You may have heard of the Obama campaign’s attempt to use an imaginary woman named Julia to convince women to embrace a cradle-to-grave welfare state. (And looking at European demographics, we can only assume that’s more grave than cradle.)
Naturally, conservatives have had fun on Twitter with #Julia, including the observation that her male counterpart would naturally be named “Winston.” Also: “#Julia died at age 78. She voted Democrat until age 92.”
But, as usual, IowaHawk nails it.
Some other Julia tidbits:
What was left out of Julia’s story: She’s not a taxpayer, she’s not married, and she’s not religious.
The Heritage Foundation reimagines her life.
Paul Ryan calls it creepy and demeaning.
Ad “Twitter” to the list of things The New York Times doesn’t understand. (I know, it’s a long list.) Hey NYT, it isn’t the “Republican Response Machine,” it’s the swarm. The reason I named this blog “BattleSwarm” was after the Rand Corporation’s Swarming and the Future of Conflict: Dispersed, autonomous units come together at a point to concentrate their firepower. It’s the army of Davids. It’s the future of media. It means that the MSM has lost control of the narrative and there’s nothing you can do to get it back.
About Lawrence Person
Lawrence Person is a political commentator and science fiction writer living in Austin, Texas. His political work has appeared in National Review, Reason, The Freeman, Liberty and The World & I. His SF has appeared in Asimov's, Analog, F&SF, Postscripts, Jim Baen's Universe, Fear, and several anthologies. He owns such a large library (mostly science fiction first editions) he had to buy a two-story house to put it in, and then adopted a golden retriever to drag him out of his house on a regular basis.
Your “swarm” comments remind me of a book by Kevin Kelly called Out if Control. I’m guessing you’ve read it, but if not, it’s definitely up your alley.
http://www.kk.org/books/out-of-control.php
The book was assigned reading for my wife when she studied Architecture at A&M, but I find it’s filled with lessons about computer science, economics, networks, and the Internet … Very impressive for a book written in ’95. The book is online in many formats, and purchase-able, too.
Yes, I’ve read it. It was one of the big pop science books in the science fiction community, and I was reading it at the same time I was reading Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age, which covers a lot o the same themes.