MAN POSTS PERSONAL DICTATORSHIP AGENDA: Sometimes freedom must give way to beauty.
Notes on Personal Dictatorial Utopia
"If I were dictator," he said,"Things would be Better. People would be smarter and happier. My dictatorship is clearly necessary, and, given the sorry state of our democracy, it is clear that this country needs a period of dictatorship, both to straighten a lot of things out politically and culturally, and to make people realize what democracy is, so that when my period of dictatorship is over they will finally actually participate knowledgeably. I figure that two generations of dictatorship may be necessary. As I am 35 now, that will keep me busy until I am 95, which would work quite nicely: at that point I could die, knowing I had made my nation better.
"To begin with," he continued, "considering the fact that the first three years of a human’s life are so important, everyone would be guaranteed food, shelter, intellectual stimulation, and, as far as possible, affection for these years. That way we can really punish them if they do wrong later. Second, prior circumstances will no longer be considered upon sentencing for crimes. If you did the crime, you are punished. Third, these prisons are too full, and I dislike the idea of a slave labor force taking jobs away from workers. Further, keeping people in prison only acculturates them to the mores of a criminal class, which is no good. Corporal punishment would come back as a replacement for the bulk of prison time. In fact, modifications on punishment would be a great part of the regime. Whippings would occur. However, there will still need to be a few prisons here and there. Jail rape is too horrible to imagine, so a temporary chemical castration would occur for all inmates. We want them to have less testosterone. Anyone convicted of forcible rape would be castrated, at least chemically. In fact, many criminals would be chemically castrated. I am convinced that too much testosterone contributes to crime. Those prisoners in jail will receive daily counseling; but rather than lily-livered social workers, their counseling will come from accredited tough guys who don’t break down but who say things like, 'yeah, I know you had a rough childhood and that’s partly why you turned to burglary. But so did I, and I didn't end up in jail (or if I did, I grew out of the stupid desire to 'act out') and you need to stop doing this shit, or else. It’s stupid.' This is clearly what criminals need, not unlimited sympathy.
"The Ministry of Culture will be the thing that would upset the multiculturalists and hippies the most. But I’m afraid there’s no way around this. Multiculturalism has a bad side, a very very bad side, as well as a good one. I am in favor of people learning many languages, and of learning many ways of doing things, but there NEEDS TO BE A STANDARD FOR THE WAYS PEOPLE ARE EXPECTED TO BEHAVE or else we have what we have now, which is not a nation or a community but a repellent melange of differing and utterly incompatible folkways. Any standard would be fine, as long as there was one. For the sake of simplicity and maximum compatibility, the standard will have to be European. Yes, I know that there are different European peoples; so let’s make it a vaguely British standard. You stand up when ladies enter the room. You open the door for old folks. Everyone must know English perfectly. America needs to be more like France in the acculturation of its minorities. The message should be: yes, you can come here (a limited number per year, that is), but you will need to act like an American. You do NOT need to give up being a Mexican, a Muslim, a Frenchman, or whatever; however, you need to become bicultural so that you fit in.
"Entertainment would be heavily regulated. There would be no more reality shows. In fact, television would be discouraged from having tasteless things on the air, and I and my lietenants in the Ministry of Culture would set the standards. The following would be promoted and rewarded with prizes and fame: televised plays, many of yesteryear; televised classical musical performances and ballet; televised improvisational comedy. In fact, television would be used to whet the appetites of the public to go see these things live. This would create a new wave of enthusiasm for live performances other than rock and roll. The goal wouldn’t be to get people to be afraid to televise crap, but to get them to want to televise better things because those things are better. By age ten, every American will have seen several different televised productions of every Greek tragedy and comedy that survives, if their parents have a television. People will still be allowed to present shocking things, but under these rules, those things will actually shock, rather than be the standard. Shocking entertainments may require a license.
"The Ministry of Culture would have a few other responsibilities. The Fashion Police would form a subdepartment. Anyone seen wearing a tie-dyed shirt, or anything else hideous, will be apprehended and either brought to the local jail (confinement, not beatings and rape, would be the conditions here) until someone could bring him suitable clothing, or else, if the Fashion Police are feeling very nice, escorted home where he will find a new outfit. The offending article of course will be destroyed. All men will be expected to wear suits, ties, and hats, all women dresses -- at least MOST of the time; you will have the opportunity occasionally, perhaps on one weekend day, to dress differently -- for example, women in pants -- but that will be the EXCEPTION, not the rule. Anyone who compares the way people dress now with how they dress in films noirs cannot seriously tell me that they disagree with this rule deep down inside. Sometimes freedom must give way to beauty. You will have the right to express yourself by your color combinations and so on. It’s not like there will be no free expression allowed. The manufacturing of ties will enjoy a renaissance. Buy stock now.
"While we are on the subject, let us discuss homosexuality. Gayness will be tolerated, and anyone making a stink about gayness will be given a public dressing-down by the police or, better, by their fellow citizens. However, gays will also need to cooperate somewhat. Limp wrists and ridiculous voices will be frowned upon. As many gays I know agree that gays who act stereotypically gay can be annoying, I don’t really anticipate too much trouble.
"There will be a new law that individuals are forbidden from expressing resentment toward other individuals for the ancestral crimes of those individuals against the resenting ones’ ancestors. This has gone on long enough, and has replaced intelligent thought as well as civility and even personality. The punishment for this sort of crime will be inconvenience: the offenders will be arrested and taken not to a prison but to a place where officials of the state will chat with them and tell them exactly why their actions are stupid.
"It is true that some things will have to be restricted. This is an unfortunate thing, perhaps, but it must be done. I would not restrict freedom of speech too much. I think that some types of really disgusting hardcore pornography might be outlawed, in photographs at least. People who produce written forms of disgusting pornography – anything severer than the Story of O – will be arrested and spoken to. If they are recalcitrant, they will be kept in custody. In addition, if their work is of poor QUALITY --- that is, if it is not written as WELL as the Story of O – they will be quite heavily fined. The arbiters will be persons with PhDs in literature.
"
On this subject, we must proceed to my educational changes. Postmodernism will no longer become the reigning orthodoxy in the academy. I will personally alter it by writing rebuttals against postmodernism. Anyone arguing that the world is constructed of language rather than of stones, dirt, etc will be deported permanently, or pelted with sticks and stones to see whether or not they will be saved by the alleged building blaocks of their universe, "language." Their family will be prevented from seeing them: they will be subject to a special tax. All persons will have to learn the following languages FROM ELEMENTARY SCHOOL ONWARDS: English, Latin, French, German, Ancient Greek. Persons in California, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, and Florida will be REQUIRED to possess a fluency in Spanish equal to that in English or else they must live elsewhere. Persons in New England must learn French equal to their knowledge of English. The other languages, besides English, must be learned at a pretty good level. Anyone passing tests in hard languages, like classical Chinese and Sanskrit, will be given fame and money. The educational system, in the humanities at least, will be retooled to emphasize historical studies foremost. Everyone will have a comprehensive knowledge of the ancient and modern culture of every single continent on the planet. Greece and Rome will be emphasized the most. There will be no exceptions. Elementary school teachers must have PhDs above grade six. Pay will be upgraded accordingly.
"While exercise will be encouraged, it will be decoupled from schooling, so that no one has to stink sweatily while studying. Personal exercise trainers will make the country fit. No male will be permitted to be unable to do 25 pushups in one set. Nutrition needs revision as well. There will be no more fast food, or at least fast food will be squeezed out because they will be forced to pay great amounts of money to heart and cancer foundations to offset their damage. Vegetarian and low-fat fast food will be encouraged: Taco Bell will still do fine. I imagine a system in place similar to the "milk bars" in Poland, of cheap, high-quality food served ON CROCKERY (not on paper plates) by people who may be government employees. You can get a dinner of soup, compote, Polish ravioli, and a vegetable for less than three dollars at these places. No one needs to go hungry. If this system requires a government subsidy, then the government will subsidize it.
"Perhaps the most immediaterly visible change will occur in architecture. Each building is a sculpture and must be considered accordingly. The inventors of the ugly suburban box strip mall will be hunted and executed and their children punished with fines. Any architect using that style will be fined and subjected to corporal punishment. He may flee but upon his return he will face the music. Many buildings will be demolished or at least given attractive facades. New developments will undergo the strictest controls.
"
Money? Let’s talk money. The tax will be heavier on the rich and as light as it is now on the poor. Anyone making over 100,000 a year will suffer increasingly serious taxes. This is the system that has made you rich, and you must pay into it. Don’t like it? Go somewhere else. But you won’t be allowed to take your money with you. In addition to all this revenue supplying infrastructure imporvement, such as better roads and hospitals and schools, it will also feed my government’s system of incentives and prizes, a system evidently necessary to encourage excellence.
"These are the beginnings of my proposed reforms. I will add more as time goes by."
With that, he walked away.
"If I were dictator," he said,"Things would be Better. People would be smarter and happier. My dictatorship is clearly necessary, and, given the sorry state of our democracy, it is clear that this country needs a period of dictatorship, both to straighten a lot of things out politically and culturally, and to make people realize what democracy is, so that when my period of dictatorship is over they will finally actually participate knowledgeably. I figure that two generations of dictatorship may be necessary. As I am 35 now, that will keep me busy until I am 95, which would work quite nicely: at that point I could die, knowing I had made my nation better.
"To begin with," he continued, "considering the fact that the first three years of a human’s life are so important, everyone would be guaranteed food, shelter, intellectual stimulation, and, as far as possible, affection for these years. That way we can really punish them if they do wrong later. Second, prior circumstances will no longer be considered upon sentencing for crimes. If you did the crime, you are punished. Third, these prisons are too full, and I dislike the idea of a slave labor force taking jobs away from workers. Further, keeping people in prison only acculturates them to the mores of a criminal class, which is no good. Corporal punishment would come back as a replacement for the bulk of prison time. In fact, modifications on punishment would be a great part of the regime. Whippings would occur. However, there will still need to be a few prisons here and there. Jail rape is too horrible to imagine, so a temporary chemical castration would occur for all inmates. We want them to have less testosterone. Anyone convicted of forcible rape would be castrated, at least chemically. In fact, many criminals would be chemically castrated. I am convinced that too much testosterone contributes to crime. Those prisoners in jail will receive daily counseling; but rather than lily-livered social workers, their counseling will come from accredited tough guys who don’t break down but who say things like, 'yeah, I know you had a rough childhood and that’s partly why you turned to burglary. But so did I, and I didn't end up in jail (or if I did, I grew out of the stupid desire to 'act out') and you need to stop doing this shit, or else. It’s stupid.' This is clearly what criminals need, not unlimited sympathy.
"The Ministry of Culture will be the thing that would upset the multiculturalists and hippies the most. But I’m afraid there’s no way around this. Multiculturalism has a bad side, a very very bad side, as well as a good one. I am in favor of people learning many languages, and of learning many ways of doing things, but there NEEDS TO BE A STANDARD FOR THE WAYS PEOPLE ARE EXPECTED TO BEHAVE or else we have what we have now, which is not a nation or a community but a repellent melange of differing and utterly incompatible folkways. Any standard would be fine, as long as there was one. For the sake of simplicity and maximum compatibility, the standard will have to be European. Yes, I know that there are different European peoples; so let’s make it a vaguely British standard. You stand up when ladies enter the room. You open the door for old folks. Everyone must know English perfectly. America needs to be more like France in the acculturation of its minorities. The message should be: yes, you can come here (a limited number per year, that is), but you will need to act like an American. You do NOT need to give up being a Mexican, a Muslim, a Frenchman, or whatever; however, you need to become bicultural so that you fit in.
"Entertainment would be heavily regulated. There would be no more reality shows. In fact, television would be discouraged from having tasteless things on the air, and I and my lietenants in the Ministry of Culture would set the standards. The following would be promoted and rewarded with prizes and fame: televised plays, many of yesteryear; televised classical musical performances and ballet; televised improvisational comedy. In fact, television would be used to whet the appetites of the public to go see these things live. This would create a new wave of enthusiasm for live performances other than rock and roll. The goal wouldn’t be to get people to be afraid to televise crap, but to get them to want to televise better things because those things are better. By age ten, every American will have seen several different televised productions of every Greek tragedy and comedy that survives, if their parents have a television. People will still be allowed to present shocking things, but under these rules, those things will actually shock, rather than be the standard. Shocking entertainments may require a license.
"The Ministry of Culture would have a few other responsibilities. The Fashion Police would form a subdepartment. Anyone seen wearing a tie-dyed shirt, or anything else hideous, will be apprehended and either brought to the local jail (confinement, not beatings and rape, would be the conditions here) until someone could bring him suitable clothing, or else, if the Fashion Police are feeling very nice, escorted home where he will find a new outfit. The offending article of course will be destroyed. All men will be expected to wear suits, ties, and hats, all women dresses -- at least MOST of the time; you will have the opportunity occasionally, perhaps on one weekend day, to dress differently -- for example, women in pants -- but that will be the EXCEPTION, not the rule. Anyone who compares the way people dress now with how they dress in films noirs cannot seriously tell me that they disagree with this rule deep down inside. Sometimes freedom must give way to beauty. You will have the right to express yourself by your color combinations and so on. It’s not like there will be no free expression allowed. The manufacturing of ties will enjoy a renaissance. Buy stock now.
"While we are on the subject, let us discuss homosexuality. Gayness will be tolerated, and anyone making a stink about gayness will be given a public dressing-down by the police or, better, by their fellow citizens. However, gays will also need to cooperate somewhat. Limp wrists and ridiculous voices will be frowned upon. As many gays I know agree that gays who act stereotypically gay can be annoying, I don’t really anticipate too much trouble.
"There will be a new law that individuals are forbidden from expressing resentment toward other individuals for the ancestral crimes of those individuals against the resenting ones’ ancestors. This has gone on long enough, and has replaced intelligent thought as well as civility and even personality. The punishment for this sort of crime will be inconvenience: the offenders will be arrested and taken not to a prison but to a place where officials of the state will chat with them and tell them exactly why their actions are stupid.
"It is true that some things will have to be restricted. This is an unfortunate thing, perhaps, but it must be done. I would not restrict freedom of speech too much. I think that some types of really disgusting hardcore pornography might be outlawed, in photographs at least. People who produce written forms of disgusting pornography – anything severer than the Story of O – will be arrested and spoken to. If they are recalcitrant, they will be kept in custody. In addition, if their work is of poor QUALITY --- that is, if it is not written as WELL as the Story of O – they will be quite heavily fined. The arbiters will be persons with PhDs in literature.
"
On this subject, we must proceed to my educational changes. Postmodernism will no longer become the reigning orthodoxy in the academy. I will personally alter it by writing rebuttals against postmodernism. Anyone arguing that the world is constructed of language rather than of stones, dirt, etc will be deported permanently, or pelted with sticks and stones to see whether or not they will be saved by the alleged building blaocks of their universe, "language." Their family will be prevented from seeing them: they will be subject to a special tax. All persons will have to learn the following languages FROM ELEMENTARY SCHOOL ONWARDS: English, Latin, French, German, Ancient Greek. Persons in California, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, and Florida will be REQUIRED to possess a fluency in Spanish equal to that in English or else they must live elsewhere. Persons in New England must learn French equal to their knowledge of English. The other languages, besides English, must be learned at a pretty good level. Anyone passing tests in hard languages, like classical Chinese and Sanskrit, will be given fame and money. The educational system, in the humanities at least, will be retooled to emphasize historical studies foremost. Everyone will have a comprehensive knowledge of the ancient and modern culture of every single continent on the planet. Greece and Rome will be emphasized the most. There will be no exceptions. Elementary school teachers must have PhDs above grade six. Pay will be upgraded accordingly.
"While exercise will be encouraged, it will be decoupled from schooling, so that no one has to stink sweatily while studying. Personal exercise trainers will make the country fit. No male will be permitted to be unable to do 25 pushups in one set. Nutrition needs revision as well. There will be no more fast food, or at least fast food will be squeezed out because they will be forced to pay great amounts of money to heart and cancer foundations to offset their damage. Vegetarian and low-fat fast food will be encouraged: Taco Bell will still do fine. I imagine a system in place similar to the "milk bars" in Poland, of cheap, high-quality food served ON CROCKERY (not on paper plates) by people who may be government employees. You can get a dinner of soup, compote, Polish ravioli, and a vegetable for less than three dollars at these places. No one needs to go hungry. If this system requires a government subsidy, then the government will subsidize it.
"Perhaps the most immediaterly visible change will occur in architecture. Each building is a sculpture and must be considered accordingly. The inventors of the ugly suburban box strip mall will be hunted and executed and their children punished with fines. Any architect using that style will be fined and subjected to corporal punishment. He may flee but upon his return he will face the music. Many buildings will be demolished or at least given attractive facades. New developments will undergo the strictest controls.
"
Money? Let’s talk money. The tax will be heavier on the rich and as light as it is now on the poor. Anyone making over 100,000 a year will suffer increasingly serious taxes. This is the system that has made you rich, and you must pay into it. Don’t like it? Go somewhere else. But you won’t be allowed to take your money with you. In addition to all this revenue supplying infrastructure imporvement, such as better roads and hospitals and schools, it will also feed my government’s system of incentives and prizes, a system evidently necessary to encourage excellence.
"These are the beginnings of my proposed reforms. I will add more as time goes by."
With that, he walked away.
posted by Timo-t at 3:49 PM
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