Ideological State Apparatuses
December 1, 2011 § Leave a comment
Normally I’d just roll my eyes about this, maybe make a snide comments about how cybercriminals are threatening our great nation with bootlegged copies of the 1996-97 season of Mad About You, OFF TO GITMO WITH EVERYONE. But not today, today I’m just irritated. Because this isn’t just old people being dumb about the internet, and this isn’t just about paying homage to the ghost of Jack Valenti. This is an ideological salvo, and a dangerous one at that.
By equating “intellectual property” (in this True Crime Comedy the focus is counterfeit goods, though the press conference extended the IP umbrella over file-sharing) with “drugs and crime,” not to mention TRRKING ERR JERBS and everything that’s plaguing America, Holder and Co. are greasing, or at the very least are running the risk of greasing, the wheels of bullshit SOPA and Protect IP. In short, by framing the discourse in black and white (not to mention horribly misleading) moral terms, the White House is preempting rational debate. Thus the conversation becomes CRIME AND DANGER vs INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM AND FREE SPEECH AND A THRIVING ECONOMY, which for the record is about as false as dichotomies come. Still, for the average American, which of those two categories will sound more desirable? Which of these two categories are people more likely to align themselves with, on (misguided) principle?
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