To a Place Beneath the Chin I wish I Could Sing Of

I normally don't excerpt this much of an article, but read how the elites are preparing for the inevitable :

The story was in essence a twelve-minute Pentagon infomercial. What the “protesters” had come up against was the Active Denial System, a weapon, we were told, that “could change the rules of war and save huge numbers of lives in Iraq.” Active denial works like a giant, open-air microwave oven, using a beam of electromagnetic radiation to heat the skin of its targets to 130 degrees and force anyone in its path to flee in pain—but without injury, officials insist, making it one of the few weapons in military history to be promoted as harmless to its targets. The Pentagon claims that 11,000 tests on humans have resulted in but two cases of second-degree burns, a “safety” record that has put active denial at the forefront of an international arms-development effort involving an astonishing range of technologies: electrical weapons that shock and stun; laser weapons that cause dizziness or temporary blindness; acoustic weapons that deafen and nauseate; chemical weapons that irritate, incapacitate, or sedate; projectile weapons that knock down, bruise, and disable; and an assortment of nets, foams, and sprays that obstruct or immobilize. “Non-lethal” is the Pentagon’s approved term for these weapons, but their manufacturers also use the terms “soft kill,” “less-lethal,” “limited effects,” “low collateral damage,” and “compliance.” The weapons are intended primarily for use against unarmed or primitively armed civilians; they are designed to control crowds, clear buildings and streets, subdue and restrain individuals, and secure borders. The result is what appears to be the first arms race in which the opponent is the general population.

Not me, and not most if not all of you reading this shetty bleg, of course, who are not merely complicit but invested in the status-quo (though we root for underdogs on our blegs):

It is a need for discretion rooted in one of the oldest fears of the ruling class—the volatility of the mob—and speaks to rising anxieties about crowd control at a time when global capitalism begins to run up against long-predicted limits to growth. Each year, some 76 million people join our current 6.7 billion in a world of looming resource scarcities, ecological collapse, and glaring inequalities of wealth; and elites are preparing to defend their power and profits. In this new era of triage, as democratic institutions and social safety nets are increasingly considered dispensable luxuries, the task of governance will be to lower the political and economic expectations of the masses without inciting full-fledged revolt. Non-lethal weapons promise to enhance what military theorists call “the political utility of force,” allowing dissent to be suppressed inconspicuously.

What follows is a history of crowd-control and the lessons learned that make "soft-kill" weapons' research and development so eagerly funded. It's all about the marketing.

The next hurdle for non-lethality, as Colonel Hymes’s comments suggest, will be the introduction of so-called second-generation non-lethal weapons into everyday policing and crowd control. Although “first-generation” weapons like rubber bullets and pepper spray have gained a certain acceptance, despite their many drawbacks, exotic technologies like the Active Denial System invariably cause public alarm. Nevertheless, the trend is now away from chemical and “kinetic” weapons that rely on physical trauma and toward post-kinetic weapons that, as researchers put it, “induce behavioral modification” more discreetly. One indication that the public may come to accept these new weapons has been the successful introduction of the Taser—apparently, even the taboo on electroshock can be overcome given the proper political climate.

I take it back: yes, me, you. The clusterfuck is coming: my complicity now won't buy me dogfood then. They'll foreclose my ass with the corporate fuck you they foreclose on dogs now, and though they think me a rube and thus a coward, what's a few $B annually of our taxes spent R&Ding better choke collars for when they're needed?

• Spectacle.
• More.
• Anatomy of Liberal Outrage.
• Haig beats Hague.
• In case you forgot what an asshole Haig was.
• Giggle:

• Assholes.
• Crackers.
• The paranoid style.
• Exactly correct.
• Obamapostasy.
• Teach your children.
• The Dickwhisperer says only Rahm saves Obama from complete failure, so in love with Rahm for calling liberals fucking retarded is The Dickwhisperer.
• Obamalame.
• Your Fucking Washington Post. Please remember that when Obama condones John Yoo and orders more money spent on soft-kill weaponry, he is doing so at the behest of Sally Quinns.
• It's not in Your Fucking Washington Post (where her slop is spilt weekly), it's Your Fucking New York Review of Books that Applebaum writes: It is simply not possible to imagine any three prominent contemporary American public intellectuals—say, Malcolm Gladwell, Niall Ferguson, and David Brooks—indulging in a night on the town such as that one, let alone weeping over the human condition and threatening to throw themselves into the Seine at the end of it. Hollywood starlets and pseudo-celebrities behave that way in our culture, not serious people.
• Tiger Woods cheated on his wife?
• On newsstands now.
• Elric is in Yerevan.
• Soliciting submissions.
• Just because:

• 20 hours on Metro.
• Metro.
• No surprise this local asshole works at Cato.
• Crisis in Kensington!
• Frederick Gazette uses both "farmers" and "plethora" in headline!

• Ten rules for writing fiction, with advice from Atwood, Kennedy, Ford, and others.
• Ten rules for writing fiction, with advice from Mantel, Oates, Tremain, and others.
• On the above two links.
• Vollmann reviews a book about roads, but the big news is Vollmann has a new book out in April. Makes me wonder if he's abandoned the Seven Dreams project.
• Thoughts on late Coetzee reminds me I promised myself another attempt.

Today's Listening Assignment. Today's Listening Assignment.
Today's Listening Assignment. Today's Listening Assignment.
Today's Listening Assignment. Today's Listening Assignment.
Today's Listening Assignment. Today's Listening Assignment.
Today's Listening Assignment. Today's Listening Assignment.
Today's Listening Assignment. Today's Listening Assignment.

NORTHERN PIKE

James Wright

All right. Try this,
Then. Every body
I know and care for,
And every body
Else is going
To die in a loneliness
I can't imagine and a pain
I don't know. We had
To go on living. We
Untangled the net, we slit
The body of this fish
Open from the hinge of the tail
To a place beneath the chin
I wish I could sing of.
I would just as soon we let
The living go on living.
An old poet whom we believe in
Said the same thing, and so
We paused among the dark cattails and prayed
For the muskrats,
For the ripples below their tails,
For the little movements that we knew the crawdads were 
    making under water,
For the right-hand wrist of my cousin who is a policeman.
We prayed for the game warden's blindness.
We prayed for the road home.
We ate the fish.
There must be something very beautiful in my body,
I am so happy.

Another one of dozens of my five favorite songs ever: