I'll Eat Fish and I'll Eat Meat, But There's Some Shit I Will Not Eat
Irradiated by LabRat
…With apologies to e.e. cummings.
There’s a fair bit of overlap between my commentariat and Kevin Baker’s, basically because I probably have a bigger wordcount in comments there left over the course of this decade than I do here. For whatever combination of luck, personality, and topicality, the folks there tend to make me wordy from time to time.
For that reason, some of you have already encountered Markadelphia, who essentially functions as Kevin’s reactive target range. (Or, depending on your mental image generator, the site’s gimp. That’s what usually plays in my head when he pops up in a thread for the first time.) The simplistic way to describe him would be as an extremely stock liberal idiot, of the sort that would get accused of being a ridiculous political strawman if he were a fictional character, but it doesn’t really do him, liberals, or strawmen justice; he’s really much more like an Eliza program fed a string of the most commonly occurring search strings and phrases on Daily Kos.
Now, the thing is, despite my politics and despite who I generally congregate with in the blogosphere, I do not actually dislike liberals. I’d have to check a lot of friends off my list if I ever decided to, and generally become a much more paranoid and generally angry person. I have this cute, heart-dotted belief that for most people, if their politics are actually well-thought-out to any degree at all and not just based in raw tribalism (and this may be the most default mode for “political” people on both sides), most differences boil down to a combination of fundamental philosophical differences in how you understand the world, and the priority ranking you put on your values. This is fine. I can solve all of these problems, when they come up, by applying enough beer to the situation at hand. Camaraderie between people that otherwise get along is usually much stronger than politics.
I don’t even, when you get right down to it, usually get all that exercised about people who are assholes and express their fundamental rectum nature through the medium of politics. Assholes are encountered every day, and usually, when I feel like bothering with batting them around at all (which is rare on days I have anything whatsoever better to do with my time), it doesn’t get to me. Their arguments and assertions are usually pretty standard and they behave more or less like normal people, except with a lot more gratuitous insult and general primate agonistic display, text format edition.
What it takes to get me genuinely, britches-burningly furious- and willing to write off the other person as a waste of perfectly good carbon- isn’t an insult to me, or to my politics, or my nonreligion, or what have you. They have to prove they have absolutely no value above that of scoring rhetorical points for their side. Sometime roughly a year ago, Markadelphia managed to do this by equating having to work for a living and be in contracts that require you to uphold a financial obligation (otherwise known as “a boring job” and “a mortgage”) with slavery- not metaphorical “wage slavery”, not even indentured servitude, actual honest-to-$deity kidnap you from your tribe and whip you and sell your children slavery. See, you have to pay your bills and fulfill your contracts, so it’s like the system owns you! It’s slavery! So we should end it, because we should be opposed to slavery!
I should never have had to explain to anyone why this comparison wasn’t just disingenuous, wasn’t just cheap, wasn’t just stupid, but amoral. In order to say that and have any excuse other than having been raised in cardboard box with no exposure whatsoever to history, you have to sit there, and think about slave ships and slave auctions and slave-catchers and whips and chains and shattered families, and you have to think “Well, I’m kinda stuck in this mortgage and I don’t really like my job, I guess it’s kinda like I’m a slave too!” And THEN, having had time to sit there and decide on the argument you are going to construct to criticize the oppressive system, you have to actually type out word by word that they’re really the same thing. And stand by it. You have to consciously summon up all the horror and gravity that this word carries and use it to try and make the point that modern middle-class first-worlders just don’t have it easy enough and this proves we’ve not gotten beyond, have I used this word enough that it no longer sounds like it means something real, SLAVERY.
How much do the words “fascism” and “Nazi” and “Hitler” mean to you anymore? They get thrown around so much that “fascist” now just means “a political system I don’t like”, and “Nazi” and “Hitler” are both almost jokes now, to the point where there’s a law of internet forum discussion about it and Iran can trot out “Israel is just like Nazi Germany” and everyone just sort of sighs and rolls their eyes. It’s lost nearly all meaning now except those who lived it, and those who saw it. There are no fucking words for how much I hate that this is true, but it’s the end point for this syndrome. You want to score a cheap emotional point in a debate you’re maybe not doing so well in, you borrow something horrible and claim that what your opponent supports that you don’t like is JUST LIKE THAT and how could you support such HORROR.
You eat meat! You’re part of something just like the holocaust!
Your mom didn’t abort you! You’re just like a holocaust survivor!
Heterosexual intercourse is penetrative and married women are tacitly expected to have sex with their husbands! Marital sex is just like rape!
This crap proves to me, with no further evidence needed, that the person or organization who uttered it has lost all sense and perception of right and wrong and are no longer worth even remotely humoring, let alone engagement.
That is my line. Call me an angry conservative or an angry liberal or an angry libertarian or just plain pissed off, but that’s my reason, and I think it’s a good one.
June 26th, 2009 at 8:27 am
Are you similarly offended by arguments that taxation is akin to slavery?
Certainly, the government is a far less visibly cruel master than the slavers of the 1800s and back, but they still claim the power of life and death over you if you refuse to comply with their demands.
June 26th, 2009 at 8:52 am
http://terpsboy.com/blogger9/Nahtzee.gif
June 26th, 2009 at 8:58 am
Slavery is like slavery, and being taxed ls like being taxed.
To start with, anyone in this country can opt right out of being personally taxed. But that’s not the point the Rat is making.
We’re clever enough and our language has enough words that we don’t have to analogise every single experience to another. We’re newspeaking ourselves by driving our conversations into narrower and narrower channels of thought. Everything is not good or evil, liberty or slavery. And we’re trivialising genuinely serious things, and showing moral depravity, by the silly comparisons.
June 26th, 2009 at 9:52 am
If you’re a slave, it doesn’t matter what you think or want - your slaver will tell you what to do and when. If you’re paying taxes, you at least have the option to vote for people that will raise or lower your taxes. Therefore, slavery != taxation.
Simple enough? Good.
What’s funny is I was ranting about this very phenomena on my way to work this morning. I’m not sure what spawned it or what tipped it off, but I do find it incredible aggravating. People that equate “cults” with “all religion”, people that equate “murder” with “meat”, people that equate “rape” with “looking at another human being”… these are all people that I have absolutely no use for. Words have meaning, damn it, and I’m getting incredibly incensed that people can’t seem to grasp that. We need a word like “rape” to express the psychological and physical harm incurred when someone forcefully forces themselves sexually on another human being. We need a word like “murder” to express the psychological and physical harm to a family when a loving and doting parent/lover is unceremoniously killed by an amoral psychopath. We need a word like “holocaust” to express the psychological and physical harm to a population when a group of people willfully choose to exterminate millions of people. We need a word like “cult” to describe the psychological and physical harm incurred when an organization claiming to be a religion makes its members completely and totally dependent on the organization, thus making it effectively impossible for anybody to leave the organization under any circumstances.
We need these words, and I am getting damn sick of people taking them away from us.
June 26th, 2009 at 10:20 am
When I saw the “Your mom didn’t abort you! You’re just like a holocaust survivor!” line, I was expecting it to go to a site for people that survived failed abortions. I did not realize there were people who actually consider being born after Roe v. Wade to be “surviving abortion”.
June 26th, 2009 at 10:58 am
I actually get pissed off by two things. The specious analogies that you listed are high on my list. Be even more aggravating are when you that the person saying it isn’t just deluded, but is deliberately lying about the subject. Actually, only the latter really pisses me off. The former is just annoying.
So, comparing being born after Roe v. Wade to being a holocaust survivor = annoying.
Paul Helmke continuing to lie, implying that no gun purchases at gun shows actually require background checks = me pissed off.
June 26th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
When I hear any one of the words “fascism” or “Nazi” or “Hitler” i immediately think of the other two words. I don’t understand why people trivialize them.
I once said something like “your entitled to your opinion, of course, but if you call me a Nazi again I’m going to break your face” at work. Even HR let me pass on that one.
June 26th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
Staghounds: True, I have the option of not working, in order to avoid being taxed. Makes it hard to eat, though.
David: I’ve always voted for the person who said they’d lower my taxes, for fuck all the good it’s done me.
Hey, maybe y’all are ok with the government asserting dominion over your productive output. I’m not.
And, do please note I never said taxation was slavery, I said it was akin. The master owns the slave, which is why he is entitled to the productive output of the slave’s labor. The government claims to be entitled to part of yours. It may not say in so many words that it owns you, but that’s certainly the implication.
June 26th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
We are not owned… at least the last time I looked. We have the option of voting, both at the ballot box and with our feet. Having spent many years abroad with the military, I will tell you point blank, even as “bad” as people think we have it now, it is MUCH better than the norm overseas…
In some countries, a post like this could literally get you shot for treason, no ifs, no ands, no buts, and no recourse.
June 26th, 2009 at 7:48 pm
Perlhaqr-
Even the word “akin” is hyperbole. You don’t get punished for being unemployed or underemployed by the government. If you’re a slave, you get sold or killed, because you’re [i]property.[/i] I know some folks with numbers tattooed on their arms and folks who are working in factories in China who would really enjoy the chance to pay taxes.
Yes, paying taxes sucks, but you get benefits from it. I agree I would like the government to be responsible with money and perhaps allocate funds differently. We, as a society, do need things like roads, and sanitation, and safe transportation, and secure borders.
Wanna go live as a hunter-gatherer somewhere? Or as a beachcomber? There are places where you can still do that, knock yourself out.
June 27th, 2009 at 6:22 am
By what right does the government have the authority to lay claim to roughly half of the remuneration I receive for my productive output?
None of you are arguing why this is so, simply that it is. Maybe no one else cares. *shrug*
Old NFO: You don’t have the option of voting with your feet. The IRS lays claim to the right to tax you even if you move to another country. As for voting at the ballot box, that implies that it’s simply a question of numbers. It’s certainly the case that numbers confer the ability to enforce the will of the masses on the individual, but I should think it is pretty obvious that it doesn’t confer legitimate authority.
Quick example: Ten men and one woman take a vote on whether she’s going to have sex with all of them. Does the process of voting confer any authority if her vote is no?
William: I never said the government wasn’t a particularly lenient master. But to some of us, being unemployed or underemployed is itself punishment. Which makes your “beachcomber” option fairly unpalatable for those with higher skill levels.
And, sorry, the “It’s worse elsewhere, so shut up and eat your gruel” argument isn’t much of one.
Yes, paying taxes sucks, but you get benefits from it.
So, how would you react to a mugger offering to buy you a cup of coffee with the contents of your wallet, after he’d finished lifting it from your pocket?
June 27th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
Perlhaqr-
You wish to be a member of society. You wish to be able to exercise your skills. Fine. You wish to be in a society that has a need for your skills. This is what makes being a hunter-gatherer unpalatable. Note that it is still an option, you MAY, you just don’t WANT to. I get it. You wish to have the benefits of living in a first world society without paying for it.
You are a parasite.
In the world of a Michael Williamson novel, you could only pay for what you use directly. I’ll even grant that US citizens probably overpay. Again, there are countries where people pay much less. They have lower standards of living, iffy rule of law, and shorter life spans
The IRS claims to tax you if you live elsewhere. Sure. And there are other countries that claim that their citizens who live elsewhere owe military service. Wanna change it? Send your US Passport back. Vote with your feet. I have a legal judgement against a citizen of Belize. That’ll never get collected. If there is no extradition between the US and the country you go to, so what? In the pre-rebellion South, slaveholders sent slavecatchers after escapees.
The mugger of your analogy isn’t giving me a cup of coffee. The mugger is giving me a functioning court system, clean streets, indoor running water that works, an educated populace so I can get things DONE, people who need my services, a fire department, building codes, safe food, and I can get around without having to hire my own private army. The mugger is also limited and can be replaced.
The social contract is unwritten. It is based on traditions that go back past Runnymeade, and recognizes reciprocal duties and obligations. But that doesn’t matter, does it? You don’t WANNA.
June 27th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
The mugger of your analogy isn’t giving me a cup of coffee. The mugger is giving me a functioning court system, clean streets, indoor running water that works, an educated populace so I can get things DONE, people who need my services, a fire department, building codes, safe food, and I can get around without having to hire my own private army. The mugger is also limited and can be replaced.
Except that…we’re not getting any of that. Our education system is pumping out stupid drones that can’t read or reason, our court system blows- they’re squashing our rights. Clean streets aren’t clean, and running water is a local thing you pay for outside of taxes, and other than the army thing is NOT THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT’S FUCKING JOB. We do have a written contract, it’s called the Constitution, and one party gets to ignore it at their whim, while the other side gets screwed. So Bill, you’re an idiot.
I don’t mind paying local taxes where i can see the effects: functioning roads, a fire department, parks, etc; but I have a problem paying federal taxes to continue goat semen research in Iowa. Or for paying out money to countries that literally want me dead. That’s a fucking problem, man.
June 27th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
It’s true, you’ve got me, I’m a complete parasite.
—-
No, wait, for fuck’s sake, if you’re going to attempt to insult me, could you at least try to come up with something that’s vaguely accurate? You’re talking to someone who advocates never giving anyone anything they haven’t paid for. Try “You’re a heartless bastard who hates children”, or “You’re a racist who doesn’t care about the plight of African Americans and the patriarchy and all that bullshit” or something. At least that would have some semblance of adherence to reality.
—-
You’re making precisely the same argument as the bloody Marxists. “I have the right to take your stuff for the greater good”. You have different specifics, but the same philosophy. And yes, maybe your take on reality is more practical, but it’d be very practical for me to go lift my neighbor’s car. Certainly easier than working for the money myself.
June 27th, 2009 at 8:39 pm
Reality - nobody chooses where or when or to whom to be born. Nobody gets to opt out (or in) to things like gravity, aging, or for the most part poverty, famine, war, or oppression.
So in that very broad sense, we are indeed all “slaves” to the real world. To the obligations imposed on us, often against our will. Some by phsyical reality. Some by our own biology. Some by our social fabric. Some by society as a whole. Some by our government. Sometimes some by groups in other countries. All sorts of parties take things from us, demand things from, and don’t even think about allowing us to opt out.
Working like Slavery? In a society where subsistence farming is practically impossible, working for money is an “imposed obligation” that one doesn’t get to opt out of. But to be Slavery, it would have to be cruelly micromanaged with no recourse. A circumstance of abuse unaltered by employment law, competition among employers, or common decency.
Marriage like Rape? Unless it was shotgun wedding of some kind, we may assume the woman wanted to be married. In fact I know several couples where women set it up - they in effect captured the men into marriage. Talk about opting in!
Marriage like prostitution? It happens all the time, one is sanctioned, the other isn’t.
The Holocaust, the rest of WWII, the conquest of what is now the United States, enslavement of Africans, and many other examples through history all represent tremendous murderous violence. We should remember them for what they are.
But of course, the NAZIs seemed kind of appealing to German voters in the 1930s….
June 28th, 2009 at 8:58 pm
The social contract is unwritten. It is based on traditions that go back past Runnymede, and recognizes reciprocal duties and obligations.
That assertion would come as a surprise to the plaintiffs in Gonzales v. Castle Rock and Warren v. D.C. Possibly also the folks in Flint, where the temporary mayor wants to shut down services to places where there are too few taxpayers per block (and what do you care to bet they wouldn’t get to stop paying taxes to Flint?).
When speaking of reciprocal obligations, the empirical evidence indicates that the obligations of the individual to society are whatever society says they are, and the obligations of society to the citizen likewise.
Nice work if you can get it.
June 29th, 2009 at 8:47 am
In my experience, hyperbole is the only way to shock some people out of their respective deluded microcosms and actually open a dialogue.
In that respect, talking to your philosophical opponent is akin to bargaining for a car. If you don’t get the salesman flustered with a rediculous low-ball offer right off the bat, how do you expect to get the price you want in the end?
June 29th, 2009 at 10:31 am
Let’s spell this out:
If you get to pick your master, it’s not slavery. If you get to complain about your master without punishment, it’s not slavery.
Look, I vote for the guy that promises lower taxes and a smaller government, too. He or she doesn’t usually win, but such is life. Am I happy that the majority of people can decide to take a good chunk of my income (not half, by the way - in my current income bracket, I think I’m paying about 15-20%, including sales taxes and whatever share of property taxes my landlord is passing down to me) and redistribute it somewhere else? No, but I’m not going to call it slavery because it’s not slavery. Slavery would imply that, if I don’t like it, tough - I can’t just move to another jurisdiction with lower taxes and fewer government services and be done with it.
As long as there are people, there is going to be government, and as long as there is government, there are going to be taxes. That’s a given. As long as there are people out there that think they can just do whatever they want, regardless of how it affects everyone around them (think murderers, thieves, etc.), there will be a need for an organization with sufficient social and political power to deal with them appropriately. As long as that organization is in place, those that work for it will need a way to feed and clothe themselves. That organization, at its very core, is government. Employees of the government feed themselves by our taxes, which we pay so our government can continue governing. It’s not an ideal state of affairs, but it’s better than anything anybody else has been able to put into practice in the past few millenia. Don’t like it? Come up with something better, put it into practice, and let us know how it works out. We tried that with communism, we tried that with hippie communes, and we’ll continue trying that with whatever political and sociological models we come up with. Most won’t work - big ideas are funny that way. But, one of these days, somebody might come up with an idea that does work and we can use that from then on out.
Until then, reality is a pragmatic bitch. Deal with it.
June 29th, 2009 at 11:35 am
So, Mr. Colborne, since apparently choosing your master is akin to not having one in your mind, I suppose, to borrow perlhaqr’s analogy, if the men got to pick how many times the woman must have sex, and the number of different men she must do it with, but she got to choose the order and the comparative frequency (and got to insult them while doing it!) it would be okay?
June 30th, 2009 at 11:41 am
John, following perlhaqr’s example and using the real world here, if men in one jurisdiction got to pick how many times the woman must have sex, the woman could move to a place where the men aren’t assholes.
Seriously - that’s the point. It’s not about “picking your master”. It’s about being able to leave if one group of people is getting too oppressive. When you have freedom of movement, it’s not slavery. If somebody is being obnoxious and you can leave, they don’t own you. Slavery is when someone owns you, completely and totally, and has the right to do anything they want to you. Anything less is not slavery. Our government doesn’t have that right. Yeah, sometimes it gets a little close to comfort from time to time, but there are legal and societal restrictions to its power.
Look, are there similarities with majority rule and slavery? Sure. Both involve not being able to do what you want 100% of the time. Are there similarities between rape and penetrative sex? Sure. Both might involve a guy on top of you and may lead to bruising. Are there similarities between murder and trophy hunting? Sure. Both involve killing things for no particular practical purpose. Are any of those similarities significant enough for us to seriously consider penetrative sex as a form of rape, or trophy hunting as a form of murder, or interacting with society as a form of slavery? No… at least, not unless you have an agenda or you’re an Internet Troll. Trying to conflate one thing with a mildly related but infinitely more serious thing does nothing to drive any meaningful debate forward and does nothing to actually address whatever issue it is you’re trying to resolve.
July 1st, 2009 at 8:26 pm
And of course, the selector forces that determine what societies survive do not necessarily select for freedom, fairness, niceness, achievement, or anything else any of us might like.
They select for societies that manage to continue…
So far, societies with taxes win over those without.
So far, societies where people have sex win over those that are celebate.