I don’t think communications law will ever catch up with the technology unless
we can make our government functional again; aside from our antiquated laws
still geared towards broadcasting, we still do not have adequate regulation for
the internet, largely because our campaign finance and electoral systems are so
screwed up by big money, much of it made in that new sector.
These folks don’t seem to know fact from their own fiction, Mr. Strauss; their
freedoms are the kind that can and will hurt everybody. Besides, they make
money on their lies because their bigoted readers eat them up. It is going to
take functional democratic government to put them in their place.
A fellow mechanic at a place I once worked, a German, once told me they should
have put all of us in the ovens while they had the chance; he insisted
afterwards it was a joke, that his girlfriend was Jewish and appreciated such
humor. I sort of doubted that.
I never considered myself Jewish growing up, but many of those around me did,
both Jews and Gentiles, friends and enemies, because Kahn is a German Jewish
surname; it is a much bigger part of me now, far more than my quarter of Jewish
family heritage. My paternal grandfather, who might as well have been an
atheist (he died before we could have that discussion when I was only 4 years
old), was certainly 100% Jew, but aside from knowing of that heritage, I never
gave it much thought until I became aware of the hatred of Jews through overt
and covert acts of prejudice against me and my family, acts that I expect to
continue for the foreseeable future. My paternal uncle changed his name from
Kahn to an English name and he raised a kid as antisemitic as anyone I’ve ever
met with no real understanding of our Jewish heritage; it boggles the mind.
My immediate family is not particularly religious, but I we all attended
Unitarian Universalist churches at various times in our lives. I remember that
my Sunday school was pretty much like courses in comparative religion and that
one of our ministers took us to his genetics lab, showing us things like
pulling a glass tube over a Bunsen burner and breaking it to make a tool to
inject fruit flies with various stuff. Every UU church and congregation is a
little different, but they share the basics, principles that most hope can draw
all human beings together in peace and understanding. I went on occasion when
my niece was growing up and probably would go still if I had had kids of my
own, but have not so much lately; religion, even my Unitarian Universalism
seems problematic to me, but not as problematic as “church” is to the
alcoholics I have known, where they can break down all the barriers to
fellowship or call up and Satan and break some heads (I knew some rough bars,
too). I guess as long as you don’t go overboard, your local bar is as good as
any church while your body holds out.
Naw. Religion, any religion or all religion, is the problem, the source of all
conflict aside from inequitable use of the world's resources.
Knowing who and what we are and about that of the billions of years of our life
heritage and its other progeny besides us, is the solution.
Let our laws reflect whom and what we really are and the world, meaning us I
guess, will start being more hospitable to all life on Earth, even those damn
[insert your least favorite ethnicity here].
Boy, I can’t wait to get off this low carb diet so I can have a beer or a belt
of some good whisky again; I wonder if pot would help me. Send? Delete? Yup.
This super organism is going to bed.