The State

Hand twin?

I'll answer the question seriously some other time.

The "avant-rock" thing was an inside joke (known only to me) regarding this AWFUL article I bitched about on my website. (The bitch is still on the front page, if you're (A Href="http://www.popshots.org">curious.

Damn it, people, we're off-track again!

I also want to close with the following State in-joke: "I'm outta here."

This seems like a sort of lame excuse for having the state do nothing but build roads and utilities, the Orange County right-wing libertarian dream.

I don't know, most everyone here seems to fear the massive influence of corporations, and yet some of you are equally averse to state action. But the state, in theory, is our corporation -- our vehicle for collective action, the one entity with the power to protect our interests over corporate ones. Now before you scoff and point out that it never seems to work that way, realize that in a lot of senses it does, just maybe not as much as you'd life -- we do have a minimum wage, we do have labor standards, we do have food safety regulations, and so on and on. We could do better, in my opinion, but if we're comparing state action versus state non-action, state action comes up winner in my book.

This opinion is probably informed somewhat by identity politics, I should admit, and the fact that I think the U.S. has a responsibility to attempt to correct the legacy of slavery ... the government can do terrible things to people, but employed correctly, it has as much power to improve our lives as a massive corporation has to improve the lives of its shareholders.

* cue laughter among State-aware folks.

How the fuck am I supposed to find a youtube video of the "And" sketch?

Which one is that? God I love this one:

i'm gonna dip my bawwls in it!

It's the one about the word "And" - the dude learns to use the word "and" and gets really excited about it. Unsearchable, obv.

Is the "ACTION! ACTION!" in the theme song a sample from Nation of Ulysses?

Wedren is even responsible for The State's theme song, "Boys and Girls- Action.” Written in conjunction with Girls Against Boys frontman Eli Janney—"we kept it very DC"—the song was written as the two "banged around with samples" and came up with the thumping, '50s sci-fi-esque theme. For its punk energy and memorable chorus, the pair sampled "The Kingdom Of Heaven Must Be Taken By Storm" by DC DIY-ers Nation Of Ulysses.

Source: a website

This guy sounds just like Thomas Lennon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZK8zo81gtH8

I kept waiting for him to say "Monkey torture".

Reading about Rojava and Daesh all year got me thinking, what would a Christian equivalent of the Caliphate look like? Disregarding all Christian organisations since the disciples - how would Jesus govern?

So I translated, or rather 'remastered,' the Jefferson Bible into my native tongue, and while doing so, a vision of a very cozy, very liberal state occurred to me, where the government provides free education, healthcare, infrastructure, a basic income, and hands out carefully tested and updated licenses for *everything* that is potentially harmful to individuals, society or nature, regarding not only physical harm but also oppression and addiction - drugs, gambling, hooliganism, rape, suicide, cannibalism, running a factory, you name it (no seriously, YOU name it, there would be constant ballots on what to license next, bad news for the cannibals I guess) - until the state and the people run out of stuff to legalize.

Once something is legalized, the state helps you do it. A licensed junkie would receive very pure, cheap heroin, licensed smokers and drunkards would get their poison tax-free. A licensed brawler can challenge anyone with a matching license to a fight, even in public, and not be prosecuted... unless she hurts innocent bystanders, which will result in her losing the license (re-application is always possible, 77 strikes out, JHC was very clear about that) and possibly go to jail, doing time with thugs who still have their license, and get to play Fight Club all day while little Miss No-License sits by idly.

Maybe there should be a law that the legal system, including the licensing system, will be shut down immediately once *everything* is licensed, releasing the people into anarchy - although such a law could be used for oppression, I guess?

What I see is a state that limits itself to the role of a gardener who waters all the plants equally, fertilizes those in need, but doesn't pluck the weeds. Crime and hierarchies would slowly fade out, because they need a climate of oppression and inequality to thrive, and the Christian State provides anything but that.

Naive, I know, but hey, it's Christmas.

licensed smokers and drunkards would get their poison tax-free

Perhaps you based this conclusion on The Golden Rule? Because offhand I can't think of anything else this could be connected to in the New Testament. iirc, Jesus showed zero interest in the mechanics of governing a state.

Crime and hierarchies would slowly fade out, because they need a climate of oppression and inequality to thrive

Crimes require only passions in order to exist. Hierarchies are inherent in all social groupings, but they do not need to be as inimical as present day hierarchies are.

Christ was explicitly uninterested in governance - "render unto Caesar" etc. This was no doubt a self-preservation move by early Xtians (don't piss off the Romans!) but it nonetheless obscures any real political solutions Jesus might have had.

licensed smokers and drunkards would get their poison tax-free

Perhaps you based this conclusion on The Golden Rule? Because offhand I can't think of anything else this could be connected to in the New Testament.

Basically it's 'our daily bread' applied to everything. Sounds perverse, I know. (My problem with this is that God is supposed to hand out the bread, not the state. And if the state gets fancy ideas about casting people into fire for cursing... maybe with an asbestos suit? jk)

iirc, Jesus showed zero interest in the mechanics of governing a state.

True. He was very much invested in how flocks and swarms and fields and gardens work, though.

by providing for the existence of a fruitful earth, sun, soil, rain and suchlike, god has already done 99% of the work in providing us our daily bread, wine, weed and what have you. I think we're supposed to take it the last 1% of the way.

... like Ikea, you need a few simple tools and there's some assembly required.

If I read JC's examples correctly, to the birds that one per cent consists of staying in motion and seizing oppurtunities -- and why not to us? A clear position, in a modern context, on (voluntary) vagrants and other, uh, possibly digital nomads.

BTW,

"Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earthy
Where moth and rust doth corrupt, And where thieves break through and steal:
But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven. Where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt,
And where thieves do not break through nor steaL
For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."

Yes, Christ foretold cloud computing.

eh. irl, those 'clouds' consist of massive server farms in windowless, featureless, gray buildings covering acre upon acre, attended to by a small handful of lonely technicians who wander up and down the empty aisles rarely seeing one another. hardly anyone's idea of 'heaven'.

We don't know what heaven looks like from the outside.

according to some, heaven looks like cloud computing. but it is obvious to you and I that such confident assertions are misplaced.

Have you ever trashed your laptop?

JC's late-career attempt at apocalyptic ranting reads like a failed standup routine in this modern translation.

Not sure what apocalyptic ranting you are attributing to JC, but the Book of Revelations was written by St. John the Divine, who may or may not be the same person as John the Apostle, but who certainly was never the same person as Jesus. But none of this is very germane to The State, so it's probably best if we stop.

The OP wasn't about MTV either, and the ranting (and lots of it) is in Matthew 24, but yeah, ok.

Checked out Matthew 24 & 25. Not up to Revelations in terms of whores of babylon, satanic goats, sky-riding specters, and overflowing bowls of blood, but a passable first draft.

yall know this but just so that jesus is clear, "the cloud" is what data merchants call their computers so that you will put your data on them, only being boring on this point cuz as digital space continues to be frenziedly enclosed the airy doublespeak is just gonna get prettier and prettier and it's prob easier if we just let the advertisements make the allegations about transcendent post-material freedom rather than going to the trouble ourselves

sry. the lord is my sheeple