On Feb 10, 2012, at 10:35 AM, Doug Henwood wrote:
> ...You're not going to get even significant reforms unless people in
> power are scared, and to scare them, you need some violence...
What could be a more appropriate expression of the adage that terrorism is the opposite side of the coin of reformism, coming from a 2008 Obama-voter who just yesterday declared that he was still "rooting" for Obama and his Dumbocruds? If people in power are "scared" of violence it's not their blackbloc stooges they fear: they see (and willingly or not they constantly reinforce) the impunity enjoyed by the secret police well before and ever since the assassinations of Long, the Kennedys, King, and so many less "powerful" individuals, and to some extent are made to feel personally threatened (remember the anthrax letters?) by the consequence of even envisioning "significant reform." To overcome that legitimate personal fear those even capable of envisioning significant reform need to feel, as a class, real political fear--the fear of being voted out of office if they fail to side with the left against their corporate masters. And as long as there are so many leftists rooting for their team they can feel utterly secure so long as they can keep a dime's worth of difference between themselves and their Repugnicon buddies.
> The amount of destruction in Seattle was trivial, but in mainstream
> memory, it was like a Richter 8 earthquake.
"in mainstream memory" it was like a cat's meow in the middle of a sound night's sleep. Take a poll asking "mainstream" Americans what happened in "Seattle" and the answers would likely be about 90 percent "no idea," 9.5 percent "what's a Seattle?" and 0.5 percent "wasn't that some sort of riot?"
Shane Mage
"scientific discovery is basically recognition of obvious realities that self-interest or ideology have kept everybody from paying attention to"