> On the other hand, I consistantly run into the other type of
> pathology [i.e. "the politics of difference and micro-resistance (i.e. [not?]ordering a Whopper at McDonalds)"]
> whether I am doing grad school organizing, legal organizing,
> demonstrations or what have you. There are probably more of them on
> any one big campus than there are all the people you name. they...
> can be some of the biggest opponents of a sustained and organized
> politics.
"pathology" seems a bit strong, if not downright wrong, to me.
Right now i'm reading our Michael Dawson's (so far, i've read the first third) excellent _The Consumer Trap_ (U.of Illinois Press, 2003). Early on Michael has the best chiasmus i've read in years, at least since Mahmood Mamdani's critique of one type of justification for colonialist rule in Africa ("the force of tradition turns out on examination to be the tradition of force"). Michael writes that the US media has had few priorities higher than enforcing as common sense the dogma that "when it comes to using and procuring commodities, ordinary Americans get what they choose, rather than choose among variants of what they are going to get".
Michael's thesis is that this particular false consciousness is critical to the successful self-reproduction of the really existing US model, and that its maintenance requires a continuous and enormous effort. If this false consciousness is in fact breaking down as widely as Dave suggests, and if Michael's thesis is correct, this is not an obstacle but an opportunity.
Confession - i'm an enormous fan of _Adbusters_ (the design negation of MR). Over time they have moved from an amusing send-up of corporate manipulated consumerism to a biting critique of US imperialism. Why could this not be a model, if micro-resistance is in fact this widespread?
john mage