Annals Of The Hive
Hellstrom's Hive Without Hellstrom
Some of the workers are very disturbed this morning. Especially the foreign workers. Jumpy.
"I see," Hellstrom said. He sounded sad. "Do not try to escape. The two workers there know they must kill you if you try to get away. There's no sense trying to talk to them. They don't speak. They're also quite jumpy; they can smell your difference. You are an Outsider in our midst and they've been trained to dispose of such intruders. Now, if you'll excuse me."
-- Hellstrom's Hive, Frank Herbert
The closer we get to winning the election, the jumpier and more aggressive the workers get.
What will they be like after we win?
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I see two possibilities. They will turn on Obama with all the venom they have unleashed on his opponents. Or more likely imo, most will go back to sleep contented that they have done all that's needed save America.
October 12, 2008 11:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
I appreciate your, quinn's and Bruce's comments on the other blog. I believe most will go back to sleep. What I don't understand is how some of the most over the top foreigners have become spokespersons for the Hive. By default probably. In 2004, I was shocked by the dense hatred and fascist repression of dissent at Free Republic. And now? The hatred and personal attacks here have surpassed the Freepers.
October 12, 2008 11:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
We can thank Axelrod for lowering the bar for Democrats.
October 12, 2008 1:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
OK, I get it. I am not on your level intellectually and therefore not entitled to an opinion on your blog. I'll go somewhere else where I understand the conversation. BYE!
October 12, 2008 12:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Don't be so jumpy.
October 12, 2008 12:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Maybe this is more your style, Bullseye.
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/10/annals-of-the-whining-yellow-w.php
It's what this post is about.
October 12, 2008 12:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Get real! Do you really think we don't know that you and liam are the same person?
October 12, 2008 1:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
ROFL!
October 12, 2008 1:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
LOL. I've taken a funny sort of liking to you, Bullseye. That's an amusing idea.
October 12, 2008 1:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
BZZZ.
Jeez, get a topic, willya?
October 12, 2008 1:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Why the fascination, Tom? As you know, I don't read or comment on your blogs. You have your interests, I have mine. Right now, I'm interested in your lack of independent thought and your constant attempts to stifle deviation from Hive wisdom. If you don't like yourself in the mirror I hold up, find a more flattering mirror. I suspect on some level you're ashamed of the company you keep here.
October 12, 2008 1:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
He reads you because you're smart, Billy.
October 12, 2008 1:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
What is going on with people around here thinking they are insulting me by calling me a woman? I can't think of another site in the liberal blogosphere where someone could get away with that kind of blatant sexism. Again, I blame Josh Marshall for that. His problems with women have seeped into every corner of the Hive.
October 12, 2008 1:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Josh created the Hive, and his workers carry his message.
October 12, 2008 1:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
At least we know what TPM will be about after Obama is elected. The merciless suppression of dissent and hounding of our political opponents. Remind me again of how Obama was going to be able to unite the country.
October 12, 2008 1:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Geez Ready - pucker up why don't cha?
October 12, 2008 1:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Why, do you want a kiss?
October 12, 2008 1:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's very human to argue, and that isn't restricted to human animals, either.
You won't be able to find evidence of me wanting to suppress dissent, just to argue a point. Back during the primaries I made a few posts to tone down the rancor between the Clinton and Obama camps.
I continue to snipe at you because you continue to snipe at Obama supporters. I would prefer direct discussion of issues and politics, not this sniffy superiority.
October 12, 2008 1:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Tell me an issue that is more important than the way we are going to wield power after we get it, Tom, and I'll discuss it with you. Is there anything worse than the abuse of power?
October 12, 2008 2:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Non sequitur.
Where does that fit in with your implied insult to us "Hive" members? Who's abusing power, other than the current officeholders and Sarah Palin?
The cheap metaphor is getting under my skin, so it has at least troll value. But it is facile and puerile to equate the complexity of human society with the mindless simplicity of a beehive. It is, therefore, intentionally insulting and not merely a metaphor to aid discussion.
I'm tired of seeing this insulting topic on the list all the time. I don't consider myself mindless, and it's not sufficent to say you mean the others. Which others?
October 12, 2008 2:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for proving my point, Tom. The amazing thing is you think you just refuted something.
Why are you talking to me? We confront what we detest where we encounter it. The Hive is no place to confront the abuse of power by the government. The only thing that can be confronted here is the Hive mentality that you so perfectly embody and demonstrate and I so completely detest.
October 12, 2008 2:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
And which you are now confronting.
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/10/wideopen-blogging-allows-perso.php
October 12, 2008 3:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
I take exception to perfectly embodying anything. I confront you for your insulting title.
As to confronting abuse of power there is some value in discussing strategy, in determining what is important enough to sacrfice for, etc. and community talk can determine that question. But this doesn't feel like you are trying to help the discussion, rather it feels like you feeling superior since you were not a true Hive member.
I am not a hive member, and neither is anyone else here, so I still feel you insult us.
October 12, 2008 5:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
You should develop more self-confidence.
October 12, 2008 5:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
OK OK - I'm leaving.
October 12, 2008 1:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah. Go on over and help your friend liam insult women. I would have thought you'd know better than that.
October 12, 2008 1:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Billy is employing a metaphor to try to understand something better. If you don't want to work with the metaphor, don't. But no one has effectively argued against Billy's Hive metaphor, they just attack Billy himself. (Which only strengthens the metaphor. Kind of ironic, wouldn't you say?)
In the time I've been reading Billy at this site, I can't think of an instance when someone upended one his metaphors. (Usually people just get mad.)
Here's a hint: If you don't want to work with the metaphor, but you want to outsmart Billy, try to work around it. If you don't want to play an intellectual game, then avoid Billy. Otherwise he'll probably frustrate you.
October 12, 2008 2:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, it is more that Captain Glahab chooses to ignore anything that does not quite fit his pet theory of the day.
Here is an easy one for starters: explain what is the analogue of the vats here on TPM.
October 12, 2008 2:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
When the trolls turn up, I'm at a disadvantage because I try to ignore them, gasket.
TPM Hive food isn't physical. It's thoughts and ideas. While Herbert envisaged the vats, where workers' bodies were recycled as food, as a place where physical bodies were disposed of, the vats at TPM are used to dispose of virtual presences and ideas. In the simplest sense, throwing someone in the vats simply means disposing of them and their thoughts.
October 12, 2008 2:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
I haven't read the novel, so I can't add to your references, Billy. In the meantime, I'm having fun Googling.
October 12, 2008 2:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
The best part is this particular troll thinks of itself as "learned." It covers itself in stilted and archaic language in order to present itself as a lofty intellectual. Believe me, it's not worth responding to. The anti-intellectualism around here makes me puke. Now they are even attacking clearthinker over there. All of the nasty little one-liners are coming out of their holes.
October 12, 2008 3:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
And right now this little troll is over at the other thread, pretending that when I call someone on trying to insult me by using the term "she" over an over, I'm the one that's sexist and abusive. And, of course, it gets immediate agreement from other trolls, some of them using woman avatars.
And where are the hypocrites who manage this site while all of this is going on? Nowhere to be found?
I'm really disgusted by the mental dwarfism here.
October 12, 2008 3:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
See, I am not pretending anything. I merely pointed out that your accusation was simplistic and poorly argumented.
October 12, 2008 3:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
I saw Clearthinker over there. I believe his contribution was: FOODFIGHT!!!!
October 12, 2008 4:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Right, but that is not an analogue since there is no nutrition to be gained by merely disposing of unwanted persons.
Try this one instead: who is/was TPM's Hellstrom?
October 12, 2008 3:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Read the first line of the post, genius.
October 12, 2008 3:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Right.
Who or what is the analogue to the Agency, Hythloday?
Here is the problem: your metaphor does not work. If there is no Hellstrom, even in absentia, then a huge part of the theme drops out right off the bat. Secondly, most of the significant plot points and thematic elements are either missing in the metaphor, or are divergent. C.f. the selective breeding, the Outsiders and the Vats.
So what it boils down to is that, apparently, people tend to be averse to people outside their normal social group.
This is not exactly an earth-shatteringly novel theory.
You could have opted for a simpler analogue instead of this grandiose, inaccurate portrayal. Might even have gotten somewhere with it. There are arguments to be made about another
frequent literary archetype, the troublemaker, perhaps the martyr as well.
But, I expect this is all too banal for you. The true visionaries are not bound by mortal intellect or mere ruthless logic.
Is it not so, Loki?
October 12, 2008 3:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's right, genius.
October 12, 2008 4:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Okaydoke. I look forward to the next installment of Annals of Finding a Metaphor That Is Actually, You Know, Metaphorical.
Oh, and Gladysses? Take this flower.
October 12, 2008 4:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Suck my dick, punk.
October 12, 2008 5:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
More aggressive, indeed.
October 13, 2008 11:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
And stick the flower up your uptight ass.
October 12, 2008 5:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
What are you mad at HIM for stupid. He's the only one (besides me) who'll talk to you besides your suckups.
October 12, 2008 6:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Of course, here is a highly recommended blog in which someone is trying to push me into the vats.
A couple of people try to get in the way and get savaged themselves, including, incredibly, bslev.
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/10/annals-of-the-whining-yellow-w.php
No one should have to explain Hive behavior to anyone again after that blog. In spite of the fact that they tell each other to ignore me, the attacks keep coming from these anonymous cowards.
October 12, 2008 2:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's just so darn fascinating watching the intelligensia kiss each others arses.
October 12, 2008 1:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
If it's any consolation to you Billy - I know you're not a woman. In the words of John Stewart Mills, "Women seldom run wild after an abstract concept."
October 12, 2008 6:14 PM | Reply | Permalink