You Know It's As Bad As Usual, When It Takes Random Comedians To Get Politicians To Stop And Actually Think.

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

Wanted for secret rendition: "Tracy, Dick"

The following is from a retired IBEW member in Pittsburgh, not a 20 yr old.

'I've seen CitizenFour. I've read many articles about America’s surveillance programs. But Sunday night John Oliver used humor and Edward Snowden himself to explain the NSA, privacy and security via dick-pics. No, seriously. Watch this, laugh, and then think about what the “Patriot” Act has done to us.' John Lewis

Is this inevitable life in the 21st century? Or is it gross bungling of our own democracy? Or is it somewhere safely somewhere in between? Still just as FUBAR as we can afford, but no more?

You know it's as bad as usual, when it takes random comedians to get politicians to stop and actually think. Or citizens, for that matter.

Yet it's ALWAYS been that way. Since way before Mark Twain. Historically, even one court jester can make a difference. The transition we didn't notice is that modern cultures now just bully ALL the distributed people they secretly admire & learn from, but keep such punching bags around nonetheless. After all, a humanity that good, you don't loot all at once!

What's that say about the permanently-gestating culture of Homo Sapiens? Stuck, by necessity, forever in it's 31st week? Proverbially, of course.

Who knew that aggregate politics is just another example of thermodynamic statistics, and a pocket of resistance against entropy?

This brings up a fascinating TRINITY question about any and all recombinant systems.

To be continuously re-makable ... our foundations must be alterable, and hence vulnerable. 

To remain vulnerable, we must obviously be fallible, and insecure. 

Hence, to continuously grow, we are ALWAYS getting clumsier before regaining agility, in an endless 2-step.

Who knew that the key to evolution is the Trinity of remaining vulnerable, insecure & clumsy? :)

So phenotypic persistence and political momentum are two examples of the same thing?

And to continue, we must declare the same old trinity cry, involving not the old

Town Crier, townsfolk and dead/new bullies ..... but the 

Aggregate Crier (grapevine), our aggregate, and the conquered/emerging self-parasites (the regulated/new "entrepreneurs"). 

"Our social auto-immunity is breeched. Long live our social auto-immunity!" :)

i.e., We fitfully embrace & extend inevitable change in ourselves, yet also repeat a permanent vow of "never again!" :( [And even declare: "There, I fixed democracy!"]

[Or, as Steve Hansen might say, we think that we must pretend that everything remains the same ... until we can't. Yet we deny it. :( ]

Does that explain politics, or what? For consistency, we lie to ourselves ... until we can't.

With kudos to Ford & Edison, the process that makes the consistency good, makes the change good, also.
To just keep walking, metaphorically, requires not just a left foot & a right foot, but also something (usually hidden from both feet) to yoke the two into recurring phase-steps.

An aggregate is not a culture until all recombinant components are once again trapped by an auto-catalytic yoke that keeps a set of Dead Components Walking ... long enough to spawn more generations, and then get out of their way.

Ironically, the components are not really walking. They're actually just busy consuming their old selves, plus anything else that's available. :( AggreZombie is real!

Night of the living dead? Pah! It's actually eternity of the evolving cannibal!

And, we're secretly all members of the John Lurch Society. :(