Comments on: First They Came for the Bloggers http://www.popehat.com/2008/07/11/first-they-came-for-the-bloggers/ A Group Complaint about Law, Liberty, and Leisure Thu, 09 Feb 2012 22:39:39 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Ken http://www.popehat.com/2008/07/11/first-they-came-for-the-bloggers/comment-page-1/#comment-5559 Ken Fri, 11 Jul 2008 15:50:42 +0000 http://www.popehat.com/?p=1505#comment-5559 The impulse to clarify the "status" of nominally free people in order to avoid "uncertainties" is the hallmark of both bureaucracy and totalitarianism. The whole goddamn point of blogging is that it does not require official status. One of the whole points of writing, unless you are writing an air conditioning manual or a regulation governing endive transshipment or something, is to play with nuance, ambiguity, and uncertainty. 99% of blogging (including my own), like 99% of the rest of the internet, is banal. But it's unregulated banality, accessible to everyone, currently unfiltered by Concerned People Who Know Best, and thus perversely threatening to the bureaucratic mindset. The impulse to clarify the "status" of nominally free people in order to avoid "uncertainties" is the hallmark of both bureaucracy and totalitarianism. The whole goddamn point of blogging is that it does not require official status. One of the whole points of writing, unless you are writing an air conditioning manual or a regulation governing endive transshipment or something, is to play with nuance, ambiguity, and uncertainty.

99% of blogging (including my own), like 99% of the rest of the internet, is banal. But it's unregulated banality, accessible to everyone, currently unfiltered by Concerned People Who Know Best, and thus perversely threatening to the bureaucratic mindset.

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