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Midget McNamara

By Al Schumann on Friday January 7, 2011 09:20 PM

Woody Mattchuck says:

What we need, I think, is some form of American gendarmerie—a quasi-military federal organization specialized in police/security functions rather than finding and killing bad guys per se. Such a force would, unlike today’s military, have a valuable peacetime domestic role to play as a flexible auxiliary police force that could assist high-crime jurisdictions with the kind of temporary infusion of extra personnel that can help push crime rates down to a lower equilibrium. A “surge” if you will. But it would also be prepared to deploy abroad in the case of contingencies. The regular military would be big enough to beat an adversary (i.e., a lot smaller than the regular one) but it would need to call on the gendarmes (who naturally would need a less French name) to conduct an occupation. This means we wouldn’t be caught lacking capacity in a real emergency, but since the gendarmes would be performing a useful peacetime domestic service politicians would (appropriately) feel that initiating situations that require their mobilization is high cost situation that ought to be avoided if possible.

Via

I thought we already had the proposed paramilitary. In fact, I thought we had several; some of them in the "private sector", the rest under notional government management. Maybe he wants to add another one? Regardless, it's a phenomenally stupid idea. It's not worth arguing on the merits because there is no merit whatsoever. We already know how badly it works out. The military budget doesn't get cut. It increases. The use of the military increases too. The official and quasi-official paramilitary groups burgeon, demand more license, a bigger remit and more money, and they get it. The process yields more conflict and more criminality. This results in demands for bigger budgets, even more license and a remit that's better defined by what it doesn't cover than what it does.

I consider Mr. Mattchuck an idiot, for obvious reasons, but he's got some use as a bellwether. His nose—his shit-covered nose—is attuned to the "deep thinking" trends in the Democratic Party. I expect to see this cretinous proposal of his catapulted into the party's propaganda stream.

Comments (14)

Yggles functions as bellwether. He's too stupid to say other than what he means, and too self-consciously smart to mean any other thing.

He advocates the liberals and "progressive" line, but he lacks the audacity to pretend it isn't awful and a little bit trite; equally, he isn't clever enough to pretend that the liberal project isn't as authoritarian as its conservative counterpart.

op:

i must admit i'm surprised
at chucky cheese here

this is blatant neo moynihanism

"occupations "

i guess i didn't knew he was a humanist storm trooper type
i took him for more of
an ivy league boy scout of empire
then this tubby freak geek type ...
death's head with a donald duck mask

op:

stupid unclever ... chuck ??

i guess this
implies you're smart and clever
or at least that's how i take your lines


mr crow
the tinker bell denier

Comments about someone else are not also comments about self, Priest.

op:

crow
i'm satisfied with a little inductive hunching
at least in your case

one hardly handles black boxes with great care
unless they're self labeled

fragile ...this side up

Al Schumann:

The 'chuckster is an exemplar, in my opinion. He's taken a good education and leveraged it into a career that's consistent with the educational intent. The content he produces is horrible and cruel—Neo-Moynihamism indeed. It's a vision of a giant, well-policed Skinner Box, with sensible nutritional guidelines as recommended by the First Lady.

Owen, I find Crow's opinion of the 'chuckster insightful. The Harvard qualities are a neurotic stew and make for marketable punditry.

op:

mad Al
i agree
crow has the goods on upchuck

his dream of
a full figured
boots on the ground
soft palmed hard knuckled
wog make over show ...
well its indeed the essential product of ivy training
so mnakedly so as crow points out
as to come across
like a rippin' good fart at prayers

op:

speaking of operant conditioning
the essentially dialectical dynamics of our brains seems to fuck up this wet dream of top down control
from jump street

of course this works both ways

hidden devils are as likely to hatch out
of gos-prog total gulag
agit prop
as angels
out of
mad-ave broad or narrow casting

both yin and yang have their day
just can't keep the otherside down

Al Schumann:

Owen, I'm plagued by that tar pit. There is no way to hang on to whatever you create without some kind of coordinated backing that can deliver violent opposition to imperialists. It can be pretty loose, but that reaches a point where autonomy works to the advantage of command and control aggressors. They can take losses, almost endlessly, while they patiently, inexorably strangle the economic basis for autonomy.

Pacifistic communitarianism has some potential, but the discipline it takes is out of reach for most people. Success over generations literally requires totalitarian religion. It's enforced by democratic consensus and shunning, rather than direct personal violence, but that makes it no prettier.

So what's left? All I think of is a bit of cautious, opportunistic, non-violent nibbling and the patient creation of a slippery, resilient economic base that can make the extant order less immediately relevant.

Boink:

Hey, Al, could you look into this item for me?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/private-memo-exposes-us-fears-over-wikileaks-2177041.html

Maybe this is how the empire will crumble from within.

Al Schumann:
What metrics do you use to measure “trustworthiness” without alienating employees?

Do you use psychiatrist and sociologist to measure:
• Relative happiness as a means to gauge trustworthiness?
• Despondence and grumpiness as a means to gauge waning trustworthiness?

MSNBC has the full memo and it is indeed painstaking in the number of passive aggressive questions-posed-as-orders. There are hundreds of them. It's lunatic in its thoroughness.

Good stuff. Thanks, Boink. They're obsessed with junk psychology. It's completely unworkable, of course. I suspect it will be widely ignored. Answering all the "questions" would take months—time that's better spent spying on the Society of Friends or offering explosives to entrap deranged teenagers.

I swear: A couple of years ago, I barely even knew who Matty was. Can somebody pleae help me un-remember now? Sweet Jeebus, what a creepy little specimen he is!

Al Schumann:

Ms. Xeno, I recommend good liquor and good music. They may not give you a salutary amnesia, but there's no harm trying.

True. Except now that I've sworn off using Amazon or PayPal for a time, I'll have to get up off my rear and actually go to music stores again to buy music-- assuming that I ever make money again. :p

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