I wrote back:

Thank you for automatically assuming that since I cared enough to write you regarding an issue (which you duly ignored and sent me a form letter casually fellating my support of an issue which I, in fact, opposed) that I wanted to be signed up for the “Rich White Douchebags Pretending to Help Poor People Monthly”. I see Senator Corker made the cover this month — an excellent choice, if I do say so myself. As one of the wealthiest Senators, who has never (so far as I can tell) served in the military himself, yet who supported Bush and his pet war in Iraq, this photo is indeed a rare gem. Imagine! Him supporting the military!

Anyway, I’d just like to let you know that I do not, in fact, wish to subscribe. As I already read many magazines and see rich, white, condescending douchebags every day, I don’t really require such a periodical. Thanks again for thinking of me though.

Sincerely,
Flattered Reader

The last thing Los Angeles needs is a repeat of what happened in Oakland. The demonstrators haven’t made themselves a public nuisance to the extent they did in the East Bay, and there is no reason to rush a confrontation. At the same time, though, it’s becoming increasingly clear that they can’t be allowed to camp out at City Hall forever. They’re killing the lawn in one of downtown’s rare green spaces, which will have to be replaced at taxpayer expense, and they may be damaging City Hall’s majestic fig trees. Merchants who normally set up a weekly farmers market on the lawn have been forced to set up in a plaza across the street, and there are obvious sanitation, vermin and public-health problems that come with an impromptu encampment in an urban zone that wasn’t intended to accommodate it. Besides, it’s against the law to camp in city parks after 10:30 p.m.

Horror! Shriek! Gasp! Had I only heard this news sooner, how quickly I would have turned my back on the #Occupy movement. Someone really should do something about this grass-killing menace. Besides, it’s against the law to be a sober, peaceful, fully-cognizant adult wandering around “wild” after dark.

(Source) (via)

It seems to me like interest in the specific movements of #OccupyWallSt and its family of related protests around the world is waning, outside scattered reports of police brutality (and excepting the Citizen Radio podcast). Most commentators at this point have settled on their pre-conceived notions of what the make-up and results of the protest would be, seeing confirmation of their expectations lurking around every corner. So rather than relying on pundits slyly framing the protests in their particular narrative, let’s just focus on the numbers for a minute.

The professor who conducted the survey described the #Occupants as “disgruntled Democrats”, but is that perception accurate? I can see why he might think that. After all, 60% of the protesters appear to have supported Obama in 2008:

9. Who did you vote for in November 2008?

Barack Obama	60%
John McCain	2%
Other	11%
Did not vote	27%

And now an even larger majority of same are rejecting his performance:

1. Do you approve or disapprove of the way Barack Obama is handling his job as president?

Approve	27%
Disapprove	73%

To put those numbers against a baseline, Obama won 53% of the popular vote in 2008, and Gallup puts his approval rating right at 42-43% right now. So maybe slightly more Obama voters than average (+7 percentage points), but a far lower approval rating (-15 percentage points). But wait. Voter turnout in 2008 was roughly 57%, higher than any year since 1968 (and we all know what was driving voter turnout then!). And third parties, with notable exception of billionaire deficit hawk Ross Perot in the ’90s, rarely make a decent showing in American federal politics. So it’s at least as surprising that the Wall Street protesters are a mix of third-party voters (11% in 2008) and non-voters (27% in 2008). The former number is right at the baseline, but this isn’t an average crowd — that puts it on the high end. 27% isn’t a high percentage of non-voters for a national crowd, but it’s pretty striking in a small group of activists who have taken to the streets…

Looking further into the numbers, I see less reason to believe that the protesters are actually former Democratic activists with their sour grapes. Because of the long historical dominance of the American two-party system, I think the professor’s view actually reflects a bias toward identifying people as “supporters” of one party or the other. I don’t see any particular love for the Democrats among the #OWS protesters, at least not contained in this survey:

3. If the 2012 election for the U.S. House of Representatives were being held today, would you vote for the Republican candidate or the Democratic candidate in your district?

Democratic candidate	42%
Republican candidate	4%
Wouldn’t vote	22%
Someone else	32%

In other words, a majority (54%) of the protesters wouldn’t vote today for either of the mainstream parties in a Congressional election, to say nothing of an election for the president. Speaking of the president:

14. Thinking ahead to the election in November 2012, who do you plan to vote for president? (check one)

Barack Obama	36%
The Republican nominee	3%
I do not plan to vote	25%
Other	36%

Less than approve (nationwide) of Obama right now would vote for him again (though strangely, more than approve of him at #OWS?), but again an even stronger majority (61%) are looking for answers outside of mainstream politics.

The polling even gets into — with more appreciation for nuance than elsewhere — the potential political affiliations of the protesters:

8. Generally speaking, which of the following political parties do you identify with most closely? (check one)

Democratic	25%
Republican	2%
Tea Party	0%
Socialist Party	11%
Green Party	11%
Other	12%
I do not identify with any party	39%

This is perhaps the most incredible result in the survey. Survey respondents tend to answer in ways that they feel would be viewed positively. While refusing to identify with any political party might well be the result of groupthink within the protests, respondents here are unlikely to have thought their answers would be viewed by fellow protesters. Rather, they would have sought to please the researcher, who in this case has framed all questions but this one as pertaining to the support of mainstream politics as seen through the lens of the mainstream American news media. Thus, finally given the chance to identify their “true” beliefs, I feel like many more would have chosen a party than not. Perhaps I’m wrong, but you have my reasons and you’re free to disagree. Whatever happened here, almost three-quarters of the protesters (73%) do not identify strongly with either political party.

And they’re definitely no fans of the status quo in DC:

2. Do you approve or disapprove of the way Congress is handling its job?

Approve	3%
Disapprove	97%

---

10. How much of the time do you think you can trust the government in Washington to do what is right?

Just about always	1%
Most of the time	5%
Only some of the time	52%
Never	42%

Again, considering bias, 42% answer an unqualified never?! Unless I’m totally misreading it and the protesters were eager to flex their radical lefty street cred (doubtful considering the probable desire to override the smears against them in media coverage), it’s incredibly shocking that almost half the protesters believe Washington to be completely morally ineffectual. This is to say nothing of the fact that a full 94% believe it’s mostly incapable of correct action (never or “only some of the time”).

Perhaps the best evidence that the researcher here just didn’t “get it” with respect to the protesters’ political leanings is this:

13. What do you think is the most important problem facing this country today? (check ONLY one)

Unemployment and jobs	31%
Federal deficit/Government spending	9%
The wars in Iraq/Afghanistan	9%
Health care	10%
Education	8%
Terrorism/National Security	0%
Illegal Immigration	0%
Taxes	1%
Other	32%

For all his relatively extensive listing of “problems” (the ones the media focuses or has focused on, anyway), the researcher failed to adequately capture the imaginations of more than a third of the protesters on any single issue, and left a full third again wanting for any adequate encapsulation of the nation’s problems. This bizarre question (which is akin to asking, “how would you pigeonhole yourself?”; indeed, that can be said of the entire survey) is as telling an insight as one could probably ask for using traditional methods of “understanding” and “accounting” for populations (without, you know, visiting them). Basically, even when presented with what should be a puzzling question, few of the #OWS protesters are willing to jump on this or that bandwagon created by the media to cry foul against some perceived threat to our country.

What the hell was this researcher thinking? He went to Occupy Wall Street. Where’s “deregulation” on this list? Where’s “the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act”? There’s nothing about corruption, or banking, or the finance sector. There’s only lip service to anti-war positions (by naming the “major” two wars and failing to acknowledge literally hundreds of other military actions that have enjoyed far less support). There’s no political ideology anywhere.

Framed as it was, we can learn very little from an exercise like this, if indeed we can ever truly homogenize a population in this way. The #OWS protesters surveyed are disproportionately young (median age: 33; 25% students), and more than average are unemployed (28%). Overwhelmingly, though, this is not a group of radicals or the desperate poor. These are people who have been repeatedly failed by institutional American politics, corporate-government collusion, and the politicians who ostensibly represent them and make decisions on their behalf.

I’m now migrating away from Google, since it’s clear they’re more interested in maintaining their property than their client base. That means no more ‘Recommended Reading’ widget, which is predicated on the use of Google Reader. I’m going to replace this indefinitely (until something better occurs to me) with the @PaxReader Twitter feed. A key difference to note, if this is a part of the site you care anything about, is that this list is not curated. Where ‘Recommended Reading’ was only the posts I chose to share from Google Reader, this would be more like being logged into my Google Reader (alternatively, as if I shared literally everything). Thus, the change to the more appropriate title of ‘My Reading List’, since by definition there is no longer any implied recommendation.

Definitions

Sleep

Assuming 8 hours per day of sleep. I hear that’s average.

“Work day”

As traditionally defined: the time you’re actually at work.

Prep for work

Getting ready and eating in the morning and during your “lunch” break are all peripheral parts of the work day. Although you would still otherwise have to eat, your choice of food and eating time is almost always limited by both your work schedule and where you work (e.g., is there good food within a sensible distance? can you even leave on your break?). Avoiding these scenarios further complicates things, as it eats up precious time in the evening spent preparing for the next day on someone else’s schedule. Similarly, your choice of clothing is limited. One of the first things I do after work is to change into something more comfortable. During these parts of the day, choice of clothing is typically determined by external influences.

Commute

As above, assuming 2 hours per day commuting.

Wind down

As any wage-earner will tell you, we’re tired after work. For some of us, that’s got to do with the physical strain of our jobs. For others, the mental strain. In every case, there’s a good-sized period after coming home that you feel the need to relax and regain your strength. Even I, who have a sedentary office job, sometimes find that after a long day of staring at computer code, I can come home utterly useless for the rest of the evening. I’ve known many factory workers who weren’t much company (if they allowed anyone near them at all) on any day they actually worked. (Many of them indulge in alcohol or other drugs for this very reason.) Granted I’ve picked a number here, but I think 90 minutes a day of R&R after work where you’re just not yourself is a fair estimation of the average of the continuum running from so-called “cushy” jobs (not much recuperation needed) to manual labor (lots of recuperation needed).

“Free” time

All that’s left. The only time we’re truly free is when we are able to do as we please. Time spent fussing about doing things we wouldn’t do left to our own devices is not “free” time because we’re doing it to please the one who is paying us our living, or else we’re paying obeisance to some social custom or ritual we’d as soon not follow except that it is demanded by the hollow platitudes of professionalism and other such pseudo-ethical systems. Likewise, time spent making decisions that are necessarily limited by factors related to our occupation — some of which I discussed above — is not truly free, either. (By this logic, some of us sadly have no free time.)

Conclusions

Questioning the Assumptions

Is this a representative sample of the American working class? I’ll be the first to tell you I don’t know and probably not. But is the fellow above so rare? Some quick Googling shows that while he is at the top end of the American commute, he’s not unheard of:

(Asked of adults who are employed full or part-time) How much total time in minutes do you spend commuting to and from work in a typical day?

2007 Aug 13-16

	%
Less than 30 minutes	28
30 minutes to less than one hour	36
One hour to less than 90 minutes	17
90 minutes to less than 2 hours	9
2 hours or more	8
No answer	2
Source: 2007 Gallup Poll

Also according to the above link, while a thin majority (53% ±3) say their commute is not that stressful, this particular kind of worker is far more likely to be stressed out (thus showing that in this thought experiment, at least, he is in an agitated state unlikely to be experienced in his own free time):

Although the vast majority of all workers say their commute is either not that stressful or not stressful at all, workers with longer round-trip commutes say they experience much more stress than those with shorter commutes. This may be due to those with longer commutes report traveling more than three times as far as those with shorter commutes.

Is he representative in other ways? Well, a 40-hour work week certainly isn’t far-fetched (or not). Wikipedia suggests I’m not outdated thinking about 8 hours of sleep a night. 3 hours per day “prepping for work” suggests 1-2 hrs/day setting things out for tomorrow, bathing and grooming, and eating breakfast and lunch (or your equivalents based on shift). Again, a lot of this is stuff we’d all be doing otherwise, but the key here is that it’s not being done leisurely, and that I’m defining free time as, essentially, leisure time. As I mentioned before, eating and clothing choices are limited during this period in many (most?) cases. You might also bathe or groom differently (or at least on a different schedule) “for work” than you would if unemployed. Continue on in this way and it’s not hard to see where 3 hours a day could be spent doing this. If you think this is bullshit, then just keep reading. I’ve got some flex time built into this as pertains to my ultimate point.

Why Free Time Matters

There’s a reason we call it our “precious free time” — because there’s precious little of it. If, as above, we spend just over half our lives doing our jobs or worrying about them ¹, then that remaining 15.8%, just shy of a quarter of our waking lives, is what we’re left to divide between home, family, love, art, children, pets, reading, skydiving, writing, solving, LIVING. You know, all the shit we do really, really well that virtually none of us have jobs doing. You can certainly nitpick with some of the things I’ve listed, and they’re different for everyone. But loving one’s free time is universal precisely because of these things; it’s part of being human.

Americans are eccentric in a lot of ways, and one of them is certainly that we work too hard. And if you listen carefully (the rest of the world does), you’ll note that the loudest voices among us advocating for hard work are probably the least worked among us. I’m not saying there are no poor people who are completely opposed to this view — there certainly are. There are also anti-feminist women and anti-gay gays. I don’t claim to truly understand it, though I’ve got my own theory as I’m sure you do.

But even if you don’t think Americans need to collectively relax ², I ask you sincerely to concentrate your imagination on the being implied by my thought experiment. I’ve shown, I do hope, that is he not only possible, but actual. There are such people, if not in such proportions exactly, then with more or less the same general ratio. In fact there are a great deal many worse, such as the iconic poor single mother working several jobs to feed her children, or vice versa. Then I want you also to set firmly in your mind the sorts of things you enjoy about leisure time. Why is it important to you? Perhaps you do important work: do you not do things even more important (to you) in your evenings? You don’t have to change your Facebook political views to “Anarcho-Syndicalist” to see that there’s a lot of personal sacrifice going on in this country every day, and quite a bit more than people tend to realize.

The Point ³

The point is this: Even if this guy is an outlier nationally, it’s not hard to relax the numbers a bit and see that even a more conservative picture of perhaps a modern American full-time worker depicts someone splitting their life evenly among work, sleep, and the pursuit of happiness. In other words, you work a third, you sleep a third, you keep a third. Forgive me, friends, but that sounds like a raw deal. After all, what do most of us get paid? $30,000/yr? $40,000/yr? When many of us ask ourselves what any human life is worth, we often come up short, deciding there really isn’t any answer at all. And yet, our own lives seem to be worth no more to us than $120,000. Would we work the full 24 hours for a full 24-hours’ portion of our wages, our access to the little wealth we use to advance and better ourselves?

Under capitalism, if not always then at least as expressed in the modern US, we all must “play the game”, for even our bread on the table is won by our hard work. What is the point of a society as wealthy and as technologically advanced as ours, after all, if it as yet cannot provide the basic needs — food, clean water, clothing, shelter, warmth — to all its citizens? “But all of that is there!” goes the objection to this. But it is not there for the taking. On the contrary, it is there for the “earning” which we do through our labor and toil at things that only go toward facilitating the dreams of others, while our own languish. Meanwhile, if we do not or cannot work hard enough, we are cast aside to die, our children left to starve, our name ground to dust. Simultaneously, some in our midst have the means to do everything they please.

In Part II, I will say more of these (mostly) men who so govern and control our daily lives. Meanwhile, I implore you to ponder these questions if you have not done so already. Does it really make sense that we live this way? Can you imagine nothing better? If you can imagine it, for what reason can it not be so? If your answer to that is, at bottom, “I am powerless,” then you are not alone; but therein lies the key, for our strength is in numbers. Where one is powerless, many are unstoppable. Keep reading.

The Subject

Progressive. Says it right there on the tin.

The Data

An Obamabot:

...wait. I thought that was pejorative?

A “fiscal conservative” interventionist:

Who knew mass murder could be so cheap?

A USA PATRIOT:

Give him another Nobel Peace Prize!

An activist:

My president can beat up your president

Poor Obama

A True Believer:

Team America! Fuck Yeah!

Sampling Techniques

Representative Sampling, Not Cherry Picking

“THANK YOU FOR ONLY KILLING DIRTY FOREIGNERS, PRESIDENT OBAMA.” —Some Black Woman

...and vote y'all

John Glaser:

Michele Bachmann in last night’s presidential debate:

Cutting back on foreign aid is one thing. Being reimbursed by nations that we have liberated is another. We should look to Iraq and Libya to reimburse us for part of what we have done to liberate these nations.

Bachmann isn’t the first to suggest that invading, destroying, and occupying a country for the benefit of defense corporations and Washington’s national security planners is grounds for reparations to be paid back to the United States government. I’ve written before about such idiotic proposals. This is such extreme ignorance it’s hard to stomach.

We did this, you know. Our nightmarish corporato-capitalistic machine churns out these candidates because all it takes in our country to become famous is a little bit of start-up money and a marketable personality. Michele is a Good Christian Woman with a Faithful Husband (who cures “the gays”); just Good, Trustworthy, Suburban Whites Like God Intended. Of course, some of this is her doing, since she has the Strength of Character to Ask Tough Questions. And Fame = Money = Power. Actually, for many people, Fame = Money = Power = Trust.

I don’t mean you, dear reader. You’re the enlightened sort (or a spambot) if you’re reading this. No, I mean the Sleeping Classes — the dormitariat. I mean the lumbering hordes watching television and reading the Bible. I mean your mom and dad. I mean the desperate and powerless who have sold their souls to the failed system by proclaiming, to their own self-comfort, “There is nothing I can do!” In a way, I can sympathize. There isn’t anything you can do. But there is something we can do. We can reject. We can resist. We can learn. We can teach. We can inform.

Michele Bachmann isn’t an anomaly or a rogue idiot; she is a mouthpiece for the illness affecting our entire culture. She is America crying out against its own decadence and decay. Her cruelty and lunacy is amplified endlessly by the echo chamber, Approved by the elite and Consumed hungrily by the masses. Bachmann is not an indictment of her own low IQ, however low it may be; she is an indictment of the entire failed American Experiment and the vastly unexceptional, unsympathetic culture it has spawned.

Bachmann’s prominence is an indictment of the State. The staggering behemoth that is Our Government (and the out-of-control machines and algorithms that compromise our Two Parties) are the gale force winds of Hurricane Bachmann, but it is the glassy-eyed masses, paralyzed with fear, uncertainty and doubt, who acquiesce to her terrible presence. We must not forgive our “plugged-in” brothers and sisters; on the contrary, we must strive to awaken them. This is the time for more speech.

Ignorance does not become the masses. We must not be silent, lest we suffocate beneath the overgrowth of the thin veil of wool covering America’s eyes. It is in silence that the martyrs of Palestine suffer. Not their silence, mind you, but ours. It is in silence that millions of men, women, and children are incinerated for the crime of living where they happen to have been born. And it is in silence that the few bones thrown to the lower classes (i.e., The Bill of Rights) in the formation of the oft-worshipped Constitution are ground into dust and left to blow away in the wind.

None the less, I hear the pragmatist. I would not recommend 24-hour rabble-rousing to your average person. That shit has real life consequences in an environment where shunning behavior is so well-rehearsed. And few can bear the attendant strain of basing one’s life around silently screaming at the deaf. The American epidemic of zombieism is a culture that’s marketed to us by the most powerful forces in the world, armed with the most pervasive message broadcasting system the universe may have ever known and billions of dollars in clinical research into methods of control and behavioral modification. For this reason, I remind you of the two most important aspects of our movement: solidarity and resistance.

Remember that the automata surrounding you every day are not human in a way we’ve ever defined that word prior to the 20^th century. Humans are thinking things, and thinking, like most art, experienced significant decline in the last 100 years. The broken nature of our system permeates our everyday lives. Those of us with our eyes open see it all around us. And there is a rich tradition — dating back at least to the French Revolution if not all the way to Athens — in Western History, of thinking this way. Socialists, anarchists, and leftists of various stripes have always been around, always going by different names to suit their particular period in history. Remember this. It binds us together both presently with our movement brethren ¹ and through time and space with our ancestors.

Remember that this is quintessentially human. That we are not in the decline of civilization, but the decline of American civilization. Remember that the most marginalized forces in history have never gone away, even for a second, while elites come and go like so many sunrises and sunsets. We are the perennial; they are the fragile. Remember as well that power, as Foucault reminded us, is a two-way street. It is the submission of the powerless as much as the commission of the powerful that results in the exchange of authority. Thus, there is one protest we can all join in: resistance.

Resist their ideas. Boycott their language games. Refuse to play by their terms in every way that you can. Celebrate your humanity by leading an intellectual, informed life. Lead by example. Right now, as we speak, we are at the most recent crest of the waves made by centuries of thinking about societies. We are part of an undercurrent that has been running through all of known history, and we shall overcome. It is we who hold the keys to the future. The braver we can be, the faster we can unlock it by waking the masses from their dogmatic slumber.

Frogsarelovely, who pointed me to the article originally in asking for my take, responds (in yesterday’s comments):

In response to your critique I have this to say. You are proving she is right in her assertion that any or all other tactics of resistance is rejected. I find you go further by making her look like a crazed violent maniac.

Yikes. Well, clearly, I’ve got some ‘splainin’ to do. I think this is nothing more than a textbook clash of worldviews, so I want to attempt to explain mine so it can be accepted or rejected on its merits rather than awed misunderstanding. I don’t think Frogs genuinely sees where I’m coming from so I want to try to provide a little background. While I took perhaps a harsh tone in my previous post (for reasons I’ll get more into later), please know that all the following is intended as gentle correction, rather than any sort of condescension.

When I read this article it made me question my own thoughts. I believe in peace and I also think that it may be time for other tactics to be examined.

This seems to me (and perhaps I’m reading between the lines) to imply a sort of dogmatism on my part. This much is explicitly suggested numerous times in the original article by Morningstar. I’d be lying if I said the article “made me question my thoughts”, but pacifism is not something I dabble in. I have read, thought, and written about it a great deal, understand several different flavors of it, and even have some cursory familiarity with the philosophical literature on it. While it may come off as dismissive or even dogmatic that I am so quick to dismiss Morningstar’s arguments, please know that it is only because I have heard (and responded to) them all before. My beliefs are based on what I perceive to be credible evidence and careful moral consideration; I see neither of these things in Morningstar’s article.

As a matter of fact, I stand by my reading of Morningstar’s article, and I think I could accurately summarize that as callous dismissal and dogmatism. Has Morningstar really given due consideration to pacifism (as she would have pacifists for violence)? I sincerely doubt it, given that her entire argument, which I take for granted is heartfelt, is regarding a pacifist bogeyman from forty-year-old editorialized philosophical literature, making it a strawman at best.

This brings me to another point. The only kind of pacifism discussed in Morningstar’s essay is absolutist, and indeed even non-absolutist pacifism was given an absolutist tinge by her rhetorical flourish. I am not an absolutist about anything, insofar as I can help it. The very nature of skeptical pacifism is skepticism. I don’t reject violence; I question it relentlessly. As Chomsky put it so eloquently (paraphrased), the onus is always on the one exercising power or violence to defend the use of it. That is clearly not what Morningstar is doing. Rather, she argues viciously against pacifism (calling it several times a “pathology”, as if to imply that a pacifist belief system connotes mental defect), as if somehow “defeating” it intellectually leaves only acceptance of violence. There could be not a single pacifist in the world, and violence would still be wrong. (I know that may sound absolutist to some, but discussing why I think it’s not is far outside the scope of what I’m writing here. Ask in comments if you want a post about that.)

Briefly, I am a French separatist from Québec. I remember the October crisis and the war measures act. I also remember the Kanehsatake resistance from the Mohawks. Two instances where Resistance by force and/or threats and/or violence gave results where peace did not.

I don’t think that the author is promoting violence nor am I by the way. She is saying that we need to stop wanting everyone to think and act the same. Her article is mostly about the environment and the need to take a stand.

I wouldn’t go as far as to suggest that Frogs is promoting violence, but Morningstar? Her argument boils down to “give violence a chance”. Do we not think that John & Yoko were advocating peace (at least wrt the Vietnam Conflict)? It’s not a far stretch from there to saying Morningstar is promoting violence. I recognize that this is a relatively minor moral outrage compared to actual violence of any sort, much less that practiced regularly by the state. None the less, let’s call a spade a spade.

When I heard about the Tar sands action I was surprise to hear that so many people were ready to go to jail for their beliefs. But when I saw them being so cooperative about being arrested and other applauding them and they are still sending letters to Obama as if he will listen. I am stunned and a little disgusted. We are talking about the dirtiest project on the planet here.

Now the Occupy the world movement comes on and already we see a difference. Those protester are screaming shame, shame and are in the cops faces and sit-down and make it harder for the cops. The establishment is worried. Good. It’s only the beginning.

Now to get back to the tar sands. How much longer can we wait before we let corporations destroy not only the economy but the planet we live on? Are we willing to let Big oil company, Mosanto etc get away with the destruction or are we willing to consider other alternatives like say sabotaging oil pipes or burning seeds to stop it. Is it an act of violence?

There’s a lot to unpack here. First, quickly, I’d like to sharply distinguish between applauding the arrested and a engaging in a letter-writing campaign to our failed, disconnected president. The belief that Obama is “still” a progressive is beyond baffling to me, and the efficacy of writing letters to politicians unmoved by all but the largest campaign donations more so. Being arrested at a protest, however, is an act of courage. Standing up to the potentially deadly violence of the state is an act of unsurpassed bravery, and being in the midst of a protest that the police choose to “crack down” on, to use their cutesy language, is every bit as scary as the front lines of a warzone must be. The peacefully arrested at a protest are metaphorical martyrs, and demonstrably approving of that sacrifice is praiseworthy.

Secondly, I don’t know the Tar Sands action intimately, other than to say I know the gist of what’s being protested and that it’s being protested. I do, however, follow the #OccupyWallStreet protests to some extent. Particularly interesting, I find, is that #OWS is “led” by a group of anarchists who set up Bloombergville — to my knowledge, a voluntary anarchist collective that organizes protests, holds teach-ins, and even has its own library. This, plus some amazing ingenuity on the part of some perhaps Anonymous-affiliated hacktivists on the ground is the core of #OWS by my lights. And one thing that has stood out to me the whole time about the OccupyTogether movement (esp. in the original sense, at #OWS in New York) is how incredibly peaceful the protesters have been in the face of adversity. As a matter of fact, I am under the impression that they employ largely the same tactics as the Tar Sands protesters are being accused of here.

Contrary to Morningstar, I see this as something to be admired. As I alluded to in my post, I don’t see pacifism as passivism, nor as morally blameworthy. Even so, I don’t think one needs to be pacifist to appreciate the pragmatism of this. In the grand scheme of things, and in the face of what we can surely all agree is the vast and terribly violent presence of the state, throwing oneself at the police or literally starting a riot will only cause lots of our currently energized activists to get needlessly hurt or locked in cages. That, to my mind, is a swift way to end #OWS, which is right now a bastion of hope, perhaps to the entire world.

I also want to turn particular attention to the question of whether or not destructive direct action is violence. Emphatically, no. I have a very nuanced view of violence, but I can summarize it (and often have done) thus: violence is making a choice for an individual that they ought to be entitled to make for themselves. It is this that I object to, and this that by my pacifism I reject (or rather, question mercilessly). It could be argued that you are choosing to destroy objects which are the rightful property of others, but I personally find the right of most “private property” to be absurd and indefensible. That’s my view, and others may disagree, but thus do I conclude that I would not label such destruction violence.

So you see, again, I do not reject these tactics out of hand. The time may well come when they are useful. But at #OWS or the Tar Sands, you’re just asking a lot of energetic young people to suffer a crushing defeat in order to swiftly achieve some minor, short-term victory. I would much rather patiently wait and have them continue to build, to band together peacefully, and to prove that this is not a transient movement. Why prove to the state that it can (yet again) crush rebellion? Rather, let us prove to the state that our rebellion is enduring, and that we do not forget: that they, alone, do not control the message.

Finally, let me elaborate on my point about the success rate of violence. I doubt very much that I will ever be swayed by any number of examples of violence “working” where peace “failed”. Again, this is not dogmatism, but the recognition that these sorts of counterfactual arguments are necessarily limited. Once peace has been interrupted by violence, who is to say what might or might not have been accomplished in the unwritten future in which it had been maintained? Furthermore, who is the right and just arbiter of what constitutes “winning” and “failing”. Peace provides intangible gains like hope, morale, and goodwill that cannot be so easily quantified and measured against the alleged success of violence in its stead.

The violence is done everyday by the 1%. They have all the power. They need to be stopped. We need a debate on how to do it. Can more than one tactic work? I think so but at least let us have a debate without the scorn and high moral judgment.

The 1% are united in their greed. Why can’t we be united in changing the world. We all live in different countries and I trust the 99% to do what they feel has to be done depending on their own conditions. After all if Mohamed Bouazizi had not set fire to himself would the world be resisting right this moment?

Yes, the 1% have all the power, or at least the vast majority of it. In fact, that’s exactly my point. This is why it’s utterly pointless to use violence, because in a contest of power, we already know who will win. What the 1% do not have, and “the 99%” do, is numbers. That’s why, by my lights, the game right now is “hearts & minds”, which in turn is best served by peace and love. Turning to terrorism this early in the game would be to invite the full force of the state to bear down on us, squashing a perhaps viable movement in its infancy. This would be the height of foolishness, and as a pacifist who chooses to contribute information (what I believe is my best ability to help), I feel a sort of duty to strongly condemn rhetoric I perceive as violent, dangerous, and divisive.

The sentiments expressed here are clear and resonate strongly with me, but the picture is oversimplified. The 1% are not “united in their greed”; they merely all share that they want the best for themselves. A faction united by selfishness will soon find that it is not united at all. Why can’t we all be united in changing the world? I don’t know. Why can’t we all just get along? I don’t think I’m being frivolous, so I guess I don’t see myself as “just not getting along” so much as just not going along, something that underlies my very radicalism. Unity and solidarity are admirable, even necessary, goals right now. But that doesn’t mean I want the whole populace to be marching in lockstep under a thin veneer of hypocritical conformism. Rather, I think there will have to be a cultural revolution occurring in parallel with the social revolution, the very reason I often refer to it as the “sociocultural” revolution when I speak of its (hopeful) inevitability.

I think history offers far too many examples of passionate visionaries getting so swept up in the idea of change that they try to take matters into their own hands, forcing through a change that society is not yet ready for. In all cases, this has ended badly. Think of the Bolsheviks, or Rev. Jones. Consider the moral bankruptcy of the Professional Left. Consider even the bankster or venture capitalist, using their godlike power and resources to intentionally craft and shape the world in ways they can’t even understand. Because I am opposed to these things in principle, I do not take lightly to suggestions of use by the proletariat quid pro quo. Power corrupts, so I’m content to sit and wait on a movement to form, instead of throwing away my principles to catalyze a change that will never happen if we all begin by selling our morals to the View from Nowhere, an unrealistic vision of the greater good.

I hope I’ve at least shed some light on my response, and shown that I’m not trying to be reactionary. I’ve made this a second post in order to foster more discussion, and to disprove by example the notion that rejecting (or merely questioning) the use of violence is tantamount to stifling criticism. Finally, while I stand by everything I said, I do apologize for the way the previous post would have come across to a neutral-ish reader unfamiliar with my background. That’s not really how I normally write for this blog, but perhaps it would have been better in this instance.

We have now reached a new level of subservient conditioning in an action ironically titled Stop the Machine. If the freedom fighters from liberation armies and resistance fronts read “the rules” that the organizers have established in order to “stop the machine,” they would undoubtedly come to the conclusion that Americans are insane.

The rules put forward by the organizers of this action clearly demonstrate how the mainstream liberal movement as a whole is further embracing its false belief that they (the “leaders” of the movement) have the moral superiority and authority to impose their unnegotiable, absolute tactical doctrine on all others, framing anyone who falls out of line with the dogma as provocateurs or “haters” who wish to incite violence. Such free-thinkers will be verbally chastised, stigmatized, then isolated and marginalized to the best of the ability of those wish to cling to denying reality. To date, these simple steps have proved most effective in stifling dialogue and shutting down dissent.

That’s quite a weighty charge with which to begin an essay. Unfortunately for me, I’m a bit devoid of context here. As I’m not familiar with “Stop the Machine” (and also, presumably, not part of the intended audience), I can only guess the targets of the more specific charges. Morningstar mentions “rules” and “rules of non-engagement” being allegedly forced down the throats of the activist left, but for the life of me I can only find this list of non-violent guildelines and principles for resistance supplied by Veterans for Peace and supplemented with some MLK. If that’s really the “new requirement” for the left that Morningstar is referring to in her title, then maybe that already says more than you need to know.

But I’m charitable enough to admit that there is perhaps a more strongly worded list of hard-and-fast rules somewhere that I simply did not turn up. After all, I’m in the position of ignorance here. So I’ll just let Morningstar explain her own charges. She continues:

Some of the actions that have been undertaken include: training “peacekeepers,” a request that participants undergo nonviolence training, employing “peace cameras” to video anyone who might initiate violence with a request that participants bring cameras too and work with police to make them aware of threats and to isolate counterprotesters if they should attend.

Other rules include turning your anger at injustice into a positive, non-violent force; no destruction or vandalism of non-sentient objects; no running or other “threatening” motions; no insulting or swearing; protecting those who “oppose or disagree with us” (i.e., police) from insult or attack; no verbal or physical assaults on those who “oppose or disagree with us” (i.e., police) “even if they assault us.”

I’m baffled as to what’s so shocking or awful about this. Here again we have, now in the author’s own language, phrases suggestive of undermining the original thesis: “a request that participants undergo nonviolence training”; “a request that participants bring cameras… and work with the police”. What seem to me to be sensible guidelines apparently strike Morningstar as abhorrent, and symbolize (as she later writes) “citizens… essentially being trained to completely submit to the corporate state — even if they are beaten with weapons.” Now, I’m a fan of both extremism and rhetoric, and have no soft spot for the corporate state nor its attendant arsenal: but, seriously? I don’t think Veterans for Peace is really an arm of “the corporate state that is hell-bent on eradicating us”, and supposing there is a missing list of rules here, I think passing out fliers that teach people good ways not to get arrested and/or the shit beaten out of them can only attract more warm bodies to any hopeful protest. Even if there is some hidden list of draconian peace-rules somewhere ¹, how the hell is a lefty community-organizer NGO going to enforce them? If they were capable of so much coercion, I don’t think they’d be wasting time organizing street protests.

We jump from here to Morningstar categorically rejecting pacifism sans argument: “[following ‘the rules’] is nothing less than an irresponsible, misleading nightmare that shields the truth rather than exposing it.” As I pointed out, I think the guidelines could easily be interpreted as a good way to keep people from being arrested unnecessarily ², and on that view these objections are ludicrous on their face. To hear Morningstar tell it, telling a bunch of possibly scared, possibly first-time young activists to keep their wits about them and not turn into a riotous mob doomed to choking tear gas and “dummy” rubber bullets (if not live ones) is the moral and ideological equivalent to sucking a bank CEO’s cock before going on CNN the next morning to tell the American people what dirty hippies are at #OccupyWallStreet.

Morningstar would have you believe this is due to the Professional Left, whom she calls “activists… replaced with global strategists, finance officers, marketing executives and branding agencies.” While I don’t disagree with the characterization, this is nothing other than a bizarre inversion of marginalization from someone so extreme that ‘mainstream’ has become an insult. ³ Morningstar goes on to sling ad hom after ad hom, furiously piling insult upon insult, while drawing heavily on populist language (of various sorts) to paint these evil flier-printers as yuppie, middle-class white liberals who Just Don’t Get It™:

The movement with the corporate greens at the forefront refuses to admit — and in many cases refuses to even acknowledge the cold hard fact — that our success in achieving truly substantive change has been essentially zero, completely impotent. And a million “likes” on Facebook won’t make this fact any less so. And as far as preventing our own mass-eradication of unparalleled proportions, the “leaders” of the movement are a trillion miles away in La-La Land and racking up the airmiles. Reality cannot and will not be altered by a belief that the white middleclass can stop the very forces oppressing us with a dazzling dress code and impeccable manners.

Further, a dogmatic refusal to see reality and failure, along with an obdurate insistence on condemnation of those who may choose to take up self-defence (thereby framing anything other than “their way” as unacceptable in the eyes of the public) does nothing but further displace ongoing violence and bone-grinding poverty onto the billions of citizens and species already marginalized and suffering. This is not to say that everyone is expected to participate in self-defence. Rather it is to say that one’s decision must be base upon real facts — not on the doctrinaire delusion that pacifism is a moral virtue.

I’ll cut myself short here and just say that I find the view that “[our progress] has been essentially zero” is ahistorical, from a big-picture perspective. I’ll skip all the glib jokes about social media campaigns and dogmatism and just go for the part that really irks me, which is the repetition of the old myth that one man with a knife could kill a room full of pacifists. I attribute this to pure naïveté, and rather than condemning as a sin the author’s ignorance, merely humbly suggest Andrew Fiala’s wonderful entry on pacifism in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy as a good introduction to the various flavors of it, including my own. [Full Disclosure: I corresponded with Mr. Fiala by email a few times in grad school, but that's more a bragging right than a bias. It was just discussing his views, that entry, and his then-upcoming book The Just War Myth; neither of us had anything to gain from the correspondence.]

Morningstar spends the next few paragraphs trying to infuse the reader with the sheer terror and paranoia she obviously feels at impending environmental collapse, ⁴ building to a fever pitch:

Once enough tipping points have been passed it is essentially GAME OVER. There is no going back. No second chances. This is what mainstream NGOs, even ones claiming they are the leaders in the climate movement based on climate science (350.org/1Sky), do not share with the public. Why? Because it is terrifying. We must fight to achieve the impossible.

And by fight, of course, she presumably means setting stores on fire, throwing rocks at SWAT officers, and hurling Molotov cocktails. Actually, just kidding:

If citizens occupied the industries that supply the [military/imperial] occupations, if we stopped this madness as a unified front, on top of eradicating energy wastage (56% of all energy is wasted in the U.S. economy alone) through extensive conservation, we would create the swiftest, most massive dent in the climate crisis possible. Further, if we transferred all fossil fuel subsidies to zero-carbon energy, the dent would be astronomical…

Got that, folks? All we have to do is occupy the entire physical military-industrial complex (at least the parts of it on US shores, I guess), eradicate all energy wastage in the US economy, and impose draconian conservation law. Gee, that sounds easy. Seriously, I’ve heard critics of the Professional Left ⁵ referred to as “Leaders without a Movement”. Yet, if anything, Morningstar embodies this charge. Aside from writing entertaining populist manifestos, I do hope she has some oratorial talent at least, since she’s going to need a tremendous group of extremely loyal individuals to pull this off. If I may be permitted to reduce my skepticism here to an old joke, “Her and what army?”

Taking another turn (though perhaps this time toward the middle), Morningstar decides to argue against (some kind of) pacifism that she’s already categorically rejected. Dutifully citing well-known pacifist, “Film director Josh Fox”, Morningstar cites several important documentaries effectively proving that pacifism doesn’t work, by showing two or three weighty examples of where pacifist resistance “didn’t work” well enough for her. Again, seriously? I’m going to yet again attribute this to mis/disinformation. Surely this sophomoric attempt to undo all of philosophical pacifism with a wave of the hand toward a few films is not serious. If anything, I will simply repurpose a phrase I’m borrowing from Mr. Quotable, and say that if the game is which resistance method has had more stunning, disheartening, brutal defeats at the hands of the violence of the state, I’d call it a draw. In any case, winning 3% of the time may be 150% better than winning 2% of the time, but who’s counting?

Hell, Morningstar’s beef isn’t even really with pacifism (to the extent she even understands what that is). It’s with common sense. Protesters numbering in the hundreds and occasionally thousands springing up in cities across North America is a welcome development, but it’s hardly indicative that now is the time to rise up as One Nation and throw Obama/Harper/Cameron into the Atlantic. As far as I can tell, this “argument” from urgency runs approximately thus:

1. We owe violence everything good about the world.
2. Things are really scary right now.

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3. Get your pitchforks

Yet again, though, I pull out ironic hyperbole, and one paragraph further I get one-upped by reality:

Pacifism is a deadly position for those exploited and facing death. In the case of escalating climate change and collapsing ecosystems, those facing death are us and all living species on the planet. Forever.

Therefore, to be clear, when we speak of force, by any means necessary, we are embracing this essential and vital position, in self-defence.

Allow me to rearrange that into premises and conclusion, so the insanity here comes into clearer focus.

1. Pacifism is a deadly position for those exploited and facing death. (Assumption ⁶)
2. We’re all exploited and facing death. (From corporatocracy, climate change)

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3. Therefore, all violence is not only justified, but is in de facto self-defense. (From thin air, ass)

The essay meanders on like this for paragraphs beyond this, explaining how we’re all — rich and poor alike — “happily” participating in the system which we “not only condone but also support” by merely existing within it. Yes, merely by shopping at one of the two corporations in my town that sell food, I’m apparently committing intellectual suicide as a pacifist, since I’m “supporting violence” against underpaid overseas laborers with my dollar vote. Woe as me! The lack of choices presented to us by our magnanimous Corporate Masters is apparently not enough to absolve the poor of the Eighth Deadly Sin of shopping for groceries while the world is imperfect. Damned though we are, I’d like to offer another suggestion for our beloved author to read up on: moral agency.

Reaching the pinnacle of shrillness, Morningstar all but fetishizes her fantasy guerilla activist paramilitary for us, demanding our unthinking respect before throwing in some paranoid-delusional afterthought about the supposed ‘criminalization’ of self-defence by the Ruthless Pacifist Overlords:

Skilled saboteurs are desperately needed. Underground movements and radicals who have the bravery to fight for humanity and for the rest of Nature, by any means necessary, deserve and require our undivided respect, gratitude and public support. Self-defense is not a crime. ⁷

At this point, I’m giving up. My point is made, and I have little time for this sort of drivel. Suffice it to say the rest is a mix of emotional appeals (“Think about the poor blacks that fought back against the KKK!”), cherry-picking boring, already debunked articles supposedly proving pacifism is “morally indefensible” that Morningstar likely doesn’t understand anyway (given her paucity of knowledge on philosophical literature thus far demonstrated) and are thus mere fluff thrown in to give a pseudo-intellectual academic gloss on her tired, Swiss-cheese arguments. Oh, and Bill McKibben is the high priest of the Pacifist Illuminati, and is secretly disseminating our propaganda through the Guardian by writing what would otherwise appear to be a really common article about a popular civil rights hero who’s been in the news quite a bit lately. Shit, you caught us.

Starting today, as promised on Twitter, I’m going to dedicate a page here to defining the stupid, meaningless terms that circulate in the media. I figure this way I can just link to them instead of repeatedly debunking them. And who knows? Maybe there’s an actual need for this and it will grow into a project. In any case, I’m debuting it today, with a first entry on the non-meaning meaning of “post-partisan”.

PS — since I’m a web designer, feel free to request features in comments. Terms, too, if you’re feeling game.