Please. Don't be frightened. Your assistance is requested.

[This post belongs to the previous manifestation of this blog, Statesubterfuge, which is very different in intent from the current manifestation, Extraordinary Edition. Accordingly, the bent of this entry will resonate differently in tone than those that follow it. While you are welcome to view the mission and purpose of Statesubterfuge, the mission and purpose of Extraordinary Edition are along the lines of news analysis where the former was political theory]


Greetings. Welcome to the very serious-faced outlet of political information and ideas being created here. The only thing to do now that this page has such a serious face is create and accumulate much serious-face-themed material—issue-based news and commentary posted in the spirit of inquiry and intellectual pursuit—under the auspices of visitors to the site being able to make sense and use of it. Please remember ‘subterfuge’ is really just a big word for lying, and also please try thinking of ‘state’ as something created by humans in quite the way a machine is—to serve its originally intended function, and when found to fail that function, to duly be dismantled or replaced with something intended to function better than the obsolete incumbent mechanism.

A specific theme that will be recurrent here is the tendency of power in the modern liberal democracies to centralize within the population, boil down to two ideologically opposed leading forces still in pursuit of some of the same things—be they Democrats and Republicans in the U.S., Labor and Tories in the U.K., Socialist and Social Democrat to a more left-leaning populace, Center-Right and Christian Democrat to one leaning more to the right—and proceed to lock the doors behind them, the duopoly increasingly resembling a monopoly wearing two suits as time accumulates more wealth and power beneath the symbol of each leading force.

Under this theme we’ll look for what happens to human issues and the rules we impose upon ourselves (call it ‘the law’) within a system that bears the contours described above. Let’s also examine possible social arrangements precluded by monolithic (sorry, ‘duolithic’) dominance in the political sphere. What might life be like if [circumstances we could never have because the most powerful people we’ve heard of would never consent to it, therefore it shall never be] didn’t exist? If we wanted this world badly enough, what steps would have to occur in order to bring that world into existence? And, since achievement requires sacrifice, would it be worth the sacrifice?

This endeavor is proposed with at least one foot on the earth at the beginning and end of each engagement. We will commit to focusing on the world into which we were born and own up to each of the problems with which we all are faced. This pledge will rein in the dreaming only to the extent that the ship’s crew does not lose sight of the shore before developing instruments by which to navigate on a voyage of discovery to a world of possibilities we’re unable to see from where we now stand. The discussion will be superior in value if you’ll be so kind as to join in.