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snurriI didn't go out looking for trouble last night. I watched Weeds on DVD, because I cannot watch the conventions. I can't watch Republicans, period, because it's bad for my blood pressure, and because I know that somewhere there are people believing their bullshit. I generally can't watch Democrats speechify either, because they are not above pandering and promising things they have no intention of delivering. There's a bit of Yes-But-He/She-Is-OUR-Hypocrite going on every time a politician opens his or her mouth. I only support the Democrats by default, because there is no Anarcho-Communist party in this country.
I was thinking a bit about the "Black Bloc" kids, the ones who call themselves anarchists so that they can break windows and generally derail the conversation that peaceable demonstrators hope to provoke. And the thing is, while I disapprove of what they do, it seems to me that it comes from a feeling of hopelessness, and that I can relate to. There was a moment early in the campaign when Obama had me believing that things could change, but I lost that feeling somewhere around the FISA vote. I'm still voting for him, but my expectations are that if elected, he will make an honest effort to make some things better, fail on all but a few, and ignore the myriad of other issues that I care about.
Barbara Ehrenreich was in town here a couple of months ago, and I went to see her with my friend Pete. During the Q&A people were asking her how we could possibly change anything, how we could stand up to the 1% who now control 90% of the wealth in this country. I perked up when this question was asked, hoping that she would have an answer that would reignite my optimism; but all she had to say was--and I'm paraphrasing--"There are more of us than there are of them, and all we have to do is get organized and get loud." And I thought, wow. She's really coming from an entirely different consensus reality than mine.
It happened at the Take Back Labor Day Concert the other day, too. Steve Earle invoked Abbie Hoffman and quoted him as saying that what made the activism of the late '60s and early '70s different was that the people made a lot of noise and actually stopped the war. I wish I believed that. It seems to me that the military and political realities of the situation forced the U.S. to pull out of Vietnam; up until the point where the position became untenable they were perfectly content to ignore the protests. In reading about that time, which I've done a lot of in the past couple of years, the parallels between the attitudes of the Nixon and Bush administrations towards demonstrators are eerie. They don't care what we say. Our opinions are not the ones that matter to them. The votes that matter are those of Exxon and Halliburton and Pat Robertson.
To be clear, I don't think this is anything new. I don't think governments have ever been different. Even in the early days of the U.S., when guys like Jefferson and Adams were dead serious about building a working democracy, they were denying the rights of women and the humanity of non-whites. But all our lives we've been fed this lie that the U.S. is different, that it's better, that this is the one place in the world where individual voices are valued, and it simply isn't true. We're no different from anywhere else, no less susceptible to corruption, no less in danger of losing what little say we have left.
Yeah, I have nothing hopeful to say today. I guess we can still laugh, at least, right?
I was thinking a bit about the "Black Bloc" kids, the ones who call themselves anarchists so that they can break windows and generally derail the conversation that peaceable demonstrators hope to provoke. And the thing is, while I disapprove of what they do, it seems to me that it comes from a feeling of hopelessness, and that I can relate to. There was a moment early in the campaign when Obama had me believing that things could change, but I lost that feeling somewhere around the FISA vote. I'm still voting for him, but my expectations are that if elected, he will make an honest effort to make some things better, fail on all but a few, and ignore the myriad of other issues that I care about.
Barbara Ehrenreich was in town here a couple of months ago, and I went to see her with my friend Pete. During the Q&A people were asking her how we could possibly change anything, how we could stand up to the 1% who now control 90% of the wealth in this country. I perked up when this question was asked, hoping that she would have an answer that would reignite my optimism; but all she had to say was--and I'm paraphrasing--"There are more of us than there are of them, and all we have to do is get organized and get loud." And I thought, wow. She's really coming from an entirely different consensus reality than mine.
It happened at the Take Back Labor Day Concert the other day, too. Steve Earle invoked Abbie Hoffman and quoted him as saying that what made the activism of the late '60s and early '70s different was that the people made a lot of noise and actually stopped the war. I wish I believed that. It seems to me that the military and political realities of the situation forced the U.S. to pull out of Vietnam; up until the point where the position became untenable they were perfectly content to ignore the protests. In reading about that time, which I've done a lot of in the past couple of years, the parallels between the attitudes of the Nixon and Bush administrations towards demonstrators are eerie. They don't care what we say. Our opinions are not the ones that matter to them. The votes that matter are those of Exxon and Halliburton and Pat Robertson.
To be clear, I don't think this is anything new. I don't think governments have ever been different. Even in the early days of the U.S., when guys like Jefferson and Adams were dead serious about building a working democracy, they were denying the rights of women and the humanity of non-whites. But all our lives we've been fed this lie that the U.S. is different, that it's better, that this is the one place in the world where individual voices are valued, and it simply isn't true. We're no different from anywhere else, no less susceptible to corruption, no less in danger of losing what little say we have left.
Yeah, I have nothing hopeful to say today. I guess we can still laugh, at least, right?
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(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-04 08:01 pm (UTC)and this is why I get pissed and stay pissed and have cried every day for the last week and then start drinking.
and this is why I got FURIOUS when it came out that she talked about book censorship. We can't do very much, but you DO NOT TOUCH THE BOOKS DAMMIT.
*ahem* You know what I mean.
*sigh*
(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-04 08:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-04 08:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-04 08:47 pm (UTC)Still, there's a positive spin when you consider the difference between now and the 60's. We've got a vastly more egalitarian distribution of the tools of power, from the ability to document events to making sure the entire world is able to see those events unedited and uncensored. We have the theoretical ability to mobilize thousands within minutes.
The problem is, we've mostly done fuck-all with those tools so far. Zombie marches and flashmobs. Facebook pulse-posts and endless Livejournal updates to the same hundred people who feel exactly the same and are writing the exact same thing.
So, what do you do with that? What do you do with those hundred people? Damned if I know. But for all that it always seems like we're smarter than the current evil in power, they seem to use those tools much better than we do.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-04 08:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-05 03:52 am (UTC)I did a lot of Lost Cause Work in the late 70s and early 80s. For a whole year I believed that we could stop Big Steel from leaving Western PA. I fucking believed it. And then it left. Before that I believed the ERA would pass.
In '92 I had another episode of Hope and that's why I absolutely couldn't stomach the attacks on Hilary from the liberals. I expect it from the conservatives, but not from who I thought was Us.
Now? The above comments about the internet are so dead on. I think back to the labor group I worked with. What would we have given for a way to reach people around the world, to get our version of events out every time there was a march, a picket line. Holy crap. What could we have had?
So I shorten my Default View almost daily, and I dig into my own life and try to do right by my family and my authors and become obsessed with sports.
Would the right leader/candidate be able to mobilize people like me? Maybe. Tip O'Neill said all politics are local. Maybe that's what it's going to take. If We (and by We I mean, the disaffected like me) decide to clean up around ourselves maybe that'll start something.
I know I'm somewhere between tired of all of it and tired of being tired of it. If that makes any sense. It's late. You don't talk about this stuff often but when you do, you're good.