I’ll elaborate on my argument another day, but here is some source material first:

The new design.
DF’s criticism is representative and flawed.
A video about the new design.

Concisely, my opinion is that American Cash is still pretty badly designed overall, but that it has been making great big positive strides recently and that this criticism is too broad and badly out of context.

“We all know that there’s no fucking way in the world we should have microwave ovens and refrigerators and TV sets and everything else at the prices we’re paying for them. There’s no way we get all this stuff and everything is done fair and square and everyone gets treated right. No way. And don’t be confused — what we’re talking about here is our way of life. Our standard of living. You want to “fix things in China,” well, it’s gonna cost you. Because everything you own, it’s all done on the backs of millions of poor people whose lives are so awful you can’t even begin to imagine them, people who will do anything to get a life that is a tiny bit better than the shitty one they were born into, people who get exploited and treated like shit and, in the worst of all cases, pay with their lives.”

“You know that, and I know that. Okay? Let’s just be honest here. Just for a fucking minute, let’s all be honest.”

Actually, the coolest thing ever is the BBC miniseries Britain From Above. Especially this:

“Get to hell out of here, you son of a bitch [spoken to the attending minister]. I go sit down all by myself. Viva Italia! Goodbye to all poor peoples everywhere! Lousy capitalists! No picture! Capitalists! No one here to take my picture. All capitalists lousy bunch of crooks. Go ahead. Push the button!”

How about if the debates were filmed and broadcast in black and white?

I was just looking at some photos (here) from the first Presidential debates that made me realize that I really love Obama as a person, even though I still intend to vote for Ralph Nader on principal. Holy Jesus, I hope Obama is elected.

Anyhow, the set for the debate was ridiculous: blue walls, red carpets, weird neo-deco lecterns, and script font wall projections of the Constitution or some other document of Democracy (it was illegible). What the fuck is that? Some more cartoon imagery pretending to represent a falsely presupposed understanding of an unstated concept that doesn’t exist based on fallacious and illusory patriotic nostalgia, I guess.

So I thought, “wouldn’t it be dramatic and nice if they shot these debates in startling close-up under starkly lit black and white?” Especially appropriate, I thought, in a race where race is a central though unspoken issue. Like in the recent dramatization of Edward R Murrow, Good Night, and Good Luck. That’d be sweet, and it might help me suppress my gag reflex.

Also, on the issue of race: What the fuck, you racist hill-jack fucks!?!* Stop voting for causes that don’t benefit you. Just because most rich people in America are white doesn’t mean you’re on their team, idiot.

*Obviously, this statement only applies to certain people. Hopefully you can tell who you are. I love you.

(via Steve Olsen)

I do think the way news is reported these days is ridiculous in all its forms, and one of those is definitely the portrayal of really obvious things that have now become verified by science. I admit that there could be some use to it if it helps establish some legal boundaries or something to assist the greater good, but can’t science work on something more important?

I’d been thinking mostly about the first half recently: it’s in our nature and an expression of life itself to do unlikely things, to pursue something bound to fail, to create something for no reason, to be (willfully or ignorantly) defiant of the odds. That was starting to be a hopeful point of view too, but as Wil points out it could be responsible for humanity’s stupid pursuit of extinction and catastrophe as if we can’t tell what’s coming.

Well that’s a bummer! Something positive to take from it: at least the remnants of civilization will have the will to push on after the rest of us die off. Of course, it’d be nice to think we could moderate things just a tad so as not to hit the finish line quite so fast.

That last video I linked too said that we were spending over half of all tax revenues on the Military!?! Is that right? Holy fuck! Can’t we just switch most of that money into space travel? The same Military Industrial Complex can build everything with the same wasteful amount of Government money, so we don’t even need to get rid of corruption to do this. At least there’d be a chance that as a side effect human Lunar and Martian Colonies would make it after Earth becomes a little less comfortable to people. Maybe they could teach us how to live in bubble cities?

I didn’t think I needed to sit through it, but it was really charming and unfortunately the topics covered probably aren’t as obvious to most as they should be. Check it out.

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