[lbo-talk] Blue Dogs cashing in

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Sat Jul 25 12:38:35 PDT 2009


shag wrote: I'd still like to know why it matters! (And later notes she's asked it three times.s)

I woul d like to take up that question, but I'm not going to touch on it until there is moe clarity on what that "it" is that is supposed to matter.

And in a later post, shag wrote: . . . doug and everyone else looks at what you say as a problem of agitation. how could we possibly run around denouncing morality, they say, no one would take us seriously!

Well, that's their problem, not mine. I don't run around to say anything, and neither does any competent agitator. Agitation occurs in a particular context, never in the abstract. (It isn't jouralism or an academic lecture.) And that context always includes a specific notion of a particular audience under the given conditions. The given conditions in Bloomington/Normal right now are that out of all the people who are on our mailing list and all the people who honk encouragement or wave as they drive by one of our pitifully small monthly demos, only half a dozen or so come to our monthly meetings. And we need more people to share in the thinking process. Concrete work has to be organized through a process of face-to-face discussion of where are we et cetera, not excogitated by so few. (Though considering, we do a pretty damn good job.) So it's a very small constituency we would aim at now: those who should, given their views of the current conjunction, be with us thinking, not merely wishing us well from a distance. (That is more important now than increasing the size of the dmos.) If I or one of the other half dozen now doing the thinking figure that out and it works, I will post on it.

Carrol



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