Only the lonely

Post things like this (originally written as a comment at balloon juice but i decided to put it up here as well):

after two years of an Obama presidency, it is past time to continue to blame the media, blame the Rs, blame everyone except the person (and his party) who, sophistry aside, began with a tremendous amount of power. the Ds, their leadership and their national chief have muffed, blown, or frittered away every advantage they gained in 2008, so much so that a bunch of buffoons had no difficulty making a campaign based on blaming the Ds for the continued destruction of post—WWII america.

it was easy for the Rs to do so, because while they lied about the why, the evidence of where true power lies was there for all to see. bankers and insurance companies made out like bandits while Obama declared himself lord high executioner and appointed “deficit commissioners” who told the working class to drop dead. the Ds found themselves unable to counter the inanity because they could not; after all, they had continued the wealth transfer the Rs started. all the Ds had was rhetoric that bore an increasingly tenuous relationship with reality, though it continued on its lofty, lonely rhetorical heights. at least the Rs could pretend they believed in a crackpot theory while the Ds were, indeed, socialists who lacked even a fig leaf of rhetoric to cover their servitude. but then, a socialistic oligarchy is not the stuff of great populist phrasemaking.

to put it a bit more precisely, on every single major issue, this administration has sided with the wealthy and the profiteers and poltroons of perpetual war and the attendant destruction of civil liberties. after this amount of time, one can continue to concoct rationalizations, or one can start to, perhaps, infer that something is amiss with this picture, namely, that the Ds don’t side with their voters, because that’s not who they represent.

it is undoubtedly difficult to come to terms with the idea that the political party you have worked in, for, and perhaps most of all, have believed in, sees you as a commodity rather than its principal. but then, why should they see you as anything other than cattle? their true principals don’t sit in smoke filled rooms, or man picket lines or call centers. they don’t even run unions, though Ds might in a few places still care about those relics. no, these commanders of the spigots of jobs and cash run board meetings and can be found at places like Aspen that are properly fenced off from the increasingly impoverished voters.

now, someone will say that this overstates the case and that of course the Ds care about their “voters”. and yes, they do. like the Rs did during Junior’s tenure, they can throw the “base” a few trinkets along the social lines so as to have something to point to. and it’s not as if their masters mind these gestures: after all, the end of DADT means more cannon fodder and coffins to sell, and it’s a hell of a lot easier to write the health insurance regulations in DC where you don’t have to deal with those pesky state regulators. just don’t even think of changing the tax rates. come to think of it, don’t even talk about it.

even assuming one considers all of the above, it’s still difficult to think about. on top of that, there’s any number of clever people, some paid, some not . . . who continue to argue that you should just ignore what has actually happened in favor of what might have happened otherwise, or how much legislation has been enacted. until this administration, i had never been alerted to the notion that quantity of legislation was more important than its substance. anyway who cares what they say because they are just negative haters. the Ds can only be failed by disloyal Ds not by their party, just as america is still a great, special nation that’s just having some problems at the moment.

perhaps here lies part of the problem. leaving the R mouthpieces, jingoes and out and out fascists aside, it’s interesting to note how the vast majority of americans are wholly unable to come to terms with the notion that perhaps the country they inhabit is, well, pretty much like every other empire has been. in a word, icky. that’s if you are a citizen of said empire. if you are not, well, you take your chances; after all, the perception of safety amongst the citizenry of the empire is much more important than your life.

it may also be true that those of us who have come to the view that the US has become something much closer to a merchant of death have been too strident about making such arguments. after all, to some extent we are talking about feelings and beliefs and ideology, despite the many clever references to policy and pragmatism. or perhaps it is just a failure of imagination on my part; i just don’t get how it’s pragmatic to kill people in other countries for domestic political reasons. perhaps those are the same folks who say it’s pragmatic to write toothless bills and champion them as “reforms”. and since nothing else could be done, this was necessarily the best of all possible outcomes. because, you see, nothing else could be done. yes.

Memorial

It's Memorial Day weekend, and here in South Florida I was struck by the amount of gasoline being consumed both on and off the water, but mostly on. As I watched people scoot around atop the water while burning fuel that was appearing in the raw hundreds of miles away, I couldn't decide whether I was watching the equivalent of a last hurrah or playing with matches at a gas pump. Not really a surprise that humans aren't really wired for the long view; we'd never reproduce if we understood where we're driving the planet.

upside? or upside down

there's a post over at balloon juice about how the supposed "repeal" of the homophobic "don't ask, don't tell" policy of the US military was done away with by the Obama administration. leaving aside the argument that perhaps it was really Congress getting out in front of the WH, it does seem to moi that there are perhaps more important issues afoot with the military. but then i am a crazed loon. anyway, here's my comment from there. ignore my idiotic formatting fail, as the bold shouldn't be there (boxes are quoted text from today's NYT).

it is kinda silly to posit that a decision to hand over control of the issue to the people who oppose it (the armed forces) is somehow progress.

from the NYT

It was not clear whether the deal had secured the votes necessary to pass the House and Senate, but the agreement removed the Pentagon’s objections to having Congress vote quickly on repealing the contentious 17-year-old policy, which bars gay men and lesbians from serving openly in the armed services.

House Democratic leaders were meeting Monday night and considering taking up the measure as soon as Thursday. But even if the measure passes, the policy cannot not change until after Dec. 1, when the Pentagon completes a review of its readiness to deal with the changes. Mr. Obama, his defense secretary and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff would also be required to certify that repeal would not harm readiness.

so if you want to pretend that this is a big deal, feel free, but don’t be surprised when people like me say that most of you all seem to be as deluded as most Bush-GOP supporters were/are.

incidentally, it’s really rather telling that this is somehow a bigger deal than that the US continues to wage war against the rest of the planet. i, for one, would think that not killing people is more important but i guess in the land of permanent war that’s not the case, as long as it’s a non-discriminatory murder machine.

NYT today, again

The secret directive, signed in September by Gen. David H. Petraeus, authorizes the sending of American Special Operations troops to both friendly and hostile nations in the Middle East, Central Asia and the Horn of Africa to gather intelligence and build ties with local forces. Officials said the order also permits reconnaissance that could pave the way for possible military strikes in Iran if tensions over its nuclear ambitions escalate.

While the Bush administration had approved some clandestine military activities far from designated war zones, the new order is intended to make such efforts more systematic and long term, officials said.

nice to see that everyone has their priorities in place.

history is bunk! chapter n

So apparently the latest fad is arguing for repeal of the 17th Amendment, which provided for the direct election of U.S. Senators. Normally I don't bother with this stuff but for some reason I got a bit exercised about it. My guess is it's because I know just enough history of the Progressive Era to be able to say this argument is based on a lie. I don't think the people who are pushing for it will care, as they seem to be ok with the notion that everything is fungible. Except of course when it isn't or when it is an idea--not a fact. It is odd that we have entered an era where theories require consistency but facts can be disposed of. I guess the thinking is that if you are high enough on Maslow's hierarchy you can believe whatever you wish because you will be immune to the consequences. Or it's just the angry white folks' version of relativism.

Anyway, here's my cranky post from Balloon Juice

sigh. another crap idea backed by crap scholarship.

i'd like to agree with the poster who suggested the Rs have been reading too much Foucault, but i think it's more likely they've been listening to too much Frank Luntz. or is it watching too many reruns of "Mad Men"?

perhaps the teabaggers would do something else to promote their faith in a non-existent past. maybe they could do something like build temples to their pretend ideology instead of playing pretend with history. dealing with this crap is like dealing with "the protocols of the elders of zion": no matter how many times you smush it, it pops up again, like a stubborn weed. i am not certain who coined the term, but "zombie argument" is apt here.

so, a brief rebuttal:

a. citing yourself does not constitute proof

the Dean piece quoted above cites to a Zywicki book review from the mid 1990s that claims that a public choice analysis demonstrates that major interests wanted the 17th to pass. guess who he cites in supporrt of this idea? Jay Bybee (yeah, that Jay Bybee) and himself.

b. for lawyers, history IS bunk

what you have here is the usual lawyer trick of pretending that history (that is the actual facts) don't matter when you have a more clever explanation as to what occurred. and if the facts don't fit, well you just ignore them in favor of your overarching theory. as an aside, never trust a lawyer's argument about history, especially when, as here, the intent is to prove a theory. see, it's just a notion to them, and being "different" is a good way to be noticed and get tenure.

c. out damned facts!

here are a couple of those pesky facts: the initiative was taken up in the states, not at the federal level, where it was initially opposed in the senate. next, for this argument to be correct it would require that all of the supporters for the thirty years before it was passed including such favorites of the plutocrats as the Populist Party were secretly working for Standard Oil. i could keep going, but you get the drift. i would be remiss if i didn't include this famous line from The Atlantic (yes, that one):

The Standard has done everything with the Pennsylvania legislature, except refine it.

H.D. Lloyd, Story of A Great Monopoly, The Atlantic, March 1881, n.p.

d. reality bites

incidentally, the better explanation is that the move towards an expanding federal government was being made, but not that many were paying attention. those ideas would be picked up and used in the 1930s, not the 1910s (excepting some of Wilson's more reprehensible civil liberties manouvers--like Bush, he did a lot of damage whilst mouthing off about democracy).

anyway, to repeat, this is a clever lawyer trick, nothing more. it is an effort to pretend that history is bunk, in that it can be rewritten at will. an analogy would be the recurring argument that the Civil War was not about slavery.

Earth As Seen from Mars - Marvin the Martian's front lawn : citynoise.org

Earth As Seen from Mars - Marvin the Martian's front lawn : citynoise.org

Nice little planet ya got there....

You Are Where You Eat aka Linkfest

Via Ethicurian, U.S. Food Policy's Google Earth display of ten sites illustrative of US agriculture practices that you probably don't know about.
What I always find fascinating about these displays are the deep complexities in policy that arise over time, growing like an incredible organism until we arrive at the end point of an incomprehensible jumble of blinkered desire, or, to be a bit less polite, greed.

Linkfest, first of ?

I've decided that someone ought to get something out of my perusing the intertubes, and that might as we be you. So, the first in well, probably a lot of links:

Steven Colbert + Glenn Greenwald= Be still, my psyche!

In re: birthers. I have always been fond of Richard Hofstadter, and used to sit in his corner in Butler Library when reading. So I was pleased to find, via LGM this link to The Paranoid Style in American Politics.

Enjoy!

Notes From All Over

Hilzoy has decided to stop blogging. Sorry to see her go; I know of no one else who has been unfailingly rigorous in her attempts to deal with the distortions passed off as accurate in the blogosphere.

Like, no WAY!

CADIE rickrolled me.
OMG.

Meet the New Boss

Yeah, so this is a little obscure. My point is just that with the bailout of Fannie/Freddie (a) the US has to pay for it and (b) someone else called the shots. Ergo meet the new boss. Maybe it was like this in the Middle Ages, too: the king screws up so the peasants have to tithe more hay. Whee!
(video via Calculated Risk)

Post-Modernism Final Exam

Post-Modernism Final Exam

So apparently the GOP has decided to go all in on its post-modern vision of the US. I am continually impressed by the fervency that the Party displays in its message discipline and, really in The Message. The discipline perhaps comes more easily to everyone when you believe that there is no reality other than The Message, whatever it is these days.

Is this 1984? The Handmaid's Tale? Does it matter? I don't think so. The arch reason is that since it's all a construct, attempting to bind this nonsense to a static theory of anything is futile. The non-arch, and possibly the only non-trivial reason for not bothering with this overmuch is that because it is nothing more than whatever the reader chooses to read into it, it's not possible to make sense of it.

Another way to put this is that it is nothing but pure emotion. It doesn't play to anything other than a “narrative” that's already known. In other words, it's like telling a familiar story but with different names. Is a bedtime story with the names changed a different story? No, as anyone bored by the tale or a bored copyright lawyer can tell you. But it has one great great advantage over any other kind of story: we already know how it comes out. There's no worry, and we discount that at our peril.

And that is in a sense the genius of the GOP. They have managed to make the truly abnormal, the berserk fringe in American politics, the normal. It's a story that has been repeated so many times: “bad Democrats”, “someone is out to get us”, “they want to take something away”, “some nasty people are not like us”, ad nausem, that the only effort entailed in this is shoehorning the opposition into the right box. 2004 is perhaps the best example of this, as a pliable Democratic slate lacked the suppleness to evade categorization. My point is merely that like an old shoe this is a narrative that doesn't require much effort on the part of the narrator or reader.

There is one thing that it does require and here, I think, is the real GOP gamble. It requires credulousness on the part of the voter. Credulousness for authority. In 2000 the GOP was able to fool enough people into accepting an unknown. The situation is not quite the same in 2008 because the GOP has been in power since then and the current occupant of the White House is not loved. So the institutional authority that lends power to the narration (the deep voice, if you will) is missing. Thus we see the various efforts to create it out of whole cloth by incessant repetition of the Vietnam War, as if sitting in a cell in North Vietnam somehow confers … something. Again, my point is not that it confers judgement or experience. It's pretty obvious that in this case it does neither. But what it can do is provide a patina of respect, which can be jiggled a bit to look like authority. The point, again, is that if the narrative track is well-worn enough, it's only necessary to make it fit into the existing framework reasonably well. There are no calipers in the voting booth.

So we come to the point: can the GOP sustain a narrative when the facts that might otherwise sustain it point rather profoundly against the narrator? Success here requires both agility and luck, and IMO I think the franchise has run up against two real problems. The first is, as mentioned above, those pesky facts that seem to suggest that the narrator is not the benign all-powerful caretaker the weary anxious voter may take refuge under. The second problem is one the modern (post-Nixon) GOP has not encountered: an opponent who cannot be easily caricatured. Clinton, whatever his skills at oratory, could not resist giving the GOP a bottomless ammo dump. Obama is, in contrast, much more like the Teflon-coated Reagan so that there's really nothing that has stuck to him. Just as important is his grasp of the rhetorical niceties that had been the exclusive province of the GOP till now.

Faced with these perils, the GOP went all out for what it knows best: firming up its base whilst suggesting something else. Thus as any number of Important People have suggested the Palin selection was brilliant, though not for the reasons they have put forth. What I mean is that it was strategically (and, yes, tactically) brilliant in that it allows the GOP to tell the story it likes best—again. But whether it can do it with this particular pick and against this particular opponent at this particular point in time is a different question. Less than 172 hours after the news of the selection, Palin is dogged by stories that are generating friction with GOP efforts to fit her into the narrative. Can the friction be overcome? I doubt it, because all of Palin's problems are problems anyone can understand, and she cannot hide behind the White House. And if you cannot retell the narrative without someone interrupting all the time, then you've lost in the post-modern ring. The truly interesting question, of course, is whether the GOP is correct that politics in the US is, in the TV age, nothing more than a Punch and Judy show signifying nothing. It appears that's the case in good times. We are now entering a double-blind cognition test phase. Cognitive dissonance chin-ups, anyone?

The Nation's Open Letter

Here is a link to The Nation's open letter to Obama. Please take a look at it and if you agree, sign it or pass it on to someone. Thanks!


Update: Bad linky!

Caucus Of Course

Florida and Michigan should hold caucuses. Holding caucuses would give the vote back to these two states (and thus energize the Democratic voters in both states), and might—note might—eliminate a Clinton-Obama deadlock. There’s no guarantee that either contest would, but it is difficult to see what the downside of holding a caucus would be. Outside of Camp Clinton, no one seriously contends that either primary was representative, so it is difficult to argue that a do-over would be antidemocratic. Probably the biggest problem at this point would be the logistical issues, especially if the state parties are unwilling to take on the issue. Apparently the FDP is unwilling to hold a caucus; I leave to your imagination as to why that might be. Can the national Democrats get it together to hold a caucus in Florida and Michigan before the convention? Hard to say, though it looks as if there is no particular urgency on anyone’s part to make either caucus happen. It would be a nice reversal of fortune if these two states could have a role, given the closeness of the Democratic primary race.

History in the Making

It’s difficult to see turning points when they occur if they are not large events. Only later does the thread appear. But today might be different. Here’s some of what happened today:

The United States Senate proved unwilling to pass a measure restoring habeas corpus.
It also refused to articulate any direction regarding the tragedy in Iraq.
It did, however, manage to pass a resolution expressing unhappiness with a newspaper ad.

At the same time, the President held a news conference expressing confidence in the US economy.

While these events were transpiring, the US dollar fell to parity against the Canadian dollar.

For Sale:
One Country. Large, empty in spots. Cheap. Good views; some resources. Clowns included.

Meta-Paris

I confess: I was fascinated by visions of Paris this last Friday. More precisely, I was fascinated by the response to her physical return to the system. I thought at first it was just garden-variety schadenfreude but after a bit of reflection (such as it is) I think the episode speaks more to the importance the public attaches to an unspecified but deeply felt sense of fairness. I don’t think it’s that important, or even possible, to define exactly where this line lies; it’s probably not possible to do so, even if someone were foolish enough to try (hello?). But it does exist, and it’s dangerous to cross it, so I’m going to try to delineate its shape rather than its precise location.

We have three points this week for location purposes. First, we have Paris and the general outpouring of unhappiness at the idea that she would be released from jail before serving a certain number of days. I don’t think it matters whether its 23 days or 45 days; what matters is that it not be less than a week. In other words, her release triggered a sense of unfairness in that she should receive the same treatment as a similarly situated poor person might.

Point number two for the week was the defeat of the immigration bill. As recounted in the NYT a great number of “ordinary” people made their opposition to the immigration bill known, and the upshot was the bill’s defeat. For many people it seems that the question was one of fairness, as the story illustrates by quoting a woman who’d performed volunteer work but thought it was unfair to give out benefits to people who’d broken the rules. (Note to my three readers: I’m not taking a stance on a solution to the illegal immigration debacle here.)

Point number three is interesting because it comes from an unlikely source: a U.S. District Judge. I’m referring to the footnote where the judge, in the course of granting a motion for leave to file an amicus brief on behalf of Mr. Libby, suggests that the prominent conservative academics running to support Mr. Libby should also expect to be called upon to use their skills on behalf of less well-heeled defendants. Now, it’s true that strictly speaking, this is more snark than claim of fairness. But still, it makes its point by bluntly comparing the spectacle of these academics rushing to Libby’s defense with the lack of resources that other, poorer defendants face in the system. (There’s another take on the Paris-Scooter juxtaposition at Balkinization.)

Taking these three points together, what we have are three examples of an unwillingness to accept a degree of unfairness that seems beyond the norm. In other words, two of these events roused the general public, and the third roused a District Judge to protest elite “business as usual.” What’s my point? Just this: Americans will tolerate a great deal of structural unfairness, perhaps in the service of particular ideologies, preferences, or wants, but somewhere there’s a notion of fairness that kicks in when pressed hard enough. I know of no one who wouldn’t agree that one’s experience in the legal system is likely to be a better one if one has more money. Most people accept that, just as they accept a certain amount of imbalance in other aspects of their lives. At some point, however, the limit of tolerance is reached, and the cry of “unfair” goes up. Why does this matter? It matters because it’s useful to get a sense of where the bottom line in unfairness resides; it’s a fault line through American life. Perhaps all these episodes demonstrate is that the floor of unfairness is pretty low. Still, it’s reassuring to know that there’s some point beyond which even Americans resist the call of self-indulgence.

Things to Thank the Bush Administration For

Good Faith Matters.
Perhaps.

If there’s anything that may come of the various GOP attempts to destroy government at the Federal level, perhaps one of the most salient will be a recognition that institutions are more than just a collection of people operating under political authority. The Bush administration has operated government as if it is politics all the way down. A corollary of this kind of thinking is treating the unwritten norms of a government institution—EPA, DOJ, FEMA, for example—as if they had no effect or weight. This includes the apparently quaint notion that one holding a position of authority should act in good faith. The end result has been obvious but what I want to point out is not the obvious damage such as the raw incompetence, chicanery, fraud, self-dealing and theft this approach has brought about, but rather the insidious but more long-lasting harm to the mores of the institutions the Administration has assaulted. In other words, as Mr. Rove has repeatedly demonstrated, it’s possible to destroy an institution by refusing to accept good faith as a constraint on the exercise of power. Comey’s testimony this week demonstrates this doctrine in action: when you don’t get the answer you want, just try to game the system to achieve a different outcome. In this particular instance, apparently the gambit did not work but that was probably due to the threat of wholesale resignations. It is a sad but revealing comment on the decay of official Washington that it took a dramatic scene out of the Godfather movies to make at least a few official voices recognize that at least a few people in positions of power still believed that the government had some meaning independently of the individuals holding power at the moment. What the defenders of the status quo (e.g., what was called in an earlier day the Establishment) appear to have, finally, realized is that at the end of the day if the people in power simply refuse to act in good faith, no governmental body will be anything other than a Party apparatus. Time will tell whether it is possible to recover from this poisonous self-dealing.

I am of the opinion that if we as a country continue to exalt cleverness without compunction ("Yes, you're clever. Now sit down.") whatever democracy in the US is left will be destroyed. The remnant will be a shell—a nice marble façade, but a false front. Eventually the gap between pretense (accountable, democratic government) and reality (political power exercised without accountability) will be so great as to resemble the gap between the Soviet constitution and the Soviet state. I don't care to speculate on what kind of havoc that situation would


Here, and here are two of the most thoughtful posts I've seen on the Comey testimony and its implications.

Better Late Than Never

So I haven't written for a while. My bad, but I haven't had much to contribute to the ether of late, so it hasn't been a real loss. (This is where someone might insert an emoticon, if they so desired.) Generally, I don't post when someone I read has already said what I was thinking: I have plenty of ego, but I don't feel the need to be an echo chamber. I am making an exception now because I am finding only a few bloggers have made the following point.

It appears that the U.S. of A. (you know, us) is planning to attack Iran. There's plenty of chatter about it, and the administration has made a series of maneuvers that look as if they are designed to provide a rationale for an attack. I don't want to argue about those points. The greater problem, at least for me, is that the U.S. seems to have adopted the Bush Administration's argument in favor of wars of aggression without any serious discussion. In other words, while there are discussions about the validity of evidence regarding Iran's intentions, and the consequences of an attack on Iran, almost no one is making the point that the U.S. has no business attacking nations that have not attacked it. I find it astounding that there's no discussion on this point in the mainstream press; so far as I can tell, the discussions center on procedural details and policy questions about the effects of an attack. No one seems to question the notion that the U.S. can bomb another country that has not attacked it; the only issue is whether it's a good idea to do so. Have we all been so brainwashed that we don't even stop to think about what we are doing? Can we really have arrived at the point where our only concern about waging war is whether it's good for us?

So what to do? Well, if you think the U.S. should not be engaged in these kinds of actions then I encourage you to write to your representatives and let them know that you are opposed to making offensive war. Period. Don't give the game away by demanding that the U.S. require more evidence before engaging in more war. The question is whether the U.S. should wage offensive war. I would have thought the answer was no. It may well be no. We might be misguided enough to say yes (it's not as if we haven't done it before). But at least we ought to try to have a discussion about it, no?

Politics: for children only?

The Washington Post has an exceptionally silly editorial today about Gen. Pinochet. Aside from being disgenuous tripe that, as usual, attempts in an underhanded way to glorify authoritarianism, it throws in an even sillier attempt to claim that Jeanne Kirkpatrick was correct. Both claims are so wrong-headed as a factual matter that I find myself being once again puzzled by the willingness of "grownups" to write and publish material that belongs in a high school diary. As usual, I fall back on my theory that only narcissism explains this kind of silliness.

The Post had a great deal of credibility. Too bad they have decided to throw it away on conservative crack binging.

Hope Springs Eternal

I took a peek at the Althouse site today.(My bad, but I was curious to see if I was right. Fortunately for yours truly, I was. Whew!) What I saw there gave me some hope, in a kinda perverse way. Instead of actually talking about something remotely resembling an election or issues, the posters there were discussing John Kerry. If, in a covertly rabid partisan blog you have to resort to bashing someone who isn't even running, well then maybe there's hope after all.

Also reading those wacky posts cleared out the bile from reading the WP's bit about how the President of the United States said this: "However they put it, the Democrat approach in Iraq comes down to this: The terrorists win and America loses."

No, I didn't make that up. The President of the United States actually said that about the opposition party. Why not just have them declared enemy combatants and be done with it?
At least the ugliness that is the GOP machine is finally out in the open. It's like a sci-fi story where the attractive human is revealed as horrible ugly monster. As the LAT pointed out the other day, even Nixon (Nixon!) never went this far. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/la-na-outlook29oct29,0,2375674.column

Maybe this is the right's version of the destructive mayhem of the early 1970s? Only, since they are already in power, they want to take all of us down with them.

The Althouse site itself also appears to be becoming a pallid imitation of Red State. Perhaps they could effect a civil union. The Red Staters can do the heavy thinking and Ann can do Styles. It'd be just like the NYT. How nice!

Forget? I hope not.

Via Altercation http://mediamatters.org/altercation/ I came across this parody:
http://www.thewarofthewords.net/

Quite well done. But I confess that my primary initial emotion ran more along the lines of "humans can be pretty scary" than anything else. Sometimes it seems like technology just gives us the power to be scary messianic idiots more quickly. And I do mean all of us.