Tim Boucher (no relation):
It made me realize what Halloween is all about: sharing value amongst your community. When you have extra, you give it away to others. In Harvest Culture, this is directly obvious: food you don’t eat or game you don’t freeze goes bad. Better to give it away than to waste it. As people have become more and more dependent on chemically-preserved factory foods, this idea of giving away extra so as to prevent waste is in danger of vanishing. Never mind that people have been taught by corporations to throw shit away like its going out of style (or more accurately, as things go out of style they get thrown away). But it is the giving away of extra which is the foundation of community: everyone pitches in a little bit towards the commonwealth, and then makes mutual agreements about how those resources are to be allocated.
By the way, Halloween is a liberal holiday, because we’re teaching our children to beg for something for free.
Liberal, eh. Seems more conservative when you realize that after begging doesn’t work, punitive action in the form of a “trick” is in the offing. We didn’t get our candy from Hussein so we went ahead with our trick. Finally about to make it across the street to his neighbor.
That nice Darth Vader guy down the street gave me a whole bagful of Mars Bars!
Interesting what that Forbes article got so badly wrong. The Saudi armed forces are a militarily worthless, tremendously expensive white elephant — essentially a nationalist welfare project. The rulers keep them operationally crippled out of fear of a coup. All they could manage is a little domestic slaughter against poorly armed insurgents.