Where Do We Get These Power-Hungry Creeps?

As long as we elect the Ignorant (and the Austin/San Antonio suburban region seems to be full of them, judging from its representative in Congress), we will have to be ever vigilant against the enemies of the Internet. Said representative has not only sworn to continue the fight for Internet censorship, has authored a moral-panic bill to spy on every single Internet user in the name of protecting the kiddies from perverts.

Speaking of the power-hungry, Chris Dodd, ex-senator and now mouthpiece of the MPAA, let out a refreshing burst of arrogance on Fox News last Friday, directly threatening politicians who had taken bribes from the entertainment industry for backing out of their support for CLOACA. There is now a petition drive to have him and his gang investigated by the Federal government for bribery and corruption.

Evidently the entertainment industry, including the big press (New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and the murdochists at the Wall Street Journal and Chicago Sun-Times) seem to believe the resistance to CLOACA is a publicity problem: [I]f only you moron internet kids couldn't actually say what you want!. Yes, folks: Those head-in-another-world apelings think the resistance to Internet damage and censorship is coming from children!

These entertainment industry types, so wonderfully depicted in Bendis' Fortune and Glory, are the same people who, in their own form of Orwellian doublethink, mock both the denizens of Flyover Country and the idea that Southern California and Metro New York function as de facto independent nations separate from, and parasitical to, the rest of the United States — that very same Flyover Country.

The following quote would sound like it came out of a pamphlet from the ultra-nationalist John Birch Society, were it written in the 1960's or 1970's. The problem for the CLOACA supporters, subjects of the quote, is that the Birchers were never taken seriously, whereas the enemies of CLOACA were loud enough, and numerous enough, to kill its two bills on Internet harm and censorship that the supporters wanted so badly.

But much more to the point: we're talking about all of the major media companies in the world who were in support of this thing, and they're seriously claiming that they didn't have the means to get their message out? Who the hell do they think they're fooling? They own all the major TV networks, all the cable news networks, the majority of top magazines, a bunch of top radio stations … and most of those media outlets refused to give critics of these bills the time of day. But suddenly they're claiming they couldn't get their message out? Give me a break.

The problem for the CLOACA supporters is that they controlled the American broadcast media, but not the Americans on the Internet. That was the true reason for CLOACA, so that big media would be able to control the Internet. But, unlike television, the Internet is not a passive medium; it is an active one. If something happens that the denizens of the Internet do not like, they react in angry and in massive numbers. The supporters of CLOACA, ignorant of the Internet as were their paid congressmen, were floored.

The supporters of CLOACA could not believe that they could not get their message out; their enemies would not listen to that message because that message is a lie. Repeat: That message is a lie. The entertainment industry has been making a living out of lies, and getting away with it, for so long that when a single lie brings about outrage, it could not believe what was happening.