People Happily Sign Petition Supporting The 'Orwellian Police State Based On Nazi Germany'
from the yes,-it's-godwined-from-the-very-start dept
You can get people to sign just about any kind of petition, apparently. There's an amusing video making the rounds, put together by Mark Dice, in which he convinces people on a boardwalk in San Diego to sign a petition for the "city council" to "support an Orwellian police state." Sometimes he directly mentions the idea of modeling this police state on "Nazi Germany" and it doesn't appear to give anyone any pause at all.
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Filed Under: mark dice, orwell, petitions, police state
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi3erdgVVTw
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This though? No excuse.
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The P & T petition was based on a kid's science fair project which did something similar.
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Come on people
They are signing to curb the governments powers, not increase them.
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Wrong Conclusion
It's not how worthless street petitions are... it's how utterly clueless most Americans are unless you're talking sports or pop culture.
I'll bet 90% of the people don't know what Orwellian means, who George Orwell was or that he was an author... and that he wrote 1984.
I find it more surprising about the Nazi Germany references - most people SHOULD know what that's about, but the younger generation have no actual point of reference and with mass genocide featured in movies, they attach no real emotion to it.
The other false premise is... that we're not ALREADY in an Orwellian state. Anyone read the news? NSA spying on everyone, Homeland buying millions of rounds of ammo, drones flying over U.S. skies...
We're not THERE yet... but we can see the lights ahead.
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A lot of people will sign
petitions to allow a vote on any important issue, even those they disagree with. Until a ballot actually writes out something, it's all just a thought experiment. Their premise is that debate about actual concrete proposals beats out debate about hypotheticals.
Some of these people have learned their lesson, when the issue they wanted to debate hotly against actually got onto the ballot and passed because the rest of the populace didn't understand the hot debate.
But this "well, let's vote on it" mentality is not entirely a bad thing.
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No petitions ...
In a state like California, with the Proposition (referendum) system, it should remind us out dangerous petitions can be. Enough signatures gets bad law on the ballot.
And any real petition for a new law means someone with money is behind it, who has an agenda, that is not likely in the interests of the public.
(Also, that looks to be Oceanside, which we San Diegans do not consider to be San Diego. Whewww... [kinda]).
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Re: No petitions ...
I, for one, am in the GREEN PARTY which has no hidden money motives or backers. which means the great majority of our public political actions are entirely volunteer powered.
public petitions are the only way to speak to the public in our country because all of the other channels of public communications are owned by the ruling elites, who have no interest in democracy.
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Candid Camera did something like this years ago
They made up random politicians in random positions they also made up, didn't tell people what party they belonged to or why they should be recalled, and got lots of signatures from people to recall them. At one point when asked what party a person they were recalling belonged to the petitioner says "oh we can figure that stuff out when the recall election happens", and the person who asked that question signed the petition anyway.
They ended it with Peter Funt's kids getting people to sign petitions to recall their teachers simply because the kids didn't like them. A bunch of people signed those petitions to, even though teachers can't be recalled, and they knew nothing about the teachers.
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Education
People don't read -- they're watching cable shows.
WSJ ran a bit recently about so-called IT workers not having engineering or science degrees. Still, I don't remember reading Orwell in engineering school.
We're all responsible for our own education.
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there's plenty of other weird petitions out there
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Sign me up!
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Personally....
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SS Please
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I wanna see the people who didn't sign
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Operation Paperclip 1600 Nazi Scientists
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