Another unpopular post, lol, buckle your seat belts!
It doesn’t matter if Obama is a liar.
It doesn’t matter if Obama is a Corporate sell out.
It doesn’t matter if he is a tool of the PTB.
It doesn’t matter WHAT he is.
And above a certain level that is needed to stir your activism, it doesn’t matter how outraged you are about that, it doesn’t matter how much disgust you have for people who just can’t see “it,” and it doesn’t matter how much you beat people over the head with your opinions on it, or facts to back them up, or even to a lesser extent, how much history you muster on exactly what the United States is and who it is really run by.
Why doesn’t it matter? (Except for those few rare cases where someone’s eyes are just opening and you can help them see) I will let Morpheus explain, lol, in my continuing overuse of the Matrix as metaphor…
Morpheus: The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you’re inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.
Now the ‘enemy’ part is a bit overstated in our context, the people who have not yet opened their eyes, those who still think The System can work are NOT our “enemy.” And treating them, at least the ones who CAN wake up, as such hurts more than it helps.
And so attacking MOST of them (besides those already on the attack themselves) is fruitless and counterproductive. They are not going to wake up because of a blog post. And thus it just doesn’t matter if you try to convince them of your truth about Obama and the Government….and even stuff like torture….by beating them over the head.
What matters is this.
There IS a political situation, a political reality. And we are trying to change that reality. THAT matters.
We are not going to be able to change that situation, that reality all at once by telling people what they are UNABLE at this time to hear. That is not effective.
The entire System is broken, it is pretty much impossible to fix it all at once without an, lol, armed revolution. And that is just not going to happen in the USA….right?
So we chip away, and SLIGHTLY change minds…and the System…..piece by piece. While trying to raise consciousness of the real situation, the real reality as we go.
In that context…
It doesn’t matter who the players are or how corrupt they are or who owns them……except in so far as pointing these things out will raise the political consciousness of those we are talking to.
We don’t STFU, we don’t back down, we don’t run from a fight.
But we DO ask ourselves the key question, the question that DOES matter….Is This Working.
And if the answer is no, we find another way.
And then AS The People start to wake up, we feed them the info that they need to become active, to become part of the burgeoning People’s Movement. To become part of the solution to a broken System.
Fixing that System for the Greater Good of All Concerned is what matters.
Finding The Way to do that is what matters.
The rest of the “stuff” is important, knowledge is always important. But using that knowledge effectively is what matters.
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Just ask yourself…..is ‘this’ working
You know, that awake/asleep binary equation of the Matrix has always turned me off. Oh sure, undoubtedly because “it hits too close to home,” right? Maybe so, maybe not. That’s for me to find out. I know it’s an extreme version, but that us/them friend/enemy right/wrong revolutionary absolutism, that assumption that the “other side” has no idea what the truth is, or has never even looked for it, dehumanizes any side of an argument and helps nothing.
That assumption that if I’m not living up to someone else’s arbitrary standards of “activism,” I’m automatically nothing more than a hyper-cynical speed bump. That utterly banal lack of figurative thought that cannot comprehend the possibility that, yes, what we say and what we do (or don’t do!) is often contradictory and yet, miracle of miracles, the world doesn’t end as a result. That assumption that none of the presented arguments have already occurred to me, simply because I have not yet “acted” on them in an approved way.
There are many ways to be “active” and no one way is superior to the others. I very much agree that insisting on adherence to only one kind of ideological bullshit is a great way to make me care less. De-legitimizing the ways that I do use, to care more, isn’t too productive either.
As for armed revolution, well, that’s for trigger-happy fantasists in my opinion. It’s the biggest turnoff of all. Of course, people like Gandhi and King proved that there are things worth dying for. However, I’ve never heard a convincing argument that there are things worth killing for.
Of course, I could be hyper-sensitively projecting all of this, which is quite likely, but that doesn’t make it a lie or a fraud. I am not, after all, a serious person.
Sticks as well as carrots buhdy.
Without making DC Democrats pay a painful price by losing their jobs they have no incentive at all to change.
No Money, No Votes
Incrementalist!!!!!!!
just kidding.
Im pretty much in agreement Buhdy. Y’ do that chip away stuff, but you also dont back down, and sometimes its a tricky…. trick, a juggling act. A lot of it is tone.
Being dogmatic or judgemental or scornful or smug and superior isnt very effective at winning people over.
Good question to pose: Does it work?
Ive been lurking too much at gos lately. it is entertaining. And I do sense a shift. I dont comment much but Im trigger happy with my recs there. lol.
my little brother quite well, unfortunately. And a lot of other people I know, too.
I have been where it doesn’t matter how the system is broken, but that it is broken and people are part of it for better or worse, for some time now.
I think there’s a certain desperation, though to “make” people see, and to see ourselves as on the outside and powerless, that ill befits us as people and a group.
You cannot “make” anyone see anything. That I have learned time and time again. You have to lead them to see, and only if they’re ready. Ironically, though we are impatient for change, our way may require the most patience of all, to show a better way of being and to let and mildly help the cognitive dissonance do our work for us.
To use a different fictional metaphor, “One man can summon the future” is a Vulcan saying ;).
Or, at least, a realignment of my perspective. (Yes, it hurt.)
I realized today: Obama doesn’t know us.
He doesn’t have a true clue who we are or what we’re about. You, buhdy, would be completely alien and incomprehensible to him and so would I (probably for different reasons). He was raised in Hawaii and the Phillipines; went to either foreign or very pricy private schools with the elite; and, as an adult, has lived mostly in New York or Chicago, where he was mentored in cynical, cutthroat politics by the likes of Rahm Emanuel. He’s clearly more aligned with the Republicans in Congress than he would be with us.
It’s that simple and complicated. He doesn’t know Seattle, San Francisco, or New Orleans. He knows one highly specialized aspect of community organizing on the South Side of Chicago, where he established his “liberal” credentials, but he doesn’t know anything about it in rural Kentucky or Arizona or North Dakota or any of the rest of the United States.
Since I can’t see how he could possibly have had much exposure to or experience with anyone but Washingon D.C. or Chicago “liberals”, I can only conclude he doesn’t know squat about the vast majority of his own liberal/progressive base. You know, people who actually believe in the Constitutional rights, genuine equality, the Rule of Law, and ending wars and holding war criminals accountable.
He doesn’t know us.
we can physically do outside an armed revolution, that will affect and shift the balance of power. In order to figure this out one must “Know your enemy and know yourself“. With this in mind, we must then ask, What and how are our enemies able to control the system? How can we remove the source?
People say that the country is a corporatocracy which is all part of the MIC. But is this true?
I believe that the MIC is the security guard for the corporate energy sector and that it is the energy sector that controls all the cards. Why? Because everything we do in our current society is tied to huge amounts of energy consumption. Energy that is produced centrally and then unevenly distributed.
Therefore, in order to tackle our enemies, we must shift the energy paradigm. We must cut into their money flow and profits. So the big question is, How can we do this? Just in writing this comment I have probably consumed 5 lbs of coal. Adding not only to the enemies coffers, but contributing to global warming by increasing greenhouse gases. It only makes sense, we need to stop giving them our money and we can only do that by changing how we harvest and use energy.
The thing is, is that they already know this. They actively move away from renewable sources. Furthermore, they also create roadblocks and resistance to change. They sabotage green legislation. They create doubt by “stirring the waters” with lies. They talk about “clean coal”. They talk about a “global conspiracy on global warming”. They say green sources aren’t enough. They talk about using the Prudhoe Bay reserves in Alaska. And they talk about nuclear energy. (My position on this issue is very clear. There are advantages and disadvantages– none which has anything to do with the waste or accidents, but rather it is a continuation of a centrally produced and controlled conventional energy system.)
What’s missing in your thesis is to what do we measure failure against?
If what I believe is true, then we can measure success in several ways. Are we cutting into energy corporations profits? Are we reducing our carbon footprint? Is there renewable energy legislation that anyone can participate in? If the answer to these is yes, then I would say we are moving in the right direction.
that what matters is how YOU play the game.
sure, we get angry. feel hopeless. but at some point, the machinations of others must stop ::: stopping us.
at some point. it simply comes down to how we decide to play the game. that we decide to stop playing defense all the fucking time. that we decide to stop blaming others and compiling lists of every fucking horrible thing.
truth is, i haven’t the ability to keep those lists anymore. i’ve decided what is important. i stick to that path.
i’ve decided i will make it work, no matter what happens. and i will help others. not by telling them what truth is or, even worse, revealing truth, but by sharing what i have. perhaps that’s the only truth i can offer.
my life in the ballroom of the titanic is lovely. i sense the iceberg ahead. and i am prepared to swim.