Massa Says We Can Blog!

In the old days, you know, before "democracy" and all that, we had it pretty simple. A "wiring diagram" for 99% of us was pretty simple:
GOD (maybe)
KING
DUKE
COUNT
KNIGHT
PEASANT
US (SLAVE)

There was just one "massa" - yeah, he might have a boss, but as far as we were concerned, when that ol' farmer said jump, we asked how high, and didn't have to worry about what his boss (the knight) or HIS boss (the count) thought - that was way beyond our paygrade.

Even when we got all high-flautin' in this country, it wasn' much different, at least for slaves:

GOD
MASSA
BOSS (Straw boss or Overseer or Foreman)
US (SLAVE)

But in 21st Century America, for most o' us supposedly free descendents of freed slaves, liberated Indians, and paid-off indentured servants, we got mor' massa's than I knows what tae do wit' - we gots Special District massas, and Town or City massas, and County massas, and State massas, and Federal massas, and prolly NATO massas and UN massas, too. And it isn't just one at each level, or even one COMMITTEE at each level: at the County, the massas sit on the County Board of Commissioners, the County Planning and Zoning Board, the County Elections Board, the County Health Board, and the County Environment Board, to name just a few. It's worse at state and federal level. It's not that straight line but more like an inverted pyramid, with one poor guy at the bottom, holding that point, and what seems like half the rest of the world standing on the upside base.

One, mind you, just ONE of those multitudinous massas at Federal level, right here in the good ol' USA, is the Federal Elections Commission, or FEC, which is supposed to make sure that we all properly know how to, and do the right thing to elect a new massa every two or four years, especially the "massa of massas" with that mystic name of POTUS (President of the United States). Well, one of the things which has really been bothering the massas that sit on the FEC and make sure we all do all the elections right is to do with "exemptions" for media and bloggers from all those limits on such triffles as free speech, right to trial by jury, private property, free assembly, etc. (I'm sure that the hoploclasts [gun-haters] will soon come up with a way that the FEC can also weigh in on our right to defend ourselves - maybe by claiming that concealed guns can be intimidating to other voters.)

One of the BIG (read, can be used to raise lots of funds for those lobbying for or against it) issues before the FEC in recent months has been whether bloggers can say anything they want to about political ballot issues and candidates within a certain time, before elections. Those people of the ilk of Senatoads McCain and Feingold don't want people to be able to publish nasty things (or even good things) about incumbents and challengers that might influence an election (read, let the challenger win), and got the rest of their fellow id... Kongrus-kritters to pass it, and POTUS to sign it; and now it was being interpreted to applying to bloggers and little old ladies in tennis shoes writing letters and posting them on-line. I think part of the argument was that, like the radio and TV stations, we are using the "public media" (you know, airwaves, electrical power lines, phonelines which cross or are located on public rights-of-way, and therefore have to be monitored and regulated, lest we create a CRISIS or "take away someone's rights."

It was sounding pretty serious in there, for a while, but... Finally, the FEC has announced that the Internet can have, courtesy of their glorious wisdom and inate modesty and love of the common folk, FREE SPEECH. WithOUT any (undue) government regulation! Wow! Some of our massas have said that it is okay for us to talk about some of our other massas, provided we don't get carried away. (Folks, if you think I'm being sarcastic and rude in this blog, read Paul Jacob's article, but wear an ovenmitt.)

As Paul points out, this is like DoD making a public announcement that they've decided to continue NOT to make private homes provide troop billeting, or the Supreme Court announcing that trial-by-jury can continue (provided they judge only the facts and not the law, mind you). It is stupid, it is insulting, but it is apparently taken at face value by many if not most political commentators on both left and right as being a wonderful affirmation of the way our political and regulatory system works.

Garbage! This, like 99.5% of what comes out of DC (and for that matter, every state capital and the entire Beltway), is nothing more than a sickening affirmation of what slaves we have turned into, of what tyranny we have accepted, and of how brain-dead we have become in this nation. We are indeed a nation of too many "massas" but only because we have become a nation of slaves - unwilling or unable to do anything without first having permission granted by twenty different agencies, boards, and petty tyrants on a stack of paper that demands a forest to make and a landfill full to dispose of. Free speech, on the 'net or anywhere else, is one of those many freedoms that are honored in memory, but only exist when they are not an annoyance to one of the hundreds of thousands of "massas." Including this blog.