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Could Truths Go Viral? Liberals In The Weeds?

01/25/2013 by 13 Comments

 

 

I’m far more radical than the liberal dream. But as a wake up call to what liberals have been led to and, conversely, away from, by corrupt politicians and the status quo media, this is not bad…a bit corny, ripe for some editing but could be worked with.

There’s got to be some talent on the anti status quo side of the political spectrum. Political expression with music, images, words and art — that, the internet, and economic repression, with many pitfalls and points of insecurity into decades ahead, should be ripe for social movements and for a culture of expressive, inquiring, and challenging the status quo “Potemkin Village on The Potomac” majority public sentiments. The status quo is the economic race to the bottom for workers/employees, imposed by short sighted and self serving ideologues and high priests of global financial (capital) hegemony, in total detachment to unchallenged on the ground obscene gestures, in our direction, and crowded by dark and broting thoughts pressing from behind.

 

The most honest three and a half minutes of television, EVER…

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  • InL_A

    The most honest three and a half minutes of television, EVER…

    I’ll admit it, I actually cried watching that. There are so many wrongs being done in our name that it’s hard to find the beginning or the end.

  • wendydavis

    I love it, mcmurphy! And your rant is a humdinger. I’ve been trying to form a post in my mind about the dearth of oppression/suppression art in this era that was so prevalent in other dark times, by way of encouraging people to find their way of expression through any medium: poetry, painting, videos, song-writing, telling their own stories. This video could act as an example, if I may borrow it (if I ever write the diary, of course).

    And John Kiriakou got sentenced to thirty months; judge said she would have asked for more had the plea deal allowed it. Truth-tellers go to jail, fraudsters and war criminals…run free.

    • http://mosquitocloud.net/ aprescoup

      Hey Wendy,

      I’m despairing of self-kettling and the inability, unwillingness(?) of many active (radical left) commenters to rise to the challenge of engaging in organizing even small, internet based, collective actions.

      We endlessly talk of participatory democracy, of mutual aid, of bulwarks and ramparts, of OWS and activism, only to find ourselves stewing in our self imposed individual helplessness.

      We cannot expect to turn hearts and minds when we isolate ourselves from the vast public whose brainwashed views we ought to be challenging, and expect anti establishment sentiments and populist reactionary movements to take shape.

      • wendydavis

        ‘Self-kettling’; you have a way with words…in how many languages? ;o)

        Not sure what internet collective actions, but from where I sit, the web and (the accursed Facebook) , and OWS sites, Occupy Sandy, Idle sites, etc., really are boosting actions, but not majorly enough, like with Move Your Money, solidarity with strikers, what else?

        My question would be: how do you reckon we can use radical left commenters to interact with the brainwashed public? My own personal choice has long been coordinated flashmobs like UK uncut to disturb, disrupt and disarm with humor and shock, then educate with simple brochures naming the reality we’re facing, including giving histories on any given subject area.

        Re: Arthur Silber. I’m a long-time reader, and love him. I’d urge you all to look at his extensive body of work on Alice Miller’s work. I just wrote some about it as a response to what I saw as all the wrong response after the killings at Sandyhook.

        Arthur’s dying, or has been for a time now (why he needs us to send him a few bucks as we can), and he is writing with cannons blazing, not just six-guns in his haste to make his mark before his death, whenever that may be.

        As to Jeff Nguyen on the internet, Guardian has the new Anon video in their second response to Aaron Swartz; pretty bold, pretty outraged. We’ll see…

        Looking forward to ideas; I admit that I’m only a bit of a keyboard warrior since I can’t do any physical protesting any more.

        • wendydavis

          Now I see; I hadn’t read this post of yours.

          http://mosquitocloud.net/the-very-vocal-silence-of-the-voices-of-reason

          Hmmm. One kind and gentle blogger friend from my TPM Cafe days came to a few posts at my.fdl, and had been trying alone to do so at Red State, but kinda hit the wrong issues (can’t remember which now). But wouldn’t folks just get banned jig-quick?

          Shoot, when ya offer counter-arguments on the front page of FDL ya get called a Republican troll often enough…(well, friends of mine; I get called other names. ;o)

          • http://mosquitocloud.net/ aprescoup

            I think that single forays and engagement in heated arguments are not very productive. Well constructed arguments appealing to what is understood as 70% public consensus would, when supported by others, stand on their own merits and give others permission to start embracing not such outlandish views, after all.

        • http://mosquitocloud.net/ aprescoup

          I was addressing mostly the keyboard warriors, in as much as local, feet on the ground activism, is altogether a different beast. Yet once public deference to party and status quo punditry is undermined online, I would imagine that curb side activism will gain in membership.

          So if we take Marx’s missive that “the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas” to heart, and then using polls(?), identify and prioritize the topics on which say upwards of 55% of the public agree (public centrism v. political centrism) we’ll find that 70% (trans partisan) centrism flies in the face of key political centrist policies and legislative work product.

          Upwards of 70% want Pentagon’s budget cut, Wall Street banksters prosecuted, the social safety net fortified with progressive taxation, and upwards of 60% want deficits reduced by means other than spending cuts, and favor price controls on big pharma and medicare for all, in lieu of the proposed, by bipartisan political consensus, pro corporatist gimmicks.

          That being the case, it would seem incumbent on the keyboard brigades to swoop down on division stoking articles about partisan politics, and do what marketing has proven to work best: relentlessly and ad nauseum repeat the same set of common sense arguments, even at risk of being consistently, and by default, OT. If, rather than regurgitating know political stances to the same old crowd in the FDL kennel, the 50 or so radical leftist contra-pups were to each day, or so, agree to descend, armed with 2-3 comments, on a specific site or piece of propaganda, to do battle with good arguments and superior links, I dare say that such a concerted action would, over time, pay higher dividends than continued preaching to the choir.

          Our task then would be to help build an independent of self serving partisan perfidy, political identity based on discreet issues. Sparta and Athens were mortal enemies until the arrival of the Persian Xerxes. The current centrist and neoliberal status quo is the divided public’s singular and overarching enemy no.1.

          Clarifying this reality is, IMO, the low hanging fruit we are consistently and almost obdurately failing/refusing to reach for.

          • wendydavis

            Which sites, which propaganda; that might help me see what you mean.

            Polls: the casual answering of polling questions doesn’t mean all that much to me. What matters most is what they rarely ask: ‘how *much* does this or that issue matter to you?’ One metric of a tipping point to change is said to be: when at least 10% of a population embraces a new meme strongly, then others follow the shift. I think it may be so.

            Writing at my.fdl: I know what you mean in the main about ‘the choir’, but it’s a very divided place obviously. I not only write for the choir, but for the D base that reads my stuff and don’t comment. I also write for the google cache, which is why i try to tag the hell out of pieces, just in case someone’s searching. ;o)

            Commenting is not my strength; I’m pretty crap at it, and need time to organize my thoughts. I end up following my passions: antiwar, GMOs, Indigenous issues (which covers anti-neoliberalism and unregulated capitalism, if not capitalism itself), corporitization of the commons and taxpayer;built institutions and services, etc. The average commenter on my threads there aren’t as likely to use Facebook and those things, but it can enlarge one’s megaphone.

            I’m also dedicated to the principle that until we change psycho-spiritually, there will be no shift, and I do try to hasten it by spotlighting those who bring the new lights to the argument/table by their brave dedication and wisdom underpinned by scrupulous attention to their moral compasses, both for themselves and the planet. Satire, when it comes to me well, is also a fave, and can change minds before they know what hit em, imo.

            But what keeps hitting me in the face since Obomba’s re-election is that his defenders are increasingly ramping up their defense of his policies while pretending to ‘hold his feet to the fire’. For instance, this is the latest evidence of using allegedly rational argument toward misinformation and misdirection, in this case, actually to endorse John Brennan to head the CIA.

            http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/01/26/drey-j26.html

            When I read the piece at the Nation, it had a total of five comments, arrrgh. To me, that stuff is what we’re up against, not the Republicans or the Tea People the base loves to hate.

            But, even though your strategy (tactic?) won’t likely work for me personally, give more hints, and I might be able to stick your ideas into a post, though without this link. Love ya, but your FDL tab there kinda tells the story, lol. I do try hard to say my own truth there, but seriously don’t want to get banned. It’s the best place I’ve found since the Cafe days, and many friends there are fairly radical.

            You all are clearly intellectuals, I’m more ‘the voice of the people’. Oh: and you might want to stop by Edger’s antemedius.com; he may want to get involved, and know others who might. Docudharma? They don’t pull many punches, either.

            Anyhoo, I’ll come back tomorrow or so; thanks for the conversation, aprecoups. Hope your family is well.

            • wendydavis

              Man, those captchas are a bitch; flunked twice before that posted.

              • http://mosquitocloud.net/ aprescoup

                What’s up with your Disqus account?

            • http://mosquitocloud.net/ aprescoup

              “One metric of a tipping point to change is said to be: when at least 10% of a population embraces a new meme strongly, then others follow the shift. I think it may be so.”

              That is precisely the metric I’m aiming for. One dissenting voice on a comment threads begins to thaw the reluctance of others to embrace dissent.

              I love the work you do, still, I believe that especially at fdl the lines are drawn with barbed wire. How many of the ancienne regime guarde has the radical leftist faction been able to coax over to their side, in the past two years (since my eviction?) OTOH, if after posting, you were to finagle the link into a comment at some MSM/gatekeeper sites… I’ve watched the response to such linking at MC, and it works, although I haven’t been pimping MC in that way for awhile now.

              If you subscribe to MC, I’ll enable your authoring privileges—copy, paste and post. :)

              You all are clearly intellectuals, …’.

              I sincerely hope not, although that aspect will be needed to later turn movements into political players. I believe that we need to go for the public’s repressed but, still, inherently sound common sense and instincts.

              Edger banished me for my attempting to make an anti status quo propaganda case by generalizing its detrimental effects to the right as well. In his mind, it would seem, propaganda works only on the left and the right is immune to its siren song…Docudharma seems cut from the same cloister cloth of blinkered righteousness.

              Off to read up at your Nation link, thnx.

              xxx

              • wendydavis

                My guess is that I may one of the few diarists there that lured a few of the front-page commenters over to the ghetto, but i’ve made my share of enemies, but most of them are light-weights, really. Not that I do well with attacks: I don’t, but I may be learning to wait until the pressure subsides a bit and my mind can work a tad better. ;o)

                But I take your point, and still wonder if I will have time for your suggestion. I *will*, however, give this thread to some of the many fdl-ers I email with, see what pops.

                I’m not sure what you mean by ‘subscribing’ to your site, but feel free to grab any of my posts you wish. My first two hits about cross-posting, or blogging separate posts here are two: one, that most of my stuff wouldn’t be a fit here, and two, that I am hopeless at learning new blogging software, esp. html, which has been part of the reason I’ve wandered away from other sites.

                Yikers on edger doing that. Seemed so sad that the comments on his pretty site are months old, but maybe… ;o)

                I’ve forgotten my disqus login and password, so i just post this way. The two buttons for ‘new captcha’ and ‘audio captcha’ don’t seem to work.

                And…I certainly didn’t mean to offend you by saying y’all are intellectuals. ;D It’s just that i’m not, and have trouble understanding some of the the references y’all make now and again.

                wd

              • wendydavis

                And I forgot to ask again about which sorts of sites you meant to visit in order to change hearts and minds.