Cynthetiq

Please tell my uncle who was asked to publish Pro Marcos articles and when refused and shut down the Manila Times was incarcerated for 9 years.

Please tell that to my other uncles who were Senators and then shuffled out as Ferdinand Marcos delared martial law and disbanded the senate and congress.

When I lived in Singapore I paid very close attention to the leadership there. I paid attention to the voting process and how they work their democracy.

When I visited Iceland I sat with members of their Parliament.

If I had more time in England I would have done the same with them.

I'm not creating this picture in my head from reading newspaper clippings here in the US. My opinion is coming from interfacing directly with the people of the countries, and also my own personal experiences there.

__________________
I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.

smooth

I didn't accuse you of building your caricature of all other nations' from newspaper clipppings. I don't doubt that you have personal experiences that lead you to create these fictions. I suspect that your experiences shape your worldview more profoundly than any thing you might have read, which you might otherwise cast (inaccurately) as objective standpoint.

Your anecdotal evidence notwithstanding, you have still created a subjective impression of your world and reinterpret it to yourself as an objective reality. That is, you purport it to be, both to yourself and others, an accurate portrayal of the world as it exists.

If there is such a thing as a universal reality, I would hope that we can both agree there is no possible way for you to tap into it and all the thoughts and intentions of every single actor on this planet. Instead, you are left with the taskof ordering your experiences into categories based on very limited, first-hand experience, supplemented by the experiences of others, which may or may not be filtered through someone willing to point out the obvious--that our experiences are framed and warped by our own biographies and prejudices.

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"The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account." -- Walter Lippmann

"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman

smooth

I also should add that I'm not arguing that abrogations of what one might consider freedom do not occur in other nations, which seems to be what your reply took exception to. Unless you connect the dots for me, I have no way of knowing how your uncle being co-erced into providing pro-statist articles translates into a requirement to vote for the incumbant of his nation, let alone at all times in all countries.


My point was that you select those types of things to 'prove' to yourself that such people over 'there' experience freedomlessness and juxtaposition those select experiences with ones over here that 'prove' to you that we experience, on the whole, freedomness--as if there were intrinsic qualities to each flavor of freedom rather than contemplating that 'freeness' is a social construction.

The danger is this might force you to disregard stories of people getting arrested for hanging a banner that read "bush and the truth point in opposite directions' from their hotel balcony. You might disregard it out of hand, but you are most likely to interpret it in such a way that conforms with your worldview.

That is, you might think, well, they were trespassing or being loud or being obnoxious, or even that they don't really have a 'right' to display such banners on 'private' 'property' (I've enclosed quotes around all the socially constructed categories we have created to support our nation's notion of freedom, and believe them to be real in and of themselves). I don't know whether that really happened, only that I heard Tom Hayden say so last night on C-SPAN. I have only eaten lunch with the man one time, and can't say for certain how he frames his experiencs to others or whether he can provide me an accurate portrayal of the events as I would have interpreted them.

But I am willing to engage in questioning the premise that we actively participate in the free-est nation on this planet. And I think other nations would dispute that statement, as well, likely believing many of them live in a free-er nation.

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"The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account." -- Walter Lippmann

"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman

Cynthetiq

sure we all do that in filtering our experiences with our values and morals.

I don't think we have a freer society... we have a different society than that of others. There are freedoms here that don't exist in other countries as there are freedoms there that don't exist here. I liken it to the differnce from state to state laws, though a very simplistic analogy.

__________________
I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.

smooth

OK, first of all, I apologize because I didn't notice that you limited your comments to "Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia," That was my bad and an honest mistake--I wasn't trying to put words in your mouht.

Second, my comments were about the human condition, in general, but I directed them at you because we were engaging each other. I do exactly what you do in terms of filtering and categorizing, etc. Please don't think that I was excluding myself or any other particular person from escaping cultural blinders.

Third, the really main point I want to get across is to dispute your remark that, in this country, people aren't being arrested for things that ought to be politically acceptable. People are being arrested for 'harmless' or should we say what ought to be considered lawful activism. The point I would also drive home, however, is that our fictionalized notions of freedom make us interpret this as new, when in fact all powerful, effective political speech is dangerous to the established power structures in this nation and has always been supressed. There hasn't, to my knowledge, been a time when effective political speech has been allowed by activists that wasn't happening on the streets outside the purvue and abilities of the authorities to end it; except possibly during the birthing of this nation before we had a solidified power structure--but even then it's possible the rabble rousers weren't really doing much in terms of there subversiveness. I mean, it wasn't like they were throwing off the crown and participating in some sort of populist or communal governance.

__________________
"The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account." -- Walter Lippmann

"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman

Cynthetiq

It's not acceptable to me on it's face, but the fact is that some people will be arrested and that's acceptable to me.

While I don't think that the protestors that were involved in the Bike Ride through Manhattan on Friday were ALL bad, as one friend who was swarmed by bikers was harassed and annoyed by it.

My boss' upstairs neighbors were arrested and detained for 36 hours.

There are two sides to it, but at least in this country one just has to wait until it's time to vote again and thus some things change bad to good and some good to bad, depending on how you saw it.

You won't find me at protests because large crowds can be stupid all together as one, and then the police single out a few and that's that, which is what happened to my boss' neighbors. Did they do anything wrong, no. But they pay a price for the few that did, as I've read and seen annoyed NY'rs via blogs and regular media.

smooth

Also, Cynthetiq, the part where I was quoting Tom Hayden was from a piece on C-SPAN with a panel of activists and experts speaking about activism, civil disobedience, and civil rights. They all expressed dismay at tactics like the one you just listed because it alienated the general population. Hayden's comment was partly in response to their suggestion that the media and administration also uses those instances to frame protesters, in general, as rabble rousers. So when the story does get around that a group of people were arrested for hanging a banner from their balcony, people wonder just what the hell else they were up to--because in this country people don't just get arrested for something like that, right?

Well, that's his point anyway. He argues they are. But I wanted to point out that both you, a non-'activist' (in I think this sense we are using it in) and me, an 'activist' (maybe 'protestor' would get the point across better as I don't really know how active you are in politics), agree that those tactics are annoying and disruptive to the general population and likely counter-productive to their long-term goals. I'm actually contemplating writing a popular piece for the Times that details the scope of the damage to the environment when an activist damages a vehicle of a logging company, for example. Similar concept--but I think we agree on that overall picture.

I stated this before and believe that some other 'conservative' TFPers came to agree that the public discourse really serves as a way to keep the public from coming together on very importance issues and forces them to be at loggerheads with one another. It's really very skillfull and my fear is that, with all the social science, technology, and means of dispensing propoganda, that this current administration and those following it will really be able to manipulate the public sentiment on a far grander scale than times past.

__________________
"The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account." -- Walter Lippmann

"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman