dagblog - Comments for "Polite punks, pitiful *pussycats"

They got the guns but we got

Resistance — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 09:05:43 +0000

In reply to spposed to fear the words

They got the guns but we got the numbers...

They got the Electoral College and The Supremes.

spposed to fear the words

jollyroger — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 08:52:08 +0000

In reply to Very well stated Jolly, I am

spposed to fear the words Class War?

You would think so whenever one of the hacks in the pugnant leadership gets his ass all up on his shoulders cause someone wants to tax the rich "this is class war!" he'll say like it was a bad thing... That said, class struggle is also a term of art that often includes armed struggle as the final phase of political revolution. That's the good, old fashiond kinda class war that Marx envisioned, and altho he did pretty good all together for a century and a half ago, I don't see armed struggle in the future of the american proletaariat. I mean, all they really have to do is vote their own interest and it's over, even with election stealing, and vote caging, and whatever. They got the guns but we got the numbers...

Very well stated Jolly, I am

Resistance — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 07:35:38 +0000

In reply to A preliminary reply:1.

Very well stated Jolly,

I am always at war with myself, when my conscience directs me or redirects me

Are we spposed to fear the words Class War?

A preliminary reply:1.

jollyroger — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 20:04:30 +0000

In reply to First, the Oct 6 link is

A preliminary reply:

1. re:class war meme

difficult to say one is all for peace and then speak of a class war. War is inherently violent

Point well taken. Disclaimer: I am without peradventure of the belief that only non-violent civil disobedience is tactically (let alone strategically) sound when your opponent outguns you by two or three exponential powers.

My vision of "class war" is meant to be an ironic rendering of the ruling classes whine when the subject of taxation comes up.

That said, and tho' it pains the poet in me ("class war" is punchier).I shall henceforth render my valedictory "class loyalty" or, perhaps, "class struggle" (if willing to flirt wih bellicosity)

2. Re:"impolite(ness)"

By risking the conflating of the impoliteness of the Tea Baggers with the impolitieness of burning down banks with people in them, I fear I was vulnerable to the rejoinder you (fairly) launched,

I'm wanting more of a ruckus at the congressional town halls. (ed. note:Not exactly the taking of the Winter Palace... )

more to come..

First, the Oct 6 link is

Elusive Trope — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 16:45:30 +0000

In reply to Polite punks, pitiful *pussycats

First, the Oct 6 link is going to a "page not found" - I assume it is meant to refer to the same event Stardust is linking to.

Now - if one of the hopes is to get people into the streets, reports like this ain't going to help:

A massive protest in Athens over the Greek government’s austerity measures turned deadly Wednesday.

Fire officials in the Greek capital said three people were killed in a fire that broke out at a bank during the demonstration.

Some of the estimated 100,000 protesters chanting “thieves, thieves” that took to the streets in Athens Wednesday tossed chunks of stone and Molotov cocktails at riot police and various buildings, sparking at least two fires.

Police answered back with tear gas and stun grenades.

The Oct 6th rally/protest is seeking non-violence, but as so happens with major protests, especially those that cultivate rage and anger, the attempt to avoid the small group bent on using violence as means of expression is basically impossible. I remember being in the mayhem of WTO protests in Seattle, which was started by the Anarchists, and made worse by Seattle Police who responded inappropriately.

It is difficult to say one is all for peace and then speak of a class war. War is inherently violent.

Which brings me to another point. As it says on the Oct 6 -

where we will NONVIOLENTLY resist the corporate machine until our resources are invested in human needs and environmental protection instead of war and exploitation.

Now I am all for having our resources invested in this way (although I would point out that I believe out our military expenditures to be vastly scaled back, but not entirely eliminated, a stance that the vast majority of people you want to come out on the streets believe as well). The point I would make here is that many of the people we y'all want in the streets make their living working for the corporate machine. The multinational corporations alone employ 15% of the workforce (from the figures I could find), as opposed to the federal government and postal service which employs about 2%. Excluding the postal service, Wal-Mart employs just as many as the feds.

Technically, corporations is the way most business organizations form themselves. Heck, I work for a non-profit and we're technically a corporation. Now when people are talking about the corporate machine is referred to in statements as above, it is usually the multinationals and extremely large national corporations that are being thought about. But most Americans either work for some corporation or know family members who do. Many of the unemployed are looking to find employment with some corporation. If the large corporations (employ 500 or more) in my community packed up their bags and left town, the place would be devastated economically.

And yet we asking them to fight this machine. It becomes a moment of cognitive dissonance. We are telling them they are part of the problem without offering much of an alternative (beyond spending the dollars spent on the war instead on the country, although at the same time saying we don't have the money to be spending on the war).

Which is a long way of saying that it has lot more to do than people being too fuckin' polite. The problem with taking up the rhetoric of something like a "class war," it tends to force one into making simplistic assertions in order to sustain the Us vs Them simplicity.

Charlemagne at the Economist offers one take on the situation in Greece that provides a good example of just how complex it all is. He takes on what he sees as lack of empathy toward the Greeks in the rest of Europe. He places the current situation resulting from the size of the public sector in the context of the Greek civil war, and the bloody score-settling that followed.

Newspapers here in Belgium talk all the time about the government needing to "buy social peace" by paying off some interest group or other. In Belgium, the alternative to "paix sociale" is a strike. In Greece, plenty of grown-ups remember when the alternative to social peace was their neighbour, or their loved-one, vanishing in the night into a jail cell or worse. The current clientelist truce between right and left is the price (albeit a horrible, wasteful price) established for the current version of social peace enjoyed in Greece.

He concludes:

But Greeks are not children, or silly crickets chirping in the sun. They are adults, from a real place. If Europe is to get out of this crisis in good shape, we will need a lot more empathy.

One last note before we make the Greek class consciousness out to be much more than it is. In a city of 800,000, 20,000 or so showed up to protest. In contrast, when Obama showed up in Portland with its rough 600,000 population, 75,000 turned out to see Obama. Maybe the turn out in Athens had to do with a fear of police violence. And this in turn may explain why Americans don't "take to the streets" when the activists send out the call.

I know we don't have class

jollyroger — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 02:01:54 +0000

In reply to Good backing organizations:°

I know we don't have class consciousness here like in Europe, but still, when they tell the Greeks that theyre gonna starve their children and put their grandmas on the street, the Greeks say :over someone's dead body"

We say, "thank you, sir, may I have another..."

Good backing organizations:°

we are stardust — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 23:07:47 +0000

In reply to Polite punks, pitiful *pussycats

Good backing organizations:

° ANSWER
° Backbone Campaign
° Black Agenda Report
° Code Pink
° firedoglake
° Food Not Bombs
° Green Party U.S.
° ItsOurEconomy
° Liberty Tree
° Liberty Underground of Virginia
° March Forward
° National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance
° Network of Spiritual Progressives
° Progressive Democrats of America
° Single Payer Action
° United National Antiwar Committee
° Veterans for Peace
° War Is A Crime
° World Can't Wait

To see more organizations

Class War, indeed. ;o)