Some keeping it real
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?
Comments
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.
IMAGINE if you woke up the day after a US Presidential Election and headlines around the the world blared, "The Majority of Americans Refused to Vote in US Presidential Election! What Does this Mean?"
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.
“When there's no fight over programme, the election becomes a casting exercise. Trump's win is the unstoppable consequence of this situation.” - Jean-Luc Melanchon
Well, pretty quickly
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.
I can't imagine how a bit of protest --
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?
“When there's no fight over programme, the election becomes a casting exercise. Trump's win is the unstoppable consequence of this situation.” - Jean-Luc Melanchon
I'd be very interested in your perspective
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?
It's been awhile since I read "The Strawberry Statement"
The protesters of today are best advised to design a successor organization that will innovate upon past movement attempts to change America.
“When there's no fight over programme, the election becomes a casting exercise. Trump's win is the unstoppable consequence of this situation.” - Jean-Luc Melanchon
Thank you for your response
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.
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.
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...
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.
And lawfare
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.
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.
Nah.
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.
“When there's no fight over programme, the election becomes a casting exercise. Trump's win is the unstoppable consequence of this situation.” - Jean-Luc Melanchon
Hired education
-
find foot then shoot
Brandon is a tool, a monkey on a chain.
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:
The US is just another proxy pretending to have value.
Thank you.
Your link offers a good story.
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.
“When there's no fight over programme, the election becomes a casting exercise. Trump's win is the unstoppable consequence of this situation.” - Jean-Luc Melanchon
Yeah
Entire Ivy League™ is jumping the shark, effing up its brand,
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.