all 18 comments

[–]saidittwice 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Feminists often have chosen their politics over their declared cause

[–]jet199 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

Or choose between thousands of women being killed by an invading force they or thousands being killed by religious nutters they likely support and enable themselves.

[–]saidittwice 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I'm referring more about the SO Quiet feminists in the US

[–]Ponderer 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I hope not. We need to stay out of Afghanistan.

Or need I repeat...

  • 20 years

  • 2 trillion dollars

  • 2,000+ lives

[–]Chipit[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The Chinese spent 800 billion and got a nationwide highspeed rail system that is comfortable, fast, and cheap.

[–]StillLessons 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (7 children)

I have a sense of the tide pulling out before a tsunami. What she describes here in regards to Afghanistan is an analog of what's happening on many fronts. At the same time, there are many many school board members resigning because they are facing very heated pushback regarding education of kids. Put those things together, and I see a huge groundswell of rage developing at the personal level, but those enraged realize that the usual vehicles of expression (the "standard protest") will be ignored. The Kennedy quote about "those who make peaceful revolution impossible..." is every day coming closer to truth. Beware the quiet eye of the storm. When the far wall of the hurricane hits, it's a doozy...

[–]FlippyKing 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

sounds like they're setting up an ambush for those who feel frustration over the impossibility of peaceful revolution.

[–]StillLessons 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

Rage at the level that is building overruns any such "strategy". If the mob decides that the "they" you are referring to is the enemy, such an "ambush" would be like a matchbox tank placed in the way of a real-life bulldozer.

[–]FlippyKing 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

When you say "the 'they you are referring to" you make it sound like my idea.

I think in the scenario you just described, you underestimate the very real tanks. In that analogy look at the mobility of tanks vs bulldozers. No contest. The bulldozed has a hard time changing directions quickly, much like the masses of people who have been convinced to see each other as the enemy.

In that analogy the masses are the bulldozer, whose minds and reflexes and dysfunctions are trained through years of schooling and mass media culture, and will only change slowly. It would be nice to change directions, to get people off the internet and ignoring the things "they" want us worried about (be it viruses or terrorists or what is happening to women around the world in part because of "their" foreign policy or immigrants leaving their homes because of "their" foreign policy and lust for oil gas and mining "rights"), and instead speaking to their neighbors about what is real right there in front of them that they can do something about, instead of giving over trust to the "theys" we're so ambiguous about.

[–]StillLessons 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

I did not intend to make it sound like your idea.

I think a lot about the word "they". Like everyone else, I use it far too much. But as you say, we are all inherently ambiguous about it.

My first instinct was to ask you who "they" are. But then the comment came out as it did.

I think you and I are largely in agreement, though I am open to hearing otherwise. I agree with you that I am being too glib about the possibility that "the mob" (another ambiguous term I used) will suddenly coalesce into a unit that sees a single entity and attacks it. You're correct that it is not remotely so simple. But the point I was getting at is that if enough of the population decides to aim their rage at the established powers, their tanks are never enough. Especially in a country as heavily armed as the US with a lot of very very pissed off veterans, if (and it's a huge if, I grant) people unified just enough to say "okay, first step, this established power needs to go..." all that modern machinery and military tech they have would be of even less use to TPTB than it was for them in Afghanistan. It is still about hearts and minds.

That's what we're here on these sites hashing out...

[–]FlippyKing 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I think we are agreement, especially with regard to what the problems we face, the the difficulty in making a real distinction between "us" and "them" because we each have our own flaws and our mix of loyalties and understanding of what our priorities should be.

I do think a look at the way established power has really crushed any opposition it faces should serve as warnings against thinking any popular organization of force could ever compare to "them" in organization, planning, armaments, logistical support, intelligence support of both tactical and strategic natures, and propaganda (which in this context should also be divided into tactical and strategic natures). This imbalance of force and the manner in which it dominates is seen as far back as written history. Squabbling between elites, be it Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Western European, Chinese, Japanese, or any other should not be seen as examples of any thing analogous to the struggle of "us" vs "them". Those are all "them" vs "them", like our elections.

I think the problems we face must be overcome by looking at the problems more so than looking at those who are manipulating the problems to their advantage. This removes some of the strategic advantages "they" have over "us". If the adage "many battles, one war" is true, then how does it apply to us? We may be in solidarity in our struggles but we are not on the same fronts. A foot soldier is only able to support and survive and fight with those immediately around him. If we do not see those around us, immediately around us in the real world not on line and not in some fictional communities, as "us", then we've already lost. We have to disengage from as much of what siphons off our energy and our material from us only to empower those who see themselves as above us, because it weakens us. That it strengthens them is also the point, but we should not need them.

In one sense, all we can "fight" with them over is control. Control, power, is the problem. This is not the same thing as saying a local community does not have to protect itself and empower itself in circumstances necessitate it. The analogy here is the concept of federalism, which has really been obliterated by the federal government. Federalism is supposed to refer to the balance between power between states and the federal government. It was mocked by the idea of "state's rights", and failures of that more local power to reflect the morals and sense of justice held on a more national level and in more populated areas compared to less populated areas was seen as a flaw-- though this was never presented in terms of federalism as far as I know. But this idea of balancing of powers is not a civil governance concept created for itself but an attempt to scale up the kind of self-governance we are supposed to be engaged in. It is an idea that is applicable to individuals within themselves where pursuing every desire is a path to disaster. We just do not call it federalism. We might call it stoicism or religion or any number of other terms where a higher moral rule and the cultivation of a higher self, perhaps more humble but certainly more willing to accept the bad in life along with the good and willing to be courageous about it, are seen as virtues. The better we are at that, the less we need "them" and the less we care what "they" say about any of us. This is one way to view the Christian or biblical struggle between the accuser (ie satan as that's kinda what the word means) and forgiveness/love/us. The biblical idea might turn people off, but I see a bigger truth by including it in with all these other ideas: they point to the same problems and the same solutions. In so doing I have to throw away ideas about submitting to earthly authorities that religious types always throw around, but I think they really never stick to that instruction they way they expect people to. Also it is obvious that it is an idea that is abuse so much that looking it squarely in the eye should always be the first step (and it is not a coincidence that the common folk were not allowed to look their rulers in the eye)

[–]StillLessons 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Thank you for the considered response. I always appreciate the rare opportunities when a conversation like this actually yields ground for - as you say - "looking at the problems more so than looking at those who are manipulating the problems." I fully agree this is the only strategy that can ever yield actual motion in society rather than just revving up the established gears even faster.

I'm mildly encouraged by the news the past couple of days. I'm seeing multiple examples of individuals gathering into groups, yet the purpose of the groups is "Just Say No" to centralized control. People are getting loud about taking control back into our own hands, such that when some government or corporate authority says Jump, we are beginning to say No rather than how high? I'm particularly interested - as a good example - in the reporting that the Chicago Public School system now faces a crisis of student transportation after the city told employees "Vax or quit", and ~90 bus drivers quit. This is an excellent real-world application of the principles we are talking about. These concrete decisions will be where the concepts you and I are batting back and forth here will be fleshed out.

Thanks again for the thought you put into your response.

[–]FlippyKing 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

the metaphorical masks are off, power is showing itself for what it is, and the truth of it all is only deniable via cognitive dissonance-- which our schooling was always meant to create.

If I may get "religious" for a moment ...

We have freedom of choice as a God-given right, if one believes in God and all that stuff that goes along with it. I don't pretend to understand in a rational way any of the details, but I think we can agree that we have freedoms, limited only by our physical realities. We can't fly like birds, we can't breath under water like fish. We can go anywhere and try to eat anything nutritious or poisonous. We can love or hate each other, we can help each other or we can hurt each other. We can even lie to each other. People look at two of the earliest biblical stories and wonder "how can a God allow that?: when talking about the eating of the fruit of a tree he forbade and the killing of a brother. I see the first story as very allegorical or metaphorical and I don't pretend to understand it except by analogy. I won't go into that here. I will say though that if it is the first story of what humans did, and it refers to a place we were banished from, then maybe we can not really understand it. Our analogies and metaphors requires us to have a shared sense of reality and of the dynamic between individuals. But, this is a story from before that could be established. I'm OK with not getting it and avoided thinking about it. I've seen so many very different and contradictory interpretations of it anyway. But the first murder, I think is an event we can understand. We have the freedom to even do that bad of a thing.

Rights then are not something high-minded officials grant us out of their progressive values or their enlightenment. To see them or to see our freedoms as something "we" protect for each other or our government balances in an enlightened manner, now looks silly. We've allowed the idea of free inquiry and the drive to investigate everything and demand reproducible results to be turned into the authoritarian oxymoron of "THE Science". We have allowed very slowly over time to allow the idea that freedom and enlightenment and rationality and the knowledge and the expertise, gained from the free exploration we're told to accept those other things have allowed, have all been the fruit of human endeavor. This is the root of the myth of progress. The idea that some great future is right ahead of us if we only be rational about it and we ignore all the lying and cheating and brutality that has been rationalized along with all the "opps, I guess we were wrong" (dust bowl, WMDs both in Iraq and in general, DDT which probably is at the root of polio, AZT for aids patients and possibly the blaming of a seemingly harmless retrovirus for something that might not be well understood at all, the relationship between the "Spanish Flu" and an early vax, and we pretend away the guy who admitted lying about the data in the study that supposedly refuted Wakefield, etc. )

I love science, I love engineering when done well. The issue is authoritarianism and our meekness in the face of dishonest and big claims with no or completely fabricated backing. I also don't like people who take credit where it is not due. At the very least we should all see our natural or actual or God-given freedoms are unrestrained, and we instead need something better than our selves to not kill each other and not do horrible things. Handing power over to the most ambitious of us is clearly not the answer. Freedom exercised wrongly should have consequences, we also should never let it get to that point. We are each other's keepers. We are each other's friends and care takers and shoulders to lean on when things go wrong. Or we kill each other. This might be why Jung called early Christians the first depth psychologists. I don't know what that means, but I think he was referring to the practice of confession. Like if Cain had unburdened him self over being miffed about Able being the cool kid, instead of stewing about it and killing his brother, that would be better. If Adam had been a man and not say "she made me do it!", maybe we'd be a little better off. Some Eastern Orthodox Christians see the idea of original sin as the problems left unsolved and passed down across generations, or at least the most obvious manifestation of it. I like that version.

[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

I remember when the democrats wouldn't stop protesting bush Jr over his wars. 8 years of nonstop whining and they would not shut the fuck up. Went very quiet very fast as soon as it was "their guy" in office doing the war mongering.

[–]StillLessons 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

I was one of those democrats until 2009. Obama opened my eyes. I don't know how many of us disillusioned democrats are out here, but I sure seem to be running into a lot of us lately. I honestly cannot imagine how the ones who remain are explaining the world to themselves.

[–]Budget-song-budget 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Heard of way of the bern? That's where they are. hanging out! Their community on reddit is facing a clampdown, on posting live links as posts, so this is there fall back plan for the day they are zapped by reddit.

On reddit they were flourishing.

https://saidit.net/s/WayOfTheBern/

A sample on reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/WayOfTheBern/comments/pf66df/i_get_that_this_is_a_lightly_moderated_sub/

[–]Budget-song-budget 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Also to criticize his lordship was frowned upon. His policies couldn't be criticized. Um...why? Well you know, the .....of the skin.

He outdid Bush jr! The king of drone. Surveillance enabling by nefarious means. Alas! His legacy Trump.

Did you see pictures of his 60 birthday bash? Gold Napkins! His inspiration The Great Gatsby? The response, at least Trump didn't hide his love of bling!

[–]Budget-song-budget 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

A jest right? Those women ARE a bunch of self serving hypocrites! Hardly surprising given their third rate role models.

Journalist John Pilger outed both Hilary Clinton & Australia's Julia Gillard - their REIN left women destitute, impoverished, well those anyway who weren't OFFED by those Nutjobs mercenaries posing as Sunni salafist wahhabi - their name changes so numerous, akin to product re-branding,, that' it's hard to keep up! Al Qaeda, into ISIS/ ISIL/ DAESH and then to gatecrash the peace talks, again more re-branding!