Jerks don’t know when to shut up… that’s what makes them jerks
: John Gilmore — the jerk who wore the “Suspected Terrorist” button on a BA flight, causing the crew to turn the jet around — is still trying to dine out on his jerkiness (which he thinks is a brave political statement).
He writes to Larry Lessig defending himself and buried in there is this doozy of paranoid delusion:
I had zero expectation that my refusal to doff a button would result in the captain returning the plane to the gate. But even if I did fly often, my response would be the same: to constantly push back against the rules that turn a free people into the slaves of a totalitarian regime. I push back using the rights granted me by the constitutional structure of the country, plus my own intelligence and resources. Way too many of you readers are like the Poles who, under orders from swaggering bullies, built the brick wall around their own ghetto, as shown in the award-winning movie
