>No, the point of all this is that we American dissenters could be
>doing more and taking more risks. We need to keep dissenting, but we
>have to understand that most forms of American dissent are just too
>tame to stop the American "system." Too many American leftists seem
>to think that merely opposing this regime or that war is enough to
>absolve us of our responsibilities. We are privileged Americans who
>enjoy freedom of speech and very little political repression.
>Instead of engaging in tactics that seriously confront and undermine
>say, AMerican imperialism and Empire, we go along with disempowering
>tactics of boring protest spectacle, i.e. ANSWER protests. And Doug
>argues that dissent was silenced in the wake of 9-11. I don't recall
>much actual political repression, other than that directed at Arab
>Americans, so we're talking about people who stopped dissenting out
>of unjustified fear.
What more should "we" be doing? What do you have in mind? A handful of anarchists and newly emboldened UFPJ cadre blocking troop deployments? It'd get crushed in a second. Radicalized unions striking against imperial war? That'd be a lot more formidable, for sure. But to do things like this you need seriously mass organization of a sort that's way beyond us now. You seem to think that if only present-day radicals had more balls, the empire would be quaking.
You also seem to have a really limited sense of audience. How many Americans would support you right now? The reason a lot of dissenters hung low after 9/11 was because they were nervous how they'd be perceived by masses of people. I don't think that sort of thing bothers you, but that goes back to my question - how many Americans support your kind of politics? Does that matter? Or would bolder action by a few more black bloc'ers trump popular opinion?
Doug