Disclaimer: I have never gambled online, nor do I enjoy gambling in general.
This week, Congress passed and the President signed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006, a bill that has already caused several publicly traded companies to pull out of the U.S. market. This bill was slipped in as an amendment to some unrelated port security legislation without serious debate and without a chance for the people impacted to make a case to their representatives. Before the bill, the industry generated $12 billion dollars a year worldwide, half of that in the U.S. Assuming the courts uphold the ban, that revenue will disappear.
The stocks of internet gambling companies are held by law abiding Americans, and millions have chosen to wager their hard-earned money on the websites.
On what legal basis were these people denied their income and entertainment? What is it about internet gambling as a transaction that makes it uniquely subject to regulation and prohibition? I can think of no meaningful distinction.
The prohibition of gambling, like the prohibition of drugs and alcohol and pornography and prostitution before it, is another example of Congress trying to impose its distinctly prudish, sober, straight-laced morality on the rest of us. Apparently this morality is good for us proles, its stiff confines shaping us in to productive citizens, but it obviously does not apply to Congressmen themselves who feel free to fuck children and fill their pockets.
I ask again, where does the authority to enact such legislation come from? What makes legislators believe they have the right to tinker with our lives?
This is the heart of authoritarianism: legislators claim the right to enact any legislation they choose because they are legislators. This logic is circular; it is not the truth and we must ban it from our brains.
This bill has nothing to do with gambling, everything to do with power. It is about the “law and order” types reasserting control over the internet and control over our lives.
To keep us paying our exorbitant taxes and believing that their control is necessary, the government must root out all eccentricity, it must attack at the source all things exciting, risky, bohemian and addictive. Where will we be if too many people start to think “I don’t believe I want 2.3 children, a house in the suburbs, and an 8-6 job working for some asshole”? The racy, sexy and utterly satisfying acts of life must remain taboo, denied to us (so they say) because they are dangerous.
It is your duty as Americans on this week marking yet another defeat for human freedom to do something boldly reckless and senselessly destructive, just for kicks. Go out to the street and feel the blood in your veins. Such action is the only antidote for the stupefying fog being pumped into you living room. I’ll see you out there.
