Learning From American Totalitarians On PBS Radio.

I learn all about totalitarian thinking by listening to Oregon Public Broadcasting and their imbedded programing from PBS and the BBC. What I recently learned was this: "You don't have the right to do something that is bad for you" (cigarettes) "You do have the right to do something that is good for you" (and for society according to certain mysterious experts on virtually everything you can possibly think of doing. Anything that could be harmful to the State you also have no right to do." That was my American Totalitarian lesson of the day. The interesting thing about it is how arbitrary the classifications of what is good and bad for you can be. It can be bad for you to drive a car and therefore not a right and bad for you and the earth or society to collect rain water on private property. It can be bad for you or good for you in any number of possible combination of variables that would have to be decided by judges and lawyers ad infinitum to determine what your rights really are in the totalitarian/ eco-totalitarian state. Do not ignore the aesthetic taste makers , at your own peril you do so, because part of what totalitarianism is all about is enjoying watching others suffer. Yes the same exact people who extol the virtues of altruism also have this penchant for enjoying watching those they otherwise sympathize with suffer. Freud would have understood it as pathology and civilization with rather severe discontents. Remember the totalitarian state is run by people who have planning authority and your life as well as all the rest of society is being planed . There has to be some rationality one might think but it really all comes down to arbitrary aesthetics de jour. Totalitarian believers either wish to be controlled and thereby taken care of or to have their natural inclinations quashed because of feelings of addiction and totalitarian leaders are inclined to be mindless control freaks with any excuse to turn ordinary life into regulatory crime and punishment to get their jollies having sadomasochistic powers over the innocent. That can be the only explanation for the idea that government is there to make what is bad for you illegal and say you have no right to it. The typical totalitarian thinkers finds anything that might give a person happiness or pleasure something to regulate, criminalize or to prohibit outright as being something only special cases might have a right to. If freedom to live in suburbs gives society joy or wellbeing that is what they focus in on to make illegal as if it makes any difference. Terrible that Los Angeles was transformed from a dusty desert to a major suburban metropolitan area. Everyone is using too many resources to not suffer so as to need someone to come and pronounce more as excessive and a lot less as good for you and thus something you should have a right too. Same thing with totalitarian folks complaining that the rich are too rich. They have too much money even when the state has excessively more. The idea that some people can have too much money is that they also have too much pleasure and someone in government should decide. Decide they do how much is too much to be good and then no right to own. That then all depends on whom they are investigating. George Soros can't have too much but the Koch brothers do. One person has a right to have a fortune and another one does not. The totalitarians in power always get rich in the end unless they are purged by other totalitarians. That is why I worship AL Gore.