Strategizing & WAAGNFNP Posted by spyder, 22 Mar 2007 04:03 am

The time line spirals in golden-mean/phi/fibonacci sections

Last week i got into a bit of a pissing match with an associate who is a powerful voice and advocate for progressive politics. He had sent out a email post sharing the views of a friend of his, and i took some offense at one startling paragraph. I’m not sure if i need to preface my posting of that paragraph, or leave it for the reader to decide how this particular comment relates directly to the founding of the WAAGNFNP. I do know that there might come a time, along that spiralling arrow, when some future/past commentator might say the same thing about the “us” now, that the paragraph says about the “us” then (i being one of the us thens to whom the author Scott Lilly refers). Well, obviously i chose the path of prefacing now, didn’t i?

To this day, I think those who insisted on injecting arguments about drugs, sex, personal hygiene, and respect for law into the debate over Viet Nam prolonged the war (perhaps by years) and, as a consequence, contributed to the deaths of hundreds and possibly thousands of my fellow soldiers. That is a lesson that anyone engaged in a struggle to build a coalition large enough and strong enough to change national policy should remember.

Wayback in that wayback machine of Peabody and Sherman, a rift did develop between the antiwar movement and the counter-culture movement, particularly in the Bay Area of California. The lines seemed to have been drawn between Berkeley (antiwar camp) and San Francisco (hippie/prankster camp). {Country Joe MacDonald, of Country Joe and the Fish, regularly attempted reconciliation but mostly to no avail, as it were.} Those on the East side of the Bay professed the view that the war was the one and only cause worthy of all the efforts and activism. Those on the West side (when you’re a Jet with Ruben) were more concerned with altering consciousness, environmentalism, back to nature intentional communitarianism, individual liberties and freedoms, and so forth. Lilly states, seeminglingly unequivocably, that the West siders (Pranksters, hippies, yippies, freaks, commune celebrants et al) were directly responsible for empowering the “man” to keep on keeping on in Vietnam. Nothing could be further from the truth.

But we find ourselves in that shadow at this point, one more time. Lilly seems to be saying that those who are actively engaged in environmentalism and ecological protectionism, are again aiding and abetting Bushco as the enemy of the people, and if only we would just stop doing all that unimportant stuff and focus only on the war in Iraq, we could stop it. Well, quite frankly, this echoes the discussion in Berube land when the WAAGNFNP was first intimated. ANSWR, and the “we are all hezbollah now” elements ask that we forget that we have huge disagreements with their policies and politics, so that we can all come together, right now, over the war. NO, i won’t!

My own deep-ecology roots encourage me to see the war as merely a symptom of a much larger and more dangerous problem. Pulling the troops out of Iraq will do nothing to help overcome the issues that lie at the root of all of the madness that is Bushco (and i wholeheartedly support ending all wars immediately). Yesterday, official US diplomatic representatives, to the G-8 summit on global climate change, walked out as the only people at the table denying there is a problem. They did this because the very nature of this country–its economic dependence upon light crude oil from the Middle East being traded in US dollars; the corporate largesse granted to our wealthiest citizens to globalize, with militarized private security forces, the resources of the planet for their own benefit– is at stake. Citizens of the US will not simply adapt to vastly diminished consumption because it is a good thing; only when it is imperative that to do otherwise is destroying them.

These problems were clearly understood by those of us on the West side in the 60’s and 70’s. We were thwarted in our efforts to engage a mass movement to address them then, by the antiwar movement crusades against the same machine that remains in place now. We knew: small was beautiful; that reducing, recycling, reusing, restoring, recreating was essential and necessary; our establishment lifestyles threatened all species and the rights and freedoms of all citizens; what needed to be done. Here we are, thirty-five years later, same old song, same old wine, same old problems. The only thing difference now, is that they are exponentially more vast and nasty.

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Responses to “The time line spirals in golden-mean/phi/fibonacci sections”

  1. on 22 Mar 2007 at 4:18 am 1. christian h. said …

    I think it is a little disingenuous to lump in what Lilly expressed with ANSWER, or the wider radical anti-imperialist (as opposed to counterculture) left. Our fundamental critique of US and Western policies - as opposed to a narrow criticism of the current war - is precisely what Lilly is against. I won’t try to convince you of our point of view, or to work with ANSWER (which is impossible, by all accounts); I believe it a perfectly healthy thing for different people to work towards different priorities. I’m just saying that bringing the radical anti-imperialist left in here as somehow an opponent of what you are proposing seems somewhat gratuitous. (I make no claims about the 60s, I wasn’t born then).

  2. on 22 Mar 2007 at 5:08 am 2. Sven DiMilo said …

    I believe that Ruben & the Jets was just another band from LA…you must be thinking of Mickey & the Hartbeats.

    (captcha: 029831…what the hell is that supposed to mean?)

  3. on 22 Mar 2007 at 7:10 am 3. spyder said …

    seems somewhat gratuitous.

    Yes, it is exactly that, actually. The throw in line about ANSWER represents my tip-of-the-hat, wag-of-the-finger at the original thread discussion that led quite directly to the founding of WAAGNFNP (i will try to find that in those pesky ice-covered archives).

    My overarching critique of Lilly is that he sees a single source agenda; and to that end he is willing to accept as allies those with whom many disagree, while chastizing the efforts of those who don’t dedicate the vast majority of their focus on his issue. And i wholeheartedly agree that Lilly cannot accept our (and i certainly do mean “our” as including moi) anti-imperialist (and in my case, anti-corporate) criticisms of both the left and even center.

    Sven, when you a Jet you’re a Jet all the way, from your first cigarette, till your last dyin day. And i much prefered Bobby and the Midnights myself, as long as they practiced in Joe’s garage while waiting for Dose Hermanos to come down.

    029831…what the hell is that supposed to mean?
    well twenty-three of course, jeez…

  4. on 22 Mar 2007 at 7:39 am 4. christian h. said …

    spyder, I completely agree. Opposing whatever the current war is at any given time means always being behind. It’s a systemic problem.

  5. on 22 Mar 2007 at 8:41 am 5. Heraclitus (Jeff) said …

    Involuntary self-confession time: I thought the WAAGNFNP originated in the fervent desire to see all life on earth annihilated, not in reference to the WAAHN hijinx. Did I miss something, or is this just my deep-seated nihilism coloring my perceptions again?

    Of course, part of it may be that I can’t imagine that wing of the left ever arguing for consensus. My experience with them is that they have all manner of stormy, three-hour shouting matches about whether we’re opposing neo-colonialism or neo-imperialism, which end with our noble comrades leaving a 3% tip for the waitress.

    In any case, good post, spyder. I’m growing increasingly desperate about my post next week, seeing the acts I have to follow.

  6. on 22 Mar 2007 at 8:47 am 6. Sven DiMilo said …

    23. Right…of course.
    fnord

  7. on 22 Mar 2007 at 8:54 am 7. spyder said …

    which end with our noble comrades leaving a 3% tip for the waitress.

    Good gawd man, what were they thinking?? Way too great a contribution to the imperialist dogs’ machine, that waitress would not only not report that income but use it to purchase mass consumables. Non-snarky aside, i did read this week that several states are considering (and passing) legislation that requires employers to pay minimum wage directly without including tips and gratuities.

    The following is only tangentially germane to this thread, but it does reflect the inroads and considerations of greater consensus among the left to convey–to the “man”–a more coherent message. Last night, on an episode of CRIMINAL MINDS, the “unsub” was (as usual) a vicious psychopath who committed horrendous and evil acts of arson against corporate polluters. The thread of the plot evolved around the EDF, with members of the FBI acknowledging that, at its core the EDF, chooses to threaten only property and corporate facilities of those who threaten the integrity of ecosystems. Yada yada yada, along the way, we end up as viewers being led to hold sympathy for the EDF itself, while acknowledging that radical movements (both right and left) have, among their membership (as does the whole of society), sociopathic and psychopathic individuals who will use the cover of the movements for personal nefarious thrills.

    This is a huge departure for commercial media; to embrace even the slightest sympathetic view of the EDF is counter to nearly all of those to the right of the far leftish radicals. Yet here it was. mmmmmm interesting that.

  8. on 22 Mar 2007 at 8:56 am 8. Ben Alpers said …

    Basically I agree with the post and with Christian H (in both 1 and 4). I have no truck with ANSWER, who are, in fact, impossible to work with. But they, and the broader anti-imperialist left (which has better sides than ANSWER) seem a very different force from the “let’s just focus on the war” crowd that (apparently) Lilly represents.

    But is this a battle we need to wage (or rewage)? Any large anti-war coalition needs to be able to accommodate all manner of systemic (and non-systemic) critiques of the war in question. I’m a systemic guy myself (it’s not just a small cabal of neocons that have gotten us here), but I’m happy to work with people who feel that a dozen folks at PNAC are wholly responsible for the Iraq War, so long as I don’t need to put my views aside.

    Finally, I guess I think that disagreements like this aren’t where the real action is today. The House is about to vote on a package that the Democratic leadership claims is an Iraq withdrawal plan, but that in fact promises eighteen more months of funding and is positively silent on Iran. This has split the antiwar wing of the Democratic Party within Congress and without (full disclosure: though this shouldn’t be news to old-time WAAGNFNPers, I’m a Green). MoveOn.org has enthusiastically endorsed the leadership plan; Progressive Democrats of America have denounced it.

    This plan has no chance of passing the Senate, less chance of being signed into law, and still less chance of being obeyed by Bush if, somehow, he did sign it into law. So the politics are largely symbolic. But they not unimportant.

    The one way this war can be brought to a swift conclusion is to cut off its funding. A single house of Congress can do this. For the Democrats in the House to go on record supporting another year-and-a-half of war will make such a move all the more unlikely.

    Because of skepticism from both pro- and anti-war Democrats, the plan is apparently still a dozen votes short of attaining passage. Voting will likely take place tomorrow.

    Whatever reason you oppose this war, I hope that you call your Congressperson and ask him or her to vote against the so-called withdrawal package, and instead to back Congressperson Barbara Lee’s actual plan for withdrawal.

  9. on 22 Mar 2007 at 9:09 am 9. Hattie said …

    Well, I thought that paragraph over very carefully, turning it over in my mind for a good five seconds and have come to this reasoned conclusion: what crap!

  10. on 22 Mar 2007 at 9:09 am 10. christian h. said …

    Hear, hear! To what Ben wrote. But maybe it should be mentioned that Lilly used to work for Rep. Obey, and made the quoted comment in relation to the now-famous incident captured on YouTube. Thus, the post is relevant to what’s going on in Congress.

    Myself, I have no problem cooperating with all kinds of people. It’s just that I usually wonder about the intellectual honesty of those who will never, ever cooperate with those evil Hezbollah-supporting extremists - but then positively gush about an ex-President who distinguished himself by returning to Arkansas in the middle of a campaign to see to it that a mentally retarded convict was executed - to appear tough. That, of course, being the same ex-president who prioritized NAFTA over universal health care, started “Plan Colombia” and… you get the picture.

  11. on 22 Mar 2007 at 9:15 am 11. peter ramus said …

    I’m growing increasingly desperate about my post next week, seeing the acts I have to follow.

    Have no fear, H (J). I’m lowering the bar considerably tomorrow.

    On the subject at hand, I have a thing or two I’ll try to get to this evening regarding then v. now from the natural born chauvinist/San Francisco-native perspective. Your post definitely reminds me, spyder.

    For now, erands call.

  12. on 22 Mar 2007 at 12:39 pm 12. James Killus said …

    Interesting. “We could have stopped the war if it weren’t for you dirty hippies.”

    He should go over an sit with the fellows saying, “We could have won the war if it weren’t for you dirty hippies.” I’m sure that they would much to talk about.

    I believe that I will go out to the van to share a toke with those meddling kids and their stupid dog. I’ve had my eye on the girl with the glasses and I think she’s just waiting for a cool geek chic clique sheik (please note the extraordinary blending of early and late 20th century slangs) to party with.

  13. on 22 Mar 2007 at 12:39 pm 13. Chris Clarke said …

    Good stuff.

    But don’t sell the proto-510 lands short. Berkeleyans, in their insistence on subsuming everything to Stopping The War Then, did provoke the early second-wave feminists into being. Laura X was from Berkeley, after all.

    And Owsley lived on Berkeley Way, if I recall correctly. So there’s that.

  14. on 22 Mar 2007 at 1:19 pm 14. christian h. said …

    Plus, MSRI is in Berkeley, and there are few nicer places to do mathematics (not that I’ve ever had the privilege). What’s that have to do with anything? I don’t know.

  15. on 22 Mar 2007 at 1:47 pm 15. blondie said …

    You guys are all too griffin’ smart for the likes of me. I couldn’t even figure out how to comment a thanks for my invite to the End of Everything as You Know It (EEYKI) on the Welcome post. So I had to sneak it in here.

    On the actual topic of the quoted paragraph, I call bullshit. As James Killus noted, I highly doubt those dirty hippies were what kept Lyndon afightin’.

  16. on 22 Mar 2007 at 2:02 pm 16. christian h. said …

    Just so you know, when I go out to eat we might cause some consternation among the staff by singing the Internationale after the meal, but I make sure we tip well. And slip the waiter some IWW propaganda material, of course.

  17. on 22 Mar 2007 at 2:03 pm 17. christian h. said …

    “We” being me and my imaginary ideologically pure comrades, of course. It’s quite a spectacle.

  18. on 22 Mar 2007 at 2:38 pm 18. Oaktown Girl said …

    You guys are all too griffin’ smart for the likes of me. I couldn’t even figure out how to comment a thanks for my invite to the End of Everything as You Know It (EEYKI) on the Welcome post. So I had to sneak it in here.

    Blondie -
    (Just a very quick note from work) We are so glad to have you here, (and everyone else too, of course!).

    Friday night we will have our first Open Thread - a lovely way to spend your evening and weekend following our fabulous Friday post. There, everyone can say hello and mingle and cry over their busted NCAA bracket or complain about the people around them crying over their busted NCAA brackets, and whatever all else they want to do.

    And don’t let the griffins intimidate you. Lord Astaroth has several of them working for him. They’re all just a bunch of love-muffins beneath that exterior.

    Oaktown Girl
    Minister of Justice
    WAAGNFNP

  19. on 22 Mar 2007 at 3:52 pm 19. Jams said …

    Everyone has someone to blame for their own ineffectiveness.

  20. on 22 Mar 2007 at 4:38 pm 20. The Constructivist said …

    I blame everyone but me.

  21. on 22 Mar 2007 at 4:59 pm 21. The Constructivist said …

    Hear we’ve been banned already? Yeesh. Some people can’t tell the difference between fun and funny.

  22. on 22 Mar 2007 at 5:34 pm 22. Chris Clarke said …

    Just so you know, when I go out to eat we might cause some consternation among the staff by singing the Internationale after the meal,

    Kinda makes that “Arise ye prisoners of starvation” thing ring hollow, doesn’t it?

  23. on 22 Mar 2007 at 6:32 pm 23. JP.Stormcrow said …

    Open Thread … NCAA bracket…

    Ohio State getting blown out and Pitt down and unable to PUT THE FRICKING BALL INTO THE BASKET! Building up some good anguish for the Open Thread.

    Oh, was someone talking about stopping war or saving ourselves from ourselves in general, or something. They both sound like good ideas.

    Arise ye Panthers from your slumbers!
    Arise ye layers of the brick!

  24. on 22 Mar 2007 at 7:37 pm 24. peter ramus said …

    I’m a native San Franciscan, old enough to have engaged in a peripheral sort of way in the beautiful mess we made of things in the Sixties: spyder’s right about the perceived sense back then of a distinction between the possibilities being explored in Berkeley (as a synonym for radical left social action) and my home town (radical? You want radical? Take some of this stuff!).

    But of course there were Berzerklians at the Avalon Ballroom, and hippies tripping at the anti-war demonstrations. What everybody shared was an utter disdain for the glacial pace of liberal consensus building of the sort championed by Lilly. I sense the same deserved disdain in Ben Alpers’ comments regarding our current state of affairs.

    I respect liberal discourse because at its core, once you strip away all the acrimony that inevitably attaches to argument, it’s pretty rational stuff, and in the main provides fine footing for moving forward. But, Jesus Fuck, does it take its time. The momentous stuff, stuff like war, can take forever to work through. People are still arguing the merits of America’s involvement in Vietnam for crying out loud.

    I don’t believe the Vietnam war would have ended a minute sooner if folks had watched their grooming, spoken respectfully, and stopped pawing at each other with their animal lusts. The peculiar idea that responsibility for prolonging the war falls on people utterly opposed to it, rather than, say, the people actually prosecuting the damn thing (because, you know, that would mean the hippies win, and we can’t have that, so we’ll just kept on warring) is what I think they label, in liberal discourse, intellectually dishonest. I just tend to say, “Oh, fuck you.”

  25. on 22 Mar 2007 at 8:38 pm 25. The Constructivist said …

    Hell, people are still debating the merits of the firebombing campaigns in WW II (and of course debating whether we should debate the merits of the atomic bombings)! If anyone still paid attention to such things, we’d have had serious debates over our occupations of the Philippines and Haiti (when? oh like a million billion quadrillion years ago) before the invasion of Iraq…. History–it’s what’s for dinner.

  26. on 22 Mar 2007 at 9:28 pm 26. Oaktown Girl said …

    Hey Folks-
    as you can see, Trackbacks are showing up in our comment section, which is not part of the plan. I’ve contacted our tech person.

    The trackback that is currently comment #25 above is someone taking issue with spyder’s opinion (or what he perceives as spyder’s opinion) in this post (scroll down a little ways to view it).

  27. on 22 Mar 2007 at 10:03 pm 27. JP Stormcrow said …

    Hell, people are still debating the merits of…[various military adventures]

    But not Grenada. Thank God there was one war where we all knew why were there.

  28. on 22 Mar 2007 at 10:37 pm 28. jlsb said …

    owsley’s bathtub was one of two at the property on the nw corner of Virginia and McGee. it has been (was?) a punkhouse for the past twenty years. the originals had, unfortunately, been removed prior. if you believe the landlord.

  29. on 23 Mar 2007 at 1:23 am 29. The Constructivist said …

    Oaktown Girl, I don’t see why trackbacks shouldn’t show up in comments….

    JP: You mean, “Thank Astaroth,” right? We’ll always have Grenada!

  30. on 23 Mar 2007 at 7:53 am 30. spyder said …

    Thanks for all the comments, and critiques/support. I want to bookend this thread with a little anecdote from those turbulent 60’s, and it draws its relevancy from the easy criticism that some liberals find from their “holier than thou” views that only serious focussed efforts foment change and paradigm shifting (and that battle is still a major bone of contention among those engaged in entheogen research to this day, as well as in the larger left spectrum {Hoffman rode his freaking bicycle, people, and we needed him to do that}).

    In the fall of 1966, UCLA and USC ended up tied for the AAWU (two years later the Pac 8, then later the Pac 10) conference football title. The winner of that title was always the West Coast entry into the Rose Bowl. Well, UCLA had beaten USC in their head to head match, and we felt reasonably confident that our Bruins would be picked as the champions. To our own horrific surprise the Trojans were assigned that “title” and the honor of going.

    At UCLA at that time, one could literally count the total number of “hippies” on campus; we all knew one another, saw each other at shows, took the same redeyes to SanFran for Avalon, Family Dog, and early Fillmore shows, etc.. The vast 99% of students were perhaps no different from those in the 50’s, with the one powerful exception that most of the male students knew they needed to stay in school to stay out of the draft and war. The antiwar movement on campus was petite and ignored by the bulk of those on campus, the few demonstrations (down the street at the Fed building) were populated by vets and others, from around the westside and other communities. Into this mix, came this strange late Fall day in 1966.

    The decision came in the middle of the afternoon. Students had gathered in Pauley Pavilion (home to one of the greatest collegiate basketball teams of all time) by the thousands, and as soon as the announcement was made, the mood turned vile and ugly. There were feeble attempts to quell the mood, but for the most part the building exploded out into the world, a swarming pissed-off mob of hundreds, who just couldn’t let it be. Half the crowd went down fraternity row, the other down the main drag into Westwood (the home to all those silly movie premiers where the paparazzi stalk celebrities), picking up larger and larger groups of angry Bruins. Some of those of us at or near the front, realized that we could make a rather profound antiwar statement by leading this throng down to the Federal building where the VVAW and other antiwar groups has a small tent city and such. To get there we needed to use the two main routes that took us to the corner of Westwood and Wilshire at rush hour. Few can imagine an intersection–that in LA, has long been described as the busiest intersection in the city at rush hour–packed in all directions by vehicles now surrounded by a few thousand pissed-off, angry students (about a vote concerning who goes to the Rose Bowl). The crowd was angry, but the mood was getting to be downright fun for a bunch of us (what’s that smell).

    The usual throng of cops who “protected” the Federal Building realized they were about to be overwhelmed, and calling for backup, they retreated into the building. This left us the entire three blocks between the intersection (W/W) and the freeway (as well as the VA cemetery across the street) to control. There were little acts of vandalism, particularly directed at people who wanted to express their disapproval and/or happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time with USC stickers on their car. It also didn’t help that some Trojans had driven over to flaunt their largesse, and were now trapped in their cars surrounded by UCLA students who could easily have been much more violent and nasty. (keep in mind that 18 months earlier LA had experienced the Watts riots, and the LAPD, would be slowly awakening to the realization that they were not really fully prepared at all for riots and protests of this magnitude). The only law enforcement at the time were hiding, or stuck on the other side of the I-405 freeway trying to get from the West LA division HQ towards campus.

    We took on the freeway. Shut it down, which then shut down the west bound lanes of Interstate 10, the Marina section of a new freeway (later named for Nixon), and pretty much all of the east west and north south traffic of west LA during rush hour. The shock to the city was palpable. Finally chased off the freeway after dark, with most students going back to campus hungry or to party, we still felt that more could be done. We marched out Sunset towards that intersection of the freeway (this is the heart of Hombly Hills and Bel Air (multimillion dollar residences) only to meet a huge phalynx of LAPD, LASD, and CHP’s who were, by now, seriously prepared for their own senseless acts of violence. Rather than engage (and i do say that the officers showed incredible restraint given what occured over the next several years), we headed back to campus to party down (it was almost midnight).

    What was anger needing to be expressed over a freaking football game, led students to participate in collective action that shut down freeways, shut down a city, forced the “man” to retreat (for a time being), and was fun. Within the next two years, groups, using this energy, shut down Century City during LBJ’s visit, shut down W/W (the intersection) and the Federal building, and were able to get to the interstate a couple more times—all this to protest the Vietnam war. The Spring 1970 campus rebellion, the 1971 and 1972 unrest, extended these efforts, coalescing the movement. But without the fun and glorious zany creative spirit, these were bitter moments in LA (good thing that Mr. Stanley and that band moved to LA in 1967; at least for the few of us who were experienced, have you ever been experienced?).

    Flowers in rifles is sweeter and kinder than challenging the man to a duel (it was a freaking park people). The system still can’t take the freaks, and because of that we, while being on our own, are still free to have fun at its expense.

  31. on 23 Mar 2007 at 9:28 am 31. Dale said …

    First off, taking a two sentence quote out of a multi-paragraph argument is always dangerous. The article was more of a ’stop running around wearing pink shirts and not showering, yelling crazy shit at your own teammates…’

    While one thing is for damn sure, the process is not perfect… And i think the Bush Admin has exposed some serious flaws in our system of government. However, at this point the only thing people in the anti-war crowd can do to change things is actually engage the process. Let’s make the focus of our efforts actually ending the war, not the hoopla by which we attempt to change things.

    Instead of blogging about the war, attacking people on our side for their best efforts to end the war, and simply running around like idiots. Forcing change doesn’t come from theatrics and in-fighting. If only we could transfer some of the energy spent on creating all this hoopla into a cohesive, effective effort… we wouldn’t have to settle for this crap hand we’ve been dealt

  32. on 23 Mar 2007 at 9:46 am 32. christian h. said …

    The problem is that at any given point in time you can claim that “engaging the process” is the only practical way to proceed. One can go on all day about how change takes time and so forth and obscure the fact that on certain questions there has not been progress at all.
    In many ways, the issues brought up by counterculture - issues of sexuality, feminism, the whole identity politics stuff - has seen some progress since the seventies. Although if you look at it closely, this progress has been restrained by the overarching imperative not to allow anything that might undermine the ruling class in this country.
    However, on the core issue (for me - others are free to disagree) - capitalism and the class nature of society, and the imperialism that flows from it - we have actually made no discernible progress; one might argue, in fact, that we have regressed.

    I don’t counsel extremism for its own sake - I have never been impressed with regular calls for “general strikes” and “direct action” nobody heard, let alone acted upon - but I strongly disagree that we should give up on pursuing fundamental change in favor of incrementalism. Forcing change may not come from theatrics and in-fighting, but it sure as hell doesn’t come from being co-opted by those who do not want change.

    Puh. Sorry about the rant. Great story about ‘66, spyder!

  33. on 23 Mar 2007 at 10:53 am 33. spyder said …

    Rant and Roll if you feel this way (john trudell). As for the ken of Ken’s in my life, while Kesey is a certifiable hero, his partner and fellow prankster Babbs was more my mentor and hero. Arriving at the time from his US Marine roots, and i coming out of my US Navy ones, we shared a certain perspective on the war and on the military–on the objectives of politicians to use them, on the completely denial of citizens to empathize with them.

    And for all this rhetoric above, what happened yesterday/today?? The House progressives (see post of Ben Alpers above) consented to support the DLC language to pass the Obey bill strongly supported by Lilly that Bush now says he will veto. In the world of DC that is all a giant “So what!”

    These sorts of high strung conversations tend to obfuscate other issues that in the long run are much more important. For example the battle in the EPA that is now framed by lobbyists from chemical and other industries to marginalize the Clean Water Act so that the requirements for protection only apply to navigable waters. Consider for a moment that such a view allows for aquifers to be polluted (as they are becoming so anyway), and other streams, creeks, tidal lands, etc. \

    Where do you put your energy to fight the system’s attack on the Earth and all the people? It would be pissy and snarky of me to say, but the mainstream liberals who now demand we oppose the war, weren’t all standing up to oppose it in 2002-2003, now were they?? Indeed many DLC types are still supporting it.

  34. on 23 Mar 2007 at 4:44 pm 34. JP Stormcrow said …

    Well, UCLA had beaten USC in their head to head match, and we felt reasonably confident that our Bruins would be picked as the champions. To our own horrific surprise the Trojans were assigned that “title” and the honor of going.

    Ohio State had a similar, but self-inflicted, disappointment a few years earlier. Imagine this outcome in today’s environment.

    In 1961 the team went undefeated to be named national champions by the FWAA but a growing conflict between academics and athletics over Ohio State’s reputation as a “football school” resulted in a faculty council vote to decline an invitation to the Rose Bowl, resulting in much public protest and debate.

    Oh, and where were we… Stopping war and establishing a sane, sustainable relationship with the universe. Sounds good, carry on…

  35. on 24 Mar 2007 at 4:52 am 35. christian h. said …

    You can watch some video of “our boys” spreading “enlightenment values” in Iraq here. You know, the guys we all have to support. As opposed to Hezbollah, who are really evil. Links to more clips in the comments. But hey, the House just passed a law that’s never going to get through the Senate saying we should stay in Iraq only 18 more months. So let’s celebrate our brave men and women in Congress.

  36. on 24 Mar 2007 at 8:39 am 36. spyder said …

    Wag of the middle finger to Bushco and all the rest of the criminals trying to run this country….random collections of others’ expressions about the futility of the political processes and stupid wars.

    “Not another nickel, not another dime. No more money for Bush’s crime,”

    “Hell no, we won’t go. We won’t kill for Texaco,”

    “Hey, Bush! What do you say? How many kids did you kill today?”

    It goes to show you don’t ever know
    Watch each card you play
    and play it slow
    Wait until your deal come round
    Don’t you let that deal go down

    and as David Swanson writes, and says so much better than i:

    “A liberal is the kind of guy who walks out of a room when the argument turns into a fight.” - Saul Alinsky

    The Congress that was elected to end the war just voted to fund the war. Congresswoman Barbara Lee was not permitted to offer for a vote her amendment, which would have funded a withdrawal instead of the war. Groups that supported Lee’s plan and opposed Pelosi’s included United for Peace and Justice, Progressive Democrats of America, US Labor Against the War, After Downing Street, Democrats.com, Peace Action, Code Pink, Democracy Rising, True Majority, Gold Star Families for Peace, Military Families Speak Out, Backbone Campaign, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Voters for Peace, Veterans for Peace, the Green Party, and disgruntled former members of MoveOn.org.

    http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/6310