i started it.

I'm not worrying about deposing Barack Obama.

i am more concerned with the war crimes of perpetrators from the
previous administration. Which they bullied the World Court into
providing them with "immunity to prosecution" for. That will fall in
time. But Don Rumsfeld and Richard B. Cheney committed many warcrimes --
famous and documented, some, covert and secret, others. Their
influence on American politics is considerable, even though the Bush
Administration seems over. Depose Barack Obama? He's barely had a
chance to do much good. The war in Afganistan, he inherited.

United States politics has tended to work this way: people get elected
and create networks, which are colloquially called "old-boy" networks.

Someone like a Dick Nixon falls out of favour? He still has his loyal
"old-boy" network to call in favours from. He's not allowed to do
anything personally to affect legislation? He phones, he sends monies
to so-and-so reprentative, and they vote as he would have voted.

As such: if Barack Obama wanted to end that war in Iraq the month he
got elected, the leaving President's old-boy network set up a stone wall
of legislative denial. Same for the infamous Guantanamo Bay Gulag
which Obama promised to close. The same for the war in Afghanistan
which Obama also inherited from the Bush Family --

Afghanistan is virtually no threat to the United States geographically.
But strategically, the Bush Family have been determined to have an
Imperialist global strategy and to place military pawns in as many
abroad places as they can.

Combine that with the "old-boy network" strategy of politicking...I'd
like to see what Barack could do if the more sneaky and deceptive
elements of Constitutional Republican politics were neutralized. That
COULD happen. I know not if it will.


re: humanity and people - a paradox emerges. People, yeah, are the way
the system operates.

When the people operating the system have as their motivating beliefs
"God, Idols, Ancestors" as you put it, well, then it's the intellectual
quagmire we face. The United States is not more free than other
countries! It isn't. That's an illusion spread by media and the worst
representatives of the United States abroad. Like in any other developed
nation, people live fearing and respecting the street militias, also
known as police, which are everywhere. There's not too many places one
can go -- the mountains, the desert -- where the police state is -- more
than impending, but completely ensconced. It's actually been this way
since before the American war for Independence -- which was won by
militias.

the United States is not more free than other nations. We are bound by
strict laws that limit most aspects of life. Police are everywhere, and
they are not "impending", they are heavily armed and if they shoot first
and ask questions later they are protected by that "old-boy" network I
mentioned before. I'm an anarchist: ask me anything.

Views: 74

Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

somebody ELSE, not you. you already know too much.
and as for what can be done? my friends in the street say "more vodka"; that is only ONE possible outlook.

i will posit this much: anarchism is the MOST evolved form of social progressiveness.
most people think 'anarchism' and think 'socialism' which was a lie the fearful began to plant during the Red Scare. OBVIOUSLY despite Ayn Rand's best intentions, contradictions still exist.

but when communities are self - running they don't need to go any further...

autonomy is an either understand it or don't thing.

most Americans have pledged allegiance to the republic. that's hypnosis, a mental block that kept people from figuring out how to Get Bush. Even today.

but let me ask you this: why do people think that Obama is a Socialist? How could they not make the connection of Union Of Soviet Socialist Republics? Is that doublethink?

because it was George W. Bush's grandfather who was the International Socialist -- and three generations of Bush males have gone to great lengths to hide that secret - as do the major media, bald-facedly lying...

as people start to figure that out, I think this Neo-fascist "tea-party" lie is going to reduce itself to absurdity.

No, you can't ask me anything. you can only ask me where the alcohol is hidden. (in a cool, dry place.)
or something.
ah yes of course,
at least to ASK what can be done about it,
to ask repeatedly. so much better than resignation, saying
"that's just the way life is"

so much better than the attitude that causes so much hatred of monotheist religionists -- the assumption that The End Is Coming and that "God" wants it that way.

i believe in God but THAT God is not the God that i worship, personally.

we can ask each other what to do, we can compare our insights.


a few minutes ago a phrase that i have read over and over again popped into my mind, that idea being the idea of "Buddhism spreading like wildfire".

for some reason Buddhism+Wildfire seems to recur in my head, as I have read -- some -- about Buddhist thought and history. Less than many, more than some.

---------

I believe that wholesale corruption, mis-information, fraud, artificially-induced war programs etc exist.
I believe that this world is full of self-serving greedy and heartless individuals who are driven by a need to conquer, own, overpower and extort whatever wealth they wish from the innocent.

----

i don't believe that "full" is the proper term.
such men exist, but the world is full of all kinds of stuff.

i suspect the sort of people you describe there
are actually in an obnoxious yet loud and bullying minority.

sort of like a pyramid
the capstone is a small part of the pyramid, right...?
this is PERFECT. see, you asked me:


"Do those of us who are driven, motivated, energised and active-orientated, bully/shove/coerce/tempt/motivate/encourage/teach/show the way/ insist...
that everyone else follow their lead?"

---
see, remember the title of this thread?

not only do i avoid the people who seem to think that they have to tell people what to do when to do and how to do it -- i avoid the people who look for that sort of shepherd in general

it's no fun for me.
anarchists have always achieved a sort of invisibility in society because most people are not anarchists.

they get confused and assume we meant socialist or communist. no honest anarchist ever meant that.

now, people who don't value their freeness of will as much as anarchists do, yeah, they probably DO get caught up in that situation you mention.

i'm not gonna quote proudhon or anything like that here becaue totalitarian philosophies have gone out of their way to deintellectualise and co-opt anarchism in the years since the Red Scare. But they are different philosophies altogether, as sure as the fact that Hugo Chavez and Adolf Hitler were/are addicted to "power-over" situations -- they are bosses, and such are the opposite of anarchists in theory and practice.

insisting that people follow one's lead -- that way is the path to totalitarianism, fascism.

for anarchists, it's just not FUN.
people are divided on the issue of the definition of the word.

i see the "human need for leaders" as a delusion.

i came to this insight on my own after many years

leaders make people lazy minded. sooner or later
humans must think independently. at the times when that need
is met by the blank face that looks around for someone to tell them what to do and when and how,
well, i am sickened. that is anarchism to me.

also going with that are those who represent cunning and snake-minded ruling class mentalities who say things like "leader of leaderlessness" to try and create absurdity where something approaching wisdom actually is.


i mean, i said, "ask me anything" --
i have also had stupid "arguments" with people who insist that we must have tyrants, people who insist, like PLATO insisted, that human nature is basically no good, and that for such reason people need "benevolent dictators".

i also knew that when people saw the title of the discussion that they would want to step forward and create bogus sub-subjects for discussion. i fully and always expect such people to lose interest and go away, so that the sincere and real-ish discussions can begin.
why?

why would i want to have a discussion
whose obvious goal was
to undermine the very notion that there was any need for anarchism?

anarchism does not exist without leaders
it exists IN SPITE of those leaders and the way that they think.

i can even like Barack Obama as a public persona while despising the system that he represents. it's not impossible.

but really...if you are a statist,
why not get into a conversation with other statists? you have nothing at all to gain from attempting to dissuade me from what i believe.

better that you read Emma Goldman's "My Two Years In Russia"

This is Google's cache of http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Goldman/Writings/Russia/. It is a snapshot of the page as it appeared on Apr 11, 2010 08:54:02 GMT. The current page could have changed in the meantime. Learn more

Text-only version
These search terms are highlighted: emma goldman's my two years in russia

Berkeley Digital Library SunSITE
MY DISILLUSIONMENT IN RUSSIA

London
C. W. Daniel Company
1925

My Disillusionment in Russia (1923) is Goldman's account of her experiences in Soviet Russia from 1920 to 1921 and what she saw as the Bolsheviks' betrayal of the revolution. Goldman was dismayed when she discovered that Doubleday, Page & Company had, without informing her, replaced her title "My Two Years in Russia." Even worse, the publisher cut the last twelve chapters of the manuscript, omitting her account of crucial events such as the Kronstadt rebellion and an afterword in which she reflected on the trajectory of the revolution after the Bolsheviks seized power.

At Goldman's insistence, the publisher attempted to rectify the situation by publishing the omitted chapters as a separate volume: My Further Disillusionment in Russia (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1924). The complete text in one volume, with an introduction by Rebecca West, appeared the following year: My Disillusionment in Russia (London: C. W. Daniel Company, 1925), and is the version from which the following selections are presented online.

[ Go to Goldman's Writings ]

CONTENTS
WHEN I STATE THAT I AM AN ANARCHIST
THE STATEMENT IS MADE FULLY COGNIZANT
THAT THOSE WHO KOWTOW TO TYRANNIES AND IMPOSED SYSTEMS OF RULE
DO SO WITHOUT THINKING -- AND AS SUCH

the sight of an anarchist opinion makes them irrational, and they lash out


it always is meant to suggest that there can be no life without government,

which is a lie.

it really takes: oxygen, water, some food, a place to stand and arguably Love to exist and exist well. we could get along without governments.

in society are people who feel especially pressed and persecuted by government -- including people who have done what Marx called "internalizing the state" -- people who have the system inside their heads, when they make love, when they choose (or don't choose) who they make love with, when they choose (or don't choose) to kill in wars, when they choose (or choose that not choosing and doing what the State imposes is best/easiest) to eat at McDonald's or whatever other institutionalized form of ritual murder is supplying blood for baby vampires...



anarchists are quite serious when we say things like calling McDonald's ritual murder blood suppliers for infant revenants. ,

we say this because we see the universe with a NATURAL order. on top of that natural order fascist systems like constitutional republic IMPOSE AND ENFORCE a different system of organization that is contrived and usually strikes human people like some form of slavery, sex slavery, wage slavery, or subliminal slavery, the sort of slavery in which the slaves laugh at the idea that they are slaves -- while they are enslaved -- and insist that they are free.

while the man who is a descendant of people who European invaders of the Americas (more unrealistic Anarchist rhetoric, right, Celtic and Australian Aboriginals? Never happened, right? Right...) --

while the descendant of Africans drives the descendants of slaveowners insane just by not being in the stables shoveling shit. hey, that would be good for him to do. Like Heracles.


I think that you are insincere in questioning me as an anarchist -- and you know who you are, i have answered your questions directly. or at least acknowledged them.


i think that you personally are insincere.
i probably won't be acknowledging any more of your statements unless we have serious personal chats.

i know that people who are loyal to the Statist idea fear anarchism and anarchists -- but ALWAYS have lied about why! they claim that anarchism creates toxic social situations...but their real fear is that they, or people who think like them, might not be in charge anymore.

their WORST fear is that people might ENJOY the idea of living free, and STOP PAYING TAXES.

as a peace activist it is my goal to reduce to absurdity the idea that anarchism is or ever has been the same as communism or socialism.

that clever lie from the 1930s got Emma Goldman, too, and continues to trick people. because to be without tyrants (any leader who inists that what they say is best -- and any leader than needs police to fight their battles for them, any "pig") is an ideal way of existance.

since a life without tyrants would be ideal, yes, anarchists can be called "idealists". we can be called cunning linguists if people want to call us that.

a rightwinger said recently that free speech doesn't mean that people can just say what they want.

either it does, or it doesn't.


the united states promised people a whole bunch of stuff in 1789
to not deliver and continue to claim to give that, well,
than LIES are all that stand between some people and the state of being DEPOSED. it's dirty to offer people that and not come through with it.


anarchists are what the Tea Party pretend to represent -- but the Tea Party are far, far too infatuated with fascism.
Thank you mikal and wendy for this interesting dissussion. We need more of those . This is devolopment since it make us think...|smile|

I LOVE " The Vision" !!! Riccardo..Is my vision TOO!!
I'm defined" much" as an anarchist also..I would say perhaps not completely though..
Most every word Mikal wrote,I too agree/believe/live my life by decisions based on what I believe,not what others try to force upon or into me.
I do wish Wendy's comments were still here on this discussion,but still read All of Mikal's replies..
I've been a "question everything",kind of girl since I was a child. Why I'm sure I became an Activist/advocate & grassroots Community organizer 20yrs ago..
What does Jai Jagat mean Riccardo?

"Healthy Anarchy"

RSS

Latest Activity

Lucy Williams updated their profile
Jul 5, 2023
Sandra Gutierrez Alvez updated their profile
Oct 1, 2022
DallasBoardley updated their profile
Feb 8, 2022
RADIOAPOLLON1242 AIGOKEROS PANOS updated their profile
Feb 2, 2022
Shefqet Avdush Emini updated their profile
Jul 2, 2021
Ralph Corbin updated their profile
Jun 25, 2021
Marques De Valia updated their profile
Mar 24, 2021
SSEAYP - South-East Asian Youth liked David Califa's discussion Flash Banners Here
Feb 29, 2020

© 2024   Created by David Califa. Managed by Eyal Raviv.   Powered by

Badges  |  Report an Issue  |  Terms of Service