Is it possible to be stupider than Gloria Feldt, Former Head of Planned Parenthood?
2012 January 26
Where have you been these last three years, Mr. President? Welcome back.
He was doing what he believed in. Now it’s an election year, and he’s pandering. You, Ms. Feldt, are exactly why women are losing their abortion rights. With leaders like you and Obama who needs enemies?
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Don’t forget John Avarosis’ idiocy as well in highlighting the article. He’s back on the O-bandwagon big time. I left that blog years ago because the mountain of Obama’s dirt always being swept under the rug, or given weak O-bot spin. Avarosis (an “ex”-Republican raised by fundie Fox news viewers) gets practically all his liberal cred from gay activism, otherwise he’s totally fine with Obama because he’s just as much of a neo-liberal. He’s Andrew Sullivan-lite.
She’s getting a one year reprieve while he goes thru the motions. And the sad thing is 75% of liberals feel the same as Feldt.
It is the only thing she can do, or give up.
What an uncomfortable mixture of sadness and anger this sort of gullibility produces in me. There are people I like and care about who are exactly the same as Ms. Fedlt.
Oh, well….
As George W. Bush once said, “You can fool some of the people all the time and those are the ones to concentrate on.”
Looks like Obama’s got that one down too.
Bloody hell! Now we know why nothing changes.
On the positive side; this highlights what rare creatures we really are.
Herd animals are generally prey and are necessary for those at the top of the food chain.
It gives the rest of us cover for our independence. Cheers…
We truly live in an insane world. As a white, middle-aged male, I have the most to gain from a Ron Paul presidency…at least according to convention, that is…..keeping in mind that the whole thing is loosely choreographed and Ron Paul’s policies are just Sonar. But, I digress, so let’s assume it’s all on the up and up. I’m not a member of the “1%”, I’m a white male, and I’d like to have a pot brownie every now and then, and not be paranoid that I’ll be thrown in jail for it. Ron Paul’s my guy, right? Obviously, I see through it and comprehend everything else that comes with Ron Paul, if there was any possibility of him and his policies being elected. On another forum, I bring up his skeletons and vulnerabilities and I get pilloried…and some of those pillorying me are Code Pink women who are myopically fixated on the Palestinian issue and Israel. Seriously, you couldn’t write better satire. There are so many people out there giving their energy to their own metaphorical incarceration. This is just one of a bevy of examples. I finally got so fed up, I said the following, because the only response to this unwitting satire, is witting satire.
Well, Gloria Feldt needs to fund raise. What’s Digby’s excuse?
I’ll see your stupid and raise it.
Check out this letter to the President from that other faux Women’s Rights organization -the National Organization of Women.
http://www.now.org/issues/economic/openletter_obamaSOTU_1-20-12.pdf
The paragraphs dealing with Social Security/Medicaid/Medicare, the Affordable Care Act and Equal Marriage Rights are specifically adorable (see: delusional).
And union leaders have the peeps back as well.
The first sentence in Richard Trumka’s statement on the SOTU:
“Leaders are judged not just by what they say but to whom they listen.”
Got that. Strong leadership is based not on actions or accomplishments anymore.
No. Instead, according to the president of the biggest union in the country, strong leadership is based on speechifying and the pseudo listening skills of paid partisan pollsters.
To bayville:
Might Trumka have been referring to Mr Obumma’s stable-full of “0.0001%’er” advisers?
“Strong leadership is based not on actions or accomplishments anymore.”
It’s been that way at least since Reagan. Rhetoric has taken the space that actions once occupied. Hell, the senile old coot has been deified over a speech that basically boiled down to, “Mr. Gorbachev, get off my lawn.”
No-one in the comment section at Ablog is having any of it though. One wonders just who exactly it’s supposed to fool.
I think something good could actually come from an Obama re-election: many of the people like her who are deluding themselves into thinking the “real” Obama will appear once he doesn’t have to worry about achieving a second term will be forced to confront reality. Once he approves the Keystone XL pipeline, orders airstrikes against Iran, agrees to cut Social Security,etc., a lot of Democrats will wake up and move toward the Occupy Wall Street mode of thinking. Of course, many (perhaps most) will not.
And to answer your question: stupidity isn’t like temperature, which can only get so low. It’s more like a virus which grows more virulent the more people it infects.
No. It is not possible.
Notorious P.A.T.:
Whether that would constitute “confronting reality” is a matter of some dispute.
I don’t know when, or if, reality will ever make a dent, with those supporting Obama.
I see Mark Kleiman (samefacts.com) has a post up right now, congratulating himself on reading right-wing blogs, despite his distaste for their views, and then touting the pleasure he gets from reading right-wing Republicans attack Romney. He actually praises Dan Riehl for allegedly acknowledging “– from across the partisan divide – Barack Obama’s personal, moral superiority to Gov. Ken-Doll [Romney]”.
Parody is truly dead.
Unrelated: Ian, any comment? “LAPD And Special Forces Conduct Military Maneuvers In The Skies Above Downtown LA”
http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2012/01/25/lapd-and-special-forces-conduct-military-maneuvers-in-the-skies-above-downtown-la/
Seems we’ve arrived astonishingly quickly where we knew we were headed.
@eftwards just scrolled through a few pages of that blog. Thought this was an interesting observation:
“I am still amazed at how many people on the left despise Bill Clinton. The best economy in half a century and the Democrats ran away from it.”
Jesus Christ really? Clinton mastermind of welfare reform and neoliberal orthodoxy. I don’t believe it. This is the glory days we ought to be harking back to? What the fuck is wrong with American progressives.
Here are the only words that you need to read in the article:
“But I’m a sappy enough patriot to listen to every word, and to embrace the theater of it as an incredibly important declaration that our democracy lives for all of us to fight passionately another day for what we believe.”
Gaaahhhhh!!!!
No, the bots won’t wake up and won’t admit what’s going on, no matter what Obama does.
Back when Bush was in office, I used to say that the only way he might lose supporters would be if he went up in a plane and personally bombed some American cities. But no, that wouldn’t be enough. There’d have to be video of it. And it would have to be shown on American TV. But no, that wouldn’t be enough. People would say the video was doctored. They still wouldn’t believe it.
A similar thing could be said of Obama and his supporters now. Doesn’t matter what he does. The true believers will still believe. That quote Alcuin posted is priceless. As Bruce Wilder said, parody is dead.
And Khalid, yes, we have arrived there. And it was all predictable. On a related note:
DHS scanning people everywhere, even without their knowledge
http://tsanewsblog.com/1204/news/dhs-scanning-people-everywhere-even-without-their-knowledge/
Stupider? Maybe, maybe not. Just as stupid? Definitely. See here (and the links herein, which are really incredible), here, here, here, and here. For a start. I linked to Caruso because I knew these would be easy to find since he regularly documents these kinds of atrocities.
The answer to many of these – but not all – is that partisanship makes you stupid. Or at least makes you have to feign stupid.
And at first I wondered if this was the same woman who made up the story (read=lie) about Obama voting “present” on abortion issues in the Illinois Senate as a favor to abortion rights groups and at their request, but it isn’t. Of course, that woman was just lying and may not be stupid. Stupid were the people who believed the story (which made no sense) and thought voting “present” was a very fine way to support women’s rights.
And while I’m at it, speaking of women’s rights and Obama, there is perhaps nothing stupider than this Ms. Magazine cover. It was dumb at the time and has only come to look worse in hindsight.
Gah. I believe it was a commenter here who used the term Peak Stupid. I’d say that about sums it up.
Agh, I need to clean my brain – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkF4WP02plg (for those who don’t watch Parks & Rec, Amy Poehler’s character is trying to take the blame for shooting her boss in the head when another (male) co-worker was the actual culprit and ends up appealing to his sexism by stating pretty much every female cliche).
I do not have to say much about that, so I probably should keep my mouth shut.
But then this:
…I couldn’t help thinking how darn lucky Obama is that Hillary Clinton is such a team player. So many of these foreign policy victories were hers. …
Which exactly?
As to the term ‘team player’ I bring to our memory this:
…On July 31, 2010, (Chelsea) Clinton and Marc Mezvinsky were married in an interfaith ceremony at Rhinebeck, New York. The venue for the nuptials was Astor Courts, a 50-acre, 1902 Beaux-Arts estate on a bluff overlooking the Hudson River. The estate at that time was the home of Hillary Clinton supporter Kathleen Hammer, once a producer at Oxygen Media, and Arthur Seelbinder, a developer and businessman.
…
Marc was a Goldman Sachs investment banker, and, at the time of the marriage, an investment banker at 3G Capital Management
…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelsea_Clinton#Engagement_and_marriage
So what exactly is the ‘team-playing’ here?
This very much nullifies everything she is bloviating.
It is a mindset, which still finds a glittering pebble in a boatload of bullshit, delivered to the masses.
To recover from that, I can only suggest listening to Lawrence Lessig at SALT.
http://longnow.org/seminars/02012/jan/17/how-money-corrupts-congress-and-plan-stop-it/
Clear diagnosis, positive vision, tiny amount of hope.
Warning: Long 1 1/2 hr podcast. Worth it.
This ‘victory’ meme.
Life is a fight.
If it is’nt, You have to invent an enemy.
No enemy, no victory.
Such a life is not worth living.
Right?
Q.E.D.
Good podcast, groo. Thanks for the link.
I think something good could actually come from an Obama re-election: many of the people like her who are deluding themselves into thinking the “real” Obama will appear once he doesn’t have to worry about achieving a second term will be forced to confront reality…a lot of Democrats will wake up and move toward the Occupy Wall Street mode of thinking.
Most of the Democrats will follow new delusions with their current way of thinking. You can’t change that way of thinking for them without herculean effort, so why bother. Too many more important matters at hand than reasoning with someone who is unreasonably reasonable.
And now we have David Atkins at Hullabaloo, embracing insanity.
“And that after the election, everything will go back to business as usual.
I’m not sure that’s the case.”
And he jabbers about how Obama’s rhetoric is causing Wall Street to alter it’s behavior, saying that “there’s a lot to be said for rhetoric alone,”implying that the alteration is significant and lasting, and finishes up with, “Rhetoric matters.”
Lord help us all.
Arguing with “Liberals” is the same as arguing with “Republicans.” It’s not worth the effort. Justin’s right. Let’s face it, many of us who post here have no place. We’re pariahs….outcasts. Sure, some of us pretend we’re not, just to make it through the day, but let’s be honest, increasingly we feel like this lady.
MB, at this point, I just do it for the hell of it, because it pleases me to be a thorn in their side. That, and I like William Blake’s dictum:
“When I tell any truth, it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those who do.”
Petro,
thanks for listening
MB, no. It is about the tedious job of shifting the overton window, adding a grain of -ahem- ‘logic’.
Lisa. Agreed, with the small exception, that the holy grail of ‘full knowledge’ is nothing of ours.
(I once translated a couple of Blake’s poems into German, because I had the impression that he is more German than British, because he is a romanticising dualist.
See Caspar David Friedrich.
http://www.google.de/search?q=caspar+friedrich&hl=de&client=firefox-a&hs=vyd&rls=org.mozilla:de:official&prmd=imvns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=jYwkT9DKNs_Esgb3u9AN&sqi=2&ved=0CC0QsAQ&biw=757&bih=905 )
-See the difference to Blake?
On a deeper level, the two monisms and dualism are in a constant fight. Which is very interesting, how they play out in their respective times.
LS and Groo, everyone has their own particular rationalization as to why they continue, but stepping outside of it, and looking at it objectively, it appears much like this. I’m as guilty as the next. I think I just spout off the same reason a volcano does….it’s in my nature.
MB,
This is depressing.
Am having a hard time to explain that.
Has something to do with the strict father, I suppose, and, well makes me depressed of sorts.
Not physically, but mentally.
Amen.
MB,
this is the Kaaba.
http://www.islam-watch.org/Assets/hajj-pilgrims-touch-wall-of-kaaba.jpg
What’s the difference, exactly?
groo, love it. No difference, really…we’re all just wailing at walls, literally in some cases, and figuratively in others.
On the other hand, when I get really down, I remember what activist Kevin Zeese told me. Paraphrasing: “You have to keep hitting that wall. You have to keep hitting and hitting it. Because you never know when you will break through. You feel like you’re wasting your time, but in fact you never know when one brick will fall out. Then another, and another. And before you know it, the whole wall comes crashing down.”
I suppose it’s just another metaphor along the lines of the Overton window, but I like it better. The OW is so policy-wonk to me. I prefer plain speaking.
Yeah, maybe so, Lisa, but there are those on the other side of that divide we call a wall who are trying to do the very same thing and they are as equal as you in their conviction. I know, I know….at this point the idealists buck up and say “but the truth always prevails in the end.” Perhaps, but the end’s a little too late for me.
Speaking of walls, the book I’m currently reading, The Monk Downstairs, has something rather profound and wonderful to say about walls.
Lisa,
…The OW is so policy-wonk to me. I prefer plain speaking….
The plain speaking we can do here. Hopefully.
My own concept is something along semantic nets. Everyone weaves his own, which is embedded in a set of collective narratives, and below that are some axioms, which hold the whole thing together.
(I do not like the meme concept very much.)
If one attacks the axioms of others, which I do occasionally, I must confess, one rarely succeeds. This has been proven by a lot of experiments.
My working hypothesis, so to say, is, that the semantic net, or belief system, of >90% is fragmented, i.e. is incoherent or even contradictory.
On the other hand, nearly everybody tries to minimize cognitive dissonance, because this is (mental-) energy-intensive.
This is also the reason, why people form groups of like opinions, and keep out the party-poopers.
So the task is, according to that mental model, to work on the spots on the net, where the contradictions are most obvious, whereas there still is a common ground, i.e. a part of the net, where one can agree upon, that it is robust.
The Overton-window-thesis is just a meta-concept about how to cope with the situation, and as you can hopefully see, I do not like it either, in the sense of a complete description of what is going on.
In the same sense George Lakoff misses something, it seems to me, because he concentrates on something quite superficial.
Not that he is wrong, or that the meme-concept is wrong.
It just replicates the brokenness of our grasp of the world on another level.
So there is a lot of work to do on many levels.
As a funny sidenote: I heard, that some Zen-monks not only practiced the art of shrinking trees to Bonsai-size, but also shrinking animals, so that they match the trees.
In the late 18th century they gave up on that, and the art was lost. Nobody knows why. There is just a rumor amongst monks and their believers, that they tried that once.
The stupidest view of all is by Fox viewers who claim Obama is a socialist. As Bill Maher aptly put it, “Obama is no socialist. He isn’t even a liberal.” Yes folks, FDR was no socialist but he was a liberal. Looks like we don’t have many of them around and socialists are hard to find.
Btw, FDR averaged a growth rate of 8.5% with not much difference between the war years and the peace years. We celebrate a quarter with a 3% annual increase. Nuts. Yup. So why do we follow right wiong not Keyn sian economics? Well, Keynsian benefited everybody but the upper1% did less well than the masses. Or, increasing inequality makes for a poorer country. Remember, Obama not only praised Reagan but blamed FDR for extending the Depression by n ot following Hoover’s program. He’a right wing standard Republican.
I want to close by paraphrasing an old Donovan song: Once there were liberals/ Now there are no liberals (just progressives)/Now there are (in weak speech)
The Crawdad Hole is in many ways a right-wing Hullabaloo minus the purges–I do respect them for exposing the sham of Hullabaloo’s “open” comment section, but they are indeed quite disingenuous most of the time. I linked there because they’re one of the very few blogs willing to acknowledge just how transparently absurd OWS is (it looks like Ted Rall has an inkling as well.)
The primary effect of OWS’s “no-politics” rule is to permit the Dems to skate free of any meaningful electoral consequences for engineering the destruction of the U.S. middle classes. OWS is to the Democrats what the Democrats are to the Republicans.
OWS is something that in theory I like (thinking beyond “There is No Alternative”), but in practice I find difficult to totally embrace. I went to a couple of townhall meetings at lunchtime at OccupyLSX and the notion that somehow this is leaderless is complete horseshit. It was very obvious that certain people led discussions and they made sure that what they want goes up to the general meeting. Also, there was no way for me to dedicate my life to their cause, so (like the Crawdad Hole article notes) it was fairly obvious that my voice was a meaningless part of the masses.
They have a fetish for organisational structure and rules that would be cute if it wasn’t already looking rather ossified. Why are their rules any better than the current rubbish we live under? I couldn’t see it.
Also, I find it annoying that the Occupy people still keep saying they have a “right” to protest and a “right” to Occupy. They go through the courts to not be thrown off St. Pauls’ square. Rights are what governments give and can take away. Laws are written by and/or for the elites – that’s where your precious rights come from. They will be given and taken away at whim. The government will use any means necessary to destroy them. They should embrace the fact that they are going beyond the law (i.e. illegal actions). They don’t seem to have the imagination to go beyond legalistic and rules-based thinking.
I think I’m just getting old and cranky. Grr.
“but the truth always prevails in the end.”
Well, I certainly don’t believe that. Wish I did, but I don’t.
As for the Occupy movement, I’ve always thought the whole “horizontal democracy” and “no leaders” stuff was bullshit. You need leaders, you need structure, you need strategy, and you need discipline to get anything done. The GA “consensus” model, where anyone and everyone blabs to his heart’s content and has an equal vote? Just shoot me now. Tyranny of the minority is an understatement. More like tyranny of the handful of people who think this is Woodstock redux and just want to sit in their tents and get high. Or tyranny of those who don’t recognize co-option when they see it and just want to re-elect Obama.
We know what we’re up against. We don’t have any illusions.
By the way, don’t know if y’all know about this bit of U.S. history, but I sure didn’t until yesterday:
Document uncovers details of a planned coup in the USA in 1933 by right-wing American businessmen
The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell Hse, & George Bush’s Grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression.
Mike Thomson investigates why so little is known about this biggest ever peacetime threat to American democracy.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/document/document_20070723.shtml
There’s been one book written about it, and even the risk-averse History Channel did a doc on it — well, back in 1997; they’d never do it today — both available on-line.
And here’s the headline from the NYT back in 1933:
Gen. Butler Bares ‘Fascist Plot’ To Seize Government by Force; Says Bond Salesman, as Representative of Wall St. Group, Asked Him to Lead Army of 500,000 in March on Capital — Those Named Make Angry Denials — Dickstein Gets Charge. GEN. BUTLER BARES A ‘FASCIST PLOT’
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB0D17FD3C5812738DDDA80A94D9415B848FF1D3&scp=1&sq=Butler&st=p
Oh, and M.InTheCity wrote: “Rights are what governments give and can take away.”
No, no, no. Rights are not given by the government. They are inherent. They are ours before the notion of government even comes into it. They are, in the words of the Declaration of Independence, “unalienable.”
Yes, of course I know governments shit on rights all the time. I get it. But government doesn’t grant rights. Rights are not that which are granted, they are that which can’t be taken away — unless we let them. And there’s a lot of letting going on.
You have exactly the rights you will fight for… and win.
Ian, yes. Exactly.
Link to Ted Rall should have gone here.
“Link to Ted Rall should have gone here.”
Wow, what a good point. Only violence solves problems. That’s why little-known figures like Martin Luther King Jr. and Mohandas Gandhi are such historical failures. And remember how the murder of uber-hawk John F. Kennedy kept us out of Viet Nam?
So who should we kill first, Mr. Rall? The president? The head of Goldman Sachs? Please, enlighten us. Or show us–instructions for building bombs are easy to find on the internet. Put your money where your mouth is.
Lisa,
You say:
…As for the Occupy movement, I’ve always thought the whole “horizontal democracy” and “no leaders” stuff was bullshit. You need leaders, you need structure, you need strategy, and you need discipline to get anything done. …
There is some truth in that.
Here You develop something akin to what I call a partial semantic net, which has its weak spots, i.e. somehow shaky assumptions and conclusions.
(no offense intended.)
Sorry.
You implicitly say, that ANY (complex) society needs a hierarchical structure.
I doubt that.
Chief and Shaman, King and Pope.
Post-enlightenment societies tried to marginalize the spiritual side.
Nowadays we have some bigots applying for the presidency, who pay lip-service to the spiritual side, and are neither one or the other.
This at first is a symptom of a disease, which camouflages as a ‘solution’.
We know that.
Anyway.
There have been successful societies, like the Mapuche in Chile, who were never defeated by the Spanish, but only by administrative rule in the 18/19th century.
They were a successful ‘horizontal’ society.
One should learn from them.
OWS has some sensible spokes(wo)men, like Graeber or Hedges or quite some others, who are very aware of their significant voice, but they do not want to be ‘leaders’, but because they are aware that they would do a disservice to the movement.
If OWS does not succeed, then it would -to my opinion- retreat to a communal level, which You could term ‘total defeat’, but I do not. A lot of land will be lost, but not all.
See e.g. as an interesting take:
“Language Imperialism, Concepts and Civilization: China versus The West”
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28940
Leader-based communities maybe effective in reaching a goal, but are not sustainable in the long term.
At least not in creating a humane society.
To correct this, ‘real’ women should step in.
More often than not they mimic stupid males. Palin, Bachmann, H. Clinton and all the rest.
This is frustrating.
Violence often solves things. You can ask George Washington about that. Or Hannibal.
Occupy has leaders. The meetings are very managed. The one place they seem to have lost control of is Oakland, which, not coincidentally, is the only place where Occupy is still going really strong.
I never said that. I wouldn’t term it total defeat.
We’re facing incredibly powerful forces here. We’re fighting an entire system. Yes, we need hierarchy. Yes, we need structure. Sorry, but “leader’ isn’t a dirty word. I’ve said that till I’m blue in the face, at every planning meeting I attended for the Occupy movement, and every meeting since then. The sentiment doesn’t fit with the zeitgeist, but tough shit. The seasoned activists get it. And the occupations around the country, all of which are having similar problems, are starting to get it, too.
And I’d still like to know, Ian, exactly what violence you think we need to commit? Every police force in this country is militarized to the nth degree. What do you think we can do against that?? I want to know. Not because I’m going to do it, but because I want to hear specifics. It’s easy to throw around the notion that violence will accomplish this, that, or the other goal, but how?
Do you mean the kind of sabotage Derrick Jensen advocates (well, he would say he doesn’t advocate violence). Do you mean blowing up pipelines and burning down condo developments in pristine areas? There are some people in solitary confinement for that. And others who are simply in jail for the rest of their lives. Are you saying that if enough of us sacrifice ourselves in this fashion, eventually our overlords will give in?
I’m asking a serious question.
Do you know how Argentina went down? The unsanitized version?
Let’s talk cars and suits.
If a taxi picked up someone in a suit, crowds would surround it and slash the tires of the cars.
If a nice car (mercedes/limo, etc…) was seen, same thing.
Remember Ben Nelson’s pizza? He goes to order a pizza, everyone in the place boos him, he leaves w/o his pizza.
As I told the NY people, what they should do is Occupy Bloomberg. Everywhere he goes, you go. Heckle him, make his life living hell. 24/7.
As for stuff beyond that, no I’m not going into details right now. Except to say that your leaders must fear you, must fear for their lives and property. Make them spend more and more and more on security. Make it so they can’t go to the theater, can’t go out for a meal in Manhattan, can’t walk down the street without a cordon of bodyguards.
This stuff doesn’t start in full fledged revolution. And ideally you’d rather not get there. But if you aren’t willing to go there, why shouldn’t they keep doing whatever they want to you whenever they want? What’s the cost to them?
I’m not spelling stuff like this out. I’d have to be insane to do so.
Start by making the lives of people like Bloomberg and Quan living fucking hell.
If it keeps going, you make them go all the way — make them go to full gulags (the US already locks up more people than the USSR did.) Make them go to liquidation camps. Push the fucking issue. See how far they’ll go, how much the military and the police and all the veterans (who know how to rip apart the US military, they had it done to them) will allow it to go.
Frankly, I think the US is done. If there’s violence now, some faction of the right will win. But remember, always, the elites want to live in nice cities like DC and NY and Boston and SF and LA. They don’t want to live in Flyover country.
Violence appears to solve things sometimes. Such solutions contain the seeds of the next problem, by nature of their birth. From “the sort of leaders that are thrown up” to the nursed wounds and grievances of the vanquished to the tensions of preventative (reactionary) policy – reactions from and to these all percolate to the surface soon enough.
That said – the sort of “violence” that Ian seems to be advocating translates more to me as social ostracization. The “elites” have been worshiped and pandered to for far too long, and its time they feel the sting of pariah-hood. I don’t know if it has to go as far as egging limousines, but that sort of thing makes me smile anyway.
Leaderlessness (or its antonymous synonym “leaderfullness”) is a state of mind, not an organizational dictum. The provisional leadership of democratic elections, or rotational lotteries, are attempts to wrap an organizational structure around leaderlessness by subtracting cult-of-personality from leadership. This remains an impotent palliative as long as the state of mind of the electorate is not aligned with the idea. Cult-of-personality (and money power) will always defeat such efforts without proper state of mind. As they will defeat any organizational structuring that OWS tries to effect, regardless of how “horizontal” it is written.
In the right state of mind, a “leader” is not a leader at all, but merely a tasked individual. “Looking up” to someone (or to an idea, for that matter) is not mature. “No leaders” should not be mistaken as a cry against the specialized qualities of leadership, specifically tasked.
A proper revolution cannot happen without state of mind. If the people are not ready, they are not ready. My hopes as regards #Occupy is as a sign of an emergent maturity. If the maturity does not emerge, to a “tipping point” degree, then the dismissive and cynical criticism of the movement is correct. The movement is about people, not systems or techniques or utopia. If the people are not “present” – in every sense of the word – then it will be just another cycle of non-evolutionary revolution, containing the seeds of violence that will emerge in the “new” system, and pre-sage its collapse.
My pushback against the cynics is only a plea for the potential for human maturity. Of course we are surrounded by examples of our failure as sensible beings. I concur that we are a miserable lot, and haven’t much to point to, to acquit us from this judgment.
To make the collective more personal: When I see, clearly, what a shit I really am, what then is my next move? Suicide, or do I cast about for some wisdom? In this context, cynicism is suicide.
——————————-
As an important nod to groo’s point about a “retreat to a communal level” – certainly not a defeat, and I could see regional emergences of “tipping point” maturity beginning to actualize, in abatement for some future historical re-connection with the whole, as these communities, across the wastelands of metaphorical “Mad Max” culture, discover and reinforce each other.
It does but this study [PDF] looking at major nonviolent and violent resistance campaigns from 1900 to 2006 says the following:
The authors are not advocating “nonviolence” but “nonviolent resistance”:
Many of these tactics seem to be the same ones as those that you’re advocating, Ian. Maybe the distinction here is between “showing up and playing nice” and those acts of nonviolent resistance that, possibly because they’re more effective, elicit violence from those being resisted and backfire.
Yes, I do know how Argentina went down. 20,000 disappeared. God knows how many tortured. It was genocide.
I’m not sure what you’re getting at.
Could we have gulags here? Of course we could. I know that, even if millions of pearl-clutching “that could never happen here!” types don’t. But honestly, urging activists to “push it that far” doesn’t strike me as a sensible strategy. The whole point is not to let it get to that stage.
As for making the lives of the wealthy looters hell, I’m not sure that’s a good strategy either. Maybe. Or maybe it’s counterproductive. I agree that, in order to have an effect, you have make people in power feel it. But there are other ways to do that besides following them around and pelting them with eggs.
And of course I don’t expect you to spell out actual tactics of violence on a blog.
Petro: “In the right state of mind, a ‘leader’ is not a leader at all, but merely a tasked individual.” Well put. Agreed.
But too much of the Occupy movement is enamored of the idea that Everyone Can Do Everything Equally Well. Which is bullshit. I’m incompetent at computers; let those who know what they’re doing in that regard use them to further the movement. Somebody else can’t string a coherent sentence together; he/she shouldn’t be talking to the media. Another person has a great creative sensibility, or is a fab artist; he/she should be designing the artwork, the more theatrical aspects. Other people can manage money; let them do it. People have different talents, skills, abilities. That should be celebrated, not lamented.
How Swedes and Norwegians broke the power of the ‘1 percent’
by George Lakey
Waging Non-Violence, January 25, 2012
http://october2011.org/blogs/kevin-zeese/struggle-ongoing
10 Everyday Acts of Resistance That Changed the World
Václav Havel called it “the power of the powerless.” How regular people, from Denmark to Liberia, have stood up to power—and won.
by Steve Crawshaw, John Jackson
Yes!, April 01, 2011
http://october2011.org/blogs/organizer/learning-successful-acts-resistance-around-world
How Americans Can “Get Up, Stand Up” Against Corporatocracy Rule
By Bruce Levine on July 20, 2011
http://brucelevine.net/how-americans-can-get-up-stand-up-against-corporatocracy-rule-2/
And thanks to Jeff W for posting the Stephan-Chenoweth study.
I wonder if you don’t realize how fed up the folks defending the elites are. At some point nobody’s paying the praetorian guard — or the IT guys and the National Guard, as it would now be.
In addition, violence is exactly what’s espoused by infiltrators and agents provocateurs. Not only don’t I believe in violence as a means of getting what we want, I would be very suspicious of anyone in the movement advocating it. It’s a big ol’ red flag.
I’ll be blunter than usual. It doesn’t matter what we want. It’s going to happen. Soros is absolutely right, we are moving into an era of riots and repression, and more riots, and so on. Violence will occur, people will not keep letting the cops beat their heads in, or lose their houses, or their jobs, or their healthcare, without fighting back.
It has already started in Oakland. The other night they broke the Kettle. Think about that for a moment.
As things get worse, there will be violence. This is a formal prediction, and I will be right on this.
It can be done smart, or it can be done stupid, and the left people can win or they can lose, but it will happen.
a lot of relevant things have been said here, too much to be considered for all us folks out there?
So probably Ian is right , that there will probably be blood on the streets.
Hobsbawm says this, Wallerstein also.
If You drive people into despair, it will happen. No doubt about that.
I also presume, that everybody here will agree, that nothing will get better by force, but that only a crude form of ‘reciprocity’ will emanate, as with any cornered animal.
So this is the last resort, so to say.
We fall back in the strife to being more human.
One can view Greece as a laboratory, where suicides soar and the overlords watch what happens.
Or to Iceland, where it was the opposite.
My argument is, that this is a multilevel process, going up to Harvard and the driving out of Greg Mankiv with his silly Econ 101.
Or Philip Glass, the composer, before the NY Met.
Here the 1% see that their marbles are potentially glass-beads.
OWS is a multilevel activity, and we should position ourselves at the proper level, which fits us.
9x% of actors and artists are near the poverty-level and not at the celebrity level.
So there is a lot of action, eg if the actors realize that they live in a scam, if they believe that they would ever be at the celebrity-level.
So there is a lot of steam in there.
The Elite has to become be aware, that they are not loved, and as they are mostly narcissists, they have some sensibilities here.
Remember that Erich Mielke, the minister of state-security in East Germany and assassin (murderer) in his early days said:
“But I love You all”
Same with Ceausescu in Romania.
These clowns actually believed that their form of rule was an act of fatherly love.
Illusion of grandeur.
(Strict father. Same with Mubarak, Gaddafi, Kim Yong Il , Bush, and countless others.)
The power-elite has a strange desire that they are loved by the common folk, which is more often than not delusional.
(My ‘love’ for Gandhi or Mandela is also rather low-key.)
If they get the message, that they are are despised, and should change their ways, maybe that helps.
Soros, Buffet and some others seem to get it, what is at stake.
The rest, 90% of the 0.01%, obviously not.
@Petro, like your assessment of the situation
@Lisa the ‘You’ you cited from me, is a misunderstanding. It is not addreeed to ‘You’, but to a generalized ‘One’. My fault.
@Lisa, there’s a lengthy entry in wikipedia on Genl Smedley Butler, which mentions his involvement in the plot to assasinate FDR. He was an early critic of the military-industrial-complex, author of War Is A Racket. The reason you haven’t heard much about the plot against FDR is explained in the article – people didn’t believe him.
alyosha, yes, I know. I found out about it because I’m an admirer of Smedley Butler. Congress believed him. The plot is historical fact. The story isn’t more widely known because this country likes its myths and is intent on perpetuating them.
And Ian, yes, I know riots are coming. At least that’s what I suspect. I’ve been saying it, along with you, for ages. I didn’t need George Soros to tell me. Even some normally clueless people on the so-called left, meaning establishment liberals, recognize this and are worried about it. Civil unrest is in our future. As the elites press the boot harder and harder to our necks, people are going to get pissed off and react in destructive ways. And all it’s going to accomplish is make the authorities crack down harder, become more repressive, hurt people more.
What I’m saying is that I’m not throwing any bricks, I’m not throwing any punches, I’m not tossing any firebombs, I’m not going to commit violence. There are other ways to fight. And to win. That doesn’t mean I don’t recognize that not everyone agrees with me. I know what’s going on out there.
Lisa,
“And all it’s going to accomplish is make the authorities crack down harder, become more repressive, hurt people more.”
And that is pretty much what the peacniks said in 1776 about the British.
“There are other ways to fight. And to win. “
I’m sure that’s what a lot of well-meaning people thought in 1776, too. In the end, it took violence, and one whole hell of a lot of it.
Bill H., read up-thread. 1776 isn’t the only example out there.
By the way, I’m still curious about what violence-advocates think they have against stuff like this:
LA Police Department Conducts Joint Exercises with the Military
The LA Police Department, known for its brutality and corruption over the years, and the U.S. military conducted joint “tactical exercises” in downtown LA this week.
One Black Hawk, a helicopter that has served in combat in Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Somalia, the Balkans, Afghanistan, and other areas in the Middle East, and four OH-6 choppers – “Little Birds” – flew over the city during the exercise . . . press release . . . “not open to the public.”
. . . “You mean the deployment of military assets in an urban area is supposed to be inconspicuous? The video of these ‘exercises’ would be something to behold, probably much like what we saw in Iron-Curtain Eastern Europe and Tiananmen Square. But since the NDAA 2012 was passed nothing seems surprising any more.”
“It appears America is preparing for war against its own citizens. I don’t know how else to put it. If someone can make a suggestion for another way of interpreting this, please do,” the blog stated.
Joint military exercises have also been conducted over Boston, Massachusetts and Little Rock, Arkansas over the past six months.
http://blogs.alternet.org/danbacher/2012/01/25/la-police-department-conducts-joint-exercises-with-the-military/
@ Lisa S.
One of the advantages one gains as an expatriate is perspective, no longer engaged in the daily onslaught of trivia. After a while another advantage appears, one’s “filter” of importance engages, being able to discern the grain from the chaff.
Your stated position is admirable, no fault can be lain at the foot of your principles. Never loose sight of those goals. However, those principles will only stand you in good stead as long as there is law, the groves of which provide protection from the storms that assault. The storms that are developing are storms of power, the obtaining and retention of power. There are no laws that withstand these forces, law itself is now lain low in service to power, shelter there no longer exists.
The nexus you find yourself is the final grasp for power. There will be only one winner. Those who loose are lost. Two books illuminate this fact, one anecdotal, the other historical, both about the Spanish “Civil War” (which is a misnomer, it was a coup d’état against the legitimately established republic that split Spain). Giles Tremlett’s “Ghosts of Spain, Travels Through a Country’s Hidden Past” (ISBN 0-571-22169-6) gives vivid color to that history. The other book, Paul Preston’s “The Spanish Civil War, Reaction, Revolution & Revenge” (ISBN 978-0-00-723207-9) presents an exceptional history of the coup d’état. Neither book is forgettable. Together these books render a prophesy of what is to come as your empire there collapses. To read a story of empire collapse another book is brilliant, Edmund de Waal’s “The Hare with Amber Eyes, A Hidden Inheritance” (ISBN 978-0-099-53955-1), a biography of a family, and how quickly wealth can disappear.
But if you are ever interested in power, there is no better book than Niccolò Machiavelli’s “Discourses on Livy” (ISBN 978-0-19-955555-0) and his reading and interpretation of the Roman historian (of the Republican era) and its importance to the arts of using power.
Those are the pearls on offer, I know of no better. Good luck with your endeavours.
I know.
And I read lots of Machiavelli in college.
What I still don’t see is how you think you’re going to go up against the most powerful military in the world. It’s easy to say “people need to commit violence.” Then what?
When I say there are other methods, I’m not speaking out of a principle of pacifism. I’m not a pacifist. I’m saying, for example, that Anonymous has the right idea. Their methods are very effective. And will only become more so. Would you call that “violence”? I wouldn’t (though the State Department and Dept of Defense do).
Hitting our overlords in the pocketbook, which is one thing they understand, can come about in many creative — and effective — ways. Certainly more effective than urging people to go into the streets and start shooting and burning shit.
Hitting the overlords in the pocketbook in what way? I need clarification on that matter, because a great deal of lip service is devoted to it by otherwise well-meaning individuals, but anything actionable that comes from that statement appears to me to be shallowly superficial and lacking any teeth, whatsoever. It’s more like a vanity play…..like “I’ll shop here instead of there until you throw me a crumb, or two.” That’s not going to cut it.
Lisa, are you invested in the stock market in any way? If so, how on earth can you say “hit the overlords in the pocketbook” and yet still be invested with, and in, the “overlords?” For all of you who have “worked hard” and “saved” for your little nest egg of retirement, you can’t claim community is the answer when your actions don’t support that assertion. Investing in the stock market, aka Wall Street, is the antithesis of community and is aiding and abetting the very enemy that is the source of the so-called OWS “movement.”
I’m saying, for example, that Anonymous has the right idea. Their methods are very effective. And will only become more so. Would you call that “violence”? I wouldn’t (though the State Department and Dept of Defense do).
There’s that pesky Overton Window again, but this time it’s applied to what is considered violence. At this rate, the Overton Window will shift to the point that eventually, in the not too distant future, thinking dissenting thoughts, even those of a mostly benign nature, will be considered violence by the Pre-Crime Military Police. At that point, which is fast approaching, the possibility exists that all those who preached strict non-violent civil disobedience will lament not taking a more active and assertive hand in steering that Overton Window in the opposite direction.
I’m not in the stock market. As I’ve said for more years than I can count, it’s a casino.
@ Lisa S.
Have it your way by all means. Good luck with that. Those books were not mentioned just to hear the keys on the keyboard clatter. As stated, being expatriate has certain advantages.
I must say I think this is ironic coming from you, MB, given that we all had a similar discussion on this blog during the UK riots and you got angry at those who were preaching violence then.
When you all figure out what “a more active and assertive” role is, other than working out ideas on a blog, let me know. You can come to some planning meetings where we talk about this stuff in person. I understand you don’t want to put it in writing — though it again strikes me as ironic that those who are afraid to put it in writing are urging others to go out and do it, whatever ‘it’ is.
I see we’re back to the non-violence thing again. So…what is a “violence advocate”? I don’t think that saying there will be violence or that people should and, likely will, defend themslves if attack makes one a violence advocate.
When people talk about non-violence and the US, I often think they are talking about that mythical US where we are a “peace loving people”. In reality, we are a quasi polic state warmongering country with the destructive capability to kill all life on the planet several times over in many nasty ways and our people are largely paranoid, fearful, resentful and armed to the teeth. We imprison millions of our citizens and kill thousands of each other yearly but yet people think that the fundamental and massive changes that are needed to improve our society are going to come about non-violently? Not likey.
My only disagreement with Ian/Soros is that the period of riots and repression is not coming. It’s been here for years but just ignored because it didn’t involve certain people. Oakland OWS is not the start. That cycle has been going on in black and poor white communities for decades and really the only difference between those two communites in mainstream consciousness is that poor blacks are demonized and ridiculed whereas poor whites are ignored and ridiculed.
Also, I think MB is right. I tend to be skeptical as well when I see the actions behind the “hitting the overlords in the pocket” slogan.
Lisa, on the Smedley Butler thing: Back in the ’90s I became aware of this plot, and I was gobsmacked. I finally found a copy of “The Plot To Seize The White House” by Jules Archer and paid $800 for it. The story going around was that when it was first published in the 1973, most copies were bought up and destroyed by certain high-placed families – don’t know if that’s true, but the book was certainly rare. (After that sale, other old copies began showing up, more in the $300 range.)
I opti-scanned the book and published it in its entirety on my pre-blog days website (now defunct as of this month, sadly – can’t afford it anymore), and consequently the site received its first (and only, really) traffic and links to it. I was delighted to be spreading this information. After a few years, I was notified that the book would be reprinted and could I please take down the copyrighted material.
My tiny contribution.
I think the “hitting the pocketbook” is less about boycotting and purchase choices and more about a fundamental shift in lifestyle – away from the consumer/debtor model that serves the needs of a “growth economy” – which is really the model for the transfer of wealth upwards. It means doing those things that are “bad” for the economy – saving instead of spending, eschewing the common practice of long-distance travel for vacations (this privilege being an historical accident of the cheap oil period) and other ways of reducing the currently overwhelming influence that monetary transactions exact in our daily lives.
If we subtract the greed out of our little consumer hearts, they have no purchase on us any longer.
This, indeed, will hurt. And, of course, it will be drum-beated heartily, on the teevee, that this is traitorous and un-American behavior.
MB gives a good example of ‘shifting the Overton window’.
…violence…
‘Violence’ is a a flexible term like ‘freedom’ and ‘terrorism’.
Liberals are mostly defenseless against this ‘occupy-language’ of the right, as Lakoff repeatedly noted.
See Gingrich ‘defending’ his obscure past, both personal and political.
And the flip-flopper was? Eg. Kerry.
(Flip-floppers are always Democrats, Repubs have a natural right to do so.
because they are only pretenders of anything. Never mean what they say.
This is the silent pact between the pretenders and the couch-potatoes.
–>fragmented mind again.)
See Romney invoking (bad) ‘Chinese communism’ against his (good) ‘American’ vulture-capitalism.
He himself channeling his money through tax havens etc.
Call that ‘freedom’.
‘Freedom’ seems to live in the tax-havens nowadays.
Or what?
This is bordering on the absurd, and can only be explained by delusion of a considerable part of the american populace.
Anyway.
I think, eg http://taxjustice.blogspot.com/, does an admirable job of deconstruction from the TOP. (i.e. where rationality reigns.)
No blood here. Only logic.
You have to confront the middle-strata of the system, who are at the control knobs, with the inner logic of the system.
If they would recognize, there would be some hope.
The upper strata are so used to giving orders (lost in abstraction) , that they actually do not know what is going on.
They seem-mentally- incapable to see the problem.
They are so detached, that they equally could live on the Moon or Mars or wherever.
Actually they do.
Hope they succeed, and we can get rid of them in large numbers.
Technology will save us this time.
Haha.
@Lisa
From a purely academic standpoint, acknowledging the devastation wreaked by military occupation, wouldn’t the people in the U.S. would have the same tools of insurgency that insurgents have always had – tools that have been deployed effectively to defeat the U.S. and its powerful weapons in at least two (Vietnam and Iraq), and probably now a third (Afghanistan) war.
Shy of insurgency, don’t the kinds of militant actions some unions carried out in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have to be seen as partly responsible for effecting postive change? One wonders if EGT would have to come to the table less willingly in their dispute with the ILWU over the grain terminal at the Port of Longview without the unsanctioned actions (blocking trains, dumping tons of grain on the tracks) of some ILWU members and supporters.
Violence has been the American way for so long. to presume otherwise is to be ignorant of American history, past and present.
to see what has been done by those in power to the “little people”.
unless the threat of violence is held and parlayed into power, the rest of us will continue to suffer the violence of the Elites.
The Riots in Chicago was the signal that violence against the DFH’s were the way to stop the “troubles’ from escalating.
Killing MLK, JFK, RFK, along with teh sudden deaths of peace advocates seem to have produced a “left” that realizes it will be killed if it dares to speak too loudly.
the idea that violence doesn’t work is mindnumbing. and our response has to be smarter than their violence. i don’t doubt there will be some violence on the Left to precipitate a “really violent reaction from the Government. just think of Pine Ridge, Ruby Ridge, Waco and countless other incidents where the “troublemakers” will either shut up or lose their leaders.
fascinating take to think we aren’t and always haven’t used Violence as a natural tenet of what constitutes an AMERICAN.
the divide and conquer strategy has worked so well. even the use of violence is now considered to be futile (for us little people). to think we shall get there by other means is just what the Elites want us to “accept”.
hope dies in such a situation, and violence is the one of the many recources people feel. Doesn’t mean we endorse violence as the “means’ to an end. just there isn’t any other way when peaceful methods are stopped, as i have seen written a lot lately.
i know many people have died since the War on America/Drugs began. the guns are going off now. the poor fighting each other for the crumbs the Elites deign to flick their way.
the blacks kill each other since killing whites violates their tacit acceptance into white society/American Society.
so many ways the violence has been quietly subsumed into American Society and accepted. i suppose the outward effortof the hopes of the rest of the “Little People” will be measured in the number of dead. with nothing left to lose what is life worth!
i guess that is one reason i despise the Republican “let them eat cake” mindset that is America today. That St. Ronnie Reagan let the termites out to destroy the fabric of the great hope that America appeared to represent. without the cover of dreams, America will devolve into the fascist state it already is today. just now the awareness of the inequality is showing through the “facade” of the American Dream. The reality is showing through with all its’ inherent ugliness and pretension.
The plantation is being seen for what it is.
Hitting the overlords in the pocketbook in what way? I need clarification on that matter, because a great deal of lip service is devoted to it by otherwise well-meaning individuals, but anything actionable that comes from that statement appears to me to be shallowly superficial and lacking any teeth, whatsoever. It’s more like a vanity play…..like “I’ll shop here instead of there until you throw me a crumb, or two.” That’s not going to cut it.
“Hitting the overlords in the pocket” can mean a hell of a lot more than just a few pointless boycotts. Anonymous is a good current example of the kind of havoc that can be wreaked on the pocketbooks of the overlords – and I believe that what we’ve seen so far is just the tip of the iceberg of what could be done.
Everythings Jake’s examples of the ILWU actions are another perfect example. I suppose some would call that ‘violence’ (that Overton Window is indeed shifting). But personally I define ‘violence’ as actions against people, not against corporations (which are NOT people) and profits.
Think Ed Abbey. You spike enough trees the right way, Big Timber will hesitate to cut. You slash enough limo tires (to borrow Ian’s example), the elite will hesitate to leave their enclaves.
There are ways to hit them in the pocketbooks and make them afraid that are more than just linking arms and singing “Kum-ba-ya,” but also don’t involve arming yourself to the teeth and facing down the Black Hawks.
Forgot to clarify that the ILWU-EGT dispute is recent.
http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/11732/longshoremen_get_old-school_with_trespassing_and_train_blockage/
http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/12045/longshoreman_struggle_poses_critical_question_about_breaking_the_law/
Lisa, your admonishing post to me wasn’t fair, in the least. I’m not attacking you, nor am I taking sides. I’m thinking through this, and spilling that thought process here in the hopes that others will engage in the same process. This isn’t a matter of winning a debate. It’s a matter of considering options, if any, and implications/ramifications.
Pursuant to that, this is what I had to say about violence in that discussion you referenced from this past summer.
Stewart agreed with my assessment….by the way, where is Stewart these days?
Once again, I’m not advocating one way or the other, but rather I am stepping outside of it from an analytical perspective and considering it objectively and comprehensively.
Violence is coming, one way or another.
Maybe you should stop getting your information from pro-police propaganda pieces that greatly inflate the power of the military and police forces?
Seriously, if it was really as impossible to fight back as some make it out to be, the Iraq War would have lasted 4 months. We’d have conquered half the middle-east by the time Bush entered his second term, The rest of Africa and south Asia would have been under our control by the time he left office, and we’d now be following Obama into war with the greener bits of the the latter continent.
In the real world, America is a huge country with a thousand little hidey holes and nowhere near the population to police it all. And if you aren’t prepared to ever fight, then you best go find yourself a nice little hole to crawl into and don’t you think about ‘fighting’ in any other way. When they come to blackbag your ass, they aren’t going to give three shits about your screaming ‘But I was nonviolent!’.
I am quite devastated about this discussion about violence.
After the recent Tahrir and the now ancient efforts to build a peaceful Europe during the last half-century. (sorry for the stretch)
I increasingly see the US as a non-ahem-western country, which discards enlightenment principles and due process.
Taliban-like.
You become the image of your imagined enemy.
And worse.
I see a somehow justifyable selfdefence with the Taliban -perverted Avatar-style- but a much mor perverted strategy of attack -Drohne-aircraft-style.
Now where does this type of ‘peacemaking’ come from?
a) Jesus with the fire-sword, a profoundly twisted red-state-evangelical view of Christianity.
b) Unresolved history:
Slavery.
Indians.
The ‘property’-question.
This dissonance makes YOU Americans obviously crazy, and leads to some Mormon ‘Theodemocracy’ Romney-style.
Decent Americans know this:
Slavery: WRONG
Indian -ahem- holocaust: Happened. WRONG
Acquiring property by force or trickery: WRONG
Because nothing of this has ever been resolved, cognitive dissonance reigns supreme in the land of the Free and the City upon the hill, and violence is the standard method.
“War is a force, that gives us Meaning”
Who said that first?
Chris Hedges?
If it were not because of such types like Hedges, I would condemn you to the deepest stages of Dantean hell.
The clowns will not be delivered to the international court.
To prevent this, those said clowns maintain a military might, such that the clowns (sorry you other clowns) cannot be held to account.
This is one of the reasons why the US-leadership gets increasingly irrational, because their type of rule and justification is self-contradicting.
Amen.
@ groo
Despair you should. There is a cancer rife in the culture, feeding on ignorance, drinking the intoxicating waters of belief, indulging in narcissistic self-righteousness, besotted with the power of wealth, possessing all answers to all questions for all time, there is little left over for those who are not them.
A (suspected) Chinese proverb: Have great care who you choose to be your enemy; you become like them. A saying of great subtlety also showing great sophistication and experience; is alas lost on these folk.
Like the loss of language, sacrificed on the alter of PC (politically correctness), there is a loss of political choice, sacrificed on the alter of “rectitude”, some perfidious integrity. You are not allowed to question these sacred constructs of the ruling social cliques on pain of expulsion from their temple, from their presence.
To shed any light in these precincts by way of history, of memory, of assessment, of critical thought, is highly un-welcomed; you are only allowed to be one of the herd, a follower. No discussion allowed; and no discussion will be heard from the herd. Besides, after a while, it becomes not worth the effort to speak out, of the terrain one sees ahead, of the cliff towards which the herd relentlessly thunders. One can only prepare ones-self, break off from the herd, withdraw consent to the path the herd takes, break free of the mind shackles socially imposed. Others will also, they will eventually provide the safety of number as well as being example of diverse experiences to meet the future’s challenges.
The cliff ahead will sort out the problem, it is the only way that removes the where-with-all, the resources of the elite, it will remove those elite as well. The rule (of the elite) that failure will not be tolerated is the foot of clay of the elite; they will be held to those standards. Their struggles to control will loosen the quicksands upon which they trod underfoot, and their mighty fortifications will be swallowed by the sands of the desert they have made. For all their wealth and power, they leave no hand about with the ability (or will) to save themselves. It was their choice, it will be their fate.
“What I still don’t see is how you think you’re going to go up against the most powerful military in the world.”
Seriously? How strange that the Iraqi people were willing to go up against that military, and kicked its ass. The Afghans were willing to go up against that military, and are also kicking its ass. It seems that only us freedom loving Americans are afraid to go up against that military.
Is that a question or a challenge? It’s an election year, Welsh. Please phrase more carefully!
When one can back off a bit; this election cycle is fascinating in it’s intensity and insanity.
Citizens United, super pacs, fascism (aka corporatism), blatant racism, and the MSM grinder are just astonishing, no?
Did you ever think you’d see this in America? Well, it now mainstream; aka normal.
And, rather than finding a populist candidate, it boils down to the rich. The candidates are openly bragging about their wealth and influence; it’s as though we (we being the majority) didn’t exist. And we take it; well, you take it; I’m long gone.
Fascinating; indeed, I have to wonder how history will view this if in fact history can continue to be written with any honesty and integrity.
I guess there will always be a scribe somewhere who will record this, probably minor event, in the history of the earth; the organism called Gaia.
There are no immunity cards in this penultimate game of Survivor. The herd will carry all of us along, regardless of any and all resistance to it predilections. We can run, but we cannot hide from the menace it unceasingly conjures and nurtures.
groo, it’s not constructive to say “YOU Americans” so chastisingly. Would you like it if we referred to all German posters to this forum as “YOU Nazis?”
You don’t think Merkel, or any leadership in Germany, or Europe, or anywhere on this increasingly shrinking planet, hasn’t sold, or wouldn’t sell the “Little People” down the river for an ounce of gold? The poison of Globalization is everywhere. Metaphorically, it is a nuclear holocaust, and its ubiquitous and all reaching radiation touches everyone and everything, no matter how sublime.
You know what I say is true. Your preoccupation with the discussions here belies any boasts to the contrary, and the same applies to the expats. You can expatriate yourself physically, but you can’t psychically, as is witnessed by your unhealthy obsession with the realities your former loved one enticingly lays at your feet for you to chew on like a daily dose of khat.
and the same applies to the expats. You can expatriate yourself physically, but you can’t psychically, as is witnessed by your unhealthy obsession with the realities your former loved one enticingly lays at your feet for you to chew on like a daily dose of khat.
_________________
In a word; bullshit!
Speaking of cattle defecation, this should brighten your day. I know it made me smile.
http://news.yahoo.com/vermont-inmates-hide-pig-official-police-car-decal-004403610.html
Well, honestly, considering how corrupted and false all our institutions have become, we do need to rebuild them from the ground up. When I try to imagine people like Joe Scarborough or Andrea Mitchell getting a clue, I can’t see that happening without something massive, destabilizing and probably violent. If Israel really does go after Iran within the next few months, that could be the spark that ignites all of it.
As to Ian’s topic question for this thread, if it is it possible to be stupider than Gloria Feldt, I think the Komen Foundation has given a resounding answer! More stupid than the leadership of Planned Parenthood? You betcha!
Kind of meaningless, since none of us can “expatriate” ourselves from the human race. Nationalism is always stupid, but in these times it is glaringly so.
In any case, last time I checked, the relative pacification of Germany to U.S. is rather disparate (even including the economic cudgel G. can wield in the EZ), so I think groo is standing on solid-enough higher moral ground to do some unqualified criticism of America. Which we deserve. In spades. Over and over again.
We’re still murdering babies.
Thanks for linking to the hijinks of the Vermont inmates, MB. Definitely smiled.
Gee. No kidding.
An uprising with dedicated roots to non-violence would be ideal, but it takes training and discipline to achieve that. The people who marched with Gandhi and MLK had to exercise enormous restraint and dignity, that I think is sorely lacking in Americans today. But don’t worry Lisa, any signs of an uprising and the police will simply start disappearing you. And with the next age of technology arriving within a decade, i.e. perfect lie detector tests, carbon nanotubing, invisibility, mind reading devices, etc. you can be sure that there will be no uprising, whether violent or otherwise, to muck up the elite’s plans. Your window of opportunity to throw the bums out will close in about a year. After that, you’re finished.
I am forty six years old, and I work with many twenty and thirty year olds. I would say to the left: be patient, because this generation is yours. I do not just see a generation gap in tastes. That is normal. What is see is a generation where good and evil are defined in radically different ways from even my generation. The ancient taboos and hoary truths are being swept away. And very importantly, anyone who thinks more traditionally has learned to speak gingerly in public. Notice how politicians have to talk about, “family values” because it is sounds less offensive to the increasingly liberal society (but the increasingly radical youth see right through that language). The revolution of the 1960s is taking firm root in the minds of the youth.
Tallifer
re ‘family values’
…in 2010 Texas police prosecuted nearly 300 000 children, partly not older than six years, for “Class C Misdemeanors”…
With a high probability being criminalized for the rest of their life.
http://www.spiegel.de/schulspiegel/ausland/0,1518,812885,00.html
(german–google translate helps out)
This is clearly against the continental European value-system.
Note: we have our shootings at schools to, but there is definitely more soul-searching,
and not a reflexive regress to authoritarianism, blaming the bad on to the kids.
Only the British seem to be sympathetic to this view in Europe.
Legalizing physical punishment of children (again).
Morocco Bama’s hair certainly stands up.
I blame this to a significant part on ‘theodemocratic’ tendencies in the US (e.g. Mormon Romney).
An agnostic presidential candidate has 0% chance, so they fake all quack sorts of religiosity, not to lose the base.
I interpret this as a regress to a punishing authoritarian god-figure, where the president is the mediator, akin to the pope.
And as such, he has the authority to do extrajudicial killings, bringing Manning to a military court, etc.
He is above established enlightenment law and eg the ICC.
If Spanish or Italian prosecutors go after some CIA minions, who engage in abduction of citizens to the nearest torture center in Egypt etc, the global sovereign gets indignant, and feels his self-attributed entitlement by god challenged.
—–
LaughingCat
Yves Smith recently ran a post
Erica Chenoweth: Confronting the myth of the rational insurgent
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/02/erica-chenoweth-confronting-the-myth-of-the-rational-insurgent-2.html
Where Erica evaluated the success rates of some 323 violent/nonviolent insurgencies, with a clear result: violence is mostly regressive.
To understand the American mind, I regularly come back to Jeff Wells at ‘rigorous intuition’
http://rigint.blogspot.com/
He leaves open the question whether the AM is mostly projective, or whether something ‘real’ is behind that.
On a purely heuristic point of view, the American Mind has considerable projective capabilities of ‘reality creation’.
Belief trumps reality, as GW.Bush said….we create our own reality…
Is this already the very definition of ‘creationist’?
Well. ‘Reality’ seems to be a bit more stubborn than that.
Americans believe >80% in (a personal) ‘god’, on par with e.g. Turkey.
(Poland comes near, but on another basis -Catholicism, which is a peculiar sort of delusion,
but more benign than the US-evangelical variant, with a much smaller power-base)
Then they believe >>50% that Aliens exist, alien abductions are real and such.
Is this (US) a rational society?
Definitely not.
Jeff’s intricate take of that is, that he does not take sides -which I do-.
But I respect his take.
As such he portraits a landscape of American delusion, second to none.
groo PERMALINK
February 4, 2012
I blame this to a significant part on ‘theodemocratic’ tendencies in the US (e.g. Mormon Romney).
An agnostic presidential candidate has 0% chance, so they fake all quack sorts of religiosity, not to lose the base.
I interpret this as a regress to a punishing authoritarian god-figure, where the president is the mediator, akin to the pope.
And as such, he has the authority to do extrajudicial killings, bringing Manning to a military court, etc.
He is above established enlightenment law and eg the ICC.
If Spanish or Italian prosecutors go after some CIA minions, who engage in abduction of citizens to the nearest torture center in Egypt etc, the global sovereign gets indignant, and feels his self-attributed entitlement by god challenged.
_________________________
That’s quite a post…and I agree, for the most part. America has become the enemy it always alleged to have fought.
The nationalism here is at a fever pitch; I’ve never seen this in my 67 years. I was too young for McCarthy, but vividly remember the nuclear fear, duck-and-cover, bomb shelters, and Sputnik, 1957.
Our “leaders/rulers” are despots.
Re: Above…
I said here, meaning the states; I’m not; I left 9 years ago.
I get feed-back from many corners and being an American, I feel I have a right to speak out; I’ve damn well earned it…
There is no “American” mind. That’s baloney. How about we blame the German mind, considering a significant percentage of “Americans”, especially influential ones, are of German origin.
And groo, citing Texas is not emblematic of “America”, at large. Texas is its own dysfunction, and is quite distinct in its brand of reward and punishment.
This is clearly against the continental European value-system.
What? Continental European Value System? Bullshit. There’s no such thing. Soros, that old game maker and king maker, asserted that Europe will devolve into its old factional in fighting once the shit hits the fan.
And what of all those cameras everywhere? Trust isn’t a value, apparently.
Celsius 233,
well done, well said.
It is quite some time ago, when I visited the US of A, and did not understand.
The guy in the Greyhound from Oregon to California, whose family has been murdered in Detroit.
The black guy in SF, who tried to sell me some drugs, and I said “no, boy”, not realizing what an offense that was.
He followed me up for quite a distance.
The immigration guys, who checked me, longhaired Me then, when I was on the way to NASA and NOAA.
Long gone.
What a disgusting folk!
Never will go there again!