Some keeping it real

Submitted by Cassiodorus on Tue, 04/30/2024 - 8:05pm

Any time you mention revolution, you always get the same reaction from standard liberals: oh but we're against violence. Really?

If you pay taxes, you're contributing to violence.

If you voted for Trump or Biden, you were contributing to violence. You'll probably be doing it again in November. It's not like you apologized.

Actually, the violence you're contributing to is genocidal violence. So why should anyone listen to you when you say you don't like violence?

You'd have to imagine that a revolution might in fact make one of the most violent nation-states in history a bit less violent. America was founded upon two genocides: the Middle Passage and the slaughter of native peoples. The first of these was followed up by a concentration camp spanning half the country. and an apartheid state after that, with de facto legal lynchings. The second of these two was a major inspiration for Adolf Hitler. And that's not even counting the genocide committed by US troops in the Philippines in 1899-1902, or that of Vietnam/ Cambodia 1965-1972, or the so-called "Iraq war."

We're so moral. See? We criticize Hamas or Russia or something.

The same sort of logic can be applied when discussing the various Gaza encampments, or the protests that have swept the world. The students are demanding divestment from Israel, the world's most racist state. So what's the argument against the encampments?

Divestment is bad because George Soros or something.

Divestment is bad because outside agitators or something.

Divestment is bad because school is for studying or something.

Uh-huh. None of the folks pissing on the pro-Palestinian movement have any credibility, because they can't be honest. So let's hear it: genocide is good and divestment from genocide is bad because... why?

What are the reasons?

Tags:

Revolution

Vote

Comments

Submitted by Pluto's Republic on Tue, 04/30/2024 - 8:40pm

Good points, all.

.
Congress has convinced itself that American minds were secretly corrupted by the enemy. Probably by TikTok, and in other nefarious ways. An attempt will be made to reverse this trend. Lives will be ruined.

—

____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato

Submitted by Cassiodorus on Tue, 04/30/2024 - 9:06pm

Here's another one:

Genocide is good and divestment is bad because vandalism or something. Or: genocide is good and divestment is bad because you're throwing your futures away, kids.

—

'French theory is a product of US cultural imperialism." -- Gabriel Rockhill

Submitted by usefewersyllables on Tue, 04/30/2024 - 9:44pm

Well, pretty quickly

@Cassiodorus

here, the only jobs for young folks will be doing the landscaping or cleaning for one of the oligarchs or their idle spawn, working for one of the MIC conglomerates manufacturing Wholesale Death for export, or joining the military directly to help satisfy its soon-to-be endless appetite for cannon fodder in one of the 5 or 6 fronts in our eternal, pointless wars. When we talk about them throwing their futures away, I have to ask “what future”?

I suspect that a lot of young folks today feel that they have little to lose. Sort of like those of us who protested Vietnam, knowing full well that our futures were likely to end as conscripted cannon fodder in some rice paddy.

—

Twice bitten, permanently shy.

Submitted by Cassiodorus on Tue, 04/30/2024 - 10:25pm

I can't imagine how a bit of protest --

@usefewersyllables -- would do anything besides improve the prospects for the great mass of young people in America today. Now, the individuals conducting the protests might themselves be in a collective pickle. I'd like to know if the lawyers reading this diary have any ideas for them.

I'm also beginning to wonder about how the Powers That Be are going to sell Columbia University from here on in. Columbia -- where you might be able to get an education if you watch what you say. You all caught the videos of the dragnet that took everyone away tonight, no?

—

'French theory is a product of US cultural imperialism." -- Gabriel Rockhill

Submitted by janis b on Wed, 05/01/2024 - 12:08am

I'd be very interested in your perspective

@Cassiodorus

I just read this Wiki page about the 1968 Columbia University protests.

How would you compare the 1968 protest at Columbia University with the current one in terms of significance and probability of success?

Submitted by Cassiodorus on Wed, 05/01/2024 - 12:38am

It's been awhile since I read "The Strawberry Statement"

@janis b but it seems to me that today's protesters confront a rather different situation than the one the protesters of '68 saw. The protesters are smarter and more desperate than the ones of '68, whereas the administration of today is shrill and authoritarian, acting delusional while appearing to be sucking up to billionaires through the trustees.

The protesters of today are best advised to design a successor organization that will innovate upon past movement attempts to change America.

—

'French theory is a product of US cultural imperialism." -- Gabriel Rockhill

Submitted by janis b on Wed, 05/01/2024 - 1:03am

Thank you for your response

@Cassiodorus

Although I am not sure whether today’s youth are smarter and more desperate, I am pretty sure that the administration today is acting more delusional. Maybe the young are more desperate today because the bigger picture is now more clearly bleaker. I guess it's hard to measure suffering.

I agree that designing a blueprint and lasting organisation for the future is significant.

Thank you also for the reference to The Strawberry Statement. It sound like a good read.

Submitted by Funkygal on Wed, 05/01/2024 - 3:27am

Gotta wonder how many of the

Gotta wonder how many of the non-violence fundies will readily call for inflicting state violence on the most marginalised people - calling police like customer service at the sight of one homeless person or someone on drugs (but unto themselves), bombing Muslim women out of their burqas etc etc.

Submitted by Funkygal on Wed, 05/01/2024 - 3:42am

A music festival being attacked makes this

bougie liberal neighbor of mine keep on shrieking than the occupation ever did. The sanctity of bougie arts for PMCs...

Submitted by Snode on Wed, 05/01/2024 - 7:31am

Sometimes I don't think it matters

what the conflict is. In the 60's what developed into a movement caught those in power by surprise. Confronted by opposition to a comfortable norm (by those of wealth) it planted the seeds for dealing with protests and protesters. It resembles the response to the 1968 Democratic Convention, except way more organized and all encompassing. Like Obama and OWS. It starts with pre-emptive hippie punching, marginalizing any opposition in the beginning (criminalize BDS! NOW!), ramp up police readiness and frame information for the media as to the situation. Bust heads (well, they deserved it!). Maximum jail time. Kind of like IDF. Wonder where they learned it.

Jan 6? good ol' lawnorder patriot boys.

Submitted by usefewersyllables on Wed, 05/01/2024 - 9:20am

And lawfare

@Snode

is now established as the norm- so I expect that a lot of lives will be ruined by pulling protestors into a neverending downward spiral of lawyer-feeding. Malicious prosecutions are now the order of the fay.

It remains to be seen if any recent law-school grads were allowed to keep their consciences. All the pro-bono work seems to be performed by older professionals who remember what happened in the 60s and 70s. And regrettably, there are fewer of those every day...

—

Twice bitten, permanently shy.

Submitted by exindy on Wed, 05/01/2024 - 10:29am

Bread and circuses

I have very much enjoyed (to coin a phrase) the last couple of weeks and its parallel to my reading and experiences.

I believe the current protest movement won't have much of an effect. The ones leading up to and culminating in Kent State were more effective because of the threat of the draft hanging over the participants. There was a feeling shared between the NG and the students, each was feeling that threat. As I mentioned my roomie at that time managed to grab a vacancy in the NG to avoid the draft but it had an effect on his attitude. He lost 6 months out of his life and spent those 6 months, a very talented and well educated (just shy of a doctorate in CS, IE and OR) completed in 6 months, ready to set the obsolete IT systems in use to build systems to provide payroll support for a rapidly expanding combat force. Instead he was a clerk/typist. We were supposed be a team.

I made a statement a while back to the effect that you cannot fight a broken corrupt system from inside the system. It is impossible.

Back on track... did you enjoy the spectacle of the NCAA battles. Wasn't it exciting? Wow, all that money flying around. Almost makes an education worthwhile.

The only way to win is not to play the game. The answer to a corrupt educational (using the term loosely) system is to stay the hell away from it. Rebuild a working system whose primary goal is education, not some $pectacle paid for by borrowed funds that have our name on the credit card.

Ok, that's it. No more rants. I promise.

I'm in the middle of trying to figure out a way to make Libre office work for someone who actually produces intellectual content (as if I do) instead of some publishing investor.

Be well, this too shall pass.

Submitted by Cassiodorus on Wed, 05/01/2024 - 11:40am

Nah.

@exindy Joe Biden is a historically bad President, on a par with George W. Bush, the Harding/ Coolidge/ Hoover trifecta, and James Buchanan. College protests are more blowback for Biden-rule. This isn't over, and we have yet to see the full blowback for Biden-rule.

I might add that today's university is overpriced, employing cheap adjunct labor to provide inadequate educations, and that this year's clampdowns on free speech will in all likelihood be the last straw for a lot of people who might otherwise hold hopes of getting degrees. Like I said in another comment: I'm also beginning to wonder about how the Powers That Be are going to sell Columbia University from here on in. Columbia -- where you might be able to get an education if you watch what you say.

Not a good look.

—

'French theory is a product of US cultural imperialism." -- Gabriel Rockhill

Submitted by QMS on Wed, 05/01/2024 - 11:47am

Hired education

@Cassiodorus
-
find foot then shoot

Submitted by exindy on Wed, 05/01/2024 - 12:20pm

Brandon is a tool, a monkey on a chain.

@Cassiodorus He serves a purpose. Get rid of him and there are hundreds ready to take his place.

It's a roach infestation in our rotting home, herpes on a global scale. Somewhere in the last few weeks I saw a reference to a new strain of modern man... homo economicus, pschopaths one and all.

Before breaking my promise... I saw an excellent essay from one of our other exploited cannon fodders. You might find it interesting:

I'm a Tenured College Professor. I'm Quitting. Here's Why.
Americans are letting education fall apart. Politicians are helping it.

My last raise was a chocolate bar.

My dean left it in my office mailbox one December. It was one of those chocolate bars that looks like a thousand-dollar bill. He thought it was funny. He said it was his way of showing me how much I was worth.
...

I'm done. I'm out. I'm giving up my tenure. I earned that tenure through endless nights and weekends in libraries, in front of screens, banging away at deep thoughts on Bakhtin that a few dozen people would read. I earned it grading countless papers and leading countless peer-review workshops. Now, for the first time since my early 20s, there's no more students to shepherd. No more papers to grade. No more pointless department meetings to sit through. No more conferences or professional development workshops that I'm supposed to get reimbursed for, but never do.
...

I'm leaving because my university, like so many others out there, refuses to get with the times. Six months ago, my dean promised to support my bid for a remote teaching position. Nothing would've changed. I've been teaching online for the last four years. Before asking me to quit, my dean scheduled a special phone call to ask if I was okay teaching a heavier course load for a lower salary, in exchange for this special concession. On top of that, I was already designing a slew of new courses they desperately needed. I planned those courses down to the day, and even wrote a free textbook for it along with videos for other teachers to use. I was also unofficially doing administrative work, and that was going to become an official job duty.

https://www.okdoomer.io/im-a-professor-heres-why-im-walking-away-from-my...

The US is just another proxy pretending to have value.

Thank you.

Submitted by Cassiodorus on Wed, 05/01/2024 - 1:47pm

Your link offers a good story.

@exindy I remember being recommended a book about "how to get an academic job." It was called "The Professor Is In." The message of this book: get out of academia. There are no jobs, and even if you were on the off-chance to get one, it would suck.

As for Joe Biden being a tool, well, maybe so, but it's important to remember that once upon a time Joe Biden had some free will, and what he did with this free will was to appoint some astonishingly bad people. Blinken, Nuland, Sullivan, and the bunch basically share a college-fraternity vision of the world reminiscent of the villains in "National Lampoon's Animal House."

It's also meaningful to consider that, of the various puppets running for President in 2019 and 2020, Joe Biden was the one with the greatest semblance of a personality, and by far the worst of the bunch. (Readers will note that the primary pitch about Biden was that he "has turned to the Left.") Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Bloomberg, Booker, Warren, and Yang are all glorified data entry clerks. (The towering virtue of the pre-sellout Sanders was to point out that the taxpayers weren't getting much of anything for their money under the current arrangement, but pointing that out was strictly forbidden, so no.)

The point I'm trying to make is that there's a yawning void in the Democratic Party's ability to perform the basic functions of the sort of pseudo-democracy the Democrats have themselves created. You'd think that a lot of people would jump into this void. Of those we actually get to see, Jill Stein is the best of the bunch, and Stein is by her own self-admission a response to this void. So, yes, they could find another puppet, but even the quality of the puppets is in steep decline, so there's a problem there too.

#6.1 He serves a purpose. Get rid of him and there are hundreds ready to take his place.

It's a roach infestation in our rotting home, herpes on a global scale. Somewhere in the last few weeks I saw a reference to a new strain of modern man... homo economicus, pschopaths one and all.

Before breaking my promise... I saw an excellent essay from one of our other exploited cannon fodders. You might find it interesting:

I'm a Tenured College Professor. I'm Quitting. Here's Why.
Americans are letting education fall apart. Politicians are helping it.

My last raise was a chocolate bar.

My dean left it in my office mailbox one December. It was one of those chocolate bars that looks like a thousand-dollar bill. He thought it was funny. He said it was his way of showing me how much I was worth.
...

I'm done. I'm out. I'm giving up my tenure. I earned that tenure through endless nights and weekends in libraries, in front of screens, banging away at deep thoughts on Bakhtin that a few dozen people would read. I earned it grading countless papers and leading countless peer-review workshops. Now, for the first time since my early 20s, there's no more students to shepherd. No more papers to grade. No more pointless department meetings to sit through. No more conferences or professional development workshops that I'm supposed to get reimbursed for, but never do.
...

I'm leaving because my university, like so many others out there, refuses to get with the times. Six months ago, my dean promised to support my bid for a remote teaching position. Nothing would've changed. I've been teaching online for the last four years. Before asking me to quit, my dean scheduled a special phone call to ask if I was okay teaching a heavier course load for a lower salary, in exchange for this special concession. On top of that, I was already designing a slew of new courses they desperately needed. I planned those courses down to the day, and even wrote a free textbook for it along with videos for other teachers to use. I was also unofficially doing administrative work, and that was going to become an official job duty.

https://www.okdoomer.io/im-a-professor-heres-why-im-walking-away-from-my...

The US is just another proxy pretending to have value.

Thank you.

—

'French theory is a product of US cultural imperialism." -- Gabriel Rockhill

Submitted by Snode on Wed, 05/01/2024 - 2:03pm

Yeah

@Cassiodorus I remember Biden "embracing the left", at least until he got elected. Then an about face to run to the center and commit biparticide, all the while disparaging the "radical left". See, Biden and the righties both agree, the left sucks.

Submitted by lotlizard on Thu, 05/02/2024 - 7:55am

Entire Ivy League™ is jumping the shark, effing up its brand,

@Cassiodorus
and may never be the same. One would think that official administration policy being pro-genocide and pro-violence against students and faculty would amount to a “Bud Light” moment for universities in general as bastions of free thought.