All About The Netroots

One of the biggest problems of the Netroots remains its inability to take criticism. Consider this post from Matt Stoller:

Frank Rich wrote a column called ‘The Good Germans’.  He spends a bunch of column inches lamenting how ‘we’ have let the war go on, and are as complicit as the Germans during the Nazi regime.  Here’s the nub:

As the war has dragged on, it is hard to give Americans en masse a pass. We are too slow to notice, let alone protest, the calamities that have followed the original sin.

And yet, last month, here’s Frank Rich.

Americans are looking for leadership, somewhere, anywhere. At least one of the Democratic presidential contenders might have shown the guts to soundly slap the “General Betray-Us” headline on the ad placed by MoveOn.org in The Times, if only to deflate a counterproductive distraction.

Rich is operating according to the rules of the media elite.  It’s ok to whine about the problem, but try to do anything about it and you’re getting very much uncivil, sir.

Um Matt, it was not the incivility, it was the stupidity. The Netroots’ problem on Move On, indeed, regarding ANY criticism of the Netroots, is the uncheckable impulse to attack the criticizer instead of considering the point. Matt might be interested to learn that Frank Rich was harshly critical of General Petraeus in repeated columns, including in the very column cited by Stoller.

It so happens that I myself was subject to criticism in a Frank Rich column:

Mr. Rich was kind enough to link to my post, but I think he misstates my views, and more importantly, the views on ending the war of Senators Reid, Feingold, Dodd, Rep. McGovern and all the other supporters of this approach when he writes:

On the Democratic side, the left is furious at the new Congress’s failure to instantly fulfill its November mandate to end the war in Iraq. . . . It’s not exactly clear how a legislative Groundhog Day could accomplish this feat when the president’s obstinacy knows no bounds and the Democrats’ lack of a veto-proof Congressional majority poses no threat to his truculence.

. . . What the angriest proselytizers on the left and right have in common is a conviction that their political parties will commit hara-kiri if they don’t adhere to their bases’ strict ideological orders. “If Democrats do not stick to their guns on Iraq,” a blogger at TalkLeft.com warns, there will be “serious political consequences in 2008.” In an echo of his ideological opposite, Mr. Limbaugh labels the immigration bill the “Comprehensive Destroy the Republican Party Act.”

First, Reid-Feingold is not “instant withdrawal.” The Reid-Feingold framework is not instant withdrawal. From my post:

This is a preemptive post, because I am positive that the naysayer will trot out the same critiques about the NOT funding the Debacle approach that was used when Feingold first proposed his Not Funding plan in January. To wit, we don't have the votes, McConnell will filibuster, Bush will veto. My response remains:
I ask for three things: First, announce NOW that the Democratic Congress will NOT fund the Iraq Debacle after a date certain. You pick the date. Whatever works politically. If October 2007 is the date Dems can agree to, then let it be then. If March 2008, then let that be the date; Second, spend the year reminding the President and the American People every day that Democrats will not fund the war past the date certain; Third, do NOT fund the Iraq Debacle PAST the date certain.

Some argue we will never have the votes for this. That McConnell will filibuster, that Bush will veto. To them I say I KNOW. But filbustering and vetoing does not fund the Iraq Debacle. Let me repeat, to end the war in Iraq, the Democratic Congress does not have to pass a single bill; they need only NOT pass bills that fund the Iraq Debacle.

But but but, defund the whole government? Defund the whole military? What if Bush does not pull out the troops? First, no, not defund the government, defund the Iraq Debacle. If the Republicans choose to shut down government in order to force the continuation of the Iraq Debacle, do not give in. Fight the political fight. We'll win. Second, defund the military? See answer to number one. Third, well, if you tell the American People what is coming for a year, and that Bush is on notice, that it will be Bush abandoning the troops in Iraq, we can win that political battle too.

This approach is perfectly consistent with the so called “short leash” plan, where the Debacle will be funded in 3 month intervals. But it is only consistent if BOTH are done. The intention to NOT fund the war after March 31, 2008 must be made the Dem position now.

The short leash must be pulled to a stop on March 31, 2008.

Say it now so you can end it then. If you do not say it now, then you can't end it on March 31, 2008.

Second, I can't say Rush Limbaugh is right in his characterization of Bush's immigration initiative, but it seems clear that the Republican Party is in deep turmoil over it. Similarly, the Democratic Party is in some disarray on Iraq. And yes, I do predict that the Democratic Party will suffer in 2008 if it is not viewed as having made a principled stand against the war. Certainly I could be wrong, but I think the view I espouse is not an angry one. It is a considered one.

But, to be frank, ending the Debacle is more important to me than the Democrats' fortunes in 2008. I won't be pulling my punches on the issue with the 2008 Dem fortunes in mind. Does that make me an “angry prostyletizer?” Well then, so be it.

I think I addressed Rich’s argument. I am sure Stoller did not. This is part of a pattern. The Netroots decided that defending Move On at all costs mattered more than anything else:

Chris Bowers writes:

[T]he current conservative governing coalition of George Bush, Bush Dogs, congressional Republicans, and anti-MoveOn, anti-Reid Feingold Senators is opposed to the will of 60% of the American people on Iraq.

This conflation of criticism of Move On's ill advised ad (which is, I suppose, what Bowers is referring to; I condemn Move On for the ad and for its efforts to support the horrible Iraq Supplemental this Spring (Bowers also supported at times) and for its silly waste of a “ratchet up the pressure”/Wait for the Godot Republicans strategy this summer) withsupport for continuation of the war is ridiculous.

And it is unfortunate that Chris chose to demand fealty to Move On in this post as he makes a point of mine of longstanding – there is no compromise on Iraq. The choices now are binary – are you for ending the Iraq War? Then support ONLY funding with timelines. Anything else is de facto support for continuation of the Iraq Debacle.

This is wrong and counterproductive. The fight to end the Iraq Debacle is NOT about Move On and the Netroots and defending them. It is not about defending Democrats. It is about the issue. The Netroots has lost its way.

Pony Party, NFL Roundup


For more widgets please visit www.yourminis.com

My apologies for another in a series of phoned-in pony parties.  That life thing, y’know…

please don’t recommend the Pony Party!

~73v

“A Day on Our Homestead”

A little over five years ago I was working as a clinician at a treatment center for adolescent sex offenders. The clients themselves were difficult to work with but what was worse was that the administration was abusive and exploited staff and clients. It was a bizarre place that asked for top dollar from the clients’ sending agencies by selling a state of the art therapeutic program but in reality treated both therapists and clients with loathing and contempt. One by one my fellow therapists dropped from the stress and hostility at this treatment center.

Cross Posted at Pockets of the Futureand Dkos.

Eventually I also began exhibiting stress related symptoms including migraines, extended illnesses as well as an array of negative emotional states. I would come home to my pregnant wife and five children in our cramped two bedroom, cockroach infested apartment above a laundry room in a college town. We definitely needed a company like https://www.pestcontrolexperts.com/ to get rid of all the cockroaches, it was awful. There was no air conditioning so the heat from the laundry room in the summer was unbearable. I didn’t realize how much I took air conditioning for granted but I missed it so much! I thought the HVAC system was broken at first, so I contacted an AC Repair company and when they got there, they told me that there was no system! How could anyone live without a HVAC system? The heat was truly unbearable! Due to the stress from my job, I felt disconnected from my wife and children while at home. I realized one day that I was working/commuting to work for over 48 hours a week. What little downtime that left was spent recovering and preparing myself to go back to work. My children were basically growing up without me. Everything I had was going into a job that I hated and that was making me sick. I was missing out on my life. This needed to change.

We were living in a beautiful part of western Massachusetts. The area outside of the towns was farmland that was being eaten up by the urban sprawl monster. For a bit of fresh air, we sometimes drove through the countryside peering out our car windows at the rural setting. My daughter three year old daughter loved animals and everything to do with the farm areas. Every time we turned to drive away from the farms and back to town, she wept uncontrollably. It tugged on the hearts of both my wife and myself. Obviously a rural life was essential for her existence.

Meanwhile my wife had done research about the homesteading way of life for many years. Furthermore, our shared spiritual practice called Sahaj Marg (the Natural Path) emphasizes living natural and simple lives in harmony with Nature. We were clearly not doing that. We were also painfully aware that the current political/economic system was breaking down on all levels. We could see, for instance, that the petroleum based system that is now in place to raise and transport food to large cities would not be around for our children. Life on a homestead, in our view, would be the best way to prepare our children for the future while learning to live in harmony with nature in the present. As we could not afford land in the expensive northeast, we finally settled on rural Virginia as the place for our future homestead. Leslie gave birth to our six and final child with a home birth at the apartment. A year later we loaded up the truck and headed down to Virginia.

That was three and half years ago. Since that time we turned a small home on 3.7 acres in central Virginia into a working homestead and then last May moved to an old farm house in southwestern Virginia that has much better pasture. We now have two rare breed Dutch Belted dairy cows and their two heifers, a donkey, three rare breed Nigerian Dwarf goats and 24 free ranging laying hens as well as two cats and a border collie that holds it all together.

Since making these large changes towards a homesteading, more self reliant way of life, we have found our lives and our relationships have improved in every possible way. We still experience problems and stress but instead of facing intractable problems that have no solutions, we are now presented with problems for which solutions seem to come in natural, doable ways. Living more in harmony with our natural path and spiritual laws, we find that we are much more in the flow as a family. We are now living in a way that is much more congruent with our inner natures. This has brought remarkable progress to us as individuals and to us as a family unit. Furthermore, the positive energy that the homestead, the surrounding rural area and, especially, our animals emanate actually boosts everyone’s energy level and brightens our spirits. For us the return to the original agrarian environment away from the manufactured bright lights and loud noises of urban and suburban mainstream environments has been a Godsend for us. Our path now is much clearer to us. As hard as it may be sometimes to learn this way of life and adjust to the constantly changing conditions of nature and so on, we can at least soldier on doing and being in something that we truly believe in. We can work hard each day knowing that we are building a sustainable future for our children and giving them the skills and mind set to share that with others as they grow older.

We have posted a new series of homesteading videos on YouTube. We were asked by viewers to post video on day in the life of our farm. We were happy to oblige. It took nine videos to chronicle one particular day outside on the homestead from start to finish. The links are posted below

A Day on our Homestead (Part 1) The Morning

A Day on our Homestead (Part 2) The Morning Milking

A Day on our Homestead (Part 3) Feeding and Watering

A Day on our Homestead (Part 4) Collecting Eggs

A Day on our Homestead (Part 5) Underlying Philosophy

A Day on our Homestead (Part 6) Strawbale and Homeschooling

A Day on our Homestead (Part 7) Evening Milking Part 1

A Day at our Homestead Part 8 Second Part of our Evening Milking

A Day at our Homestead Part 9 The end of the Day

Docudharma Times Monday Oct. 15

This is an Open Thread

News Happening Now

Pentagon, FBI misusing secret info requests: ACLU
  WASHINGTON (AFP) – The Pentagon has misled Congress and the US public by conniving with the FBI to obtain hundreds of financial, telephone and Internet records without court approval, civil-rights campaigners said Sunday.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which has successfully challenged key planks of US anti-terrorism legislation, said it had uncovered 455 “National Security Letters” (NSLs) issued at the behest of the Department of Defense.


Before the ACLU’s challenge, the USA Patriot Act had allowed the FBI to issue gag orders to prevent those receiving NSLs — usually Internet service providers, banks and libraries — from disclosing anything about the request.


USA

Al-Qaeda In Iraq Reported Crippled

Many Officials, However, Warn Of Its Resilience


By Thomas E. Ricks and Karen DeYoung

Washington Post Staff Writers

Monday, October 15, 2007; Page A01


The U.S. military believes it has dealt devastating and perhaps irreversible blows to al-Qaeda in Iraq in recent months, leading some generals to advocate a declaration of victory over the group, which the Bush administration has long described as the most lethal U.S. adversary in Iraq.


But as the White House and its military commanders plan the next phase of the war, other officials have cautioned against taking what they see as a premature step that could create strategic and political difficulties for the United States. Such a declaration could fuel criticism that the Iraq conflict has become a civil war in which U.S. combat forces should not be involved. At the same time, the intelligence community, and some in the military itself, worry about underestimating an enemy that has shown great resilience in the past.

America’s own unlawful combatants?

By Julian E. Barnes, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

October 15, 2007

WASHINGTON — As the Bush administration deals with the fallout from the recent killings of civilians by private security firms in Iraq, some officials are asking whether the contractors could be considered unlawful combatants under international agreements.


The question is an outgrowth of federal reviews of the shootings, in part because the U.S. officials want to determine whether the administration could be accused of treaty violations that could fuel an international outcry.


But the issue also holds practical and political implications for the administration’s war effort and the image of the U.S. abroad.


If U.S. officials conclude that the use of guards is a potential violation, they may have to limit guards’ tasks in war zones, which could leave more work for the already overstretched military.

Unresolved questions are likely to touch off new criticism of Bush’s conduct of the unpopular Iraq war, especially given the broad definition of unlawful combatants the president has used in justifying his detention policies at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Turkish General Sees U.S. Ties at Risk

Commander Warns Against Passage of Genocide Resolution


By Molly Moore

Washington Post Foreign Service

Monday, October 15, 2007; Page A10


ISTANBUL, Oct. 14 — The commander of Turkey’s armed forces warned that U.S.-Turkish military relations will be irreparably damaged if the U.S. House of Representatives approves a resolution accusing his country of genocide in the mass killings of Armenians nearly a century ago, according to an interview published Sunday.


“If this resolution passed in the committee passes the House as well, our military ties with the U.S. will never be the same again,” Gen. Yasar Buyukanit told the daily newspaper Milliyet in the interview.

Republicans fire back at Sanchez for Iraq war criticism

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Republicans reacted with surprise and recrimination Sunday to blistering criticism of the Iraq war from former coalition commander retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez.

On Friday, Sanchez, who was coalition commander in 2003 and 2004, called the Iraq war “a nightmare with no end in sight.” He said the Bush administration, the State Department and Congress all share blame.


Speaking with military reporters in Virginia, Sanchez also said such dereliction of duty by a military officer would mean immediate dismissal or court martial, but the politicians have not been held accountable.


Europe

Russia divulges Putin assassination plot

By LYNN BERRY, Associated Press Writer

MOSCOW – Russian President Vladimir Putin has been told about a plot to assassinate him during a visit to Iran this week, a Kremlin spokeswoman said Sunday.

The spokeswoman, who spoke on customary condition of anonymity, refused further comment.


Interfax news agency, citing a source in Russia’s special services, said suicide terrorists had been trained to carry out the assassination.

Airbus delivers first A380 superjumbo

TOULOUSE, France (AFP) – Airbus on Monday delivered the first of its A380s, the world’s biggest passenger jet, to Singapore Airlines, 18 months behind schedule but with both sides hailing the major advance in air travel.

The 73-metre-long (239-feet) superjumbo was handed over in a ceremony at the Airbus headquarters in Toulouse in southern France.


Thomas Enders, chief executive of Airbus, said: “We are obviously extremely proud to deliver the first A380 to Singapore Airlines, but this is the latest milestone in a long journey.”


Asia

U.S. denies Quran desecration allegation

By AMIR SHAH, Associated Press Writer 9 minutes ago


KABUL, Afghanistan – The U.S. military said Monday it had looked into allegations that soldiers had desecrated the Quran during a raid on an Afghan home and found no evidence that soldiers had defaced the Muslim holy book.

The allegations sparked an outcry among villagers in the eastern province of Kunar, who met with the governor, provincial leaders and U.S. military commanders on Sunday over the issue.


Kunar deputy provincial governor Noor Mohammad Khan said American soldiers raided the home of Mullah Zarbaz on Saturday morning, arresting him and three others.

Taliban sets out demands to Afghan president

Declan Walsh in Islamabad, Sami Yousafzai in Peshawar

Monday October 15, 2007

The Guardian

Senior Taliban commanders in Helmand province have sent a list of demands to the Karzai government as part of tentative back-channel talks to bring a peaceful end to the conflict.


The militant leaders – who include a key aide to Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar – want control of 10 southern provinces, a timetable for withdrawal of foreign troops, and the release of all Taliban prisoners within six months. The demands were passed through a former Taliban foreign minister, Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, and the former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef.


The demands are unlikely to be taken seriously.

New Zealand activists held in ‘anti-terrorism’ raids

WELLINGTON (AFP) – New Zealand police arrested 17 people in a series of anti-terrorist raids across the North Island Monday, with Maori and environmental activists the main target, media reports said.

In the first operation under New Zealand’s Terrorism Suppression Act, police said they had information that a number of people had taken part in military-style training camps involving the use of firearms and other weapons.


“It was military-style activities they were training for,” Police Commissioner Howard Broad told a media conference.


Africa

South African editor fears arrest for minister claims

David Beresford

Monday October 15, 2007

The Guardian


The Johannesburg Sunday Times said yesterday that it expected its editor and a journalist on its staff to be arrested this week after reporting allegations that the country’s health minister was a drunk and a thief.


The newspaper said its editor, Mondli Makhanya, and reporter, Jocelyn Maker, would be “hauled off to Cape Town in connection with charges of theft and for contravention of Section 17 of the National Health Act”.


The statute makes it an offence to gain access to a person’s confidential medical records.

Congo’s pygmies take on World Bank to save rainforest from loggers

By Jonathan Brown

Published: 15 October 2007


The rumble of giant machinery heralds the arrival of loggers deep in the heart of the Congo rainforest. For the pygmy tribes which have inhabited this thick jungle for millennia, the sound of the advancing column is the sound of encroaching hunger and the loss of a way of life stretching back hundreds of generations.


“They bring with them huge machines which go deep into the forest and make noise which frightens all the game animals away,” says Adrian Sinafasi, the man seeking to alert the outside world to the plight of central Africa’s pygmies. “When the loggers arrive, they bring with them many workers who are needed to fell the trees. They also need to eat and start hunting but, rather than use traditional weapons in the right season, they hunt with firearms and don’t care about seasons or how much food they take.”

Muse in the Morning

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Muse in the Morning

The muses are ancient.  The inspirations for our stories were said to be born from them.  Muses of song and dance, or poetry and prose, of comedy and tragedy, of the inward and the outward.  In one version they are Calliope, Euterpe and Terpsichore, Erato and Clio, Thalia and Melpomene, Polyhymnia and Urania.

It has also been traditional to name a tenth muse.  Plato declared Sappho to be the tenth muse, the muse of women poets.  Others have been suggested throughout the centuries.  I don’t have a name for one, but I do think there should be a muse for the graphical arts.  And maybe there should be many more.

Please join us inside to celebrate our various muses…

State of the Onion XXV

Art Link

Suspended in Blue

Common Ground

Common ground
cannot be found
when some people demand
that everyone have
the same beliefs
as themselves

Common ground is found
when it is acknowledged
that individuals
with different beliefs
can work together
towards the same goals

Common ground is found
when we concentrate
on what we do
not why we do it
or what we believed
while we were doing it

Common ground
is populated
when individuals
with different beliefs
can respect the value
of divergent points of view

Most important of all
common ground occurs
when people are willing
to be changed
by the effort they make
to seek it

–Robyn Elaine Serven
–February 10, 2006

I know you have talent.  What sometimes is forgotten is that being practical is a talent.  I have a paucity for that sort of talent in many situations, though it turns out that I’m a pretty darn good cook.  🙂 

Let your talent bloom.  You can share it here.  Encourage others to let it bloom inside them as well.

Won’t you share your words or art, your sounds or visions, your thoughts scientific or philosophic, the comedy or tragedy of your days, the stories of doing and making?  And be excellent to one another!

The Second Half of the Equation — # 2 — Evolve or Die

About 25 years ago, I woke from a good night’s sleep filled with words.  The words went something like this:

—If evolution is now the evolution of consciousness (and I believe it is), ergo, whatever species is evolving in consciousness must become aware of increasingly more aspects of the totality of being, must become aware of that part of being which is death— 

When awareness of death began dawning in the evolving consciousness of homo
sapiens (although animals have some sense of death, they don’t wake in the morning thinking, ‘I’m going to die some day’), the human species reacted largely with fear, denial, and avoidance.  This ‘significant’ awareness of death in the evolving human consciousness seems to have coincided with the transition from a matriarchal to a patriarchal orientation in society.

I state these only as interesting possibilities, to be examined, thought about, researched, felt with the heart, contemplated…

Early literatures, like the Gilgamesh Epic, have themes of searching for the fountain of eternal life.  From fear and attempted denial, the effort to escape, the effort to transcend death, became a driving force of western civilization, and led to much of our cultural and technological progress. 

Through various religious constructs, humans sought to continue existence in an afterlife where we join our loved ones who have gone before, to continue where we left off, so to speak.

Other means of ‘escaping’ death were such devices as fame, power, control of nature, wealth.  So, if you are as rich as Walt Disney (of the Happy, Magic Kingdom) you can, at that  moment of imminent death, have your body frozen in cryonics until science comes up with a cure for whatever it was from which you were about to expire.

But I apologize for being on the brink of slipping into sarcasm and humor in what is a  very serious subject.  Yet I love to laugh!

There are many means by which we have attempted to avoid and deny.  Find your own examples.

But, as the psychologists say…

  “Whatever we deny is bound to come back to haunt us, writ large, barring the
  way forward!  Saying, “This denied content is what is blocking the way
  forward.”  Saying, “Deal with this.  Integrate this.  This psychic content
  is what is barring your way forward, is barring your further growth, is
  barring your evolution…”

Our very attempts to avoid death, our attempts to dominate nature, to control natural processes in a non-integrated manner–have brought us to this point where we have created…

  DEATH WRIT LARGE ACROSS THE PLANET

…saying, basically, deal with this, integrate this, awareness and acceptance of death is the way forward.

And so the very threat to our survival is the gateway and the impetus to our evolution forward. 

—With the splitting of the atom, everything has changed save man’s way of thinking, and thus we drift toward unimaginable peril—

With our technological advances we have taken into our own hands the power which was once attributed only to Gods.  This mandates that we evolve man’s way of thinking to become at least somewhat more equivalent to the thinking of the Gods.  Evolve or die!  Thus it has always been.

Be excellent to each other…we’re in this together…this is all we have…

America’s Optimism Is Gone

Gary Younge, the New York correspondent for The Guardian, has a commentary in today’s paper (15 October) about how America’s sense of optimism is gone.

It is a well-written essay and worth reading in full. I think Younge has nearly perfectly captured the general hopelessness that many Americans are feeling now about their country.

In his essay, The land of optimism is in the dumps, but refuses to accept how it got there, Younge writes:

This sense of optimism has been in retreat in almost every sense over the past few years… America, in short, is in a deep funk. Far from feeling hopeful, it appears fearful of the outside world and despondent about its own future. Not only do most believe tomorrow will be worse than today, they also feel that there is little that can be done about it.

While many will see this as Americans coming to terms, finally, with their place in the world. Up until the country placed George W. Bush in power, this picture of James T. Kirk is pretty much how America had seen itself at least since the end of the Second World War.

The awesome Capt. James T. Kirk

“I’m sorry, I can’t hear you over the sound of how awesome I am.”

Even after America’s defeat in Vietnam, the country was still a perceived as superpower. Europe was divided into Eastern and Western power blocs and Americans saw their country as needed to counter the Soviet threat. America has been in bad spots before. Such as during the 20th century, America survived Watergate, came back after Pearl Harbor, and reinvented itself during the Great Depression and during each crisis, most Americans didn’t lose their sense of hope and optimism.

But, no more. Hope in America is quickly fading. Younge believes Americans have lost their optimism because of “three main reasons”. The first reason he gives is the economy.

Closest to home is the economy. Wages are stagnant, house prices in most areas have stalled or are falling, the dollar is plunging, and the deficit is rising…

The sense that things will improve for the next generation has all but evaporated.

Younge omits mention of the neo-Gilded Age that is taking place in the United States. The gap between the richest and poorest in the country is growing by staggering leaps each year. The middle class in America is threatened — squeezed to a point where the line between poor and middle class has blurred to an obscurity.

The second reason Young gives is America’s international reputation.

Second is the Iraq war and the steep decline in America’s international standing it has prompted…

For if the war in Iraq were going well then this probably wouldn’t matter. But it isn’t. All surveys show that for some time a steady majority of the public believe the war was a mistake, is going badly and that the troops should be withdrawn. One of the central factors in which America’s self-confidence was predicated – global hegemony based on unrivalled military supremacy – has been fundamentally undermined…

While the United States spends enormous piles of money on weapons and other military equipment, the country’s approach solving things with a show of force still isn’t working. With having the Soviet Union collapse and success of the Gulf War (1991), many Americans felt all the world was theirs for the taking.

After a decade of macho diplomacy and neocon planning, the terrorists attacked the country on American soil. September 11th, 2001 made most of America stupid. Any reservations in America’s government that may have held in check the Bush administration’s policies were easily ignored with the blinders of patriotism and bruised ego.

The Bush administration ignored the lessons of Vietnam, the lessons of the Soviet’s occupation of Afghanistan, and the lessons of the 1991 Gulf War, and countless other lessons and Congress let them fight two wars on the other side of the world without mobilizing the country to fight. After 6 years in Afghanistan and 4 years in Iraq, America is stuck seemingly impotent before all the nations in the world.

Which brings, Younge to his third reason:

Which brings us, finally, to the political class. Once again the American public have lost faith. The rot starts at the top. Almost as soon as they elected Bush in 2004 they seemed to regret it… Bush’s only comfort is that public approval of the Democratically controlled Congress is even worse… In other words, however Americans believe their country will return to the right track, they no longer trust politicians to get them there.

Little suggests that anything will change any time soon…

Most Americans want out of Iraq in a bad way and I think believed they voted for an American withdrawal in the November 2006 general election that placed the Democratic Party in control of Congress. But after almost a year with the Democrats in power, not enough has changed to make many Americans believe anything has changed.

Younge goes on to explain most of us in American aren’t willing to begin a national self-examination or introspection into why the United States is in such a predicament. “For the central problem is not that they were lied to – though that of course is a problem – but that they have constantly found some of these lies more palatable than the truth,” he writes. That is what America has become in a nutshell. Most Americans would rather live and believe in the lie, than face reality.

So as Younge explains, the 2008 presidential candidates are not discussing America’s malaise and not publically doing any sort of root cause analysis. Instead, our politicians keep telling us how wonderful and great America really is.

Americans won’t be able to fix the problems the country has until Americans are willing to admit there is a problem here. It may be cliché, but that, I think, is the State of the Union.

I don’t have much to add other than I feel trapped here in the U.S. I expect things in America are going to get a lot worse before they can start to get better. If Americans want to believe lies rather than face truth, then America will slide into an authoritarian or fascist state in the very near future.

The smart thing for me to do since I feel this way would be to get myself and those I care about out of the country, but I care about more people than can just simply move. Where would we all go? So foolishly I stay and try to keep my last little ember of hope burning through activism and writing — trying to fight to keep the dream of what America could be alive.

Cross-posted at European Tribune.

Those Righties the Right Loves to Hate





Since this is the season of “eating your own” — I came across this list of Right Wingers who are most-hated by their fellow wingnuts. There are some curious inclusions on the list that require some understanding of how folks “over there” think and strategize.

Right Wing News conducted their annual survey documenting the right’s least favorite righties. Most interesting news of it is that Ron Paul came in as most hated.

Here’s the list:

18) Ted Stevens (4)
18) Olympia Snowe (4)
18) Mel Martinez (4)
18) Sean Hannity (4)
18) Lincoln Chafee (4)
17) Bill O’Reilly (5)
14) Lindsey Graham (6)
14) George W. Bush (6)
14) Mitt Romney (6)
12) Arnold Schwarzenegger (9)
12) Rudy Giuliani (9)
8) Andrew Sullivan (11)
8) Chuck Hagel (11)
8) James Dobson (11)
8) Ann Coulter (11)
6) Arlen Specter (12)
6) Pat Robertson (12)
4) Larry Craig (13)
4) Michael Savage (13)
3) John McCain (17)
2) Pat Buchanan (18)
1) Ron Paul (23)

Of course the list is queer and upside down — so you’ll have to use your intellect (as usual) to figure out what your lower-IQ opponents are trying to portray.







And, I just can’t help myself… I thought you’d like to see some of the “insightful” explanations of how this list came to exist from the mental giants on the other side:


I’m willing to bet that most people barely recognize any of the names in that survey group.
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This list is absurd…since when do Lefties hate Hagel, Specter and Chafee???
They are hated by their own party!
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This list is pretty useless as any barometer of rightie feeling. It would be more interesting to see which group of righties is hating what kind of rightie and why. Obviously the person who is hating ann coulter is not the same one who is hating Olympia Snowe. Larry Craig was probably loved by all unitl he went homo in a bathroom. Nice to see there are some decent minded righites that abhor the bigotted nonsense of Micheal “Weiner” Thavage. As for George, I believe that is for being the one who, more than any other, symbolizes the failure that is the republican party.
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This could only come from a neoconservative survey. Palioconservatives can simply look at the numbers and clearly see the Jacobin Neocons disdain, as most neocons are like first cousins to liberals. When social conservatives and the old conservative Dixiecrats exit to fill the ranks of a third party, the Rockefeller Republicans will abandon their Wilsonian policies under the whip of liberalism!
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No true conservatives could have ended up with this list, which is pretty much upside down. This was a survey of Republicans, not conservatives.
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So RWN comes up with a list of 25 people they hate and add another couple dozen names no one has ever heard of to make it look like a choice? Is this a joke? That’s the sort of pointless tripe I would expect from Huffington Post. Or Michelle Oddis. How many people were tricked into voting, looks like maybe 100? Queen Ann, I mean come on. They missed Rush Limbaugh on their phony list as well. I would say this is a neocon hate list but Hannity’s on it. I guess I’m missing the punchline here. Not the first time I guess.
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skANNk Coulter probably fell off this list, because she said jews needed “perfecting” at the hands of “christians”. Her and Hitler, who’d a thunkit?
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I am sorry, but I think the title to this list should have been, Least favorite “righties,” according to “righties.” There are very few real conservatives on the list in the first place. If you are going to call them righties, then maybe you should put actual righties on the list. I see just 3-4 actual righties even on the list and I like them. But, what do I know? I am just a dumb conservative that’s going to write in a name on election day 08. Even though he is not a rightie, I do like the fact that Sean Hannity is on the list. He is certainly one of my least favorites so-called conservatives.
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John McCain is going to be the Next President of the United States!!
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Former Mexican presidente Vincente Fox and current el presidente Calderon would love to see a McCain presidency. Hey, maybe we should just let an international court decide who our next president should be. Also, I have to wonder if Mexico will be allowed to vote in our next election, and if so, how many electoral votes will they get?
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We let a kangaroo court decide that this idiot would be our president now. An international court might not be a bad idea compared to that.
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Ted Stevens is a rightie??? Since when???

So, which “Hated Ones” surprised you most?

Notice any patterns in what gets a “former” Right Winger on the list of shame?

Larry Craig inducted into the Idaho Hall of Fame

No, that’s not an exaggeration.  This is not a satire.  Larry Craig has just been inducted into the Idaho Hall of Fame.

It was announced on the local TV news a couple of days ago that since the nomination, “Had already been in the works for a few months”, they would continue to go forward with giving the award to Craig. 

I just saw on the TV that the award was given to him today.  This is the same award given to Frank Church–the best (imo) statesman Idaho has every produced.

Legislation put forward by Church set aside 2.36 million acres (9,550 km²), over 3600 square miles, as the River of No Return Wilderness.  He also sponsored the Wilderness Act and the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act.  He was vocally against the Vietnam War and headed the Church Committees.

The Church Committees investigated–and brought to light–illegal FBI and CIA covert operations. The Committees’ hearings laid the groundwork for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 which tried to end the abuses of our intelligence agencies and to ensure these abuses would not continue.  This is the same Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) which the bushies have subverted so that they can listen in on anyones phone calls and emails–at any time they want–for any reason they want–and, they don’t have to account for their actions to anyone.

This doesn’t have much to do with Craig–except the Idaho Hall of Fame.  You all know the hypocrisy of Larry Craig, so I thought I’d tell you about a statesman from my (unfortunately Red) state.

mcjoan says she’s proud to be an alumni of Boise High School because that’s where Frank Church went to school.  I didn’t attend Boise High (Meridian–football rivals), but I’m proud that my state has elected at least one good person to the Senate.

Krugman: Gore Derangement Syndrome

Paul Krugman is still reading Armando’s mind:

Both the personality cult the right tried to build around President Bush and the often hysterical denigration of Mr. Gore were, I believe, largely motivated by the desire to expunge the stain of illegitimacy from the Bush administration.

And now that Mr. Bush has proved himself utterly the wrong man for the job – to be, in fact, the best president Al Qaeda’s recruiters could have hoped for – the symptoms of Gore derangement syndrome have grown even more extreme.

The worst thing about Mr. Gore, from the conservative point of view, is that he keeps being right. In 1992, George H. W. Bush mocked him as the “ozone man,” but three years later the scientists who discovered the threat to the ozone layer won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In 2002 he warned that if we invaded Iraq, “the resulting chaos could easily pose a far greater danger to the United States than we presently face from Saddam.” And so it has proved.

When Nancy Pelosi had a Spine

Nancy Pelosi was for protests before she was against them:

Pelosi has had a long record of criticizing China. In 1991, she slipped away with two colleagues during a congressional tour and placed flowers at Tiananmen Square, where pro-democracy demonstrations had been violently suppressed two years before. Chinese guards briefly detained television crews filming the event.

Strikes & Boycotts, Historically Speaking

Throughout the long ages, the proponents of societal reform have traditionally found themselves with the fuzzy end of the lollipop when it came to battling the entrenched Powers That Be’d, at least in terms of military strength.  In dozens of eras and in hundreds of contexts, however, those who would change society have learned that the force of numbers is where the power of the people lies, and from this they derived and perfected several ways of exerting considerable (sometimes government-changing) pressure upon the oligarchs, tyrants, and unprincipled politicians of their day.

Join me, if you will, in the Cave of the Moonbat, where tonight your resident historiorantologist will offer for progressive consideration a look at a handful of the means our side has traditionally employed when all appeared lost and the aristocrats were running amok.  As we begin, please direct your gaze toward the Eternal City on the Seven Hills, and one of the first successful general strikes…

The tactics of the fights for social justice are nearly as numerous as the contexts under which they have been waged, but there are a few recurring themes that I’ve seen popping up around the left blogosphere lately, and it’s those I’d like to address.  I present these only in a vaguely chronological order, with no intention of trying to order, rank, or (necessarily) recommend them.

Tactic 1: Secessio Plebis
Rome; 494 BCE, 449 BCE, 287 BCE
A forerunner of the General Strike

Two thousand years before Marx, the people of ancient Rome fully recognized in whose hands rested the means of production, and they had a fairly good inkling of what would happen if they removed their noses from the Republic’s grindstone.  In 495 BCE, a Bushlike patrician named Appius Claudius got himself appointed Consul, and began using the position to tyrannize the lower classes – the plebs – largely by throwing debtors in prison and ordering a levy of troops to support the Fifth war of Rome and Sabines.  His blatant Cheneyness, as well as the fact the rest of the legislature was content to hide behind his toga hem while Appius Claudius made all the tough decisions, galvanized the plebs into collective action:

After dismissing the senate, the consuls ascended the tribunal and called out the names of those liable to active service. Not a single man answered to his name. The people, standing round as though in informal assembly, declared that the plebs could no longer be imposed upon, the consuls should not get a single soldier until the promise made in the name of the State was fulfilled. Before arms were put into their hands, every man’s liberty must be restored to him, that they might fight for their country and their fellow-citizens and not for tyrannical masters. The consuls were quite aware of the instructions they had received from the senate, but they were also aware that none of those who had spoken so bravely within the walls of the Senate-house were now present to share the odium which they were incurring. A desperate conflict with the plebs seemed inevitable. Before proceeding to extremities they decided to consult the senate again. Thereupon all the younger senators rushed from their seats, and crowding round the chairs of the consuls, ordered them to resign their office and lay down an authority which they had not the courage to maintain.

Livy, History of Rome

In order to avoid provoking the Senate into knee-jerk resolutions, pleb leaders began meeting in secret; out of this grew a movement that the aristocrats didn’t really know what to do with.  Two of the leading pols favored quietly burying the gladius, but…

Appius Claudius, harsh by nature, and now maddened by the hatred of the plebs on the one hand and the praises of the senate on the other, asserted that these riotous gatherings were not the result of misery but of licence, the plebeians were actuated by wantonness more than by anger. This was the mischief which had sprung from the right of appeal, for the consuls could only threaten without the power to execute their threats as long as a criminal was allowed to appeal to his fellow criminals. “Come,” said he, “let us create a dictator from whom there is no appeal, then this madness which is setting everything on fire will soon die down. Let me see any one strike a lictor then, when he knows that his back and even his life are in the sole power of the man whose authority he attacks.”

ibid (emphasis mine – u.m.)

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By the following year, the plebs had had enough of Appius Claudius, and to express their displeasure, they packed up their crap and left the city en masse.  Tradition (and an ill-fated 20th-century anti-Fascist movement) holds that they vacated to the Aventine Hill, one of Rome’s storied seven hills that had not, at this early date, yet been engulfed by ancient world urban sprawl.  From there, they watched as the handful of patricians left in the city came to recognize just how much of their comfortable lifestyle depended on the good graces of their inferiors, and in the end, made several monumental concessions to the plebs in order to get them to come back.  Most important of these were the creation of the office of Tribune – a powerful office reserved for plebs which at times had the power to veto acts of consuls, praetors, and even the senate itself – and the much later establishment of the Temple of Concordia, which graced the Forum from the time of the Gracchi onward.

About 50 years later, the plebs were forced to dust off the Secessio tactic, this time to assert their demands for a legal code that was, unlike the one Rome’s priests were currently administering, written down and known to all.  Beginning in 462 BCE, the plebs started pushing, and it only took 9 years for the patricians to grudgingly assemble a 10-man commission – the Decemvirate to study the matter.  The idea was that they would go to Greece and study how Solon, et. al., were running things, but they likely didn’t venture much further than the Greek city-states in southern Italy.

The plebs were making other demands, too, and while the idea of subjecting themselves to the rule of law struck the Roman patrician class about as favorably as it does Bush’s base, the other rights the lower castes were demanding were the sort of things that could destroy civilization itself, not to mention result in profound ennui, if Livy is to be believed:

He (C. Canuleius, tribune and pleb leader) was advocating the breaking up of the houses, tampering with the auspices, both those of the State and those of individuals, so that nothing would be pure, nothing free from contamination, and in the effacing of all distinctions of rank, no one would know either himself or his kindred. What other result would mixed marriages have except to make unions between patricians and plebeians almost like the promiscuous association of animals? The offspring of such marriages would not know whose blood flowed in his veins, what sacred rites he might perform; half of him patrician, half plebeian, he would not even be in harmony with himself.

The great historioranter continues his harangue against the insolent plebes in a classic blame-the-victim broadside that surely must have a place on Michelle Malkin’s list of Top Ten Ingrate Call-Outs:

Could their ancestors have divined that all their concessions only served to make the plebs more exacting, not more friendly, since their first success only emboldened them to make more and more urgent demands, it was quite certain that they would have gone any lengths in resistance sooner than allow these laws to be forced upon them. Because a concession was once made in the matter of tribunes, it had been made again; there was no end to it. Tribunes of the plebs and the senate could not exist in the same State, either that office or this order (i.e. the nobility) must go. Their insolence and recklessness must be opposed, and better late than never. Were they to be allowed with impunity to stir up our neighbours to war by sowing the seeds of discord and then prevent the State from arming in its defence against those whom they had stirred up, and after all but summoning the enemy not allow armies to be enrolled against the enemy?

but Livy, fair and balanced guy that he was, also included a speech of Canuleius that the tribune gave to the senate after a second secessio had bent the patricians to their will again:

“In a word, does the supreme power belong to you or to the Roman people? Did the expulsion of the kings mean absolute ascendancy for you or equal liberty for all?…Why, have you not on two occasions found out what your threats are worth against a united plebs? Was it, I wonder, in our interest that you abstained from an open conflict, or was it because the stronger party was also the more moderate one that there was no fighting? Nor will there be any conflict now, Quirites; they will always try your courage, they will not test your strength.”

Testing the courage of the patrician class is what secessions and strikes are all about, though the tribune must have been either coy or naïve to assert that violence would never attend a city-vacating work stoppage.  Still, the plebs got what they wanted: the Decemvirate promulgated a 10-part legal code in 450 BCE, about which Livy gave some Jeffersonian advice:

“…every citizen should quietly consider each point, then talk it over with his friends, and, finally, bring forward for public discussion any additions or subtractions which seemed desirable.”

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at PhotobucketThe following year, the code was expanded by two more parts, and the laws of the Twelve Tables – a kind of Bill of Rights, criminal code, and nursery rhymes of torts all rolled into one – were carved into ivory (or maybe brass) and placed on prominent display in the Forum Romanum.  The general strike had secured important rights for the plebs once more, but it would take one more secession before patrician families were never again safe from the prospect of losing a son or daughter through matrimony to the ranks of the underclass.

Marriage across class lines wasn’t the only issue in 287 BCE: the plebs were also demanding adoption of the Lex Hortensia, which significantly expanded the political power of the plebs, and, a little later, the Lex Olgulnia, which opened the priesthood to them for the first time.  It took yet another (but, as things turned out, the last) secessio, but in the end, the reforms brought about by this final wielding of the power of labor denial were among the most liberating and democratic of all – by giving resolutions of the plebian council the force of law, allowing pleb access to heretofore-inaccessible regions of the social ladder, and allowing for a vast expansion in suffrage, the patricians effectively bargained themselves down to parity with a least some of their perceived inferiors. 

Bad ideas die just as tough as the good ones, though, and the oligarchs weren’t about to give up their birthright simply because that’s what they’d publicly sworn an oath to do.  Together with nouveau-riche plebs, they would go on to form an anti-pleb social class/political party of their own – the optimates – which basically put a lock on plebian legislative power until the Gracchus Brothers organized the populare party and started exploring how to use voting blocs as political weapons.

Historiorant:  A straight-up Secessio Plebis is probably out of the question for us here in the 21st century – such a tactic could only work in a city of a few thousand, and even then, it would rely on a unanimity and commitment to action that only a few of us could muster.  Still, dramatic action can bring dramatic gains – which is probably why the secessio (in a slightly altered form) has traveled down to us through the years…

Tactic 2: General Strike
United States; 1877
mixed gains, but workers learned that collective action is necessary in order to win anything at all

Buhdydharma has suggested that a one-day STRIKE! might wake the Flaccid Caucus from its slumber, though organizing the numbers of participants needed to make a significant impression remains a daunting task.  As history shows, and as legitiamte historian gjohnsit, in his outstanding September 9th diary The Great Strike points out, however, “daunting” needn’t necessarily mean “undoable” – especially since there’s often a sense of  spontaneity that precludes organization associated with fast-spreading mass-movements.

Back in the Gilded Age, the Halliburtons and Enrons were the railroad companies, which had their way with workers’ rights on an at-whim basis owing to government indifference and an all-around laissez-faire attitude; naturally, Social Darwinism (of the sort recently espoused by Michelle Malkin in her pile-on-the-12-year-old screeds) was the order of the day.  It was generally felt by the Republicans of the era (and later ones, too, it turns out) that if you were poor and had to work for a living, then you sucked and you deserved it.  So it was that the Pennsylvania Railroad, in the summer of 1877, found itself perfectly within its rights to cut workers’ wages by 10%, while at the same time doubling the number of cars in theirs trains and not adding more crew to serve the expanded workload.

Accepting such concessions in order to protect outrageous CEO bonuses is a 20th/21st century phenomenon; Pennsylvania Railroad Company workers in June, 1877, did not see themselves as subject to that kind of crap.  Spontaneously – and, significantly, without the prompting of a union – they walked off the job and began stopping the movement of the company’s precious cargo.  They were joined the next month by employees of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, which was trying to emulate the Pennsylvania RR’s pay cuts.

At that point, things were getting serious.  The governor of West Virginia (home of the B&O strike) called out the militia, but they refused to fire on the striking workers, so he appealed to president Benjamin Harrison.  The Republican (natch), in office only a few months, made history by sending federal troops to Martinsburg, where they got the trains moving by showing off their new Gatling guns – though initially, this too was a problem, since Washington had only a small standing army, and most of it was off oppressing Indians on the Plains.  Not to fear, though: J.P. Morgan and a few wealthy buddies stepped in and ponied up the pay for some officers, though they drew the line at sharing their wealth with enlisted swine. 

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at PhotobucketBy then, however, the strike had spread to other places – and was losing, rather than gaining, focus as momentum took over.  Sometime during the middle of the summer of 1877, the strike became less about railroads and more about a pent-up rage of discontent.  Street fighting erupted in Maryland and Pennsylvania, and throughout the Rust Best, authorities were paralyzed by rock-hurling mobs of angry citizens.  In Baltimore, the militia killed 11 protestors, wounded scores more, and saw about half of their own number quit in disgust at what they were doing as they made their murderous way from their armory to Camden Station.

In Pennsylvania, the festivities were kicked off by a single irate flagman named Gus Harris (info via a retelling of Zinn’s People’s History of the United States in 1877: The Great Railroad Strike at Libcom.org).  Told he’d have to bend over and take it for the corporate team one more time, Gus refused, which inspired the rest of the train’s crew (he’d been told he’d have to work a “double header” – two engines, twice as many cars, no extra crew) to walk off the job.  Soon thousands of people in the union-friendly town were out on the streets.

Local authorities, who were having trouble raising up a militia willing to shoot at their own neighbors for having the temerity to demand a little respect, were forced to import goons from Philadelphia.  When these militia troops arrived at the Pittsburgh station, they were greeted by a large, mostly-unarmed mob that began pelting them with stones.  The militia responded with Blackwater-esque gusto: they started firing volley after volley into the protestor ranks.  By the end of the day, the official count of crowd casualties showed 20 dead and 29 wounded (an unusually high ratio for an “accidental” incident), though the real toll was probably higher as relatives and friends likely grabbed up wounded and dead comrades as they fled before the carnage.

In response, the entire city rose up against the occupying militia, and, well…

“Miners and steel workers came pouring in from the outskirts of the city and as night fell the immense crowd proved so menacing to the soldiers that they retreated into the roundhouse.”  (Harper’s Weekly)

…where they experienced, according to one militia member/Civil War vet…

“[It was] a night of terror such as last night I never experienced before and hope to God I never will again.” (New York Herald)

quotes via The Great Strike by gjohnsit

They might have all died in the roundhouse that night, had the workers’ plan to crash a flaming oil car into the building not resulted in a near-miss.  Realizing that no reinforcements would arrive in time to save them from certain destruction, the Philadelphians were forced to do their own version of the Mogadishu Mile the following morning.  They killed 20 and lost 4 of their own as they ran for the fields outside of town, and were still taking sniper fire more than ten miles from the city limit.  By then, the mob was torching buildings and railroad cars – in the end, nearly 40 buildings were destroyed, along with more than 100 locomotives and over 1200 rail cars of various sorts.

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at PhotobucketThe same scenes kept playing out, over and over, as the strike entrenched itself in the northeast, then began to make its way west.  Reading, Pennsylvania, saw troops kill 10 and wound 40 before being forced to hand their weapons and ammo over to the mob, and in other parts of the state, beleaguered militia forces were obligated to outright surrender to the mobs.

Weird Historical Sidenote:  First off, could you imagine the punishment a Tweety or a Beck would mete out to Reserve units that surrendered to anti-American commie-pinko Islamofascist hippies?  It boggles the mind.

Second, if anyone knows something about why the main railroads being struck against in 1877 were the same ones that wound up on the Monopoly board, please drop a note in the comments – I gotta doubt that it’s a coincidence, and I’d love to know more.

By the end of July, there was significant violence happening in St. Louis and Chicago, and the mayors of both cities were obligated to beg thousands of vigilantes to assist the police in bringing a halt to the rioting and prodding the strikers back to work.  When all the bodies were stacked up and all the beans counted, perhaps as many as 200 of the 100-200,000 workers that participated in the Great Strike had lost their lives, with maybe another 1000 arrested.  Smoldering railyards around the country were testimony to the millions upon millions of dollars in property damage done by the strikers.

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Historiorant:  The fact that the Great Strike was a spontaneous outburst, rather than a planned set of job actions, worked against labor in the end.  Sure, the companies rescinded their stupid pay cuts, but at the same time, they stepped up anti-organizing measures, virtually ensuring that future conflicts with unions would be every bit as violent as the ones in 1877.  Blacklists were created, leaders were jailed, states started modifying their definitions of conspiracy, new National Guard units were created in urban centers – and it took another 25 years before labor found a President willing to side with the working man against the oligarchs.

Labor had discovered the power of its numbers, and just as the UAW has recently and thankfully remembered, striking was shown to be a powerful tool in compelling management concessions.  This spirit is perhaps best summed up by a speaker quoted by our own St. Zinn:

“All you have to do, gentlemen, for you have the numbers, is to unite on one idea-that the workingmen shall rule the country. What man makes, belongs to him, and the workingmen made this country.”

A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present

Tactic 3: Boycott
Ireland; 1880
solidarity in economic warfare can produce incredible results

Imagine how big an asshole a person would have to be for their name to actually become a negative word – a non-capitalized noun or verb – in their own language.  I can only think of a handful of people who have risen to this level of jerkishness: Vidkun Quisling, the Norwegian Nazi, comes to mind, as does “Go Cheney yourself,” but even these are relatively obscure when compared to the most nefarious of all action-inspirers.

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at PhotobucketCaptain Charles Cunningham Boycott was an agent in for an absentee landlord named John Crichton, the 3rd Lord Earne, at the Lough Mask farm in County Mayo, Ireland, in 1880.  Loughmask was a decent-sized spread, with perhaps 300 sheep and 50 head of cattle, and it required a large number of laborers to do all the tasks that needed to be done as the harvest season approached.  Unfortunately for him, the Irish Land League had chosen that particular season to advance its “3 F’s” program, which sought Fair rent, Fixity of tenure and Free sale of land as means of making life a bit more equitable (and survivable) for tenant farmers.  When Boycott spurned the League’s demand that he reduce the rents they were paying on the land he was managing, the peasants recalled the words of Charles Stewart Parnell in his famed Ennis speech:

When a man takes a farm from which another had been evicted you must shun him on the roadside when you meet him, you must shun him in the streets of the town, you must shun him in the shop, you must shun him in the fair green and in the marketplace, and even in the place of worship, by leaving him alone, by putting him in a moral Coventry, by isolating him from the rest of his country as if he were the leper of old, you must show your detestation of the crime he has committed.

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This kind of ostracism might’ve been a new way of engaging in economic warfare, but the underlying concept was both easy to identify and simple to implement – so long as one’s neighbors were also on-board.  In the case of the unfortunate Captain Boycott, the people of County Mayo were more or less unified against him, and he was forced to watch impotently as his work force drifted away – even the postman refused to deliver his mail.  Boycott sought desperately to hire laborers to harvest his crops, but there were no takers in the area scabby enough to try to cross a picket line of angry, hungry Irish peasants.

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at PhotobucketNews of Boycott’s predicament spread quickly through the British Isles, and even as newspapers in London, Belfast, and Dublin were starting use the man’s name as a verb, a 50-strong “relief force” of England-sympathizing Orangemen from the northern counties assembled to help him get his crops in.  Escorting and protecting the scabs on their march through Ireland were about 1000 soldiers and police of the Royal Ulster Constabulary.  In the end, the British government is estimated to have spent around £10,000 in order to bring in a harvest of around £350 worth of potatoes.

And Captain Boycott?  Dejected and defeated, he left Ireland with his family on December 1st, returning to a London whose papers were already using his name to connote organized ostracism.  Though the linking of the name with the action is generally attributed to a priest in County Mayo, credit for the verb form of Boycott’s name probably goes to The Times of London, which on November 20 (while the Orangemen were still harvesting the taters) reported, “The people of New Pallas have resolved to ‘boycott’ them and refused to supply them with food or drink.”  The Captain’s legacy was sealed by January of the following year, when The Spectator noted “Dame Nature arose….She ‘Boycotted’ London from Kew to Mile End.”

The boycott has since been used by reformers in many different guises, with a wide range of effect.  This is largely based on the ability of the boycotters to bring an actual sense of ostracism to the entity being boycotted – fail to make the bad guy feel isolated, and even the most nobly-inspired boycott will fizzle.  Here are a few successful ones…

  • Stamp Act protests – late 1760s.  Technically not a boycott because it preceded the naming events, colonists were nevertheless unified in their telling of the King to take his stamps and shove them.
  • Swadeshi movement – December, 1921.  Organized by Gandhi, this self-reliance offensive also urged the pure of (Indian) heart to reject British titles, honors, and jobs.
  • Montgomery Bus Boycott – December, 1955.  A successful year-long boycott (with all the attendant ride-sharing, walking, and other hassles) against racist seating laws sets in motion the modern Civil Rights movement.
  • United Farm Workers grape boycott – late 1960’s.  Caesar Chavez wins collective bargaining rights for farm laborers by putting squeeze on the grape industry.

…the striking thing about which is the tremendous amount of grassroots support each received.  They also show that a successful boycott is a targeted boycott – and once the enemy has been designated, then nothing less than complete and faithful adherence to their principles will see the boycotters through to victory.

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Historiorant:
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I could go on about the different types of boycotts (and of strikes) for a while, but time is again running short (ain’t it always?), and there’s still a few illustrations to insert before posting.  A diary yet to be written will have to address some of the other means of exerting the public will upon recalcitrant pols and lords of industry – if nothing else, the idea of protest marches, both dangerously spontaneous and the very well-organized deserves a fist-waving shout-out.  Until then, though, you can count me as favoring the secessio plebis as the course we ought to be taking – y’all can hole up here at the Cave until Bushco gives in and allows for the restoration of the rule of law.

Historically hip entrances to the Cave of the Moonbat can be found at Daily Kos, Never In Our Names, Bits of News, and DocuDharma.

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