( – promoted by buhdydharma )
One of my daily hits on the internet is Cryptogon. The site is run by a fellow who was lucky enough to be able to leave the country and set up a self-sustaining farm out in the middle of nowhere in New Zealand. Now did he pull this off? Well, he married a woman from New Zealand. That’s step one that not everyone can do of course. 🙂
He has a knack for finding the out-of-the-way story, and has a unique perspective on the world.
Usually he posts articles and information with just a few comments, sometimes none, but today he has a post which is pure commentary. And I just have to share it because it’s brilliant.
A few people seem surprised that the U.S. is a police state.Oh the cops. Oh the poor students. Oh boo hoo, we just want to wave our signs.
The don’t taze me bro generation is obviously going to have to figure this one out the hard way.
My position has always been that people who wave signs at fascists are clinically nuts; holy roller, speaking in tongues, batshit crazy nuts.
Sign waving is not resistance. Sign waving is part of the problem in the same way that voting is part of the problem. How’s that Change working out for the Obama supporters? (Some of those bozos are already talking about how they’re going to get it right in 2012…)
In the few video clips of the G20 protests that I watched, I saw a bunch of zombies with iPhones, running around like chickens with their heads cut off, as the Legion of Doom tested out its new sonic weapons and tear gas lobbing skills.
WTF is the matter with these people? Where does someone get the idea that the way to deal with Darth Vader is to wave a sign at him? Maybe a few, “Fuck the police” tweets will do the trick? Send out invites to join revolutionary sign waving groups on Facebook?!The Twitbook aspect of this is, frankly, bizarre. Maybe I’ve been out here in the bush too long, but it looks like powerlessness is manifesting itself into a sort of flaccid, me-too technophelia, crossbred with a hamster wheel. This is more embarrassing than anything else.
The U.S. is no longer a country. It’s a company town. If waving signs at the company’s goon squad just makes people look stupid, what does twitbooking about it amount to?
Here are some other ideas:
Eliminate your debt. Take your money off the table. Stop buying stuff that you don’t need. Live well on very little. Grow your own food. Participate in alternative and/or outlawed food economies for what you don’t produce yourself. Barter, or use cash. Support people who do good work. Finally, draw a line in the sand. Don’t tell anyone where that line is, or what the consequences will be if it’s crossed. Don’t wave a sign about it. Don’t twitbook about it. Let the fascists figure it out the hard way.
The U.S. is no longer a country. It’s a company town. That’s just stating the obvious so perfectly that I wish I’d thought of it.
Just had to share.
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I started going to some protests in 2003, for the first time in my life. I felt pretty much the same way. In my first protest the protesters were herded into their little “free speech zones” away from the actual target of the protests, then were heavily monitored and videotaped by the police. Meanwhile the war criminals inside the building enjoyed a nice dinner and smirked at the protestors from their valet parking. The whole thing was kind of a joke. Hate to say it but it’s the truth.
btw,
More and more, Obama’s starting to seem like a good guy to have a beer with. :-/
Hat Tip to Jeralyn at Talkleft for No Attack, No Problem: Just Make One Up
Trying to knock sense into people that knocked the sense out of most of us isn’t.
Thanks for sharing.
There are people who live in the US doing more or less what he is. You don’t have to leave.
Now. Hey I am not one of them. He kind of has a fuck you suckers tone, I got mine. Not everybody has the option to live off the land and do the whole non-consumer lifestyle thing because big suprise… It is expensive. Even here in Tennessee where there is relative poverty and still lots of available land. So his big thrust for freedom was to marry some woman who lives in NZ? How is that showing any more independent spirit than the urbanites protesting at the G20, really in the end? Maybe I am missing something.
The entire western world is a company town. Come on that is what the G20 is about. Keeping their shit. That is what the western hemisphere is about. And most that shit isn’t even made in the west. Poor old G20 they get pissed every time another nation that used to be a nice cute third world place gets enough economic power to force being admitted.
Politics, as I’ve said till I’m blue in the face is about force. Applying force is not “nice” but you can do it in a way that is not stupid. Voting, waving signs won’t do it — neither will direct confrontation. But there are other ways as indicated in Cryptogon’s post. But mostly it’s community–making sure you are connected to larger frameworks. Move away from the theology of “individualism” that preaches our isolation — there is no such thing as isolation. Either we create our own communities or the Man will create them for you and they will exist to destroy your will and, ironically, your individuality.
from an “It’s a Bueatiful Life” gone wrong
I want to be an urban organic farmer. I want to get off the grid as much as possible, while staying in the city and offering fresh food to people who normally wouldn’t have that option. Maybe I’m being unrealistic and idealistic, but I’m going to try it.
This guy likes to come off as “Mr. Tough Guy”, smarter and better than everyone else, he’s got the world dicked with his individual solution. What he apparently while wrapped up in his hyper-individualistic “Looking Out For #1 and Screw the Rest of You” ideology is that his ideology is exactly what hegemony wants everyone to have. So that we’re all atomized, with no bonds of community, affinity or solidarity among us, no active resistance to repressive forces, no organized means of people’s power. That’s just the way fascism likes us, and he plays right into it, while thinking the whole time he’s escaped. Maybe by running away to the remotest spot of New Zealand he’s escaped, for the time being. But for him to play at being “Mr. Tough Guy” while he ran away, and criticizes those who at least try and stand up and push back at incipient fascism, well, Mr. Tough Guy looks like the chicken hawks, talks a good game, but runs when it’s on him. And sooner or later, without means of resistance, without solidarity and affinity and community, the claws of hegemony will extend themselves even to remote New Zealand, and when they do, I think we’ll see Mr. Tough Guy’s true colors.
And as for the tweeting and texting, he clearly knows nothing of how the Greek and Iranian resistances organized themselves in the last year, and that young Americans are starting to train themselves in the same means for when the chips are down in the belly of the beast, the place where the truly tough will make their stand.
essay.
“The U.S. is no longer a country, it’s a company town”
That’s a great meme, and so friggin’ true!
It was not followed up on by the text.
Fleshing that out could be a valuable message.
Peace