(Mike Luckovich via GoComics.com)
Cheer up, you could be stuck at “Porcfest” with the out & proud Libertarians! Ben Terris reports for the Washington Post on “Inside the libertarian version of Burning Man: Guns, booze and bitcoin”:
LANCASTER, N.H.— Like any good bonfire, the evening ritual at the Porcupine Festival deep in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, includes a drum circle, plumes of marijuana smoke, shared bottles of whiskey and spirited debate.
There are also guns. Lots of guns…
Once a year for the past 11 years, this campground in the northern part of the Granite State turns into a libertarian utopia. And this year, roughly 2,000 people — mostly white men — have paid between $45 and $100 to experience for one week what life would be like without the onerous mechanisms of laws, if the market ruled to the exclusion of all else. Want to wear a loincloth and sell moonshine, shop at an unregulated market that accepts Bitcoin and silver, or listen to a seminar called “How the Collapse of the State is Inevitable”? Then this is the place for you…
I leave to check out Agora Valley, the unregulated market in the middle of the campground.
At the entrance, a group sells silver that its members minted. Across from its stand, a food vendor (sans permit, sans safety inspection) sells hamburgers and hot dogs for Bitcoin, Dogecoin, precious metals, or, if you must, dollars (or “Federal Reserve Notes”). Cellphone service is bad out in the woods, so sometimes people have to buy a sausage here, and walk down the hill, over by the Bitcoin ATM, where reception is better, so they can pay.
Puns are everywhere. One popular T-shirt: “Kill the Precedent.” One popular ice cream flavor: Open-Carry Cherry. (Or, playing on the big in-joke here, that without government nothing can get done: “Who Will Build the Rocky Roads?”). A tractor rumbles by, spilling brown sludge out of a bucket.
“It’s okay, it’s Agora Valley, it should be covered in sewage,” says an onlooker eating breakfast across from an outdoor tattooing station. “It’s unregulated and we have no infrastructure.”…
***********
With that appetizing idea in mind, what’s on the agenda for the day?
Jewish Steel
They should just stay there in utopia for the rest of their nasty, brutish and short lives. That would show us!
TheMightyTrowel
@Jewish Steel: based on the conjunction of food prep, unenclosed tattooing and sewage, nasty short lives really are all they have to look forward to.
c u n d gulag
Sounds like Burning Man for Libertarian losers!
“It’s unregulated and we have no infrastructure.”…
The American Dream.
This is your America, cheris…
Oh, fuck it……………………………………………………………..
Hal
If all of society collapses, what the hell is anyone going to do with silver and gold, let alone bitcoins? Wouldn’t you be better off stocking up on salt, water, and food rations? Also:
I would really love to hear from any non-white people, if such a thing even exists in places like this.
M. Bouffant
Gathering of Life’s Losers 2014.
bago
Sounds a bit like Burning Man in the 90’s Of course the shared understanding was that it’s hard to make a kinetic accident in the desert, and hundred dollar ticket holders aren’t exactly bystanders.
bago
@c u n d gulag: Yup. It’s why pets are forbidden. The rules are good for a party, but pets aren’t in the ticket buying business. It’s that whole bit about consent that seems to confuse an awful lot of white-males.
bago
@Hal: Gold and Silver are only valuable because they are cheaply assayable certificates. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touchstone_(assaying_tool) Eureka as Archimedes might say.
Nowadays we use crypto-certs.
Hillary Rettig
on a more uplifting note, Lawrence Lessig’s Mayday.us PAC, dedicated to getting corrupt money out of US politics, reached it’s $5MM goal!
https://mayday.us/
bago
@Hillary Rettig: Hoorah!
bago
You know, the most anti-libertarian thing about crypto currencies is that they rely on a network for trust. They require protocol, connection, standards and communal consensus to function. A government of information. regulations on the transport layer that binds the nodes in the network. A shared understanding of the math that allows for quantitative transfers to occur.
We aren’t just banging rocks together.
BillinGlendaleCA
@bago: And all the research that “built that” was funded by your friendly FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.
OzarkHillbilly
One would go to seminar on that? I would think it would be far more instructive to just pick up a history book.
Baud
dmsilev
Silver that their own members minted, huh? Wonder what the claimed purity is, and how that compares with the actual purity. Selling adulterated gold and silver to libertarians in their Libertopia sounds like a viable business to me. I mean, what are they going to do, use someone?
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: ’nuff said.
The Thin Black Duke
As a friend of mine who works in IT once said to me, “This is a self-correcting problem.”
dmsilev
Can’t they draft someone from the People’s Front of Judea?
dmsilev
@The Thin Black Duke: I’ve heard the term auto-Darwination; it would seem to fit here.
evodevo
Ah,yes, let’s return to those halcyon days of yesteryear when you could dump the night soil out your second story window into the street, along with the dead pig and the spoiled vegetables. Oh, and draw your water from contaminated wells. Sounds like paradise to me!! Bring out your dead ! For a nominal fee !
The Thin Black Duke
@dmsilev: Darwinism For Dummies?
Botsplainer
What do they call their silver specie? Galts? Reardons?
And was there a booth with Dagny Taggart blowup dolls made to look like Scarlett Johansen or Angelina Jolie?
dmsilev
@The Thin Black Duke: “You may not believe in Darwin, but Darwin believes in you.”
Mustang Bobby
This gathering sounds like a Somali pirate camp with bacon and French fries.
ThresherK
As a New Englander, I must chime in about “Hamsha”: The southern part has been, for decades, the place where repressed “overtaxed” Massachusetts residents have been moving to for the small government mantra they’ve been fed for a century or more.
In the process they’ve turned much of it into something resembling a purple state.
It’s like how people used to go to the desert, AZ or NM, for their respiratory health, but after generations of other retirees and emigres from the cold, wet east brought their Eastern deciduous flora there, are getting pollen which weren’t there originally.
Baud
@evodevo:
I miss scurvy.
Derelict
Libertarian camp is good for one week a year. Then all the dreamers go back to their regular lives. They climb into their car (made useable by all the government safety and operation standards), pull out onto the government-built roads, stop at the gas station where they fill up with gasoline that meets government standards–and maybe buy a snack that is not contaminated because of government standards. They pay for it all with credit cards that operate under government standards that prohibit the CC companies from breaking their legs for non-payment. When they get back home, they flip on the lights using electricity provided through the government-standard power grid–and maybe brought to their homes through the Rural Electrification Administration. Then they relax in front of their TV watching entertainment broadcast over government airwaves.
NONE of them want to stay in their libertarian utopia out in the woods. ‘Cause let’s face it: Their utopia sucks.
OzarkHillbilly
@Derelict: Liar. We all know that is just the magic of the Free Market ™ in action. Would have been even better if only the gov’t hadn’t gotten in the way. And let’s not forget the fairy dust distributing unicorns.
RSA
It sounds like little kids playing house in their parents’ back yard. They have pretend money and everything. And if it rains (natural disaster) or a kid gets hurt (needs medical infrastructure) or the neighborhood bully comes along (an aggressive non-libertarian force), they can just go inside.
amk
@RSA:
kids are smarter and more imaginative than these nutcase idjits.
Wag
@Hal:
I doubt there any non-whites on attendance. The non- white males were likely white females.
Raven
Sitting in Grant Park in Atlanta waiting to see the Cyclorama
Aardvark Cheeselog
@Mustang Bobby:
+1
JPL
@Raven: You certainly picked a beautiful day.
Mike in NC
Fucking Libertarians. How do they work, or are most of them still living in their parents’ basement?
Morzer
Ah the libertarian dream : the freedom tp stagger out of your cold hut and fall into someone else’s external latrine while seeking to purge the effects of food-poisoning from last night’s tainted horsemeat burgers sold to you by a vendor who’ll deny all responsibility because FREEDUMB!
Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive…
Raven
@JPL: Drove over with the windows open blasting Dylan. I went to I20 and Moreland and got some shots of The Leggets Hill marker where my relative was killed 15o years ago the 22nd.
Victory
Reading the description of the Porcfest….how is this any different than any Dead(Further) or Phish show?
The only difference is the hippies gather to listen to music where these libertarians gather to stroke their shafts.
Morzer
@ThresherK:
There is a very deliberate project among libertarians (the Free State Project) of moving by their tens and dozens to New ScottBrownia in an effort to turn the whole state into mad lib central. They’ve managed to screw up the governance of a number of small towns there, but not much else.
You’ll never guess who runs PorcFest….
http://freestateproject.org/events/porcfest
Aimai
@Mustang Bobby: it sounds to me like a renfaire with guns and idiots.
Morzer
@Aimai:
A renfield renfaire?
Poopyman
By a strange coincidence, villages throughout the land have discovered that this is the week their Idiot takes a holiday.
D58826
Having beaten hobby lobby to death (metaphorically of course) last week. This is on the Obamacare docket for next week from Jonothan Turley:
Since two of the three judges are GOP appointees, I think we can figure how this will go.
I’ve always wondered how family value Christians who have a loving relationship with Jesus can so easily throw others out on the scrap heap
Morzer
Today is the day when Los Ticos take on the all-singing, all-dancing, all-diving Oranje in the soccer world cup, so:
Go Costa Rica!
Tokyokie
@Morzer: Laten we gaan Uuwerk Oranje!
Corner Stone
I wonder what they do with the guns. Are there shooting ranges? Skeet shooting? Wrong time of year to actually hunt anything.
Seems like a burden to have to lug the thing around everywhere the entire time.
Corner Stone
When I was younger we would frequently go camping on some acreage owned by a friend’s grandfather. Everyone would pitch in for gas and stuff for sandwiches, etc, and we’d all sleep in a couple tents for days at a time.
We had a bunch of good times but it got really tiring sometime around when I was 15 or 16, and I decided I preferred running water and AC.
Morzer
@Corner Stone:
Do you really want to know what a mob of glibertarians get up to with large black metal man-dildos?
Tokyokie
Somehow, I doubt that the organizers of this festival took its name from this character:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_pVCiTA86umk/SpQu6nDr3nI/AAAAAAAABOs/t_9oZ9zZGzA/s1600-h/Walt+Kelly018.jpg
(And I don’t mean Pogo.)
RSA
@amk: True. Kids know when it’s time to stop pretending, and they don’t think “You are not the boss of me” will solve all the world’s problems.
Corner Stone
Man, this is some fascinating shit:
Wiretap info
It’s a link to a PDF for stats from USCourts.gov
In 10 years there have been 7 wiretap requests turned down, out of over 20,000+ requests.
Average costs of intercepts for which costs reported: $41,119 in 2013. If I’m reading the table correctly.
Ash Can
@Corner Stone:
He ain’t heavy, he’s my
brotherdick avatar.Corner Stone
@Morzer:
…yes?
Botsplainer
@D58826:
That one is easy: Jesus will make it all better for the victims in the afterlife while forgiving the God-fearing, well-meaning thrower.
QED
Morzer
@Corner Stone:
And the vast majority of requests are to do with narcotics and involve cell-phones, originating at state level.
Your point?
Botsplainer
@Corner Stone:
I am NOT googling that. Rule 34 holds that such imagery exists.
Frankensteinbeck
@Wag:
I would think it’s reverse. It sounds really god damn dangerous to be a woman in that crowd. I’m guessing the women that are there are eldery wives surrounded by their menfolk. I use the word ‘menfolk’ deliberately.
Morzer
@Frankensteinbeck:
Menfolk or Herrenvolk?
Botsplainer
Goddamn you, Corner Stone.
Why did you do that to me? I googled that.
rikyrah
this shyt is fucking crazy. positively fucking crazy.
Bitcoin…a grifter’s paradise.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@bago:
I think I’ve found the broken lynchpin.
Morzer
@rikyrah:
Reality-detached white male cosplay with paranoia, drugs and guns.. what could possibly go wrong?
jayboat
@Morzer:
*You’ll never guess who runs PorcFest….*
Well, since you made me click.
Looks like a jolly good time- half the attendees look like family members of the various patriarchal nutjobs, dragged along because freedom.
I was particularly impressed with the woman and her ‘Second Amendment Sisters’ tshirt.
“Firearms are the ultimate feminine protection.”
I’m sold, where do I sign up?
rikyrah
Rick Warren Joins Letter Asking Obama For Strong Religious Exemption In LGBT Executive Order
“[W]e are asking that an extension of protection for one group not come at the expense of faith communities,” a group of religiously affiliated leaders writes.
Chris Geidner
BuzzFeed Staff
WASHINGTON — The pastor who caused an uproar from LGBT advocates when President Obama asked him to speak at his inauguration is now asking the president to exempt those with religious beliefs from an executive order banning federal contractors from discriminating against LGBT people.
Rick Warren has joined forces with the head of Catholic Charities and others in asking President Obama to “include a religious exemption in your planned executive order addressing federal contractors and LGBT employment policies.” The Atlantic first reported on the letter earlier Wednesday.
LGBT advocates have pressed for a limited religious exemption or no religious exemption in the order, but others, like Sen. Orrin Hatch, have said an exemption similar to that included in the version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act passed by the Senate last fall is needed.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/chrisgeidner/rick-warren-joins-letter-asking-obama-for-strong-religious-e
Poopyman
@Morzer: Not nearly enough, IMO.
Corner Stone
@Morzer: I have no idea what you’re even trying to say here.
Corner Stone
@jayboat:
Conveniently enough, right here!
Just send $100 in bitcoin to grift at haha dot com and we’ll send you a receipt for registration!
Thanks! and *FREEDOM*!!
Suffern ACE
@D58826: I’m about ready to give up. Seriously. In the real world congress would fix the language. But it can’t. And it won’t. And won’t be able to do so for 20 years. By which time, I expect the country to look like Calcutta.
Morzer
@Corner Stone:
What point were you trying to make, Corny? You’ve discovered that there are wire taps and they cost money and the information about this is in the public domain. What’s the significance of this?
Corner Stone
@Botsplainer: Listen, friend. I’ll cop to some heinous shit. But when the words “large black metal man-dildos” are clearly typed out and you still choose to google?
That shit is *not* on me.
Frankensteinbeck
@jayboat:
‘Rogers Campground’. Oh, for pity’s sake. This isn’t a libertarian freedom zone. It’s a libertarian fairground. You know why this place can exist? Because the cops are there, watching, like they are at events other groups throw. I’ve been to some. This isn’t off the grid. It’s only far enough out of town they’re not hooked up to the plumbing system.
The police figure it’s not worth busting small-scale drug use at these events, so these libertarian outlaws are sure they’re sticking it to the man.
I retract my earlier concern about the presence of women. They’re probably being careful, but everyone knows there really is law there.
Corner Stone
@Morzer: Still not getting what you’re trying to say.
Morzer
@Frankensteinbeck:
Could be the start of a really interesting story: what happened when the libertarian cosplayers met some really dangerous folks in the woods and there were no police around….
I bet TC Boyle would love it.
Ken
Be kind. It can’t be easy organizing a social event when you start from the premise that humans should not be social or organized.
Corner Stone
@rikyrah: Rick Warren being a douchecanoe? Did not see that coming!
Jack the Second
@bago: Can you imagine being in line at the supermarket behind someone paying in gold and silver, if the cashier has to pull out a touchstone and negotiate the price based on the purity of the specie?
I go into a silent, unjustified rage when someone pays with a check.
Morzer
@Corner Stone:
So you didn’t have a point, as usual.
Oh the surprise and shock! Enjoy your pie.
Botsplainer
@Corner Stone:
Actually, the more disturbing imagery that came across during that dumb search was related to dildo attachments for power drills being a real thing.
The mind reels at the thought of the speeds involved.
Morzer
@Jack the Second:
Imagine how much fun it’s going to be when the check-out girl gets out the scales to measure the weight of the hack-silver – and the libertarian insists that the scales are rigged….
Oh the hours of joy to be had by all!
Botsplainer
@Jack the Second:
I’d have to shank a motherfucker.
Morzer
@Botsplainer:
It’s sybians all the way down…
JPL
@D58826: The Roberts court gave states the right to opt out and allowed the federal government to set up exchanges. Now the Roberts court can decide to disallow subsidies on Federal exchanges. What the Roberts’ court has given, the Roberts’ court can take away.
Corner Stone
@Morzer: Not sure what it is you’re saying.
D58826
@Suffern ACE: yep and following along after that case is the one involving the origination clause. All revenue bills must start in the House but the Senate was the first to pass Obamacare. The way they did it was to strip out the guts of a house passed revenue bill and insert the Obamacare language. Congress has been doing this for years apparently but now all of a sudden it’s deemed unconstitutional by the right. The legal eagles think this doesn’t stand a chance but as long as the Mooslim usurper is in the White House anything is possible.
Suffern ACE
@Suffern ACE: I guess it would be easy to just write off the citizens in the 34 states that didn’t opt for an exchange. I live in the right kind of state for healthcare.
D58826
@JPL: Was the opt-out on the exchanges or the Medicaid expansion?
But the larger point is true what Roberts gives he can take away. We saw that this week. On Monday in Hobby Lobby there was a work around. On thur. in Wheaton the work around was shut down.
Corner Stone
@Jack the Second:
Isn’t that like the most infuriating thing that makes no sense to get that level of mad about?
“You’re doing what?! Paying with a fucking check? And you want cash back!? You F%$^*$ SH&^ SUCKING AS&^%$#( INFESTED CO*& HOLE MOTHERF&^%$#!!!”
Botsplainer
@Morzer:
The Sybians at least make some sense. The drills, not so much.
Morzer
@Botsplainer:
Probably best to Burn After Reading.
Corner Stone
@Botsplainer:
You didn’t know about this? I shutter at the thought of what kind of pr0n you actually watch that this is a new development for you.
Villago Delenda Est
@D58826:
These “family value Christians” have no use for the Jesus of the Gospels, who is very much the dirty fucking hippie. No, they worship the Son of Mammon, Jeebus.
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
@Morzer:
That attempted takeover of NH was what made me realize that even libertarians realize that they only way they can survive is by mooching off existing infrastructure.
Frankensteinbeck
@Morzer:
The clincher was the event photo where they’re playing on a maintained lawn. Not a cleared field. Not a converted wilderness area. A maintained lawn. Not even freshly cut for the first time. Those aren’t chopped down weeds, they’re lawn grass.
This is, indeed, the perfect libertarian event. It’s staged with a sense of entitlement so thick and a lack of grasp of harsh realities that they think port-a-potties and bad cellphone coverage mean they’ve cast away their reliance on society.
EDIT – Note that if they’re concerned about which part of the campground gets cellphone signals they have ready access to the electrical grid to charge those cellphones. They do not last a week long event. If you’re careful, they last a weekend event.
Jennifer
@Corner Stone: No one tell him about the “fucksaw”.
Morzer
@Frankensteinbeck:
Hey now, everyone knows that the free market spontaneously creates well-manicured lawns in the wilderness for the white sort of people.
Botsplainer
@Corner Stone:
It would be kind of OK if the checkbook was out and mostly filled out when the cashier announces the total.
That’s rarely the case.
Usually, the woman “of a certain age” ahead of me waits until she sees the total before digging in the carryon bag that doubles as her purse for her wallet zippered checkbook, from which fall 4 forgotten coupons, three of which are expired and the 4th being for quantity.
Citizen_X
I can sell my e-coli Crunch, right?
danielx
Because freedom, and because dysentery in the morning is fun.
Besides, real libertarians don’t worry about things like dying of dehydration and the running shits.
Frankensteinbeck
@danielx:
Your well cared for lawn and implied access to electricity suggest you are both regulated and have infrastructure. Possibly, dear ‘onlooker’, you confuse dogma for reality like most libertarians.
GRANDPA john
@D58826: I don’t know the answer to that but the solution to the problem is found in Matt: 7; 19-23.
gocart mozart
I’m in favor of global warming because I want to live closer to the beach.
Tim in SF
Burning Man used to have lots and lots of guns. This article sounds like it could be describing Burning Man of the 1990s.
eyelessgame
It reminds me very much of the Society for Creative Anachronism – this would be the Society for Creative Anarchism…
Bob In Portland
Speaking of anarchy, will the US and EU provide funds to fix the towns and cities in eastern Ukraine now that they own its government?
NotMax
@Botsplainer
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our checkbooks, but in ourselves.
Not Adding Much to the Community
@Corner Stone: My guess is, he’s trying to say you’re a douchebag.
Corner Stone
@Not Adding Much to the Community: Not sure what you’re saying here.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
@Derelict: Libertarian camp is good for one week a year. Then all the dreamers go back to their regular lives. They climb into their car (made useable by all the government safety and operation standards), pull out onto the government-built roads, stop at the gas station where they fill up with gasoline that meets government standards–and maybe buy a snack that is not contaminated because of government standards.
What really needs to be done is to get them all there squatting in their crapulence – and then close the roads leading out. You know, for maintenance. At their view of a government’s inefficient pace. Leave them unable to get out for an additional week or two…
Phoenician in a time of Romans
@Corner Stone: Listen, friend. I’ll cop to some heinous shit. But when the words “large black metal man-dildos” are clearly typed out and you still choose to google? That shit is *not* on me.
Heh. I recall one crossword where the word was “Onagar” and the clue was “Wild Asian ass”. You can just see the crossword setter thinking “okay, Google THAT, you fools!”
Morbo
It’s funny because they are unable to answer the question. Ha ha.