Tag: social movements

May 22 2010

The Tea Party and the 21st Century Social Crisis

I’ve been thinking tonight about the accumulating and apparently accelerating cycle of social crises and conflicts of the past several years.  Specifically I’ve been thinking about this in the context of the rightist “Tea Party” movement, which may have reached its high-water mark with the nomination of Rand Paul as the Republican candidate for Senator from Kentucky.  Most notable to me is the stridently pro-corporate, pro-business nature of Paul’s rhetoric.  This exposes to some degree the contradiction between the rightist nature of the Tea Party, and the string of corporate abuses that have provided much of the social discontent on which the Teabaggers have sought to advance.

This is also the first, tentative and provisional, step in my long contemplated effort to develop a larger social and ideological critique of the current social crisis, both in the US and globally.  I’m sure I’ll backtrack, reassess, recorrect some good portion of this and what will follow, but for the first time I feel at least sufficiently  confident of my understanding to begin putting words on paper, or on electron as the case may be.  

Apr 18 2010

How To Start A Movement In 3 Minutes And Be The Next Messiah

Tormented by corruption? Feeling Overwhelmed? Depressed? Frustrated? Fed up to f’ing here with the state of the world?  Bedeviled with angst?

Have a great idea? The best idea ever hatched in a human mind in all of recorded history? You’ve been to the mountaintop and he spoke to you and only you, man?

Are you the one the world has been waiting for all these millenia?

Are you Morpheus, man? Have you got THE ANSWER? The WAY?

The ONE TRUE PATH to world peace and justice for all but you’ve also had it up to f’ing here with all the morans in the world who are simply far too thick and obtuse to know what’s good for them and to comprehend your unique brand of genius and won’t get off their fat lazy asses and follow you?

Do you have a movement you’d like to start that you know in your heart will sweep the world like a planet scouring tsunami brushing all in it’s path aside if only you could find your first follower?

Here’s your one chance for a free lesson in becoming the next messiah. Grab this incredible opportunity while it’s hot. It may never present itself to you again.

Dec 20 2009

11th Dimensional Chess & Social Movements

Cross-posted at Daily Kos

I hope the title of this diary will cause people to think.

It should be clear to many that although I voted for Obama in the election, he was not my choice to be the nominee.  Despite the rhetoric of his campaign, I saw him from the start as too closely connected to those at The Hamilton Project, the entrenched, corporate sector that holds too tight on power.  What bothered me most was that the marketing said the opposite.  He is now elected, so what matters today and in the future is his performance and what it means to Democrats and Americans.

Yesterday I watched the latest episode of Bill Moyers with Robert Kuttner and Matt Taibbi.

Watching and listening to the conversation, I wondered to myself how it was possible for someone who many told us was playing 11th dimensional chess to screw up the health “reform” situation (not to mention some other important issues) so badly.  More important, what are the ramifications.  The answer came from Robert Kuttner, and if you keep reading, you will discover.