(urth) This Week in Google Alerts: Home Fires

[Gwern Branwen]

On Mon, Apr 9, 2012 at 7:52 PM, Gerry Quinn <gerry at bindweed.com> wrote:
> Is a single North American currency such a right wing concept as all that?
> Nobody calls one a Nazi for favouring European monetary union – quite the
> opposite, if anything.  Personally, I don’t really care what currency I hold
> so long as it is hard and fungible.

It's a right-wing concept in the same way as writing a story in which
the literal Antichrist takes over the UN and uses it to prosecute his
Satanic designs is right-wing. Which is to say, a caricature of it is
feared and predicted by right-wing nuts to a degree far beyond the
support the actual idea has in any circles, left or right (especially
after the Eurozone has proved to be such a mixed blessing, the
Canadians have not the slightest interest in a unified economic zone).

It is comparable to things in left-wing circles like anti-vaxxers or
many conspiracy theories during the Bush administration like 9/11
Truthers or Alternet posters convinced the government was setting up
concentration camps for liberals.

If I read an ostensibly apolitical novel set in 2020 in which
President Romney incarcerated all employees of the DNC and major
donors, mentioned in an side as a mere background detail without
extenuating circumstances like parody, I'd regard the author as a
little bit unhinged, for such a detail is so mindbogglingly bad
worldbuilding that it must reflect the author's own crankery.

-- 
gwern
http://www.gwern.net