'Small government' Republicans push to declare porn a public health crisis

[Pielover]

Oh wow

[Ban my account ffs!]

Using "small government" to sarcastically describe Republicans is at least five years out of date. They haven't campaigned on that since 2014 at the latest.

If you check out individual candidate websites, you'll still find it.

However, it is true that they are lying about believing in 'freedom' more now.

'Freedom Caucus'
'religious freedom'
'economic freedom'

and so on.

The issue here is that Republicans and Democrats have differing ideas about freedom “to what” and “from what”. See, while Republicans oppose external compulsion as a matter of principle, they also recognize that servitude to one’s own vices can be an even more insidious evil than servitude to an external power; thus, they will sometimes recognize the necessity of using social controls to keep people away from their own harmful behavior. Democrats on the other hand prize servitude to the collective as a value in and of itself, and when that burden becomes too oppressive, offer license to indulge the gnawing pleasures of the flesh as a consolation prize - with the goal of enslaving men’s souls, as they have already enslaved men’s bodies.

We used to talk about buying a house like one of these, an old big house, fixing it up. We would have a garden, swings for the children. We would have children. Although we knew it wasn't too likely we could ever afford it, it was something to talk about, a game for Sundays. Such freedom now seems almost weightless.

Now we walk along the same street, in red pairs, and no man shouts obscenities at us, speaks to us, touches us. No one whistles.

There is more than one kind of freedom, said Aunt Lydia. Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don't underrate it.

[pbrower2a]

I guess I've really been blind.

Good call. Not that that’s entirely your fault - I’ll be the first to admit that the Wall Street wing hasn’t yet entirely flipped from the GOP to the Dems. But the realignment is in place, and it will become obvious in the coming years how compatible Wall Street is with Hollywood and Silicone Valley, especially as they coalesce within the Democratic Party against their common enemy: Middle America.

"Wall Street" is as willing to make money off intellectual property as it is to make money by taking a cut out of 'classical' industrial production. Industrial manufacturing as a basis of economic growth is over. Manufacturing is now of consumer staples for quick consumption (which obviously applies to foodstuffs), replacement of broken or obsolete stuff, or population growth. The three-car garage is not supplanting the two-car garage in suburbia, and the middle class is not buying aircraft to supplement car travel. Energy is not a growth industry. So what is left? Disney has been a better investment than General Motors for a long time.

But Disney isn't porn. Porn is a business -- but not one I would want to be involved in and nothing that I would want a loved one in. Much of it is a sick fantasy of abuse and exploitation, and is in no way creative. The porn business leaves in its wake a stream of people with wrecked lives who came into it with problems that they could solve with some easy money and came out of with bigger problems and no solutions. That includes drug abuse and suicide.

Maybe the 'creators' of this stuff are unable to relate to what excites me. I'm not going to elaborate. Who knows -- I might get desperate enough and decide to write some erotica. Maybe it is what happens after sex that matters as much as a short-lived orgasm. That's if one wants to keep having sex with the same person, which I consider a healthy objective.

But back to the economics -- intellectual property is more difficult to create and disseminate, but still highly profitable, if it is made for smart people. I look at classical music, and especially opera. The idea was that the music that a recording company offered would be desirable for decades before it went into the public domain, after which few would care. Maybe cinema has taken over the role of classical music because it is more encompassing entertainment, and a feature film sells for less than what a record company used to get for a recent recording of Beethoven's Ninth symphony or any two others. Selling highbrow entertainment implies a highbrow audience, which means an  educated audience that has learned more than to be trained machines of meat. Porn appeals to the basest drives in human nature without any humanistic elevation, and it debases its participants.