The People's Cube - Political Satire

**7/3/2015, 3:48 pm**

Happy Independence Day: State of Oregon fines Christian bakers $135,000 over a wedding cake

Oregon Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian finalized a preliminary ruling today ordering Aaron and Melissa Klein, the bakers who refused to make a cake for a same-sex wedding, to pay $135,000 in emotional damages to the couple they denied service.

“This case is not about a wedding cake or a marriage,” Avakian wrote. “It is about a business's refusal to serve someone because of their sexual orientation. Under Oregon law, that is illegal.”

Back in more civilized days property rights guaranteed all your other rights. To violate a person's property rights was unthinkable in America. It was understood: Without property rights there are no rights.

Now, by legislative decree, your private property which you own as a business, has been nationalized by the state and redefined as a "public accommodation." This means you have no right to the freedom of association and property as far as your business is concerned. YOU and your time are now not yours but are now part of the great commons of communal property. As communal property your business and you are now subject to everyone. And those that can wrest the great McGuffin of statism: raw brute power - can force you as communal property to do a whole host of things and even to destroy you if you get uppity and forget your place.

One has to wonder what kind of victory one thinks they've won when the victory involved is the destruction of the rights of freedom of association and property. These rights are necessary so as to possess and govern one's own life on one's own terms. Those that believe in gay marriage do so ostensibly so as to live life on their own terms, but then deny the basic rights needed to live life on your own terms. Instead of the old civilized 'live and let live' they use the power of the state to destroy the rights of association and property.

The safety they seek is the McGuffin of statism, raw power, and this has all the safety of a foundation built on the wind swept shifting sands of political power politics. Such foundation of victory is soon covered over by the sands and never seen again.

**7/4/2015, 1:29 pm**

One must merely drop a pinch of incense on the flame before the statue of Caesar or whichever other gods he designates. What is so difficult about that? Why do these Christians balk?

**7/5/2015, 12:36 pm**

Thanks for introducing me to the term "McGuffin." I never heard of it before and had to look it up, so I think it might be interesting to those who, like me, didn't know what it meant.

From Wikipedia:

In fiction, a MacGuffin is a plot device in the form of some goal, desired object, or other motivator that the protagonist pursues, often with little or no narrative explanation. The specific nature of a MacGuffin is typically unimportant to the overall plot. The most common type of MacGuffin is an object, place, or person; other, more abstract types include money, victory, glory, survival, power, love, or some unexplained driving force.

The MacGuffin technique is common in films, especially thrillers. Usually the MacGuffin is the central focus of the film in the first act, and thereafter declines in importance. It may re-appear at the climax of the story, but sometimes is actually forgotten by the end of the story. Multiple MacGuffins are sometimes derisively identified as plot coupons.

Objects that serve the plot function of MacGuffins have had long use in storytelling. Such objects in stories continue through, to the name-sake of the 1941 film The Maltese Falcon and beyond. The name "MacGuffin" appears to originate in 20th-century filmmaking, and was popularized by Alfred Hitchcock in the 1930s, but the concept pre-dates the term. The World War I–era actress Pearl White used weenie to identify whatever object (a roll of film, a rare coin, expensive diamonds, etc.) that impelled the heroes, and often the villains as well, to pursue each other through the convoluted plots of The Perils of Pauline and the other silent film serials in which she starred.

Alfred Hitchcock

The director and producer Alfred Hitchcock popularized the term "MacGuffin" ("a plot device that motivates the characters and advances the story") and the technique, with his 1935 film The 39 Steps, an early example of the concept. Hitchcock explained the term "MacGuffin" in a 1939 lecture at Columbia University:

It might be a Scottish name, taken from a story about two men on a train. One man says, "What's that package up there in the baggage rack?" And the other answers, "Oh, that's a MacGuffin". The first one asks, "What's a MacGuffin?" "Well," the other man says, "it's an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands." The first man says, "But there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands," and the other one answers, "Well then, that's no MacGuffin!" So you see that a MacGuffin is actually nothing at all.

This is a perfect metaphor for the progressive agenda. All the various issues like gay marriage, socialized healthcare, confederate flag, racism, abortions, minimum wage, voter suppression, income equality, etc. are the MacGuffins that advance the narrative but are unimportant to the overall plot and will decline in importance once the issue is used up. They may re-appear at the climax, but sometimes are actually forgotten by the end of the story.

It's a shorter way of saying, "The issue is never the issue, the issue is always the revolution."

**7/5/2015, 1:03 pm**

Comrades,

ISIS kills Christians who refuse to convert to their belief system- theoracy is a form of statism but
not one we as true progressives can live with- we have just the state as our god. No doubt, we will
keep ISIS techniques in mind when setting up our utopia; but for now we should just continue our shared hatred of the US.

No, sadly, we will have to wait for a full socialist state like under Stalin before we can push it that far..... For now we have to be satisfied with the low level fascist practices of public shaming of people at homes and\or their business in attempts to put them into financial ruin....

you know, sort of a like a "kristallnacht" light version...

Come to think of it, the judge should have ordered them to put crucifixes on their jackets,
so the good people could see them coming..

**7/5/2015, 11:28 pm**

Comrades, dear friend Sinclair Lewis was mistaken.
Fascism came to America wrapped in a rainbow flag, carrying a court ordered wedding cake & bouquet.
The glorious world of next Tuesday, more fabulous than expected.

**6/5/2020, 11:52 am**

What's in the box?

A McGuffin.

What's a McGuffin?

A McGuffin is a horrible ugly monster known in scientific circles as “American systemic racism.”

The box is empty.

That's exactly what your kind would say.

The People's Cube - Political Satire

The Zen of Liberty vs. The McGuffin of Statism