> A whole world is opening up. Some of us have waited 40 years for such
> an opening. We are not going to be shut down by a priori expectations
> of what political action must be.
Yup. This is what I thought it was about. It's a sort of dialectic of hope and despair.
How would one explain the bizarre argument in this thread to an outsider? It's not an argument about whether occupying Walmarts is a good idea or not. It's an argument about whether people should be *allowed* to express the view that it's not a good idea. It's very weird. In the French pension movement last year, there was a lot of debate, bubbling up from the union rank-and-file, about calling a general strike. (Which didn't end up happening.) Different people had different opinions. But there was never anything like this bizarre dynamic where people are shouted down for saying "that's not a good idea."
Why does that dynamic exist here but not there? It's because of what Carrol says: "I've been waiting 40 years for this." Over here, one legitimately feared during the last 40 years that there would never be an upsurge again. In France, that fear was absent - little movements were simmering all the time, occasionally sprouting into big movements (like in 2006) or even huge movements (like in 1995). Now that an upsurge has happened here, people are drunk on an unfamiliar feeling of possibility, on a delicious sense that all the fears and doubts they'd harbored just a few months ago have turned out to be baseless. There's even an psychological element of guilt: self-reproach about having previously harbored feelings of despair. Hence this cultish and hysterical reaction to any words of caution or even just reflection.
Yes, a whole world is opening up, but the old world didn't just disappear overnight. A lot of its problems and obstacles are still around. Some of us will continue to point that out. The risible attempts at bullying -- "snob!" "Luftmensch!" -- won't stop that. Sorry.
SA