thread to be critical/skeptical of occupy wall street

if most people are fucking stupid then either

a) stupid doesn't mean what we think it means

or

b) any political effort to change the social structure is at best some kind of aristocratic power-grab

love you, thread

everyone says and does remarkably stupid things

I agree. But that only applies intermittently. And because it is universal, it can be considered as background noise. Where it gets interesting is studying the predictable features of human stupidity, so you can induce it to suit your own purposes. That is one of the secret levers of power. Those levers are also available to ows, to bring things back on topic.

Pretty sure referring to one's political opponents as either stupid or crazy is unlikely to convert many of them.

depends how stupid / crazy they are

"stupid" = "behaves in a manner directly and blatantly against his/her own self interest, and/or disagrees with me"

Surely any deomocratic leftist alternative to the problems of capitalism has to based on the idea that most people aren't stupid, otherwise what's the point? Might as well stick with self-interested technocrats.

'Ignorant of a lot of issues for a variety of reasons' isn't the same thing as inherently stupid. If people are stupid the left is fucked.

There are plenty of stupid leftists

BINGO and BINGO xp

are they also farting y/n

everybody farts

sometimes

they just...they just got out and farted

they mostly fart at night

mostly

most people are very short-termist thinkers, you cd argue that's "stupidity" at a stretch but this whole "we the vanguard must save the dumb masses from themselves" is never gonna fly as a program to rally behind. more likely that existing social/political forces serve to exacerbate short-termism and obfuscation. to protest capitalism ought to be to demand less alienation, not more benevolent dictators.

Wait. we aren't suppose to be against the technocrats, are we?

why not? I hate techno

would vote for an italodiscocrat tho

benevolent dictator sounds pretty good to me. i need more structure in my life.

i think misanthropy's a perfectly valid response to the fuckedness of everything too, but misanthropy doesn't need to worry about tactics

At the present levels of complexity in society, there's going to be a reliance on expertise, for sure. What matters are the rules that we all play under, and making sure they promote the goals we largely agree on. Creating a huge wealth imbalance isn't a goal I'm siging up for, personally.

read the fine print

"I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves, and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power."

Morbuis begs to disagree.

He probably voted for Adams

He probably was the driving force behind the Whiskey Rebellion.

had nothing to do w/ the XYZ Affair

who's gonna pay for the education, Tom?

i think my biggest problem with #ows is that there's so much inequality in America we should have been rallying against for YEARS... and still should be!: The lack of marriage rights for gay couples, the racial discrimination and drug laws that clog our prisons, the wage discrimination that haunts women in the workplace, the lack of affordable health insurance for entire economic classes

It bums me out that a protest movement in america cant get motivated until a bunch of tumblr whites start to feel like "have nots" instead of the privileged "haves" they've always been all along. Sorry you spent too much on college tuition, Brandon. Poor people have been feeling this for years, welcome aboard, lil homie.

a bunch of tumblr whites

you were doing a good job of hiding yourself whiney until that line

I still love #ows and love what they stand, but it just seems like this energy could be better spent, yknow?

ya can a mod check for a brooklyn ip

*love what they stand for

Sorry you spent too much on college tuition, Brandon. Poor people have been feeling this for years, welcome aboard, lil homie.

vintage

i think my biggest problem with #ows is that there's so much inequality in America we should have been rallying against for YEARS... and still should be!: The lack of marriage rights for gay couples, the racial discrimination and drug laws that clog our prisons, the wage discrimination that haunts women in the workplace, the lack of affordable health insurance for entire economic classes

It bums me out that a protest movement in america cant get motivated until a bunch of tumblr whites start to feel like "have nots" instead of the privileged "haves" they've always been all along. Sorry you spent too much on college tuition, Brandon. Poor people have been feeling this for years, welcome aboard, lil homie.

― dealwithit.gif, Thursday, December 1, 2011 9:53 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Permalink

this post is like that LatePassapedia thread but with social inequality instead of hip bands

everyone thinks abt things the wrong way

the wage discrimination that haunts women in the workplace

that is some poetical shit right there

"Brandon"

wonder what dave cool would say about #OWS http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9627011/photos/cool.gif

welcome aboard, lil homie. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9627011/photos/cool.gif

⚃

☁☔

☹

☼_☼

Sorry you spent too much on Cheetos, markers. Poor people have been feeling this for years

☝ URS

⦁_⦁

✔_✔

☝ ☝
______

i think my biggest problem with #ows is that there's so much inequality in America we should have been rallying against for YEARS... and still should be!: The lack of marriage rights for gay couples, the racial discrimination and drug laws that clog our prisons, the wage discrimination that haunts women in the workplace, the lack of affordable health insurance for entire economic classes

It bums me out that a protest movement in america cant get motivated until a bunch of tumblr whites start to feel like "have nots" instead of the privileged "haves" they've always been all along. Sorry you spent too much on college tuition, Brandon. Poor people have been feeling this for years, welcome aboard, lil homie.

― dealwithit.gif, Thursday, December 1, 2011 4:53 PM (24 minutes ago)

yeah it's crazy how it took a huge recession and lots of people losing their jobs for anyone to give a shit about these things

whiney have you heard of this thing called "concern trolling"?

just had an hourlong discussion/argument with a friend about occupy, which pretty much ruined the get together because she started raising her voice and pointing a lot, despite the fact that i was being exceedingly conciliatory and calm, perhaps overly so.

her main objections were that there was no coherent message that she could discern (despite my efforts) and also the general argument that things are worse elsewhere in the world. i tried and failed to correct that but was consistently interrupted by her.

so, so frustrating, because her heart's in the right place in general and yet she seems to be spending most of her "activist" time in opposing occupy.

i kept going back to the civil rights movement in the US, both as an example of something that was clearly worth doing despite things being "worse" elsewhere in the world (as will always be the case) and also by saying that for an apples to apples argument, we'd be comparing occupy to, say, Dec 1955 - Mar 1956. both movements were at the infancy stage, despite decades of background work. to complain that 3 months into occupy there's not a clear endpoint is just ludicrous and naive (though i didn't say that)

While we're at it, what is the coherent message behind the Democratic party?

One thing I do definitely try to say to doubters is "at least these guys are innovating -- why don't you give them a chance and see what they come up with." I mean a lot of people who later became big in politics cut their teeth in SDS, the civil rights movement, vietnam war protesting, etc., often having no idea what they were doing in the beginning. This sort of activism is very fertile for developing a more sophisticated understanding of organizing, and for developing new tactics. There are good Emma Goldman quotes about this sort of thing that I will try to find.

OWS also good at keeping our jobless state on the hot plate for the voting season

The 99% discussion should be good for the democratic party. Yet Newt Gingrich wants to make things much better for the 1% and worse for the 99% (throwing fuel into the fire, hurting our economy) and somehow he has the most support. I don't think Americans are smart enough to revolutionize our government even if it was as simple as voting yes to revolution on a ballot. The amount of problems in our system in staggering and with the way our system is set up it's practically futile to even try to stab at the root of these problems. /pessimism

What I'd say to OWS doubters - watch the Big Picture with Thom Hartman (and if I had some specific youtube links that would help too).

I would avoid trying to have an OWS discussion with any friends or family that vote republican because they are too far gone and you might as well avoid blood and tears so to keep things civil

I guess the fundamental problem I don't know whether OWS can solve is this: on one hand, yeah, they're right. Any revolutionary movement that uses hierarchy and coercion is likely to set up a new unjust system to replace the old one. But revolutionary movements that are free of hierarchy and coercion don't tend to be as good at displacing entrenched power. Or at least I can't think of an example of such a movement that has displaced entrenched power. An alternative is to just set up small-scale mini-societies that operate outside of/in spite of entrenched power. Of course this has been done many times before, with all kinds of communes and commune-like structures, with varying degrees of success. I don't know enough about OWS or the history of communes to know how the principles of the current movement might differ from those.

Anyway, my overarching take on the whole thing is that I don't really feel like I'm at a place in my life where I can really "join" the movement right now, but I'd like to see where it goes and I don't want to detract from it. And people who only talk about why it can't work based solely on what they see on the news are depressing and frustrating and kind of a waste of time.

And people who only talk about why it can't work based solely on what they see on the news are depressing and frustrating and kind of a waste of time.
And people who only talk about why it can't work based solely on what they see on the news are depressing and frustrating and kind of a waste of time.
And people who only talk about why it can't work based solely on what they see on the news are depressing and frustrating and kind of a waste of time.

absolutely

http://a7.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/390788_338374726188045_108038612554992_1352391_671758301_n.jpg

"FOLKS IN THIRD-WORLD COUNTRIES ARE EVEN POORER, SO POOR PEOPLE IN AMERICA SHOULD BE GRATEFUL AND SHUT UP!!"

this, almost verbatim, was the argument my friend was making last night, repeatedly, with righteous anger. i couldn't believe it. at one point about 10 minutes into her rant she finally paused to take a breath, and she asked "what do you think? do you agree?". i can't really think of another time in my life where my jaw was actually hanging down, open, involuntarily. i couldn't believe all the shit that had just come out of her mouth. i think i answered "i'm sorry, but that's the saddest thing i've heard anyone say in the last several years" or something.

awwkaaaaaard

leftycartoons.com

Won't someone please think of the 3rd world children!

I do often wonder why protesters don't "wear neckties like civil rights marchers 50 years ago" - any ideas?

the worst argument is SEE THOSE LEFTIES INCITE VIOLENCE AND RIOTS. y'know even though its even a small minority that gets arrested and that the violence seems to always begin when police show up in riot gear and escalating needlessly.

then again, these are probably the same people who said "Kent State protesters provoked the National Guard into shooting!"

hey HOOS, come up to NY and get some facetime w/ models

http://www.salon.com/2011/12/18/the_return_of_the_radical_chic_evening/singleton/

Penn Badgley, an actor on the hit series “Gossip Girl,” has a face too mathematically perfect to be truly interesting,

negging

At the present levels of complexity in society, there's going to be a reliance on expertise, for sure. What matters are the rules that we all play under, and making sure they promote the goals we largely agree on. Creating a huge wealth imbalance isn't a goal I'm siging up for, personally.

― Aimless, Thursday, December 1, 2011 4:11 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Permalink

Skipping 42 messages at this point... Click here if you want to load them all.

lol @ "tumblr whites"

― upper mississippi 2: still shakin, Thursday, December 1, 2011 7:01 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Permalink

who can i blame for this

He bounds onto the stage, grabs the microphone and yells “mic check!”

every time i've seen this happen its kind of hilarious

also as somebody neck-deep in this stuff i would like to say hurting's take is the most reasonable one i've read from an """"outsider"""" in a minute

we're the last major-city camp on the eastern seaboard (i'm not counting occupy buffalo, hope friends there will forgive me), and we're approaching our 3 month anniversary.

in the last month we've become more about intracamp politics/issues than that which brought us together to begin with, and that's been frustrating to see; with 200 tents and twice as many people living in a damn park it only makes sense that it would take on all the internal politics of a small town once it got settled.

fights, usually a sidecar to substance abuse among the homeless who've brought their prior issues into the community, have become alarmingly common. tensions are high, and at a time when we're being challenged by weather while trying to have some of our most important existential discussions to date.

a lot of us are trying to start conversations about "2.0," the question of what happens when there are no more tents at the square. there's a faction (as i suspect there's been at every major encampment) that, on discussion of post-occupation tactics, raises the question "post-occupation? how can you TALK like that? what about the people in this camp with no other place to live? where's the place for THEM in your occupy 2.0?"

this position seems to presuppose that camp will continue indefinitely unless we voluntarily tear it down, which strikes me as short-sighted. I also have the luxury of not living at and dealing with the camp 24/7, and i completely understand how someone who made the choice to do that might come to see the continuation of the camp itself as the most important aspect. the camp, though, has always been intended as a means--and i think that to treat it as an end in itself is dangerous in more ways than one.

not really sure what i'm getting at here--maybe the inherent danger of myopia in a community like the one we've brought together, and the consequences of allowing it to remain porous when that openness results in the introduction of elements we're not fully prepared to deal with.

oh and on the question of GAs as local decision-making mechanisms this was kinda heartening in its way--and only 84 fucking years after sacco and vanzetti too

http://www.thenation.com/signupad/165240?destination=article/165240/thank-you-anarchists