto miners and some assorted malware on their PC?
No disagreement here. I wasn’t necessarily advocating the idea, but it was interesting to explore it and “try it on” for a while when reading the book. I think there is some value in attempting to steer society in better directions, but disagree with rewriting history or purging culture to do so.
Just finished reading The Dispossessed and was going to comment similarly. It was fantastic read and surprisingly modern considering it was written in the 60s. Some of her contemporaries don’t have the same sort of timeless readability as Le Guin.
The key anarchist takeaways from The Dispossessed are the use of syndicates in lieu of corporate or government structures, no private ownership or equity, and the absence of law, elections, and criminal punishment. Committees exist for public discussion, but the outcome of that discussion is non-binding (although one may find themselves an outcast). Le Guin presents anarchy like libertarianism mixed with socialism: you are free to do as you please, but you are obligated to recognize your role in the social organism.
Le Guin also recognizes that anarchist thought is in some ways extremely foreign to all of our modes of thought, philosophy, and language. So she devises a world where the anarchists invent a new language to correct and remove “egoist” ideas. The society she develops revolted against a hyper-consumerist society, referred to as “propertarians,” and this drives much of the plot and dialogue: what does it mean to not be an egoist while still being human?; what is the limit of personal possession before becoming a propertarian?; what happens when your personal freedom and needs are trampled on by the social organism?; and how long can a non-hierarchical society last when it inevitably creates systems that begin to self-organize into hierarchies and bureaucracies?
The protagonist realizes that any revolution must remain perpetually in a state of revolution lest the people settle into inviolable customs that then calcify into law.
Your heart is in the right place, I think, but FOIA is useless here. FOIA is cool if you want to know what an agency has on file about you (which is usually nothing) or learning the “truth” about JFK, EBEs, and UAPs.
Sarcasm aside, the most important thing to note about FOIA is that agencies handle their own FOIA requests; each agency has a staff (sometimes even a staff of one) for processing FOIA requests. FOIA is also a “devil’s in the details” type of law: you won’t have much luck with vague, open-ended, or ambiguously scoped requests.
Some information and data are exempt FOIA requests, including information about law enforcement activities or investigations, the personnel files or personal details of staff, and anything considered relevant to “national security.”
Even if the information requested is cleared for release, agencies know how to stall. FOIA requests are legally required to be responded to in 20 days or less… unless “the information needs to be closely reviewed and redacted before release,” “we’ve received too many requests for the same information to answer them in a timely manner,” or “our staff are experiencing difficulty locating the specific files that would satisfy the request.” Flooding an agency with FOIA requests for the same document or topic typically makes things worse until the amount requests becomes so high that that agency just dumps them online somewhere.
The last thing I’ll say is that a lot of FOIA requests only get satisfied after a lawsuit.
Good lord, the funniest thing I remember from college German was how easy it was to distract Frau Professorin from her lecture by just mentioning bread.
Definitely a misdirect from the corporate takeover of everything.
I grew up in a shitty small rural town, but while I was in high school I watched the shitty “mom and pop” stores slowly disappear and the local factory vote against unionization only to be closed a few years after I moved away. You know what immediately moved in to fill the void? Wal-Mart and Dollar General.
My dad was so focused on immigrants taking his job and other insane republican economic talking points that he lost that job when the company decided it wasn’t cost effective to operate in the US anymore.