'We Know Who You Are"

[George H. Smith]

This TV ad from the Pennsylvania tax goons has an Orwellian ring to it.

Ghs

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[Rich Engle]

Chilling. Expect more.

[syrakusos]

This TV ad from the Pennsylvania tax goons has an Orwellian ring to it.

If the Pennsylvania Revenuers knew where Tom lived, they would not need to threaten: they would just go get him. To believe in the power of the state is to accept the efficacy of socialism.

Orwell was a muscle-mystic. Harry Browne's How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World built on many ideas from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. From K-12 to 120 channels of cable, we get the message that government is powerful and knowing, even all-powerful and all-knowing. They are indeed scary. When the ax falls, even Michael Milkin or Martha Stewart were victimized through the sanction of the victim.

You do not challenge a silverback gorilla, but you can usually out-wit one.

Edited May 4, 2010 by Michael E. Marotta

[dan2100]

You do not challenge a silverback gorilla, but you can usually out-wit one.

I love that line!

[George H. Smith]

Orwell was a muscle-mystic.

That's a bit much, don't you think? Although Orwell described himself as a "socialist," a streak of anti-authoritarianism ran deep within him.

Ghs

[Dragonfly]

Orwell was a muscle-mystic.

That's a bit much, don't you think? Although Orwell described himself as a "socialist," a streak of anti-authoritarianism ran deep within him.

Indeed. I always liked his writings, and while I disagreed with many of his viewpoints, he seemed to me to be a decent and honest man, and I have the suspicion that if he'd lived longer, he'd become as critical of socialism as he was of communism. He didn't seem to me someone who would repress the knowledge of unpleasant facts because they didn't fit into his world view.

[dan2100]

Orwell was a muscle-mystic.

That's a bit much, don't you think? Although Orwell described himself as a "socialist," a streak of anti-authoritarianism ran deep within him.

Ghs

Yeah. I think he was a mixed bag. If my memory's correct, he also wrote agit-prop for the British gvoernment during the war.

[syrakusos]

Orwell was a muscle-mystic.

That's a bit much, don't you think? Although Orwell described himself as a "socialist," a streak of anti-authoritarianism ran deep within him. -- Ghs

I confess that I would like to get beyond 1984 with Orwell, into Catalonia and Burma and all, but I think that the label fits many here, as well. Many Objectivists and others hold an implicit muscle-mystic premise that grants power to the looters. Beyond Ayn Rand of course, in The Ascent of Man, Jacob Bronowski shows the Baktriari horseman and the German panzer tank juxtaposed, barbarians drunk with muscle power to trample anything yet able to build nothing.

To take another example from perhaps a bit far afield, in the pop scifi movie The Rocketeer, the story hinges on the threat that the Nazis will take Howard Hughes's rocketpack and invade America by air. It is a comic book movie, of course, but that fear of the German "secret weapon" grew into the Cold War against the USSR, which proved to be -- no surprise -- a Potemkin village.

Even the taxman video's "Google Earth" theme itself should be indicative of the reality. Read about QUICKBIRD (owned by NYSE traded DigitalGlobe) and owner of Google's "GeoEye" platform. The muscle-mystics worship the spy in the sky because the have no better understanding of georeferencing and orthorectification than they do of where electricity comes from.

I am sorry that I do not remember where I read the essay, but there is gulf between the "Connecticut Yankee" of Mark Twain and today's suburbanite. In that yarn, the factory worker could build bicycles and a telegraph, conceptualize and implement a messenger service, build a revolving magazine handgun. An essay in one of the last Whole Earth Catalogs said that in the previous century, a skilled machinist was hired by his toolbox: the tools he made for himself spoke of his skill to any potential employer. Make any tools lately? I confess that I have not. Maybe we just live in a different time, to be sure.

How's your hexadecimal arithmetic? ... Could you build a modem? ... Ever install a generator? ...

I'm just saying, the fact that I cannot makes me appreciate those who can. I do not take them for granted. The muscle-mystics think that "technology" can be "harnessed." When they say that, they mean that they mean to put techologists in the traces.

The USSR collapsed for many reasons, none independent of the other, but I see their stellar achievements in chess and abstract mathematics as a consequence of their prohibitions on other forms of creativity. Orwell seemed not to understand that. Again, Orwell was not alone. Self-identified Objectivists want to nuke Teheran because they feel threatened. I grant that they do and specifically because they share the premise of the muscle-mystics.

Edited May 4, 2010 by Michael E. Marotta

[Robert Campbell]

Trying to get back on topic...

The ad is seriously creepy.

And that's a real house, on a real street, with a real car in the driveway... none of which belong to "Tom."

David Paul Kuhn talked to the folks who actually live there:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/05/04/pas_orwellian_tax_hunt_theyre_tracking_you__105413.html

Robert Campbell

[Greybird]

Trying to get back on topic ...

Well, Mike Marotta has branched to a more interesting topic, Objectivist muscle-mystic tendencies. One that sorely needs breaking out into a potent thread, likely to cut close to the sensibilities of many here.

I doubt I have the fortitude to do it. Maybe Mike has it. Call me a schlemiel, if you wish. But I digress.

The ad is seriously creepy. And that's a real house, on a real street, with a real car in the driveway ... none of which belong to "Tom." [...]

Creepy and intolerable agitprop, absolutely. Yet that invasion of privacy is far worse than the overblown melodrama of the ad itself. I hope that family sues and gets a huge judgment.

The Pennsylvania taxpayers deserve to pay through the nose for hiring (and electing) such authoritarian types. ... All right. Those who aren't net tax consumers, elected and appointed, don't literally deserve this. Nonetheless, the family has a potent case for a contingency-fee lawsuit. (And thanks for the link.)

As the census tyrants are busy reminding us with their own agitprop — especially if one hasn't dutifully submitted the form by now — they've already tracked all of us to our front doors with GPS devices. And they, too, now "have addresses."

Edited May 5, 2010 by Greybird

[syrakusos]

Trying to get back on topic...

The ad is seriously creepy.

And that's a real house, on a real street, with a real car in the driveway... none of which belong to "Tom."

David Paul Kuhn talked to the folks who actually live there ...

Robert Campbell

Robert, forgive me not knowing you as well as you might like, but are you not an accredited Objectivist who has been published in the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies? I ask because in addition to muscle-mysticism, I perceive rightwing paranoia and mixed premise conservatism in this complaint. If the State of Pennsylvania has the right to collect taxes "for snow removal," as stipulated, and if the technology of Google Earth is available to anyone -- the privately owned firms are even traded on the NYSE: this is just another commercial enterprise, not Big Brother -- then what is the problem?

The US Supreme Court long ago settled the question of whether or not you have "privacy" when seen from the air: you do not. You can be in your home, fine, but standing out in your back yard "behind" a fence, and open to the sky, you are, after all, as open to the sky as you would be from the street without that fence.

Again, if the state of Pennsylvania really knew who owed back taxes, they would not run this ad; they would go after the debtors.

I agree that there is a deeper problem with taxation, but that seems not to be the question here. The prolem seems to be that if you commit a crime in public and a police officer sees you, you think that your right to privacy has been violated.

I get a similar complaint when I take snapshots. Go to my website, www.washtenawjustice.com, and read about the Ann Arbor Art Fair. A woman at the ACLU booth objected to my taking her picture without her permission... even though she was at a sales booth at a street fair... Liberals are even more amusing than conservatives.

Edited May 5, 2010 by Michael E. Marotta