( – promoted by buhdydharma )
If Dr. King hadn’t been assassinated for speaking truth to power, if he was here today, if he was at the Lincoln Memorial again, looking out at that corporate capital of deceit and corruption, what would he say, what would he ask us to do?
He’d ask us to overcome our fear, he’d call for mass protests and civil disobedience, he’d explain why it’s necessary, just as he did in 1968 . . .
If you have never found something so dear and precious to you that you would die for it, then you are not fit to live. You may be 38 years old, as I happen to be, and one day some great crisis arises and calls upon you to stand for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause, but you refuse to take a stand because you are afraid.
You refuse to do it because you want to live longer. Or you’re afraid that you will lose your job, or that you will be criticized, or that you will lose your popularity. So you refuse to take a stand. Well you may go on and live until you’re 90, but you are just as dead at 38 as you will be at 90. And when you take your last breath, it will only be the belated announcement of the earlier death of your spirit.
You died when you refused to stand up for right.
You died when you refused to stand up for truth.
You died when you refused to stand up for justice.
Can you understand that, “leaders” of the Netroots? Can you understand that, Markos Moulitsas? Can you understand that, Obamacrats? Tap your TR trigger fingers on the lid of that coffin you call a blog if you do. Can you understand that, MoveOn.org? Can you understand that, Josh Marshall? John Amato? Digby? Jane Hamsher? If you do, explain it to TBogg, that Mighty Slayer of “Purists.” How about you, Madame Proprietor of the Huff and Puff Post? Can you understand that? Can any of you understand that???
None of you have called for mass protests or civil disobedience. In the streets of Washington D.C. or anywhere else. You refuse to because you’re afraid. Well go ahead, keep on blogging until you’re 90, it won’t matter, you’re just as dead right now as you will be then.
You died when you refused to stand up for right.
You died when you refused to stand up for truth.
You died when you refused to stand up for justice.
Welcome to Netroots Nation . . .
Enjoy your stay.
I have some news for those nonstop typers. Typing isn’t standing up for right, truth, justice, or anything else. It’s just typing.
But that doesn’t seem to matter to the stone cold dead “leaders” of the Netroots, they just go on typing. They type about right, they type about truth, they type about justice, almost as much as they type about each other. They never stop typing, they never stop analyzing the latest corporate fascist outrage, they never stop parading around as leaders, but all they’ve ever led is a chat fest while democracy burns. They have no solutions and not enough moral courage, it’s a rare commodity, it’s in short supply way up there at the top of the progressive blogosphere. They don’t have much that matters, but they have an endless supply of talk, an endless supply of pointless petitions to sign, an endless list of craven politicians to call.
Mark Twain has some advice for them . . .
If you keep doing things like you’ve always done them, what you’ll get is what you’ve already got.
We’ve already got corporate fascism. And if you keep doing things like you’ve always done them, we’ll always have corporate fascism.
Which part of that don’t you understand, mighty “leaders” of the Netroots? What in the blue fuck have you accomplished by typing? What in the blue fuck have you accomplished by supporting Democrats? What in the blue fuck have you accomplished by tap dancing through that two-party minefield with a keyboard in one hand and a mouse in the other? You’ve blown yourselves to Hell 500 times in a row. That’s what in the blue fuck you’ve accomplished.
Our political system is Catch 22, we’re fucked no matter what we do. Barack Obama isn’t a President, he’s a pawn. John Roberts isn’t Chief Justice, he’s the Lord of the Flies. We don’t have to read Goldman or Huxley, Kafka or Koestler, Orwell or Heller or Vonnegut to know what a nonstop nightmare feels like, all we have to do is read the headlines . . .
Court Rules That Mass Surveillance of Americans is Immune From Judicial Review
Democracy Is Dead, Killed By the Supreme Court
Pentagon Prepares to “Restore Order” in Case of “Unforeseen Economic Collapse”
Progressive “leaders” in Washington have been just as worthless as the “top” progressive bloggers have been. Conyers and Waxman are a disgrace. Feingold talks, then he blow dries his hair, then he talks some more. Kucinich talks tougher than any of the others, but even he won’t say what needs to be said.
It’s time for all of them to stop talking and start listening. It’s time for every progressive to stop talking and start listening to Mahatma Gandhi . . .
It’s time to listen well . . .
Civil disobedience becomes a sacred duty when the state has become lawless or corrupt. Any citizen who tolerates such a state shares in its corruption and lawlessness.
It’s time to start listening to John Locke . . .
Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience.
It’s time to start listening to Howard Zinn . . .
Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy, it is absolutely essential to it.
It’s time to start listening to Emerson . . .
Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
Massive protests and civil disobedience in Washington D.C. That’s the path we must take. We can’t keep following the path we’re on, it’s the path of moral cowardice. It leads nowhere. It’s a dead end. No more petitions. No more phone calls. No more pleading to politicians. No more of that. No more of any of that. Enough is enough.
It’s time to call this corporate prison what it is, it’s time to write our own Letter From Birmingham Jail, it’s time for America to hear the truth. It’s time to tell it in that city of Bull Connors in thousand dollar suits, it’s time to tell it in that city of K Street guard dogs and corporate fascist fire hoses. By 100,000 of us, by 200,000 of us, by as many as it takes. It must be told at the gates of the White House, so that puppet president will hear it. It must be told on Capitol Hill, so every addict in that crack house of corruption will hear it. It must be told on the front steps of the fucking Supreme Court, so the Lord of the Flies will hear it.
The Path of Civil Disobedience
That’s the Path We Must Take
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If we keep doing things like we’ve always done them, what we’ll get is what we’ve already got . . .
Enough is enough.
Mass protests.
Civil disobedience.
That’s the path we must take.
We have to paralyze Washington D.C. with mass protests. As I’m “typing” it. Heh.
I guess I’m already on the side of that particular angel, I just don’t know what to do with it or about it, and the function of “bloggers” in that milieu.
What I would say is we need a significant portion of the liberal blogosphere on board with at least planning for such mass protests, and they aren’t .. we aren’t doing that planning and logistical part.
When a march on Washington is called, two weeks hence, a tiny percentage of the people who are concerned even know about it, much less given an opportunity to plan for it. And how can people who cannot afford their health care bill afford to go to Washington DC for a week or two weeks?
It is all well and good to ask people to throw themselves on the machinery and have it grind to a halt with their bodies in the gears, but fewer people are willing to do that, and those who are don’t exist in anywhere near the numbers needed to be effective.
It is going to take, IMO, far more than a single afternoon march, even if it has a million people. Such a march might make an impression on Washington for a day or a week. But what is needed is a march with millions of people lasting many days or weeks. And to be prepared to repeat this type of action.
That takes planning and logistics. You need BUSES. You need food and drink. Enough time is needed for people to provide for taking the time of their slot for doing something of that nature.
And it has to be slotted. Individual people are not going to hang out a thousand miles from home in some cases for weeks or months waiting for something to happen. So you need a continuing influx of people taking their place for a march lasting many days or weeks.
So, circling back to bloggers. The problem I am having is with these large numbers of people who just continue to argue, sans any evidence at all, if we just be nice enough to our betters in Washington, they will remember us and somehow do what is right. And my problem is — where is the evidence. The evidence would seem to indicate the opposite — I certainly know it has meant the opposite for LGBT people. When you give our political class money without holding it over their heads and using it to hold them to strict account, they laugh at you behind your back — almost literally. They think you are suckers. And then if you try to withhold said money as a way of keeping them to account, these self same supporters accuse you of not being constructive.
The liberal blogs are needed for purposes of accountability. Planning for mass marches AND/OR other means of holding the beltway class’ feet to the fire. But they are not being used for that purpose, largely. They are being used for apologia. And this apologia, as far as I can see, accomplishes nothing.
tptb succeeded in marinalizing’ cindy sheehan, kucinich, and anyone else. not to mention the success of current potus which has done more than any other single thing to… quiet the masses with the “hopium’.
its a difficult challenge, how to wake up the masses? then inspire and motivate… to what action?.
sigh
i do think 2010 november will wake up lots. bloodbath…. but there needs to be i dunno… something, that will be seen as the phoenix to rise from the ashes.
sorry, im typing from my little fisher price and I gotta go in a few minutes.
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It’s getting right interesting around here!
It’s getting right interesting around here!
got my PC almost fixed, on mac laptop now. briefly.. please folks, keep your alert level up… do maintence and scans and all that good stuff TONIGHT. Shiz got infected too.
Nobody cares about protests.
A general strike is something worth the elites’ attention.
aristocracy had a choke hold on America. If it were not for
the progressive income tax, labor unions and banking regulation, the lid would have been blown off. Predatory capitalism had been held in check. But the monster is back stronger than ever. It has broken the chains that confined it.
This monster needs the masses to work hard and produce so its blood sucking, siphoning tubules can swell with pleasure, the pleasure only a monster can know. And the more it sucks, the more it wants. But it knows it will die, yet doesn’t care. It hopes that its bank accounts, bombs and phony laws will keep it going as long as it can.
This monster always seems to attract a lot of parasitical worshippers who try hard to please, cause they love big crumbs and will fight like hell to keep them. But even they know the monster will die. So how do we hasten its demise when it seems to have devoured the government and the media and seems to have grown even stronger?
Well, I suppose the answer must reside with the people.
The people must capture it and tranquilize it to speed up its death. The monster fears the people, and usually just tries to scare big shots. So I agree with the sentiments expressed here tonight: The people must scare the monster by showing their power and send it running.
why not shut wallstreet down for a couple of days?
I do it a lot. And yet I still am unable to take it seriously. I think it has something to do with the freakout-sneer-hyperventilate-scoff cycle of righteous indignation that is consuming this and other sites.
I guess I’ll never be able to take activists–of any stripe, bloggers or protestors–as seriously as they take themselves.
The answer is in the streets.
We must resist the madness, the shear insanity that has long since taken over “our” country.
See how quickly Obama’s “campaign” of HOPE & CHANGE was swallowed & neutralized so easily by the “lunatic” “soulless” CORPORATE MONSTERS.
This MADNESS must be stopped NOW!
EVERY progressive voice must demand SANITY!
NO MORE STRAIGHTENING the DECK CHAIRS on the TITANIC!
America has become a ship of fools, ruled by MADNESS – ENOUGH!!!!