June 17, 2020

The Interactive Social Contract.

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That's a photograph I took in Brooklyn in October 2007. Just ran across it as I was searching (unsuccessfully) for a post about something that happened to me around that time. That caught my eye. It was right next to this...

Breaking wave

One of my New York photos. What is it? I can see what it's not. It's not a wave breaking on a beach.

Anyway, I thought perhaps the Interactive Social Contract from 2007 could speak to us in this famously screwed up year, 2020.

23 comments:

Leslie Graves said...

I think it's a thin glaze of ice or snow but (even if it is) I can't tell what it is on.

rehajm said...

...could speak to us in this famously screwed up year, 2020.

We're seeing more and more of this kind of vague language. I guess because it's safe. You either agree with the mob or hope the mob might not come for you if they think you agree with them.

We're on your side!*

*(Maybe)

rhhardin said...

An interactive social contract is like a living bra.

RNB said...

Love the "Interactive Social Contract"! Has a bit of "Road Song of the Bandar-Log" about it.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

The implied social contract that Democrats will treat Black people like little children who cannot care for themselves and in return Black people vote for Democrats en masse has been damaged by the huge racist demonstration that Palsy Pelosi put on last week. Every single Congresscritter with D after their name draped themselves in Kente cloth and took a knee. Nancypants couldn’t get up as God rendered her temporarily paralyzed for this sinful act terrorizing the Black community, which was already roiled up by the Marxist BLM riots also burning their communities and businesses. Exactly why Democrats chose the exact garb favored by African SLAVE TRADERS was not at first clear but became obvious when Joe reminded them they’d all be “back in chains” if they failed to vote for their appointed SLAVE MASTERS in Congress. Democrats love to dress in slave trader uniforms (and white robes and blackface etc) to send canine-friendly high-pitches tones go their subjects and remind them who really holds the whip. Pelosi then ordered two Black aids to carry from the room while Schumer and the rest averted their eyes.

That’s the social contract for you.

JML said...

Nothing to cry over?

gilbar said...

i'd say it's a close up, of white paint over graffiti

Owen said...

Rhhardin @ 7:59: “...like a living bra.”

You mean, it lifts and separates? Emphasizes the cleavage?

PS: That Vototron image is seriously creepy.

chuck said...

Looks like rusted sheet iron to me, with streaks left behind by vanished graffiti.

Big Mike said...

in this famously screwed up year, 2020.

Sorry, Althouse, but as far as I am concerned, it’s your side that screwed it up and you are one whose tacit support is turning the screw tighter.

Gahrie said...

That Black guy who shoved the old lady into a fire hydrant in NYC? He has 103 arrests since 2005, he's a registered sex offender, he currently has three (now four) open criminal cases against him, and (wait for it)… he's already back on the streets.

mikee said...

I have yet to encounter a mob this year. The best revenge is living well. An acceptable revenge is living well away from idiots.

Kylos said...

It's "a torn poster on a rusty wall".

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

Aunt Teefa !

Aunt Jemima brand will change name, remove image that Quaker says is 'based on a racial stereotype'

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

Another Black Life that Matters Beating the white privilege out of a woman

Bilwick said...

I'm so old now I remember when the term "social contract" referred an unspoken agreement between the government and the citizenry; that the latter would obey the laws as long as the governnent wasn't tyrannical. If it became tyrannical, the contract was dissolved and the citizenry could overthrow and choose a new government. (I think that's how the theory worked. Later on, via Nock, I learned the Franz Oppenheimer thesis, that the State was the result of conquest, and the "social contract" scenario of its origin was a myth or fairy tale.)

Later, of course, "liberals" and other State fellators would expand the concept of the Social Contract to mean that the State (i.e., the taxpayer) had an obligation to provide you food, clothing, shelter and any other goody the ruling class could bribe you with to keep its power. I can't figure out which interpretation that weird poster represents.

Richard Dolan said...

The two you have highlighted look like street-scape photos from DUMBO, and in the original are mixed in with a few more plus one on the Promenade and another street-scape in B'lyn Heights. The mystery photo looks like a close-up of a surface with splattered or poured paint, probably a small section of wall or steel flooring.

DUMBO has gotten fancied up a bit since 2007 and the waterfront park from the Manhattan Bridge to Atlantic Ave is a large part of that.

rhhardin said...

Snerdly says he's triggered by Paul Newman on pasta products. It reminds him of white gangsters.

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

The social contact has been voided.

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

...and now they're coming for Uncle Ben!!!

Black Logos Matter!

wildswan said...

Isn't the vototron poster being sarcastic about the power of mass media over the mass mind? or perhaps I should say over the Congressional mass mind? The other image - melting snow over some kind of street markings?

Michael K said...

A bit of harsh truth for the revolutionaries.

There is no revolution in these United States by the poor and the excluded against the rich and the powerful. Instead, there is a civil war among certain members of the broad affluent class against the adjacent affluent cohorts. There is no hatred in this world quite like the hatred of a $100,000-a-year man for a $200,000-a-year man, except maybe the hatred of a $200,000-a-year man for a $200,002-a-year man.

The class war in our country is business class vs. first class; in automotive terms, it’s E-Class vs. S-Class. Everybody’s comfortable. And that produces some odd outcomes: Nobody’s going to do one goddamned thing about how they conduct business in Philadelphia or Chicago or any other corrupt, Democrat-dominated city, but there are going to be some “new representation and inclusion standards for Oscars eligibility,” and we are going to be treated to — joy of joys! — a deep national discussion on whether some Broadway stars don’t have it quite as good as other Broadway stars. The bloody-snouted hyenas have looked up from the kill just long enough to announce the creation of the Goldman Sachs Fund for Racial Equity.


VD Hansen has been saying this, too.

The blacks are cannon fodder.

Bruce Hayden said...

“ There is no revolution in these United States by the poor and the excluded against the rich and the powerful. Instead, there is a civil war among certain members of the broad affluent class against the adjacent affluent cohorts. There is no hatred in this world quite like the hatred of a $100,000-a-year man for a $200,000-a-year man, except maybe the hatred of a $200,000-a-year man for a $200,002-a-year man.”

The poor and excluded might riot, but they aren’t going to revolt or participate very long in a revolution. For one thing, they aren’t going to travel far enough from home to participate in a revolution. It is invariably part of the middle class that have to be mobilized for a revolution. This is part of what Lenin discovered in order to make his communist revolution successful. As long as he concentrated on the real proletariat, nothing was going to happen. Even worse, for the farmers.

The article that Dr K linked to, and then the ones that one linked to, are interesting. The class driving the revolution Seemingly are those who Got their college degree, or even degrees, but there was little market for their skills. They would have done better by going to trade schoo and becoming a plumber, and wouldn’t have accumulated five, maybe six figures of undischargeable debt in the process. How many French Lit, Russian History, gender studies, etc college grads do we really need? Only so many diversity office jobs available, despite the drive to ladle that overhead on colleges and businesses across the country.

I think that the movement to defund the police is illustrative. Turns out that they really don’t want to actually get rid of the police, but rather just divert some of the money into those fields that otherwise are lower in priority for funding, such as social workers. Think of it as vigorish. Of this portion of underemployed middle class demanding a piece of the action in order for the rest of society to operate. Their problem though is that this sort of blackmail only works where the city government is politically powerless to resist their demands, but those are almost invariably big cities under long term Dem party control of highly dysfunctional government. Coming right after the COVID-19 pandemic response, much of the economic portion of the upper middle class has discovered telecommuting - working at home over the Internet. That means that they can live wherever they want to, and that is likely to mean in lower cost locations with more functional, less costly government. These big blue cities, with government employee pensions already threatening them with bankruptcy, are now faced with having to hire a layer of social workers and bureaucrats, exacerbating their financial problems, ultimately causing even more of their tax base to flee.