Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - And thus, Cindy Sheehan hangs up her peace sign

roachboy · 06-12-2007, 06:18 AM

first off, this idea that somehow seems to be operational in the thread that one person can "change the world" seems naive--the example of ghandi is not good in this, as he was the spokesman/leader of a social movement. rather, it seems that folk--including historians and other such--like to collapse social movements onto individual representatives. maybe because it is difficult to write about collectives using a language that tends toward the particular. maybe it's an ideological thing in that, like margaret thatcher, alot of folk look around and do not see society, only individuals. either way, it is debilitating as a tendency in the staging/interpretation of the past, one which has effects when people consider questions of politics and how to address them.

there is no way around collective action, and there is no way to collective action that is not geared around organization.

there is no anti-war movement in the united states. there are ALOT of people who oppose the various fiascos visited upon us by the bush people--but this appears to be the kind of opposition that causes one to complain over drinks to people you know already agree with you about the miserable state of affairs in the world--or that prompts people to vacation with more intensity than is customary. there is no antiwar movement because there is no organization. there is no organization because it seemed convenient earlier to allow moveon to do the organizing for us. when moveon decided for its own organizational reason to crawl into bed with the democrats, it seems that it was willing to cut loose the tactic of large-scale demonstrations in order to focus on potentially television-worthy agitprop actions starring cindy sheehan. i do not pretend that i know the story behind this unfortunate decision. but it clearly was a response to obvious facts that emerged during the earlier phase of opposition, when actual people would show up on actual streets to protest---and would get almost no press. reports would routinely take police "estimates" of turnout to be accurate--when any idiot knows that they are not---the apparently all-important television cameras would somehow manage to not show large-scale protests--and the "new objectivity" would require that the 6 people who would gather on one street corner to shout pro-bushpeople slogans would get a nealy equivalent amount of coverage as the demo of 500,000 (in washington on lovely late spring day a few years ago, i dont remember which)...so it seems that the folk at moveon decided that there was a problem with demonstrations and that problem was television coverage and so they switched tactics.

at a certain level, i understand why: i was at demo after demo after demo...you could see what was happening if you bothered to look. you could see the television crews, where they were, what they filmed, what they did not. there were more police and fbi taking photographs than there were journalists. it was all very strangely prague in august 1968.

i dont understand exactly how it came to pass that the networks no longer considered street protests to be news really. television too does not enjoy collective action: too hard to film. television likes individuals. individuals can show up on o-reilly. collective action threatens the entire logic that makes an o-reilly possible.

i dont know anyone for whom cindy sheehan's actions were adequate. i dont know anyone who thought that she encapsulated the range of objections to the bushwar. she was clearly used by moveon and the democrats because of her son, and the thinking was obviously that her outrage over her son's pointless death in an idiotic and unnecessary neo-colonial debacle was enough to pose problems for the conservative base in that she ast least in potentia disrupted the linkage between "patriotism" (a form of that collective mental disorder we call "nationalism") and the bush people.

so there is no anti-war movement because there are no collective actions. there is no movement.
cindy sheehan *was not* a movement. she was a signifier. and she was used like a signifier. in her anger and disappointment, she wrote her piece denouncing such organization as there is behind this largely imaginary movement. the tactical choices that moveon made are now "egoism"---and in a way, she's right.

but i do not remember anyone actually deciding that moveon WAS the anti-war movement. i remember that they simply appeared during the first gulf war and were doing organizational work on a large scale when no-one else was, and that this carried over into the first phase of the present debacle. i remember that everyone knew full well who moveon was and knew thereby that they were a particular organization with a particular composition and a particular set of ties and that sooner or later they would act in their own organizational interests and they did. trots are like that. always have been. but what i did not expect was that moveon's organizational work would be the only real organizational work that was happening.

demos are strange. they give you the impression that you actually have power. you kinda feel it. you look around across a sea of people and you feel it. then it ends and nothing changes. you find out (or knew) that the people you imagined were being addressed were out of the country that day, perhaps because of the parade permits that were required for a demo.

so we sit in chairs in complain.
i am sitting in a chair. this is complaining. that's all that happens. from this viewpoint, complaining here is as good an option as complaining anywhere else. the antiwar movement is the one i make from sitting in front of this monitor into the kitchen to get another cup of coffee and back again to complain more. in the present degenerate state of affairs, it almost seems a radical action that the stuff gets written down: it seems that mostly opposition lasts the duration of sentences shouted at the television or muttered over a beer.

back in the day, jurgen habermas used to think about revolution. he worked out a little model geared around a notion of legitimation crisis--what mattered for him was a collective withdrawal of consent from the existing order. his schema relied on this as a coherent meaningful collective action, and in his optimism this withdrawal was seen as in itself a revolution. habermas didn't like violence and so thought about revolution in terms that avoided it for the most part: the collective withdrawal of consent as a result of the political implosion of a dominant order would cause the linkage between state and people to simply dissolve, and with that dissolution the existing order would, presumably, simply evaporate--this because existing orders are only as they are because we, collectively, fill them with air: they are balloons with guns. i think we are in a legitimation crisis, but it is not going at all as habermas thought it would back in the day. there is a withdrawal of consent from the existing order. it happens all around you: it is continuous. you are maybe part of it. i am maybe too. but there is not context around this withdrawal of consent: it has no coherent message...there is no organization...so a legitimation crisis can look a whole lot like a withdrawal from politics tout court, a reversion to consumerist form. because it has no collective extension, it does not exist. the marketing of politics--which is, in the end, just another commodity, like a car or a goerge foreman grill--continues as if nothing was seriously wrong. the wheels of power transfer continue to turn, as if there was some legitimacy remaining in the election rituals that every 4 years rotate factions within the oligarchy. so the framework acts as though nothing is happening.
and that which is happening--the withdrawal of consent from the existing order--has not organizational expression, no context.
so it does not exist.
it happens all around, but it does not exist.
so tell me again how it is that one person can change any fucking thing.
we are right now living through a situation in which countless individuals act as isolated individuals and as isolated individuals oppose not only this debacle in iraq but every fucking thing about not only this administration but the system that allows it. and as individuals, our actions have no status out there: they do not exist.

your sentiments against the war in iraq do not exist.
my sentiments against the war in iraq do not exist.
we might have them, but they are vapor.
they are less than that.

06-12-2007, 06:18 AM	#25 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	first off, this idea that somehow seems to be operational in the thread that one person can "change the world" seems naive--the example of ghandi is not good in this, as he was the spokesman/leader of a social movement. rather, it seems that folk--including historians and other such--like to collapse social movements onto individual representatives. maybe because it is difficult to write about collectives using a language that tends toward the particular. maybe it's an ideological thing in that, like margaret thatcher, alot of folk look around and do not see society, only individuals. either way, it is debilitating as a tendency in the staging/interpretation of the past, one which has effects when people consider questions of politics and how to address them. there is no way around collective action, and there is no way to collective action that is not geared around organization. there is no anti-war movement in the united states. there are ALOT of people who oppose the various fiascos visited upon us by the bush people--but this appears to be the kind of opposition that causes one to complain over drinks to people you know already agree with you about the miserable state of affairs in the world--or that prompts people to vacation with more intensity than is customary. there is no antiwar movement because there is no organization. there is no organization because it seemed convenient earlier to allow moveon to do the organizing for us. when moveon decided for its own organizational reason to crawl into bed with the democrats, it seems that it was willing to cut loose the tactic of large-scale demonstrations in order to focus on potentially television-worthy agitprop actions starring cindy sheehan. i do not pretend that i know the story behind this unfortunate decision. but it clearly was a response to obvious facts that emerged during the earlier phase of opposition, when actual people would show up on actual streets to protest---and would get almost no press. reports would routinely take police "estimates" of turnout to be accurate--when any idiot knows that they are not---the apparently all-important television cameras would somehow manage to not show large-scale protests--and the "new objectivity" would require that the 6 people who would gather on one street corner to shout pro-bushpeople slogans would get a nealy equivalent amount of coverage as the demo of 500,000 (in washington on lovely late spring day a few years ago, i dont remember which)...so it seems that the folk at moveon decided that there was a problem with demonstrations and that problem was television coverage and so they switched tactics. at a certain level, i understand why: i was at demo after demo after demo...you could see what was happening if you bothered to look. you could see the television crews, where they were, what they filmed, what they did not. there were more police and fbi taking photographs than there were journalists. it was all very strangely prague in august 1968. i dont understand exactly how it came to pass that the networks no longer considered street protests to be news really. television too does not enjoy collective action: too hard to film. television likes individuals. individuals can show up on o-reilly. collective action threatens the entire logic that makes an o-reilly possible. i dont know anyone for whom cindy sheehan's actions were adequate. i dont know anyone who thought that she encapsulated the range of objections to the bushwar. she was clearly used by moveon and the democrats because of her son, and the thinking was obviously that her outrage over her son's pointless death in an idiotic and unnecessary neo-colonial debacle was enough to pose problems for the conservative base in that she ast least in potentia disrupted the linkage between "patriotism" (a form of that collective mental disorder we call "nationalism") and the bush people. so there is no anti-war movement because there are no collective actions. there is no movement. cindy sheehan was not a movement. she was a signifier. and she was used like a signifier. in her anger and disappointment, she wrote her piece denouncing such organization as there is behind this largely imaginary movement. the tactical choices that moveon made are now "egoism"---and in a way, she's right. but i do not remember anyone actually deciding that moveon WAS the anti-war movement. i remember that they simply appeared during the first gulf war and were doing organizational work on a large scale when no-one else was, and that this carried over into the first phase of the present debacle. i remember that everyone knew full well who moveon was and knew thereby that they were a particular organization with a particular composition and a particular set of ties and that sooner or later they would act in their own organizational interests and they did. trots are like that. always have been. but what i did not expect was that moveon's organizational work would be the only real organizational work that was happening. demos are strange. they give you the impression that you actually have power. you kinda feel it. you look around across a sea of people and you feel it. then it ends and nothing changes. you find out (or knew) that the people you imagined were being addressed were out of the country that day, perhaps because of the parade permits that were required for a demo. so we sit in chairs in complain. i am sitting in a chair. this is complaining. that's all that happens. from this viewpoint, complaining here is as good an option as complaining anywhere else. the antiwar movement is the one i make from sitting in front of this monitor into the kitchen to get another cup of coffee and back again to complain more. in the present degenerate state of affairs, it almost seems a radical action that the stuff gets written down: it seems that mostly opposition lasts the duration of sentences shouted at the television or muttered over a beer. back in the day, jurgen habermas used to think about revolution. he worked out a little model geared around a notion of legitimation crisis--what mattered for him was a collective withdrawal of consent from the existing order. his schema relied on this as a coherent meaningful collective action, and in his optimism this withdrawal was seen as in itself a revolution. habermas didn't like violence and so thought about revolution in terms that avoided it for the most part: the collective withdrawal of consent as a result of the political implosion of a dominant order would cause the linkage between state and people to simply dissolve, and with that dissolution the existing order would, presumably, simply evaporate--this because existing orders are only as they are because we, collectively, fill them with air: they are balloons with guns. i think we are in a legitimation crisis, but it is not going at all as habermas thought it would back in the day. there is a withdrawal of consent from the existing order. it happens all around you: it is continuous. you are maybe part of it. i am maybe too. but there is not context around this withdrawal of consent: it has no coherent message...there is no organization...so a legitimation crisis can look a whole lot like a withdrawal from politics tout court, a reversion to consumerist form. because it has no collective extension, it does not exist. the marketing of politics--which is, in the end, just another commodity, like a car or a goerge foreman grill--continues as if nothing was seriously wrong. the wheels of power transfer continue to turn, as if there was some legitimacy remaining in the election rituals that every 4 years rotate factions within the oligarchy. so the framework acts as though nothing is happening. and that which is happening--the withdrawal of consent from the existing order--has not organizational expression, no context. so it does not exist. it happens all around, but it does not exist. so tell me again how it is that one person can change any fucking thing. we are right now living through a situation in which countless individuals act as isolated individuals and as isolated individuals oppose not only this debacle in iraq but every fucking thing about not only this administration but the system that allows it. and as individuals, our actions have no status out there: they do not exist. your sentiments against the war in iraq do not exist. my sentiments against the war in iraq do not exist. we might have them, but they are vapor. they are less than that. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite