Re: <nettime> Portland Occupation's tactical innovation

[Newmedia@aol.com]

Jodi:
 
> This post from Mark Stahlman is the most naive, misinformed, 
> self-deceived, and deceptive piece of writing I've ever seen on this list.
 
Thanks (but you must be new to the list <g>)!
 
Have you ever actually tried to *do* in anything in  Washington?  I have -- 
many times.
 
The US electorate is overwhelmingly "moderate" and has no dominant  
"ideology."  It has recently become more than 50% "independent" to  reflect these 
facts, with the "ideologues" evenly divided between the  Democrats and the 
Republicans.
 
The outcome is a legislative see-saw, where elections are made-for-TV  
bread-and-circus, which typically means that NOTHING fundamental gets done  and 
everyone has their hands out for a bigger piece of the Federal Budget --  
which has grown *enormously* as a result.
 
The biggest beneficiary of the Citizens United decision will *certainly* be 
 Barack Omaba, since incumbents invariably attract the largest donations 
(since  they tend to be better at delivering the "pork") -- with over  $1 
BILLION indicated for Omaba's re-election. 
 
Now, in the US, as in most European countries, this  
everyone-grab-what-you-can budget will SHRINK and that only means that everyone  will be 
scrambling madly for the scraps.  Even less will get done of any  significance.
 
If you imagine that this is the "design" of an organized "capitalist  
class" then, with all respect, you know NOTHING about the operation of *elites*  
-- who would *never* have allowed this kind of total paralysis and  
money-grubbing to happen.
 
The entire reality of an increasing spread in incomes is a CERTAIN that no  
functioning economic *elite* -- who would never allow this to occur.  If  
anyone was actually in "charge," executive payouts would have been limited 
and  some sort of "rational" economic plan would have been enforced.
 
GIMME MORE is not a STRATEGY!!  It is, rather, the quintessence of the  
*lack* of any strategy!
 
 
Read Michael Mann's two-volume "Sources of Social Power" and delve into his 
 sophisticated IEMP model of social elites.  Then ask yourself how this  
applies today.
 
Where are the *elites* -- Americans for Tax Reform and Club for  Growth?  
C'mon do you know how these groups actually operate?
 

Your examples of the organizing efforts by the "corporations" is the  
equivalent of the John Birth Society claiming that there was a "commie" under  
every bed in the 1950s.  That's what confused people resort to when their  
world-view is clearly on the losing side of history.
 
No, Jodi, the CIA didn't blow up the World Trade Center so that the Bushes  
could get their hands on Iraqi OIL!  (As, in fact, they have not.)
 
I'm sorry but NO ONE gets to describe how things work unless they actually  
and personally KNOW SOMETHING about how things work.
 
Go to Washington.  Ask people who is in charge and what their  INTEGRATED 
(i.e. economic, political, military and cultural) *strategy* might  be.
 
I have done exactly that and there is NONE.  NADA.   NOTHING.
 
Sorry, there simply is no WIZARD of OZ behind the curtain in EMERALD CITY  
(which, as OWS implies, is right where I lived and worked for 25 years).
 
We aren't in Kansas anymore and we had better stop wasting our time  
pretending that 19th-century "revolutionary" sentiment will help us in a DIGITAL  
world.  It won't.
 
Mark Stahlman
Brooklyn NY
 

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