Occupy Wall Street

--- merged: Nov 23, 2011 2:30 AM ---

I didn't think the majority of Republicans in congress before the Tea Party sweep were crazy. Either I was wrong or they all became infected with crazy after the election.

 

I think we may be seeing a repeat of the cultural changes we saw in the 60s. There was much upheaval and protest (and home and in the streets) throughout the 60s.

I am starting to think that 50 years from now, we will be looking back on 10s with the same sort of nostalgia.

 

i've been thinking along these lines as well, but as a subset of a broader problem that seem to have almost the entire political class in its grips--an ideological crisis, the collapse of an entire social imaginary form if you like. it's really difficult to think one's way through a crisis that affects fundamentally your own frame of reference. when something parallel happened to the marxist imaginary (differently in different places) it made no noise and many of the former revolutionaries that i interviewed back in the day couldn't say what had happened--they tended to point to particular moments or manifestation that indicated to them that something had happened. what in the end was problematic for writing something about that was that the process was diffuse because it was an oppositional ideology...here, however, it's a dominant ideology and the outlines are clear. it seems that this sort of thing accompanies the collapse of empire. that's what i think it happening--but there are many ways out, so it's not necessarily dire. but it's clearly an ideological crisis that's repeating at the levels of the political (in the regular sense) and as a failure of imagination--which isn't surprising if you consider an ideological crisis as a problem of frame of reference and imagination as the ability to project into the future in terms shaped by that frame (there's actually lots of them with commonalities, since these political frames don't just sit on other ways of thinking, but gets integrated with them. one response in the past has been attempts to avoid this by trying to shift into some transcendent register that basically denies the reality of what's happening out of a preference (witting or not) for maintaining intact the frame that's otherwise getting pulverized.

the victorian parallel is interesting--i dont know the period immediately prior to world war 1 in detail in england, but from what i do know (france more) world war 1 kinda occupied the space of cultural crisis--but maybe i'm wrong about that?

 

interesting. it's interesting to find that this paralysis is spread across much of the (neo-liberal) political class internationally, yes? and it affects most of the main transnational institutions as well---the eu, the imf and world bank (the former perhaps least surprisingly)....

on another note, a piece on the pepper spray cop image:

http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/11/im...-change-the-trajectory-of-occupy-wall-street/

 

That's because the Tea Party is more interested in preserving our constitutional freedoms right here in the U.S. Let the foreigners worry about their own countries. It's time for American politicians to focus on the U.S. and stop galavanting all over the world trying be friends with everyone and sticking our nose where it doesn't belong.

We don't need China or Russia or Saudi Arabia. We have all the resources we need to make our nation great right here in the U.S.A. Globalization is ripping apart the fabric of our nation. It's stripping away our national identity and our freedom. We are no longer a beacon of freedom, we're becoming just another faceless soul-less nanny state. Free market capitalism is the last thing preventing our nation from becoming socialist.

 

Free market Capitalism is why globalization is ripping apart the fabric of our nation

 

Yeah, sure. Whatever would we do without the Europeans and the Chinese. We would surely revert back to the dark ages...not. And if you're referring to our need of oil, not only can we cut way back on our use as well as convert to renewable resources, we have plenty of oil in the Gulf of Mexico, oil shale in the western states and billions of barrels of untapped oil in Alaska.

 

Sorry Eddie but economic globalization has already reached the level where no country will be able to stand truly isolated in it's sovereignty and expect to survive. The US, included. We can either prepare ourselves to be a major player in this "New world" or resign ourselves to our eventual third world status. Those are the choices.

The groundwork has been laid but fortunately the concrete is still wet enough to mold into something we can all prosper from. Folks like you who ignore the situation and bash those attempting to shape it into something equitable for all, are only insuring that US citizens will be left behind.

You think communism was the worse thing? It wasn't. An entire global economy controlled by the very wealthiest at the top will be far worse. You can part of a change the helps sets the parameters for globalization and join in or keep spouting your jingoistic nonsense while you isolate yourself on your ranch. Your choice.

 

Economic collapse? Our wealth has been shipped overseas. In the form of outsourced jobs and manufacturing, wars and the purchase of foreign oil. If we end those 3 things, Americans will be prosperous again.

 

Will this happen before or after our civil war?

 

We were prosperous...even as far back as the colonies. And Britain got a whiff of our prosperity and tried to take it from us. And unlike Canada, we said "screw you, Britain, this is our wealth and you can't have it."

 

Wow, that was the reason for the Revolutionary War? Really? Really? Really? Must not have learnt that in my public school or overpriced public university. Thank you for educating me. And to think, I thought it was for freedom from the King's whims and Human rights as described in the Declaration Of Independence:

These words and this document is as important as anything in the US Constitution. And they are even more needed today than the words of false prophets and talking batshit crazy politicians of today, bought and paid for by the establishment of that top .1%

 

Eddie gets at the heart of it. For many tea party folk, all this high falutin talk of freedom and rights is actually just code for "get your hands off MY money". On the other hand, for many OWS folk, all this high falutin talk of reigning in corporate power is just code for wanting to retain and expand the freedom and rights of individuals who aren't also wealthy or corporations.