thread to be critical/skeptical of occupy wall street

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"?

"tumblr whites" is killing me tho no lie

Skeptical of the inability to coalesce around clearly understood goals, but maybe that's impossible. Free-wheeling change the world movements are awesome and inspiring, but movements that get shit done in Amerikkka tend to have goals that can be accomplished directly, whether that's a 40-hour work week or voting rights or w/e.

Sometimes vanguardist arguments are easy to understand.

how many times do people have to say "money out of politics, reinstate glass-steagall" before this they-don't-know-what-they-want meme dies

presumably the same number of times people have to call obama a tool of wall street before the right stops asking why they love obama so much i.e. INFINITY

who's gonna pay for the education, Tom?

"I think by far the most important bill in our whole code is that for the diffusion of knowledge among the people. No other sure foundation can be devised, for the preservation of freedom and happiness...Preach, my dear Sir, a crusade against ignorance; establish & improve the law for educating the common people. Let our countrymen know that the people alone can protect us against these evils [tyranny, oppression, etc.] and that the tax which will be paid for this purpose is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance."

vanguard of well-intentioned experts prob as good an option as can be hoped for in the real world, if even that much can be hoped for

are we sure dealwithit.gif isn't zachlyon taking the merry-go-round for one more spin?

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

you find it unusual that most people don't care about stuff until it directly effects them?

i mean yeah that sucks but it's also pretty understandable

you guys, TRUST ME, we already had this entire discussion on the first occupy thread. i promise you that once ilx gets back up you will get to read this fascinating ilx discussion of race, so maybe we can hold off on the sequel for a few weeks?

are we sure dealwithit.gif isn't zachlyon taking the merry-go-round for one more spin?

― v-shasty, Thursday, December 1, 2011 5:50 PM (38 minutes ago) Bookmark

I approve of the misdirection - goons lookin out for goons

if dealwithitgif.com was whiney, he would've made a cutting reference to how to dress well by now

and he would have posted in the rolling rap thread and the childish gambino thread

Thanksgiving night, driving home with my family and my sister, who is down from NY where she is very engaged with . My 7-year-old, from the backseat, asks to hear The Star Spangled Banner (we had been to visit Fort McHenry this summer and ever since, that song just keys him up). So I dial it up on the ipod. As the intro plays, my sister turns to me and says "I learned some new words to this up in Freedom Plaza" and to the tune of "O, say can you see", she sings "No-o war on the poooor!" I don't remember the rest of the lyrics, but the look I tried to give her was "are you fucking serious" and she dropped it after a few lines.

Occupy Wall Street, are you fucking serious?

Like, I honestly stand behind the mission of OWS and I love and respect my sister, but that was some clowny shit like when Christian rock bands rewrite the lyrics of regular rock songs for Young Life campfires.

where she is very engaged with OWS

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