Is it time to start a dis-loyal opposition yet? And I don’t mean Unity ’08.
I’m afraid we won’t win back our America by jotting off a vicious email or winning an intellectual debate. You might have noticed, but that is not how it was lost.
Anything squeezed through the odious rectum that is our electoral process will smell much like everything else that has dropped out of it for some time.
As democratically empowered Americans, we must all confront the question: Is it better to stroke one’s ethics or to confront the reality of what needs to be done to make things right in our nation and thereby the world we influence?
I have often written of ethics, but know now that ethics have become temporarily irrelevant and it is their very return to rule that must be fought for, yet they are no longer effective as a weapon in that fight.
Fighting fire with fire means doing everything that is already being done TO US, but to THEM:
Legally suppressing THEIR votes, raising a vast private military answerable only to Us, occupying resource-rich lands and demanding obedience from those who wish to do business in the post-revolutionary times. That sounds hard and violent, doesn’t it? It’s what they’ve accomplished. What have we done while this has occurred? Can you not see that the ruling the blogosphere doesn’t translate even indirectly to ruling in the real world?
Is it ‘ethical’ to do nothing that changes facts on the ground, and be appeased by popular acceptance of the ‘rightness’ of our opinions? Just because this is the stance of your leadership, must it be yours? Perhaps this appeasement is at the root of our disappointment in Congressional Democrats.
Times of War are dreadful and require that you stoop to rule.
How far is it OK to stoop? How is it possible that saving your personal ethical standing is more important than defeating a present and growing Evil? A legitimate, revolutionary opposition has been called for years, but unpopular because of the chance that “He’s not as bad as all that, it’s a pose for our enemies.”
It is a pose for our enemies, but those enemies are a lot closer to home than we all thought.
And perhaps the call to arms is a pose for our enemies? As the truth has been sacrificed – so reality can be rewritten. As they have grabbed the pen, we must snatch it back from their clutches.
What will be the trigger for you to lend your strength to putting out this Nero’s fire? The only ethical path is one that may actually work.
As much as I would like to believe the numbers in the “New World Order” crowd are growing I think not. I submit to you the concept of levels vs the hope of a continued access to the current modern lifesytle. By that I mean gas in the car, the relative safety of loved ones and food still available at the supermarket, and for some idiots 300 channels of mind numbing Satanically inspired crap.
Short of a major catastrophy I doubt many of the Charolette Iserbyte Faux News watchers of the right are about to radically alter their entire worldviews.
Being bi-partisan the “progressive” left including the “premier” grassroots website dailykos are far more intellectual in their erasure of people straying too far from the prescribed “left”. Their bans are complete and are the equivalent of the stoning to death the right so rails about in justifying their Islamofascist term.
In total perhaps the term post-modern age truely applies here. What I do seek as an American is a return to sanity and a stronger desire not to mount the horse on the eve of Armageddon.
Americans are by nature good people, as such they tend not to see the evil in others.
I think it is time to call their bluster domestically. Expend their ability to distract. Incite them to overreact.
Army of the Twelve Monkeys, if you catch my drift.
Lasthorseman says that “Americans are by nature good people, as such they tend not to see the evil in others.”
I certainly wouldn’t agree with that. I’ve lived in the US for over 50 years, and I’d say that Americans are essentially bad people, who, given a choice, will always choose to see the bad in others. There are some good ones, but they’re quite outnumbered. I think most Americans, left and right, essentially support what their government is doing. They may not want to engage in violence themselves, but they don’t really have any objection to others doing it for them. They want the media to hide it from them, so they don’t have to face the consequences. Just my opinion of course, but that’s definitely my impression after decades of close observation. These people terrify the heck out of me. They like to say nice things, but they don’t do them. Or very rarely. As Dylan put it, “People don’t do what they believe in, they do what’s convenient, then they repent.” Note that not one single presidential candidate, Repub or Demo, has even mentioned Abu Ghraib or called for investigations. Because they know that Americans just don’t care about it. In fact, they’ll attack anyone who brings it up. It’d be political suicide to bring it up.
America is composed of people from all over the world, all kinds of people. But it’s a two-sided coin. It represents the very best that people can be, but it represents the very worst that they can be as well. People need to take off the rose-colored glasses and confront that reality. My advice to people outside the US who are trying to figure out what Americans are going to do is to assume the worst, the very worst that they can possibly imagine, and then some. These people are quite capable of blowing up the entire planet, IMHO.
It sounds like what anarchronarchist is suggesting is pretty close to revolution and/or civil war. I think we’re in the middle of that already. The question isn’t whether or not we want to engage in a civil war. The question is whether we want to win.
bingo.
without a side to appeal to.
Where is that side?
It does not exist.
Adopting the tactics of the enemy makes no sense: The enemy has gotten there ahead of you. You are out-gunned in every theater of action.
Those who are interested in success will be paying attention to those things the System is unaware of.
Remember, every successful insurgency has a resource base of real life support–of food, tools, recruits, and weapons. Until you can attain such a support base, you have no insurgency.
The system has you beat in advance: It lays claim to absolutely everything. It already owns you. This is its great strength, though also a secret weakness. Having great strength, the system thinks it is invincible. But it also, but only vaguely, senses the weakness, that claiming everything is not the same as having everything. The discrepancy between these two things already exists and will increase.
That the discrepancy between claiming and having is increasing is the reasons for these wars, which, truly, will be endless while the system lasts.
War is the last, desperate means of asserting control.
Yet the system will fail, for two reasons. The first is that it depends on lies. The lies succeed: There is no problem there. Americans are not particularly good, sometimes not good at all, but they want to think they are good, so they are happy with lies. Very happy. That is not the problem with lies.
The problem with lies is that they corrupt the liar, so that he loses track of reality. As a system begins to believe its own lies, it departs from reality. Eventually it begins to make fatal mistakes–in full, self-deceived wrong-headedness.
More concretely, the System depends upon cheap oil, which is rapidly coming to an end–whence it is doomed. Everything–which means most of American life–that depends upon cheap oil is also doomed. Population will have to be shed–AMERICAN population. Why? There soon won’t be enough oil to feed everybody, using the oil-intensive methods of agriculture that America uses.
We could use other methods. Cuba survived its industrial collapse by switching to organic gardening. Some individuals in America want to do this. But the System is fixed on industrial agriculture, and will not change–it cannot, because small-scale farming generates no profit. So food in the US will be short.
Now: Can America’s excess population be sent to its death while believing it is entering a nice clean shower? This is what the System has to manage. If it cannot manage this, it has an uncontrollable mass of potential insurgents–people whose potential can be used, if you know how to use it.
Do you?
with a side to appeal to.
Where isn’t that side?
It does exist.
Adopting the tactics of the enemy makes sense: The enemy has not gotten there ahead of you. You are out-gunned in no theater of action.
Those who are interested in success will be paying attention to those things the System is aware of.
Remember, every unsuccessful insurgency also has a resource base of real life support–of food, tools, recruits, and weapons. Until THEY can’t attain such a support base, you have insurgency.
You have the system beat in advance: It lays claim to absolutely everything. You already own it. This is its great weakness, though also a secret weakness. Having great weakness, the system thinks it is vulnerable. But it also, but only vaguely, senses the strength, that claiming everything is the same as having everything. The discrepancy between these two things does exist and will decrease.
That the discrepancy between claiming and having is decreasing is the reasons for these wars, which, truly, will be ended while the system falls.
War is the first, required means of asserting control.
Yet you will persist, for two reasons. The first is that you depend on truth. The truth succeeds: There is no problem there. Americans are particularly good, sometimes not bad at all, but they want to think they are bad, so they are unhappy with truth. Very unhappy. That is the problem with truth.
…
Perhaps it is the comfortable simplicity of considering yourself powerless that is the ultimate lie.
Have you read ‘V for Vendetta’?
Progressives have been counting on persuasion, which is necessary but insufficient.
Progressives are counting on changing the system, which is impossible. The system will not be changed; it will crash.
Think about where your base is really, and then build it.
Patience: The monster is very, very large, but also doomed. So watch for your opportunities carefully. They will come.
Be realistic: Most Americans are not yet ready–they think the old ways can continue. They think they will get to drive around in their cars and shop at Walmart forever. Even progressives are too enthusiastic about hybrid cars, and alternative energies–which are fine, but totally inadequate. They won’t solve anything, or save anybody.
The system will crash. But that is the good news. Think about what you would want to create in a low-energy, localized environment, and how to do it.
Because it will come.
The crash can be helped. Examples (perhaps) exist right now. While it is hard to tell from here in the States what is going on in Mexico, it certainly seems as though insurgents have found their time to strike the oil infrastructure there. If this is successful, it will certainly accelerate collapse. Naturally, no one is really ready, yet in the large it is a good thing, since the sooner it happens the more of the biosphere that will survive.
But in Mexico the poor have figured out that the rich are trying to kill them. Here in the States we have not figured that out. When we do, much will change.
Food will be a problem, from here on out. There is much that a person can do. No reason for helplessness at all.
Sorry: Haven’t read V. But if you share what you have learned, that is good.
It doesn’t take an army to defeat a regime, only to occupy the nation. We already occupy our nation.