Carl
>From: "T Fast" <tfast at yorku.ca>
>
>Carl is on to something here. The unity of 300,000 individuals all
>coordinated would have been an impressive and intimidating act of unity for
>a whole host of reasons. But it is precisely this kind of discipline that
>is generally lacking.
>
>Travis
>
>>In the conformist atmosphere of the late 50s and early 60s, the individual
>>was a threat. Like communist Russia, the system then was so weak that it
>>was actually threatened by a single person standing up and saying, "This
>>is bullshit!"
>>
>>That is not the case anymore. This current American juggernaut is the
>>mightiest empire the world has ever seen, and it is absolutely immune to
>>the individual. Short of violent crime, it has assimilated the
>>individual's every conceivable political action into mainstream commercial
>>activity. It fears only one thing: organization.
>>
>>That's why the one thing that would have really shaken Middle America last
>>week wasn't "creativity." It was something else: uniforms. Three hundred
>>thousand people banging bongos and dressed like extras in an Oliver Stone
>>movie scares no one in America. But 300,000 people in slacks and white
>>button-down shirts, marching mute and angry in the direction of Your Town,
>>would have instantly necessitated a new cabinet-level domestic security
>>agency.
>>
>>Why? Because 300,000 people who are capable of showing the unity and
>>discipline to dress alike are also capable of doing more than just march.
>>Which is important, because marching, as we have seen in the last few
>>years, has been rendered basically useless. Before the war, Washington and
>>New York saw the largest protests this country has seen since the 60s-and
>>this not only did not stop the war, it didn't even motivate the opposition
>>political party to nominate an antiwar candidate.
>>
>>There was a time when mass protests were enough to cause Johnson to give
>>up the Oval Office and cause Richard Nixon to spend his nights staring out
>>his window in panic. No more. We have a different media now, different and
>>more sophisticated law-enforcement techniques and, most importantly, a
>>different brand of protestor.
>>
>>Protests can now be ignored because our media has learned how to dismiss
>>them, because our police know how to contain them, and because our leaders
>>now know that once a protest is peacefully held and concluded, the
>>protestors simply go home and sit on their asses until the next protest or
>>the next election. They are not going to go home and bomb draft offices,
>>take over campuses, riot in the streets. Instead, although there are many
>>earnest, involved political activists among them, the majority will simply
>>go back to their lives, surf the net and wait for the ballot. Which to our
>>leaders means that, in most cases, if you allow a protest to happen.
>>Nothing happens.
>>
>>The people who run this country are not afraid of much when it comes to
>>the population, but there are a few things that do worry them. They are
>>afraid we will stop working, afraid we will stop buying, and afraid we
>>will break things. Interruption of commerce and any rattling of the cage
>>of profit-that is where this system is vulnerable. That means boycotts and
>>strikes at the very least, and these things require vision, discipline and
>>organization.
>>
>>The 60s were an historical anomaly. It was an era when political power
>>could also be an acid party, a felicitous situation in which fun also
>>happened to be a threat. We still listen to that old fun on the radio, we
>>buy it reconstituted in clothing stores, we watch it in countless movies
>>and documentaries. Society has kept the "fun" alive, or at least a dubious
>>facsimile of it.
>>
>>But no one anywhere is teaching us about how to be a threat. That is
>>something we have to learn all over again for ourselves, from scratch,
>>with new rules. The 60s are gone. The Republican Convention isn't the only
>>party that's over.
>>
>><http://www.nypress.com/17/36/news&columns/Taibbi2.cfm>
>>
>>Carl
>>
>>
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