Private to Dierdre Burkegood_as_goldyJuly 25 2006, 11:44:32 UTC
I'm glad I have done more than simply impress at least one person with this. To be honest I was more reacting in anger that attempting to reason in any structured fashion. But, I see my proclivities have shown through despite this.
As to deeply disconcerting. . . Deeply disconcerting is par for the ministry is it not? Besides which, I had thought it best to confine my criticisms to more civil uses of language. Something I'm sure you're aware of as one cog in the Rube Goldberg machine of our government.
It is a complex mess we find ourselves in, and not one solved by simple analogies, unless that simple analogy is to throw the babies out with the bathwater, as it were, and start all over again from first principles. The only commonsense option. If Anarchism, Communism, Marxism, Fascism, Consumerism, Nihlism, Democracy, Oligarchy, and Tyranny have failed to produce a society that works for more than a week then the problem is not that we lack the right 'ism,' it is that the very building blocks of our society are the wrong size and shape.
George Orwell said Control is Controlled by by its need to control. More and more this becomes true in both the magical and muggle worlds. Our systems of power relations are completely out of whack. On the one hand we require uneaven distribution of wealth and power, and on the other we legislate those who have both in some idiotic attempt to retain stability in the system. Slowly but surely our government becomes so full of laws and paperwork that it begins to slow down. New laws are created, not by lawmakers but by crafty opportunists (good and bad), who seize loopholes which are then enshrined in law or hastily patched up. In the end everything is legislated until everything not forbidden is compulsory and everything not compulsory is forbidden. Forive me, but I cannot recall at present just who penned that nugget of wisdom.
The system was never stable, but those who penned its initial charter could not stand to share the same position as the average person. They offered themselves opportunities which they denied to others as a way of keeping power and wealth in their hands. That may not be true of the ministers of today, but the strings of our 'beloved' ministry are still puppeteered by people of similar stock. Something which you may or may not know about given your surname.
Marx and Proudhon had the shape but not the colour, they assumed that politics ocurr in a psychological vacuum, where this is the very reason governments grind to a halt: Emotion. Nobody is above feeling and it is ridiculous to assume that policy is not made and broken without some form of personal investment.
As to deeply disconcerting. . . Deeply disconcerting is par for the ministry is it not? Besides which, I had thought it best to confine my criticisms to more civil uses of language. Something I'm sure you're aware of as one cog in the Rube Goldberg machine of our government.
It is a complex mess we find ourselves in, and not one solved by simple analogies, unless that simple analogy is to throw the babies out with the bathwater, as it were, and start all over again from first principles. The only commonsense option. If Anarchism, Communism, Marxism, Fascism, Consumerism, Nihlism, Democracy, Oligarchy, and Tyranny have failed to produce a society that works for more than a week then the problem is not that we lack the right 'ism,' it is that the very building blocks of our society are the wrong size and shape.
George Orwell said Control is Controlled by by its need to control. More and more this becomes true in both the magical and muggle worlds. Our systems of power relations are completely out of whack. On the one hand we require uneaven distribution of wealth and power, and on the other we legislate those who have both in some idiotic attempt to retain stability in the system. Slowly but surely our government becomes so full of laws and paperwork that it begins to slow down. New laws are created, not by lawmakers but by crafty opportunists (good and bad), who seize loopholes which are then enshrined in law or hastily patched up. In the end everything is legislated until everything not forbidden is compulsory and everything not compulsory is forbidden. Forive me, but I cannot recall at present just who penned that nugget of wisdom.
The system was never stable, but those who penned its initial charter could not stand to share the same position as the average person. They offered themselves opportunities which they denied to others as a way of keeping power and wealth in their hands. That may not be true of the ministers of today, but the strings of our 'beloved' ministry are still puppeteered by people of similar stock. Something which you may or may not know about given your surname.
Marx and Proudhon had the shape but not the colour, they assumed that politics ocurr in a psychological vacuum, where this is the very reason governments grind to a halt: Emotion. Nobody is above feeling and it is ridiculous to assume that policy is not made and broken without some form of personal investment.
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