G20 Post Mortem / Open Thread
September 27th, 2009A few people seem surprised that the U.S. is a police state.
Oh the cops. Oh the poor students. Oh boo hoo, we just want to wave our signs.
The don’t taze me bro generation is obviously going to have to figure this one out the hard way.
My position has always been that people who wave signs at fascists are clinically nuts; holy roller, speaking in tongues, batshit crazy nuts.
Sign waving is not resistance. Sign waving is part of the problem in the same way that voting is part of the problem. How’s that Change working out for the Obama supporters? (Some of those bozos are already talking about how they’re going to get it right in 2012…)
In the few video clips of the G20 protests that I watched, I saw a bunch of zombies with iPhones, running around like chickens with their heads cut off, as the Legion of Doom tested out its new sonic weapons and tear gas lobbing skills.
WTF is the matter with these people? Where does someone get the idea that the way to deal with Darth Vader is to wave a sign at him? Maybe a few, “Fuck the police” tweets will do the trick? Send out invites to join revolutionary sign waving groups on Facebook?!
The Twitbook aspect of this is, frankly, bizarre. Maybe I’ve been out here in the bush too long, but it looks like powerlessness is manifesting itself into a sort of flaccid, me-too technophelia, crossbred with a hamster wheel. This is more embarrassing than anything else.
The U.S. is no longer a country. It’s a company town. If waving signs at the company’s goon squad just makes people look stupid, what does twitbooking about it amount to?
Here are some other ideas:
Eliminate your debt. Take your money off the table. Stop buying stuff that you don’t need. Live well on very little. Grow your own food. Participate in alternative and/or outlawed food economies for what you don’t produce yourself. Barter, or use cash. Support people who do good work. Finally, draw a line in the sand. Don’t tell anyone where that line is, or what the consequences will be if it’s crossed. Don’t wave a sign about it. Don’t twitbook about it. Let the fascists figure it out the hard way.
..that’s a good word right there~
spot on Kev.
Kev said: “WTF is the matter with these people? Where does someone get the idea that the way to deal with Darth Vader is to wave a sign at him?”
That’s about as succinct a description of the phenomenon as I’ve read. As another US ex-pat who’s spent the bulk of his life avoiding blind faith-based affiliations, my wife and I didn’t wait for the door to hit us on the arse on the way out when departing the USSA a few years back.
Nothing is more frustrating than attempting to communicate with what you’d otherwise assume are intelligent and reasonable people still addicted to their favorite flavor of Kool-Aid.
And yes, as the gloves come off, there seems to be an equally brutal flavor of denial taking root among the faithful, still clinging to the oh-so-comforting triumphal American mythology hammered into them literally from birth to death.
As for “Twitbook”, that’s a f**king brilliant conglomeration. Yours Kev, or sourced elsewhere? Need to know who to credit, as I intend to adopt it as part of my own vocabulary — and it’s 100% certain to raise such questions… =)
I went to school there. On any Friday night, there was that many students hanging out all around those streets. No protests, just kids haning around.
Those kids didn’t really seem to get the idea of what protesting was all about. It was pretty strange to watch.
Fakebook and Twitbook are just another form of masturbation, but it makes more money for the Corp. State.
Love the twitbook term…hope it sticks. You really have to wonder, who is behind organizing these protests…who makes the signs, specifies what they say, where they will be. Could it all be a engineered fiasco by an outsourced provocateur services consultancy to honeypot and psycho engineer the whole scene? See who the sheeps are and who else pops up, that may be a real threat. Twitbooks indeed.
@Miraculix
As I went to type “Facebook,” “Twitbook” just appeared on the screen. I think apoplexy and touch typing combined to form a bit of automatic writing.
I’m definitely not the originator of the term. It’s in use out there on the interwebs already. I don’t know who originally came up with that one.
This abandoned Twitter page was last used in 2007:
http://twitter.com/TwitBook
@FRLVX
From The Crowd by Gustave LeBon (free ebook online):
…all the world’s masters, all the founders of religions or empires, the apostles of all beliefs, eminent statesmen, and, in a more modest sphere, the mere chiefs of small groups of men have always been unconscious psychologists, possessed of an instinctive and often very sure knowledge of the character of crowds, and it is their accurate knowledge of this character that has enabled them to so easily establish their mastery.
A knowledge of the psychology of crowds is today the last resource of the statesman who wishes not to govern them – that is becoming a very difficult matter — but at any rate not to be too much governed by them.
What the media call “protests” used to be called “demonstrations.” One rarely reads or hears the terms “demonstrators” or “demonstrations” these days. I wonder why. Could it be that the media do not want people to make a few semantic connections in their heads? When one protests, one merely espouses disagreement, but one DOES nothing. When one demonstrates, on the other hand, well, what does one demonstrate? What is meant by the term? To show, to display, and so on and so forth. But what does an organized crowd of agitated people demonstrate? That they are numerous, organized, angry, and willing to show up somewhere.
In my opinion, the purpose of demonstrations has always been to threaten force to lawmakers. Demonstrations always precede an escalation in tactics. Groups demonstrate first, then they resort to more drastic measures. In the past, demonstrating crowds and their organizers have been more than willing to escalate to violence, although with mixed results.
By contrast, the people who demonstrate today do not really understand what is it at stake. They may also labor under the belief that policies are undertaken out of moral ignorance when the opposite is often the case. They think they are demonstrating primarily to inform, or to shame, to protest. The state has a longer memory, hence it sends the police, who are always prepared for violence, whether to receive or inflict it.
With all due respect, I must say that individually drawing lines in the sand can prove as worthless as flaccidly waving a sign with no intent to escalate beyond that. If Darth Vader is really after you, it doesn’t matter that you hide out, or don’t seek attention, or passively avoid his debt-slavery tactics. If Darth Vader wants to kill or enslave you, he’ll come find you and do it to you, at which point you have to run or fight. If you fight, you’ll be made an example of, in which case, Darth Vader wins; if you run, well, with globalization, running holds less and less appeal. People could run from Nazi Germany because it was relatively local; resisting it any form, even passively, proved so risky that one may as well have engaged in the most violent acts, as opposed to merely hiding people or circulating dissenting pamphlets, in which case you were painted as a terrorist. The point is, you cannot “resist” Darth Vader, you have to incapacitate or eliminate him, or else die or be enslaved.
The answer of what do is not easy because it does not provide instant gratification. What is the point of winning a few temporary battles if one loses the war? The people who wield power over our lives did not get their overnight. They got their over a period of hundreds of years. It is difficult for most people to think in terms of one year, let alone several hundred, or even several thousand, yet the groups who wield the most power, such as religious groups, often do so because they take the long view. Any real gains made in terms of civil liberties took place over hundreds of years, and costs millions of lives, whether martyrs, or in wars.
One possible solution on how to handle the issue of police repression is to co-opt, infiltrate, or become the police. The so-called right wing always seems to understand this better than the so-called left wing, at least in recent history. Acts of violence don’t seem to “succeed” politically without tacit police support, such as with the JFK assassination or the 9/11 bombings. Part of what ended the Vietnam War was the fact that elements of the antiwar movement infiltrated the military to the extent that officers were fragged and equipment was destroyed, something rarely discussed publicly. Other solutions would fall under the category of organizing to send a more effective message than merely gathering to wave signs. The people that rule do so through a variety of organizational strategies and tactics; one can readily research them and have one’s group adopt them.
hitler analogy in doonesbury
one key point that terence mckenna repeatedly hammered home was ‘culture is not your friend’. (i daresay he wouldn’t have objected to anyone taking him on his word and stop listening to his opinions and go off and do something.)
dave letterman caught my attention in the past year when it seemed he actually might have gotten a tad riled at all what was going on, as if his bank balance somehow took a hit from the ‘recession’. seemed he suggested as much. he was mad as heck and wasn’t gonna take it for a few shows, and so on. i was curious to see how far he’d go. seeing him pally pally with obama recently though curdled my bile enough to push me to stop watching his insipid show even idly.
doonesbury likewise was something i’d long to come to see as having a line of it’s own vested existence it wouldn’t cross and so neutered blatantly while still trying fill it’s niche market of accepted mainstream ‘edginess’.
has american culture, that tip of the spear of the age-old drive of global westernization/americanization, finally fully begun to unravel? sure. imho. traditional offline culture anyway. mayhap simply the public’s present lack of time and money has as much to do with it (or more) than disgust. i imagine too though that a tipping point’s approaching when they’ve gotten enough online of huffpo, C&L, DN!, alternet, et al as well. self-vested interests are getting publicly stodgy. imho…
doonesbury *has* managed to maintain some of my attention of late, but this latest installment (that i catch online via livejournal) said it all and is enough for me.
i’m at the point that the only entertainment i’m interested in is by private folks online that i’ve known for years and enjoyably and comfortably converse with. about art mostly at that. i’ve my own endeavors to preoccupy me and those again of art mostly as i’ve ‘said’ enough and fully and bore myself in repetition. bantering in the comments of such sites as mentioned above is fruitless and does amount to sign-waving…
i’ve ceased supporting and contributing to fruitless endeavors (sorry, sean-paul) and have come to viewing only my livejournal friends page (i love the russian artists output), cryptogon, cryptome, and matrixmasters. issue-wise, cognitive liberty concentrates it all for me. (i submit that the fate of south america determines much of the nut of the future. of earth herself. that it is her mouth…) the only real honest effort i see online is here. -in all this big planet.
every month is financially worse than tight for my wife and i but we have a higher quality of life than we’ve ever known before. even a token financial contribution here is gallingly tough but in all conscience *must* be made. hopefully before the dollar must give way to the amero or whatever.
i miss comic books, books, newspapers et al but oh well. but this, here, *must* *must* *must* be supported by me even tokenly. (lorenzo’s work at matrixmasters likewise.)
i won’t miss doonesbury. or dave. or even bob dylan for that matter…
I see the question as “how do we get away from the people who join the military or the police, or work for a defense contractor?”
We are all entitled to our own opinions and the will to act or not upon them.
To me the same thing about myface/twitface could be said about blogs. I think living up to our own ideals is what we should strive for. We must fix ourselves before before we try and “fix” other people. I currently don’t know many complete and “fixed” individuals.
I think might be appropo
George Carlin – Conspiracy Theorists
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bO0-u900OG4
A couple of alpha 9-11 Truthers from ‘wearechange’ had a perfect backdrop for their bullhorning, as officers took a particularly militaristic beat. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_g1bGOPu7M
They say this man was beaten and arrested (along with the Alex Jones film crew), and sent to a special jail away from the students arrestees.
“I see the question as “how do we get away from the people who join the military or the police, or work for a defense contractor?””
When they’re family, you don’t. You just swallow your tongue until they’re well out of earshot. Much personal experience here. Conversations best not had are literally shoulder to shoulder.
I once looked at a recently “radicalized” friend stateside when the subject of a permanent US presence in Mesopotamia was broached and they insisted it simply couldn’t be permanent. Not possible. If that’s the case then, said I, why is the USSA still occupying Germany, sixty five years after the formal conclusion of hostilities?
Brief sputtering. Minor shoe gazing. No better answer than “that’s different”. How can one discuss history with the indoctrinated? Much like those defense contractors in the family by marriage, it’s just another room full of discussions better not even started.
since it’s an open thread I thought I would add my 2 cents and agree with Kevin that all hope is lost and it is best just to keep your head down and get the fuck out of the way and do the best one can for oneself and those one loves and cares about and are within one’s sphere…fortunately for me that sphere is small and mostly like-minded, knowing that, yes, the ‘They’ have been working in long-view, decade upon decade frame of mind, slowly tightening the grip of control, even giving/allowing the perceptual idea of ‘frontier’ and ‘open spaces’ still available…but those open spaces are privately owned or govt controlled and easily observed via sat coverage or predator drone…
People always talk in awed tones about the ‘progress’ we have made, in tech, communications, mass production of ‘things’, which, I believe, has been the un-doing…yes, these ‘things’ are nice,some of those ‘things’ do make life easier, here we are, communicating amongst ourselves over these inter-tubes, yet, every word and IP address and person at the other end of the tube easily ID’d and monitored…
Unfortunately for me, I am tethered to the USSA by children and having to make a living but I do have land and I am growing food, having to re-learn some skills my Dad and his family before him survived on…been off the farm a long time, but it is coming back…as for these demonstrations, it just seems like window-dressing, intended to make you think there is ‘freedom of speech’ and all those Orwellian ideas at work out there, but really, for a group who can and did bring down two fucking buildings in broad daylight, with millions of witnesses, and sell it as the work of some savage in a cave in Afg, well, I am sure they can sell the idea of ‘freedom’ pretty fuckin’ good too….
the sheer cluelessness of 99% of libertarians and the “left” (sic) shows how deep the capture is. the inability of most people to either see or consciously acknowledge that the emperor has no clothes bodes particularly badly, imho, for the systemic collapse that is not too far off.
@Zuma: we seem to have come to quite similar conclusions. good luck.
The military-cop-corporate conglomerate has had since 1965 – the last Uranus and Saturn opposition to get their anti-protest hard on ready to er, uhh, “hose down the crowds” when they even think about, let alone leave their houses to say they don’t like something going on in the world today.
I was sick to my stomach from the violence expressed by the military-cop-corp conglomerate here in Pittsburgh and my ears ached Friday morning! No kidding. No telling how far and wide the sonic boom cannon went. As the crow flies, Lawrenceville is about 10-15 miles from here. But my right ear hurt like hell.
I used to admire protesters. Not anymore. Figure that there is something masochistic in it all if you don’t have a direct target for your anger. Anger at the G20?
I like wrote you wrote Kevin:
Eliminate your debt. Take your money off the table. Stop buying stuff that you don’t need. Live well on very little. Grow your own food. Participate in alternative and/or outlawed food economies for what you don’t produce yourself. Barter, or use cash. Support people who do good work. Finally, draw a line in the sand. Don’t tell anyone where that line is, or what the consequences will be if it’s crossed. Don’t wave a sign about it. Don’t twitbook about it. Let the fascists figure it out the hard way.
Yes well my mother’s bank has been hounding me for the last month for my work phone number, and my profession, as well as my mothers. My mother is freaking 92, and has not been well for a long time.
If I don’t respond by tomorrow, well then, I was told I might experience an “interruption in service.”
I think this one of my LINEs that the bank insists I cross. No law number mentioned in the letter. No facts.
They already have my DOB, SS#, they see where my money comes from and now they want my work phone number? So yes, I am going to go and “protest.” I am going to the bank tomorrow and ask the poor teller who gets to wait on me, exactly what is that federal law? What are going you going to to do with my work phone number, call me when the FDIC auditors are ready to shut you down on Friday at 4:00 p.m.? That would be nice, but please, call me at noon instead so I can adjust my schedule. HAR.
And uh, if you think me and my Mom are drug dealing money laundering terrorists, WTF? Are you thinking, el Banko? Do you actually think people are going to tell you what their profession is when they are criminals? WTF?
I’m going to do an ear candle. See if there really is wax in my ears that might possibly cause so much pain.
I don’t see any harm in the protests. In fact, I think they’re probably better than having no public expression of dissent at all. The image of kids getting gassed by riot cops might at least give some of the less brainwashed citizens some disturbing underlying feelings that they then have to either try to understand or to suppress. No, protests probably won’t change much, but pressuring the state in this way strips away the facade of gentle liberty to reveal the grim mechanics of repression by violence underneath, and that’s a worthwhile reality-check, methinks.
In one way I’ve given up on worldly hope because, unlike Peter O’Toole’s ‘Lawrence of Arabia’, I believe certain things are written and will come to pass. Still, our global destiny does not negate our human freedom and despite believing that what happens serves only to drive and lock us into the future that awaits us, I look forward to a few surprise performances from actors known and unknown along the way and expect that as the polarisation occurs and unseen lines are drawn dividing us on the basis of what we truly love it will be revealed that many are not what we thought they were…even, perhaps, some of our Darth Vaders. In the meantime, whatever else I might think, I’d rather people demonstrated than stayed at home watching ‘American Idol’…Where there’s life there’s hope.
Protests serve an important purpose, but it’s not the one that the attendees think it is. It has nothing to do with waving signs and hopeful speeches. With the gov the way it is today, they will at some point be unable to control themselves. The result will be violence. With luck, a non-gov person will be there to capture the event on video. Otherwise, it will surely be suppressed in the MSM.
That violence, when it comes, has the possibility of triggering the masses into real resistance and change. Until then, we’re stuck with the steepening slide into fascism, with probable dictatorship at the bottom of the pit. If you think I’m exaggerating, you might want to review your history books.
Also, don’t knock the Internet too much. Yes, the whiners suck. But focusing on them is missing the whole point and power of the Internet — which is free and open (mostly) communication that isn’t mediated by the gov or the MSM. It’s only human nature to avoid conflict and violence as long as possible. The modern school system has made the status quo that much more palatable to the masses. Without the Internet, where would people who want to open their minds go for more information?
For me personally, like Kevin, I left the USSA and moved to NZ. I have withdrawn my financial and intellectual support from the system. The system as it is now is clearly unsustainable; it will collapse under its own weight eventually — the main question is whether we’ll live to see it happen, or how many more generations will have to suffer first.
imho, demonstrations are not going to achieve any substantive change in any OECD country. very large-scale mass demos, general strikes and civil disobedience campaigns have in the past snowballed into regime change in the former soviet union and eastern bloc. and the philippines. but, even in those cases, if we look at those countries today, they are run by kleptocrats who are mostly in the pay or control of the Cullinary Institute of America.yow. but really, the only possible use for demos in the developed world is to get on the six o’clock news and try and wake a few more people out of their collective stupor. quite inefficient, i think. and too prone to infiltration, etc.
to be honest, most educated people in the West see no inherent problems in the assumption that continuous economic growth is desirable and essential. they also mostly believe that whenever anything bad happens it’s always a cock-up, never a consipracy. these people, the majority of the technocrats, have strongly internalised an unquestioning acceptance of the prevailing dogma (underlying assumptions of the social/economic model). when systemic breakdown really starts to occur, the cognitave dissonance is going to be quite something. as Orlov has talked about.
i think people who just cannot resist organising demos need to look more critically at their OODA loop and what they can achieve strategically with any given set of tactics. most of what happens now seems to be a very dumbed-down version of demonstrating.