Amerika

First, the ever-enjoyable How Obama Got Elected — an expose of how friendly the media really was toward him.

Next, a much-needed description of a common phenomenon: How to Tell if You Are a Netard. “Netards are people whose lives are shaped by the internet. They realize they can be big shots on the internet, so they shape themselves and their lives to gain points with other netards, who all agree they’re a Very Big Deal even if they all live in tiny apartments, work in thankless cubicles, have fat directionless friends and generally hate their lives. Hey, it’s OK, I have 4096 friends on MySpace!”

Finally, some hilarity from Latin American Socialism:

As Chávez completes a tumultuous decade in power, polls show that Venezuelans are most concerned about rampant crime in this oil-rich country. Homicides have soared from fewer than 6,000 in Chávez’s first year in office to 13,156 last year, according to official government statistics collected and released by private research organizations. That amounts to a homicide rate of 48 killings per 100,000 people, among the highest in the world and more than in neighboring Colombia, which suffers from a slow-burning internal conflict.

Here in the capital, the rate is even higher — 130 homicides per 100,000 people, translating last year to a total of 2,710 killings.

In fact, for three years now, the government has kept homicide statistics secret, although the data are made public by crime research organizations and criminologists who receive the information surreptitiously from law enforcement sources.

Critics of Chávez , among them prominent opposition politicians, say his government has contributed to the problem with rhetoric that accentuates class warfare. It has also armed citizen militias and radical political groups.

WP

What is socialism? Letting social factors prevail over reality. Treat everyone equally, make sure everyone has a share, give everyone a chance to be narcissistic. Why does this fail? They get the reward before the effort. Nature works the opposite way: reward those who face challenges and triumph.

So in a socialist state, you get:

• Douchebaggery. Everyone’s a Big Deal without having any reason to be, so they’re both egocentric and unstable.
• Parasitism. Hey, we all get a free lunch… I’m inviting my 800,000 friends.
• Denial of reality. If reality is whatever you want it to be, you never get tested, and so people start picking arbitrary “convenient” realities.

What is the result of these?

• Unnatural selection. The system starts favoring average people, and smarter people succeed and breed less, if they can’t escape.
• Ineffective government. You can’t act if you can’t decide someone no longer should have rights.
• Political dogma. The nation’s unstable — arrest the dissenters! Even if they are our must productive people.

It’ll be fun to watch Venezuela continue circling the drain.

I think it makes more sense to call Socialism by its parent dogma, Crowdism, because even far-right states can succumb to this same insane mentality.

Tags: barack obama, crowdism