I pay for my music.

I know… it’s a relic of the past.  Nobody pays for music anymore and, at least according to some of my friends who aren’t producing and selling music to pay the bills, nobody should pay for music.  They’ve told me that “charging for music is the old model, and the artists need to find a new model where they get paid but we don’t pay them.”  I’m not sure what that means, but OK.

I’ve had plenty of heated debates with buddies and strangers about the values of those who choose to not illegally download and share media.  I don’t do it because I’m on some trip to be righteous and holy.  If I had the ability, I’d send the RIAA and MPAA lawyers to the unemployment line tomorrow.  It’s not about the law, either.  While I do attempt to keep myself out of jail, pirating music isn’t exactly a risky proposition.  The odds of someone busting down the door and confiscating my computer are pretty slim.

So why don’t I do it?  Because I balance my demand for new music with my budget for purchasing it, then I reward the artists whose material I want by spending my hard-earned income on a copy of said material.  Do they get their fair cut?  No, but as I said… I’m not in support of the RIAA.  I’m in support of the artist, and my part of the bargain is buying the material.  By copying it, I’d be doing even less to support them than I am now, and until that changes, I will stay legit.

Tomorrow, websites across the country will black out in support of SOPA.  The concept is to demonstrate the potential effects of an internet that becomes censored by an overzealous entertainment industry.  SOPA aims to stop piracy the same way an F5 tornado aims to rearrange the throw pillows on your couch.  Wikipedia, Reddit, and even Google are getting in on the effort.  This is massive online demonstration of a caliber we have never seen in the United States and it has the bill creators and the industry lawyers issuing nasty press releases, clearly demonstrating their fear of the truth being revealed.

Do I believe that piracy is an issue?  Yes, I do.  I believe that it’s important, serious, rampant, damaging to the artists and needs to be toned down.  I support stiff penalties for sharing, common sense smaller penalties for downloading, and protections put in place to help make piracy more difficult.  This puts me at odds with many out there and I understand and respect the differences of opinion.

That said, I oppose SOPA because it takes a legitimate problem and attempts to correct it by placing nukes on every corner and giving the big red button to the bastard stepchild of Kim Jong il and the crazy cat lady from the Simpsons.

(By the way… mentioning that copyrighted character in my blog could put me at risk of having my entire site shut down without recourse or trial under SOPA.  Now you’re beginning to get the picture.)

Regardless of any difference of opinion on piracy in general, it is clear that SOPA, PIPA, and the more recent OPEN are all threats to the structure and openness of the internet.  It is important we keep the government (and indeed, the lawyers for the music industry) from manipulating our democratized network of free speech and open information.  This is why I will be joining the major sites above and thousands of smaller sites around the country and the world in blacking out my site on January 18th, 2012.

It is up to us to keep our government in check.  Remember:  They work for us, not the other way around.

(Updated:  Added a missing “not” in an early paragraph that made me sound silly.)

If you’re a conservative and you support Ron Paul, we’re cool.  It’s not too often I see your side de-escalating wars and ending persecution of marijuana users, so I’ll allow it.

If you’re progressive and you support Ron Paul, we need to talk.

Like, really talk.

I make Facebook posts about the war, the economy, whatever political topic of the day and the response is “RON PAUL 2012.”  OK, I get it, you’re a supporter.  It’s good to show loyalty.  I post about my vacation or what I had for dinner and the response is “RON PAUL 2012.”  Maybe, I think, you’ve hit your head and developed some sort of amnesia where you immediately forget what the topic was and that’s your reboot phrase that automatically rolls off your fingers.  I post about some silly old lady at the grocery store who insists on paying in loose change… “RON PAUL 2012.”  WHY ARE YOU REPEATING YOURSELVES?

It never says anything else, either.  Just that.  In all caps, regardless of the topic, with no context.  Sometimes, if someone’s feeling especially frisky, there are exclamation points or boldface.  I see it on Newsvine, Twitter, Reddit, comments on every major discussion site.. I even saw it written on a whiteboard at work.

I get it.  Military intervention is expensive and undiplomatic.  Throwing pot smokers in prison is a waste of resources and a pretty ridiculous excuse to terminate someone’s right to freedom.  Some of the things the guy stands for are positives.  It’s not too often that anyone stands up for these things, so you want to shout from the rooftops how much you love this awesome “libertarian” that seems to share so many of your values.

How, though, do you justify his continued wet dream of deregulating Wall Street and allowing unchecked corruption to surpass even the vile criminal conduct of the ten years leading up to the crash?  How do you, as a progressive who cares about the people of this country, defend a man who wants to shut down the departments responsible for ensuring food safety and environmental responsibility when contamination and environmental disasters are at their worst point in our lifetimes?  How do you, as intellectuals in a country of anti-intellectual conservatives, explain your support for a man who thinks the entire educational system should be turned over to for-profit corporations?

This guy is the epitome of the anti-progressive.  He’s literally off-the-charts Sarah Palin nuts.  He has spoken against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (the one that allows blacks to eat in the same restaurant and drink from the same fountain as whites) because it “infringed on private property rights,” meaning it infringed on the right of business owners to kick out what I can only assume Mr. Paul refers to privately as the Negroes.  He stated the country “would be better off” without the government stepping in and stopping discrimination and that he would have voted against the CRA itself.  He was the only person in the entire Congress to vote against  nonbinding resolution commemorating the 40th anniversary of the act.

On Congressman Paul’s own website, he asks “Why should anyone be forced to subsidize the medical care of others?”  This progressive would like to answer with a question of my own: “In what self-righteous Ayn Rand-inspired dystopia would people need to be forced to help each other when they’re sick or injured?

This man is not even in the ballpark of progressivism.  He is a dangerous, crazy, uninspired, Objectivist superconservative that would literally hand the keys over to the private sector at a time when we need a strong and effective public sector.  Ron Paul is absolutely not what this country needs.

To which I’m sure a least a few of you will respond with nothing more than “RON PAUL 2012.”

“When even one American — who has done nothing wrong — is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth, then all Americans are in peril.”

– President Harry S. Truman

Americans are known far and wide for their apathy toward government, employers, and everyone else that plays a role in deciding their fate.  One well-known example is the vacation gap which sees a country like Germany providing 30 vacation days per year to all their workers while Americans are often afraid to take the mere one or two weeks they’re provided for fear of not being seen as a team player, which led to a very interesting observation by a German blogger living in America: “Maybe that is the reason that many Americans never been out of the country and at times there isn’t much understanding for foreign cultures.”

There’s something to be said for the concept that Americans are apathetic because of the mistaken belief that all other countries are undemocratic, oppressed, impoverished and war-torn.  In a post I once read about the “ten reasons why America is the best country in the world,” the top two reasons were democracy and freedom.  The author opined that America has shined as the beacon of freedom for two centuries in an unfree world, that America by definition means “free.”

Notwithstanding that pop culture has taught us that drug and sex trade laws in the Netherlands are lax, most Americans don’t realize that country also allows gay marriage and free speech of individuals (but, unlike America, their free speech laws exempt commercial entities… corporations aren’t people across the ocean).

The dirty little secret is that most of Europe, Australia and a large part of Asia is indeed free and even democratic. In many cases, their freedom and democracy actually outdoes our own, and any threats to their liberties are handled swiftly, like last year when French riot police nearly went on strike after being told they couldn’t drink on the job.  In Europe, they know that if you give the government an inch of authority that they may take a mile.. so there is no compromise.  The people win or the people strike.  Such a change in America would..

.. Well, we can’t answer that because virtually every employer in the United States bans drinking on the job and drug tests everyone they hire regardless of relevance to the job.  Freedom!

So what would make Americans strike?

In 1995, eventual Vice President Joe Biden and others drafted what would eventually become the USA PATRIOT Act.  Put into effect in 2001 under the guise of protection from 9/11-style terror attacks, this well-prepared and far-reaching legislation gave the government powers that would have made Mussolini wet himself.  The president who said he would prefer the United States were a dictatorship suddenly ran an administration with the authority to snoop on all communications, medical and financial records, even library book records with no warrant, no probable cause, and no restrictions.

Nothing.

In 2008, the American economy collapsed as the outright fraud and criminal behavior of Wall Street came to light.  Millions were foreclosed upon by ruthless bankers who promised the world and, as they moved out, investors felt the second punch from the industry as their AAA-rated bonds were found to be loaded with mortgages that were likely to fail.  As mentioned in previous posts on this blog, banks were even foreclosing on houses they had never held papers on.  In the course of all these, the federal government determined that a financial infusion was needed to save people.. not the people being kicked out on the street but the bankers that had screwed everyone.  Homeowners, investors, retirees… millions had played by the rules and were screwed by the bankers… then had their tax money diverted to the same bankers.

Nothing.

A few Americans have been jarred from their comas.  The Occupy movement has shown promise at fighting back against the revolving door between the government and the private industry it is supposed to regulate.  In response, wide swaths of the underpaid, overworked middle class have come out swinging… in favor of their oppressors.  As police in military gear assaulted thousands around the country, the media portrayed the movement as college students looking for handouts instead of getting a job.

Not only nothing, but we are actively beating down the roots of our own revolution.

OK… we got this.  This one will result in an outright riot.

Last week the Senate passed the National Defense Authorization Act which literally allows the military to kidnap and imprison American citizens indefinitely.  With no due process.  For any reason or no reason at all.  With no recourse.

Nothing?  Seriously?  OK… how about this…

Three days ago, the House took control of this bill and voted by a margin of 406 to 17 to make the discussions surrounding this bill private, kept sealed from the American public which elected them.

And guess what, folks:  Still nothing.

So you tell me, what will it take?

Not far up the light rail here in Minnesota is a group of perhaps five or six people at their lowest and a few hundred on the nice days, holding up signs and shouting their concerns about a society that has forgotten about the collective in an attempt to wake those around them to the corruption that has infiltrated every level of government and regulatory agency.  They’re good people with good hearts and a worthy, important goal and I’ve spent some time with them (including rainy nights in a sleeping bag), but nothing recently.  Why, with my support of many of their most popular goals, am I not participating in the occupation today?

America is an interesting place.  I read anecdotes on a daily basis from our European brothers and sisters incredulously recounting how they saw American flags on cars and houses all up and down Main Streets and we even said a Pledge of Allegiance to our flag (which, for Americans who don’t know, is considered crass and xenophobic by many non-Americans).  We have created a life where you can get by under normal circumstances, which pacifies, but you can’t get ahead in most social situations and you can never be prepared for a crash.  We’re on a comfortable trapeze without a net but most Americans never look down and consider what would happen if we fell tomorrow.

With the occupiers, though, it’s different.  These folks see major wrongs within our society that they protest because they actually want real, tangible change.  They see that the net’s missing.  They are aware that despite its comforts, the trapeze of the working class is frayed and ready to snap.  For millions of Americans, it already has, and the outright cockiness of those who had been screwing with the ropes enrages them.  They saw the bankers pulling it apart, thread by thread, but nobody would listen until their own personal ropes frayed enough to finally break.

Why was it so difficult to make everyone look down at the lack of a net, or up at the ruling class working to fray the ropes?  Over the past thirty years, a cadre of influential charlatans such as Milton Friedman and Ronald Reagan have pushed an Atlas Shrugged-derived concept of self-righteousness, ruthlessness and carelessness onto American society.  They ushered in an era where each individual was taught that, according to Objectivism, “the proper moral purpose of one’s life is the pursuit of one’s own happiness.”  This damaged manner of thinking has become an alarmingly popular attribute even within the struggling working class, despite the dismissal of Ayn Rand’s book in 1957 as a hateful lesson in greed.

So we have a small number of compassionate, altruistic folks fighting a populace of greed and self-interest.  The challenge here is clear, but as momentum continued to build I became quite excited that this was our time.  Indeed, Massachusetts last week sued five large banks and a foreclosure mill for their fraudulent practices in that state as more people became sympathetic to a cause that featured Marines, former police chiefs, elderly ladies and librarians being pepper sprayed, assaulted with rubber bullets, and locked up in jail beaten and bloodied by a police force that forgot who they were supposed to serve and protect.

Sadly, there’s an issue with the Occupy movement that is making it difficult to build momentum.  Democracy is messy and I realize that.  However, democracy is not about ending power structure or always having unanimity.  Democracy needs representatives, branding, an organizational structure, and some concrete, direct messaging.  We aren’t going to accomplish anything by requiring a unanimous decision or by maintaining an unorganized structure with no means to release official statements or direct demands.

What the Occupy movement needs right now is structure.  They do not need to limit voices to do that; the leadership structure should be designed in a way that the individuals on camera are always representing the majority will of the people at the camp and will be quickly replaced if that doesn’t happen.  As long as the people control the message, it is not inappropriate to have a specific group of individuals delivering it.  We need trained media personalities, trained public relations experts, copywriters, producers… we need more structural organization for keeping the parks looking tidy.  We need to look like organized, clean, hard-working and respectful Americans.

What we need next is a voting structure that allows everyone involved to participate but does not require unanimous decisions.  Democracy is about majority, not unanimity.  Issues should be brought forward, explained in detail, voted on and passed or failed based on majority rule.  With this, we would be able to more quickly develop concrete demands and demonstrate that we are not on the fringe of society.  We are organized and ready to ensure our demands are met.

Then, finally, we need to focus on ONE DEMAND at a time.  We can’t have ten different campaigns going at once.  Base it one majority vote.  It’s a simple process:

• Collect the proposed demands and hold a majority vote on each to determine if the group supports it
• Hold a vote on each passed demand to ask if it should be the first demand
• The one with the highest percentage of “yes” votes becomes the first demand until it is resolved
• Hold another vote on each remaining passed demand to determine the next action