– Frederick Douglass
In our current age the word demand has been debased. A day does not go by without some person or organization “demanding” an apology or retraction or that someone do something.
These are not demands as a prior generation would have understood them.
Why?
Because there is no “or else”, not even an implicit one.
When I was a child if someone demanded something of me I always understood that they meant “or else”.
A demand which does not have a threat or a promise behind it is hollow. It means nothing. It is not, in any meaningful sense, even a demand.
A request is very distinct from a demand yet we use the word demand when we are really requesting something.
We have grown infantile in our relation to power, in our understanding of power and in our use of the language of power.
Sometimes the powerful will give something that is requested. If they do, it is because they were already considering it, because many amongst them think the benefit exceeds the cost.
But power concedes nothing that matters to the powerful without a threat, it never did and it never will.
Z
If there are no costs, they’re not going to pay.
Z
CaptainHaddock
Like you said in a previous post, OWS is a first step, but the fact remains that they are up against the most powerful elite of any era in the history of human civilization. Not only do our elite have an obscene amount of money to throw at their hired thugs if things start to escalate, they also have a century of research into human psychology, public relations and propaganda, and electronic surveillance. Add to the mix a country that is probably a good 60-70 % authoritarian including all the Obama supporters who continue to back the president’s wars, and you’ve got a nation of cowardly sheep who only feel without any critical thinking skills whatsoever.
OWS core protesters who are occupying city parks and squares across America probably does not even add up to fifty thousand. It took millions of Egyptians to take out Mubarak, and even that was not enough to free them from the yoke of the military. There are things that the OWS protesters have already achieved that are positive, but we aren’t living in 1994. We are living on the precipice of a system breakdown. 50,000 protesters across the country is not going to cut it.
I have to say folks, the game is pretty much over. It will be a rather painful century, much like the last one. I think there might even be a chance of a third world war.
We are
1. A police state that uses
2. cutting edge human psychology against a
3. compliant and authoritarian majority.
How is OWS going to beat that? They simply can’t.
Bruce Wilder
“Payback’s a bitch” has two meanings. One — the more obvious meaning — is a prudent warning to fear the karmic consequences. The other — less obvious — is the cost of sometimes acting as the karmic cop, imposing a penalty for bad behavior.
Imposing a penalty for bad behavior has a cost to the enforcer. It requires a certain moral fortitude and commitment. A sufficiently smart bad guy calculates the cost-benefit ratio, and will try to arrange things so that enforcing the penalty is too costly for the enforcer, compared to just letting the violation slide.
It may be that the present top elite are unusually insensitive to the prudent warning to fear the consequences of their own unrestrained greed. I would not know how to measure and compare historically. But, it does seem to me that the “masses”, for a lack of a better term for various mass interests and groups, and their representatives, are unuusually unwilling to face realistically the costs of paying back, or acknowledging the necessity of doing so, to maintain some semblance of balance in the social contract.
To take one simple example: the cost of properly regulating the big banks, and the financial sector in general, is, practically, destroying a large part of it. The logic of this is unavoidable, and, yet, economic policy is guided primarily by the imperative to avoid it. It is as if an oncologist recommended measures to keep a cancer fed and growing, in order to avoid a painful surgery.
The economic system in the U.S. may well break down again, relieving the American people of the moral responsibility to bring it down. But, I fear that anything more analytically sophisticated than another preservationist stampede will still be beyond the ability of the American people to organize or carry out. Captain Haddock’s “critical thinking skills” deficit will prove fatal, again, even when moral fortitude is less of an issue.
Ken Hoop
Please explain.
The system is about to break down, but at the same time it is overpoweringly agile and OWS and inferentially nobody else can do anything effective against it.
If I squeeze the Captain Haddock comment a little, I come away with, we are going to have periods of widescale chronic anarchy followed by Elite retrenchment of stability harshly enforced, then another cycle of severe anarchy, and no socialist or other movement is going to quickly fill the vaccuum with a different stable (and much superior) system.
Perhaps “beating” the system doesn’t or shouldn’t imply a quick fix.
alyosha
I’ve always been amused when I read about some leftie group’s “demands”, and this post touches on why. Infantile indeed.
Z
A lot of progressives’ demands are backed up by threatening to bang their stylus through the democratic candidate on their ballot with slightly less vigor. That’ll teach ’em.
Z
CaptainHaddock
@Ken Hoop
There are definitely no quick fixes for a system that is designed to let crooks and scum game it. They’re going to strip the financial cathedrals and main street until nothing but pavement remains. OWS simply won’t cut it. You think they’re going to maintain numbers throughout winter? Not a chance. And even if they do make it through winter, what then? Like Ian said, if you make demands, you need to back it up with “or else” and mean it. What are they going to do?
I do think that things will eventually turn around, maybe in a few decades, but not the quick fix that a lot of liberals are hoping OWS is.
Celsius 233
Frederick Douglass also said this:
“Find out just what any people will quietly submit to
and you have found out the exact measure of injustice
and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these
will continue till they are resisted with either
words or blows, or with both.”
And so it goes…
S Brennan
As long as the “lessor of two evils” excuse can find purchase with the “concerned, but comfortably numb” the “demands” for a better world will be laughed at as a master laughs at a mischievous slave who is going to be sold down river.
Bruce Wilder
“lessor of two evils”
Intentional? Because it glimmers with potential brilliance.
tBoy
The trump card that may force all hands may be the imminent European meltdown. Taking with it the Bankrupts of America.
It's All About The Benjamins
“This is what I have witnessed at Zuccotti the past few nights. On Thursday, the matter at hand was a proposal from Pulse — the group of drummers — for $8,000 for new musical instruments. They say they hoped to secure the funding after a $5,000 handmade drum was sabotaged and destroyed during a rain storm. They say that because they’ve been there since Day 1, they deserve the funding more than anyone.
“We have worked for you! Appreciate us!” the leader of the proposal shouted angrily to the GA in response to voices of dissent.
After a long debate, the proposal was tabled. No funding for the drummers. After the meeting, one drummer cursed and yelled at GA members for their decision. He confronted another occupier and the two shouted obscenities back and forth; a physical fight nearly erupted but a peacemaker came between them.”
jcapan
It’s All About…
Sounds like meetings held at Animal Farm.
Le Petit Caporal put it well:
“Power is my mistress. I have worked too hard at her conquest to allow anyone to take her away from me.”
As if it’s ever freely shared, let alone relinquished, other than table droppings meant to appease.
And if power is ever wrested from our lords, a plan on what to do with that instantly corrupting elixir would be a wise idea. I find it hard to believe that many of these folks are down with anarcho-communism.
Celsius 233
jcapan PERMALINK
October 24, 2011
It’s All About…
Sounds like meetings held at Animal Farm.
Le Petit Caporal put it well:
“Power is my mistress. I have worked too hard at her conquest to allow anyone to take her away from me.”
==============================
Nice comment…
Somewhere in the not too distant past; we the people, passed into irrelevance. I feel we have allowed all that has befallen us. Prescient authors, pundits, and educators have been warning us for decades. The few who didn’t buy into it can no longer garner enough inertia to start a meaningful movement.
In an instant gratification society the OWS, ODC, and Ofucking everything, will whimper to nothing over the very time they calculate is the answer to our problems. There just aren’t enough people actively engaged and we are seeing celebrity moments, for political correctness, which ultimately accomplish nothing, except their own aggrandizement.
When the end comes it will be ugly; all the support networks collapsing (infrastructure) to nothing.
But still, we just can’t shake our addictions to the illusions woven before us by those very people in whom we put our grossly mis-placed trust.
Denial is comforting to the addicted and so fully self re-enforcing.
Cynical? No, not at all…
Celsius 233
This isn’t the Arab Spring; it lacks the urgency and the danger. There isn’t really anything to lose; it’s too safe…
Formerly T-Bear
@ 233ºC
Not the Arab Spring at all, tis the winter of discontent and disillusionment, the deep snows are coming to bury the republic that thought itself a democracy and lost its soul to power. Ah well, the illusion is strong but makes for thin soup.
BDBlue
Re the drummers, I found this comment and the one later in the thread by MsExPat interesting.
I agree with this post. One of the interesting things is how much power is overreacting to this still relatively mild movement. Things like this baffle me because, while it is a show of power in the short term, in the longer term it’s only bound to strengthen OWS or more accurately the anti-finance sentiments in the country (since I think OWS is bound to end). But then our elite are idiots in addition to being sociopaths.
ks
Well said Celcuis 233ºC and Formerly T-Bear.
ks
Damn Fingers! lol. Apologies Celsius 233 for butchering your tag.
Rangoon78
What if Progressiveshad made demands?
In the wake of and as a reaction to the the growing force of OWS, Obama belatedly vows to use the executive power at his command:
USA Today
Obama’s Use Of Executive Power On Housing Shows He Still Holds … -32 minutes ago
The Obama White House is calling its resort to using the president’sexecutive power to accomplish what he can without legislation its “we can’t wait” …
NPR (blog) – 1239 related articles
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
ks
Really? Giving OWS credit for that modest move (read the fine print) seems a bit much. I’d say it’s more due to Obama trying to get reelected.
Rangoon78
OK. Point well taken.
someofparts
“There’s a generation of street people who’ve survived in the supposedly open spaces now taken over by Occupiers — …
Folks down on their luck, and have suffered without help, now see food and supplies become suddenly available, for people living in their places with enough resources to risk occupation. …
There are social ecologies being disrupted here”
Those are the remarks that stood out for me in the discussion at Corrente. It makes OWS seem like a new variety of gentrification.
Rich Puchalsky
So in addition to scolding OWS for not being radical enough, and for not giving in to the shell game of “demands”, now we’re gentrifiers? This is exactly the reaction I expected from leftist radicals in the U.S. whenever anything, no matter how small, started to happen. A whole lot of brave critique, intended to show that whatever people are actually doing, it can’t be right — coupled with the hope that police will riot and turn everyone into clones of yourselves. And this is why no one was exactly thrilled by the idea of you guys leading us.
BDBlue
I don’t think OWS are gentrifiers. But I do think it’s ridiculous to ignore the fact that the parks of this country were in many cases occupied by people who lost a long time ago in our economic slide. And that one of the challenges facing OWS is how to occupy space in ways that are respectful of that without being hustled by people who are used to hustling for a living.
I also think you can support the occupation and the message it stands for while acknowledging that it must be hard for the homeless to see so many resources rain down to help the people meet their living needs at the occupation while the homeless have basically been left to die for thirty years. Fortunately, many occupations have been working with homeless advocates and perhaps the Occupy movement will actually mean more understanding of what the homeless go through by pointing out how many normal human behaviors we’ve made illegal (lying down, sitting, denial of access to bathrooms) all because it hurts our consciences to step over people who have been crushed by our lousy economy and healthcare system for the last 30 years. I don’t expect OWS to last, frankly, although I am encouraged by it and hope it hangs on as long as possible. If one of the side effects it generates is more compassion for our economy’s losers – not just the middle class being pushed out, but people who were either never in the middle class or were pushed out twenty years ago – then that will itself be a victory and an important first step.
someofparts
On the contrary, I’m pleased that OWS is happening. Excuse me for pointing out that political activity in this place is about entitled middle class people arguing with other entitled middle class people. But the part about not wanting us to lead, is that supposed to be new? Middle class people have been shrieking that at me and the other poor and homeless people for thirty years now. What part of “it’s about me, not you” do you think I’ve haven’t heard yet?
Formerly T-Bear
Paul Rosenberg’s Opinion piece at Al Jazeera “Fighting the politics of illusion”
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/10/201110208525806842.html
delves into the psychological defenses on display concerning OWS, detractors and supporters alike since it takes two to do the dance. It illuminates a lot that is being written here, the differences between the 1% and their cohort of supporters and the resultant response from the 99%. Rosenberg’s opinion is both well written and well considered and clears much of the smoke of clashing world-views.
ks
“Leftist Radicals”? LOL. “Shell game of demands”? Double LOL.
So Rich, you’ve got a purposely leaderless protest/movement that’s not making any demands. You’ll occupy and march and shout and dance and sing but you won’t fall for that shell game of actually demanding anything, huh? Yeah…..wonderful…just wonderful. I guess the plan is to annoy them to death. Well, at least the Greeks, bless em, are getting it right.
But on the bright side you have created a pretty good media event and a dizzying array of bureaucratic Planning Committees. I guess that’s a “start” in some folks book.
Celsius 233
This is a link to Democracy Now;
http://www.democracynow.org/
Everyone should watch and especially listen to the video of 26-year-old Asmaa Mahfouz on January 18th. She’s the one who started this whole Tahir square movement. Her original video starts at about 15 minutes into the broadcast.
It’s a remarkable and incredibly brave thing she did. It put’s this whole thing in context, IMO.
I stand by my previous posts in light of this reminder…
Z
The cloak’s coming off of the police state: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/10/occupy-oakland-tense-standoff.html
Z
Z
You have to give these people in Oakland credit: when the Oakland cops brought the violence to them, they threw some of it back at them. Off course, it’s hard to gauge the scale of it from select photos, but it does appear to be quite a mix of people basically telling the cops to go fuck themselves. The sixth photo from the link below shows a group of people that basically took over a street.
http://www.insidebayarea.com/top-stories/ci_19188125
There’s been a lot of tenseness between the cops and the people of Oakland for a while now.
This is just the latest spark.
Z
Z
The establishment left will probably use this opportunity to lecture us that things have gone too far becoz it is becoming violent. I don’t think that they’ve got much credibility with the movement though.
Z
Celsius 233
@ Formerly T-Bear PERMALINK
October 25, 2011
Paul Rosenberg’s Opinion piece at Al Jazeera “Fighting the politics of illusion”
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/10/201110208525806842.html
delves into the psychological defenses on display concerning OWS, detractors and supporters alike since it takes two to do the dance. It illuminates a lot that is being written here, the differences between the 1% and their cohort of supporters and the resultant response from the 99%. Rosenberg’s opinion is both well written and well considered and clears much of the smoke of clashing world-views.
==============================
I’m a regular @ Al Jazeera and I had seen that piece, so at your urging I read it.
Rosenberg is bang on!
Denial and projection are genuinely key elements I’ve been drilling at for years (for all the good it does).
I honestly don’t think most people truly understand denial and projection is even harder for most people to understand.
Just to be clear; I fully support the OWS/ODC/Oeverything, but I’m not convinced they’ve fully understood what they’re up against.
I don’t mean philosophically; I mean the cold, hard, reality, of just what the 1% are capable of.
The violence coming from the 1% is on so many levels and so earnest; it’s fully capable of the murder of anybody (s) who dares to stand against it.
I don’t believe the “people” have the stomach for that reality.
My pessimism grows exponentially…
Celsius 233
No comments on my previously supplied link to Asmaa Mahfouz. I’m not looking for recognition, just something in acknowledgement of her courage and raw determination.
She knew what lay ahead; up to and including her likely death, but she did it anyway.
She states women are stronger than men;
she is so spot on…
Z
I’m getting more optimistic. At least there are people out in the streets. People are being defiant towards this government and are forming some sort of organized resistance to it. It’s something … it’s something to build from, something to evolve from.
And perhaps the thing that makes me most optimistic is that the protestors are primarily young people … often young, educated people. And they’ve begun to figure it out. That’s encouraging because the energy, the defiance, the violence in revolutions does not generally come from people that have a lot to lose. They come from people that don’t have much and don’t have many others depending upon them. And this economy is not going to turn on a dime so there are going to be at least several more years of educated young people coming out of college with a lot of time on their hands to ponder about how fucked up things are. Their ranks are going to build … and their knowledge is going to build. And hopefully their tactics will evolve.
And though I don’t think that it alone will force our rulers to reconsider their sociopathic ways, I got a lot of respect for these protestors that are getting arrested in these peaceful demonstrations. It takes a lot of guts to do that. For a day or so, they’re abandoning any control of their freedom and that’s not easy to do for most people.
I feel a lot better now than I did before OWS. People are fighting back in some way. They’re providing resistance. And that’s going to inject some dynamism into the situation.
And the 1% can fragment too, you know.
Z
Formerly T-Bear
Al Jazeera is reporting on the Oakland police assault upon OWS protest that occurred in quiet pre-dawn hours; hardly in response to violence as the protestors were mostly sleeping at that hour.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2011/10/201110266201951908.html
The face of authoritarian power is shown and what that power is willing to do to those who do not, or will not obey.
No incumbent of political office should be returned to that office or any other position of public trust. Turf out the lot of corrupt officeholders – at all levels of government. You do not need term limits to do this, just your cooperation with your fellow citizens at the ballot box.
soullite
I’m not too optimistic. But maybe I listen too too many whiny ‘Kossacks’ complaining about ‘agent provocateurs’ and other shadows of their diseased imaginations. Those people will never revolt against anything. If it comes time to dirty hands, they’ll be a fifth column among the left, no doubt snitching on the people who do the actual dirty work of change so that they can feel better about their ‘nonviolence’ and general ineffectualness.
Thirty years of nonviolence without any progress and these stupid fucking hippies still haven’t learned their lessons yet.
justin
I think there is a great point about honesty in this. Instead of pretending to issue demands, a bluff tactic that fools no one but yourself in a relationship of obvious power disparity, call them requests. The effect would be to reveal a more honest assessment about the current arrangement to the people on the side making the requests, as well as signalling to the powerful that for now we are making requests, but soon we may be making demands.
ks
The police in Oakland and elsewhere are doing what they normally do. That’s what people miss. This is not some big revealing of the face of authoritian power. It’s just a different segment of the population on the dirty end of their business.
Z
ks,
More people are going to figure out that it’s not just the bad guys that get the baton treatment.
Z
ks
Z,
It’s never been just the bad guys, no? If people are just coming to that realization now that’s pretty sad but I guess I’m not surprised.
Z
ks,
Well, I think about those protestors in Boston that were thanking the cops for protecting them when they were actually guarding a federal reserve building from the protestors. A few days later those same “protectors” arrested a bunch of protestors. I would hope that would change their mind about whose interests those cops were protecting.
Z
Celsius 233
Yes, hmm, here’s more on the protectors in Oakland;
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2011/10/20111026135124919772.html
And the 24 yo Iraq veteran fighting for his life after being hit in the head by a police projectile;
http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_19199894
The real beginning?
Petro
@Celsius 233:
Actually, I think this is quite understood.
I like the way the threads over here have been trending of late. I have been watching OWS very closely from Day One – obsessively, really – and I am pleased to see some of the hard cynicism of “realism” peel away.
I am loathe to say anything that may cause backlash to this back-handed praise, except to note (here I go) that I think some of you may be mistaking the public face of OWS for its true backbone. They are quite aware of the PR campaign that they are waging along with the truly radical nature of the revolution they are trying to birth. Some things must, for now, remain unspoken, and if it means that for the time being they will be mistaken by some to be naive and unprepared for the hard fist behind the glove, the have the courage to bear that derogation as they lie in wait.
The core of the movement knows that violence is inevitable – they just want to make sure that the violence remains emblematic of the slow motion violence that has been perpetrated against the people for, well, apply your favorite historical yardstick here. There is to be no mistaking, this time, that it is the people who are unruly and violent, a meme the 1% would so dearly love to catapult once again.
Of course, I have no more business speaking for the “movement” than any other individual might. But this is my sense of it, and is as valid a perspective as any other that has been advanced here in this stellar forum that Ian hosts.
Lisa Simeone
Hey, what happened to Morocco Bama? I haven’t seen any comments by him in ages. Anyone know?
jcapan
Lisa, see here:
https://www.ianwelsh.net/the-monopoly-of-violence-and-simple-solutions-to-supposedly-insoluble-problems/
Petro
Lisa!
(Oh, sure jcapan, make me feel guilty all over again /Snowball .) 😉
Phil Perspective
Lisa:
Welcome back!!
Celsius 233
@ Petro PERMALINK
October 26, 2011
@Celsius 233:
=====================
Good comment:
Interesting; I really have no idea about “the core” or what they know or believe. It seems “the core” is very low profile and that it even exists, is obscure at best. Wisely I think, “they” have chose a largely leaderless format, which confounds the pundits no end. MSM? Faggeddaboutit!!
Having been gone for years (out of country); I’m rather out of touch with the details.
If I were in Portland I would likely be in the thick of it, but thankfully I’m not.
One reason I rely on Amy Goodman, Ian, Al Jazeera, etc..
All of that said; having lived in the U.S. from 1945 until 2003; I’ve rightly earned my pessimism and I’ll not be talked out of it; show me! I did my part before I left.
Cheers…
Towner
@ Petro,
I too have been following this intensely from the beginning, albeit from afar as I no longer live in the US. Thanks for these thoughtful comments, they reflect my general sense of things as well.
I think, that rather than looking to OWS (in whatever form we may think it does or should exist) to be successful as an entity onto itself, we should rather see it as a space for opening opportunities for the already numerous social movements (local, regional, national and transnational) around the country to become increasingly radical and active around it. And we’re already seeing this. Let the various demands originate organically from within various locales. OWS greatest demand, in my thinking, is already on clear display. And it is an “or else” demand. Each occupation (with varying degrees of radicalism) is demanding the “right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” It’s these last two 1st amendment rights that our most critical to social movements and historically most suppressed by the state.
The or else is, “we’ll keep coming back, we’ll keep putting our bodies in the very public spaces that have been de-democratized and de-legitimized under the joint logics of securitization and neoliberal privatization. We’ll keep allowing ourselves to be harassed, beaten and jailed. This is incredibly brave. The very idea of a “public space”, whether physical or mediated, could be an extremely counter-revolutionary force against the radical anti-democratic powers that have subverted American democracy. In the US today, the bill of rights are radical to the state.
I’m certainly not drunk on hope and optimism. But for those of us not directly on the ground and/or inside the OWS movement, I think we’d be well served to recognize this point and consider how we can agitate and educate within our own social, familiar and community networks.
If all the core of OWS accomplishes is a renewed appreciation among a majority of Americans for the right (and necessity) of the people to occupy public space it will have accomplished an important victory imho. If the movement holds out long enough and actually wins back those rights, well, that would be huge in the long term struggle.
Towner
@ Celsius 233
Thank you, I hadn’t seen Asmaa Mahfouz’s video before. Watching the follow up video she posted the day before the protests began, I was struck by this:
“I’d like to tell everyone that tomorrow’s not the revolution and is not the day we’ll change it all. No, tomorrow is the beginning of the end. Tomorrow, if we make our stand despite all that security may do to us, and stand as one in peaceful protest, it will be the first real step on the road to change. The first real step that will take us forward and teach us a lot of things. Our solidarity in planning is success in itself. To simply know that we must demand our rights, that is success.”
Celsius 233
Towner PERMALINK
October 27, 2011
@ Celsius 233
Thank you, I hadn’t seen Asmaa Mahfouz’s video before. Watching the follow up video she posted the day before the protests began, I was struck by this:
“I’d like to tell everyone that tomorrow’s not the revolution and is not the day we’ll change it all. No, tomorrow is the beginning of the end. Tomorrow, if we make our stand despite all that security may do to us, and stand as one in peaceful protest, it will be the first real step on the road to change. The first real step that will take us forward and teach us a lot of things. Our solidarity in planning is success in itself. To simply know that we must demand our rights, that is success.”
========================
Remarkable, no?
Amy Goodman and Chris Hedges are interviewed by Charlie Rose;
http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11961
Numbers, they need numbers; more and more numbers…
Celsius 233
Speaking of numbers; where are the estimated 20 million un & under-employed?
Why are they not getting involved?
Erm, um, they’re distracted by “other” things in their life; maybe.
See, now there goes my pessimism meter; damn, pegged again…
StewartM
Lisa! Welcome back!!
-StewartM
Jumpjet
Here’s an “or else” if you please: they’re talking about a general strike in Oakland.
http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_19211213