I agree with you about the efficacy of marches and all, but the history here runs counter to my notions. When was the average marrying age in Europe 27? Don't mean to take this off topic, but I'm genuinely curious, and your bio suggests a certain depth of knowledge on this topic.

Thanks for the clarification, E.J.

To be honest I was immensely offended by your earlier post which I took as a beliittling of the blood, sweat, and tears that the anti-Vietnam War protestors gave. And believe me it was dangerous at some of those anti-Vietnam rallies. Being screamed at by George Lincoln Rockwell and a bunch of guys in Nazi uniforms was not fun. Running away from tear gas was not a great way to spend my spare time. Having friends get clubbed in the streets of Chicago in August 1968 because they were trying to stop the killing in Vietnam wasn't a lark. I still think there is a place for large demonstrations in addition to thousands of other ways of trying to stop this madman Bush (Cheney).

Let's move forward together to try to restore sanity to American governance.

Tom

You have some "exceptional" friends. Most of my friends have little nostalgia for the marches, riots, and mayhem of that period. Remember, each generation contains a huge number of people, your personal acquaintances represent themselves - period.

We Boomers are a bit frustrated, given that the dumbest Boomer of them all, George W. Bush, sits in the White House and is ruining our country and the world.

Tom

Yes, some surface things have changed.  But the manipulating political class has replaced global communism with global terrorism and is pursuing precisely the same manipulative agenda.  The wealthy still exploit fractures among the other classes in order to maintain and expand their control of the wealth.

The big picture is America colonizes the world for the benefit of several tens of thousands of very wealthy while making the middle class adequately comfortable to not fight back and exploiting enough cultural prejudices among the rest to keep any coherent alternate political group from forming.... How is this any different than when I got on this train?

That may not be much different than 35 years ago, but is it different from any point before that?

I guess you could argue that it is, if your peripheral vision is good.  Politicians who ignore you today beat rulers who owned you half a millennium ago.  But that's rather cold comfort, I guess.

I'll go with "they're both doing about the same amount of good" but you know their grandchildren may have volunteered for some progressive candidate or even start to run for local offices. We just don't know, and I'd argue that we're starting to see a greater desire to actually get involved in the system to change it on a structural level. It just takes a very long time because any established system resists change like all get out.

Marches don't work unless they are threatening or violent. The anti-globalization protests get more press when they start attacking. The Immigrant Marches got attention because "Oh My God! A million darkies! Aaaiiieee!"

In many ways, because we're liberals we're by our nature non-threatening. What action of the Bushies would make you for instance, go grab a gun and start shooting? You can go pretty far down the road before the lefties start resisting with force--farther than you can the other way I'd submit, if nothing else because the right is much more easily aligned with demagogues who love to stir up trouble.

As I wrote about in my Power Problem posts at DKos, when that lack of power, that helplessness to determine your own fate at all is built up enough, you get people desperate enough to commit terrorism. Our system is rather cleverly designed to provide avenues where we can "let off steam" so that terrorism and armed revolution are far from the norm. Marches are one thing. Nothing changes, but you feel like you did something and because so few people can see the personal micro effects that's enough for them so the marches don't become threatening.

Indeed, combined with kicking women back into aprons, the GI Bill helped avoid the problems several million jobless men with years of combat experience would have caused.

E.J., I accept your apology.

You also have pretty well persuaded me that demonstrations at this time are not in our best interests, because the energy and effort required would be better spent on other techniques.  Examples are: swamping our Congressional delegations with letters.  Forming committees to visit those delegations to argue our positions.  Active search for alternative candidates for those seats.  etc.

 My memories of the 60's are filled totally with deep sadness.  The assassinations.  The brutal police response to demonstrations.  My own conflicts over my decision to opt out of even working in a defense industry, let alone serving in the armed forces at that time.  Time has not changed that sadness.

Hoppy in Sacramento

Re: Yes, some surface things have changed.

Those were NOT surface things I was talking about. Our society has changed in very fundamental ways. Some of the changes were good (as a gay guy I'm quite happy the closet has been tossed in the dumpster, and yes, I like the internet), but many were for the worse (the neo-feudalism of today's GOP; the rise of the Religious Right; the sinking of the middle class etc.)
As for the foreign policy stuff you seem to think is paramount, I regard it as epiphenomenal and quite secondary, and I think we'd do better to concentrate on changing things and fighting the bad trends here at home. In a way these misadventures overseas actually work in our favor, since it distracts BushCo from domestic issues and even forces them to compromise from time to time. And the more they dig themselves in abroad, the more likely it is they will be repudiated at home.

Re: Marches don't work unless they are threatening or violent. The anti-globalization protests get more press when they start attacking.

Yes, they got some attention, but their success at derailing globalization was exactly zero. Most people (even those sympathetioc to the overall cause) were disgusted by their antics and dismissed them as a gang of tweaked-out twits with ugly dreadlocks and too many piercings.

You're right as far as it goes in regards to practice and principle. That is, Rule by Philosopher Kings in the abstract and all that is not de jure bad. That we're too flawed currently to actual pull off Enlighted Despotism is because of human failings not conceptual failings.

Polling the rest of the world: yes I don't really care what the rest of the world thinks except in terms of how it relates to my particular nation.

But here's the big difference between me and "America Fuck Yeah!" nut bars, when I say sustainable and long-term I mean it. Pissing off the rest of the world by exploiting them is NOT a sustainable long-term policy. Oh the European style nations have been doing it for nearly 500 years but you can see the end of that coming; it's not a sustainable model, rule by force never is.

regard it as epiphenomenal

Geez, I hate to be the language cop on this blog, but for god's sake please stick to words you know the meaning of.

And, there are 6 billion people on the face of the earth other than Americans. If you subtract away Americans and round, there are STILL 6 billion people on the face of the earth. American colonialism is a big deal.

Finally, your comfort as a great middle class gay puts you likely above the $40 k median income of an American family, thus placing you among the less than 100 million richest people in the US and less than 200 million richest people in the world (likely half each of those numbers). You are precisely the sort of bought out middle classer I am discussing above.

I also know, though, that the window of fertility for women pretty much slams shut at about 35 years old.

I don't see the evidence of this.  Granted, there are many first-time moms in their 40s where I live, some thanks to reproductive technology.  But from what I know, in the large-family branches of my clan, childbirth seems to have continued for at least a few years past 35.

But the anti-globalization movement was killed mostly 9/11 wasn't it? I suspect the USA Patriot Act made it tougher to be in those groups.

There have been some efforts to crack down on environmental and animal rights groups - it seems to me like these and the anti-globalization crowd overlap a fair bit - that seem to have these movements hard hit.  The FBI has made 'eco-terrorism' the top domestic terrorism priority, and they are one of the only governmental organizations to my knowledge that consider property damage to be terrorism.  Of greater concern (arson, after all, is a crime regardless of why you do it), the recently passed Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act defines it's crime even more broadly - you can be held criminally liable for any actions that intentionally cause an animal enterprise to lose profits.

But again, the issue (as I understand it) was theoretical, so none of this creates disagreement with MN.  MN said that there is nothing inherently wrong with wealth disparities, so long as my riches are not attained by making others poorer.  The problems offered in reaction to his post - the state described by 'oligarchy' - is one where wealth is concentrated in the hands of the few.  So, if I understand MN, s/he'd agree that these are problematic.  But that doesn't go to the question of whether the fact of wealth disparities is, in and of itself, a bad thing.

If we are discussing John Rawls' pick-everyone-up-by-my-bootstraps theory of justice, (Pareto-Rawls optimality, if you will) things sound good until you meet up with the Gore v. Bush problem (real justice isn't blind). 

Real decision makers will opt for Pareto optimality skewed to their own benefit, not skewed to the benefit of the worst off.  The Leviathan cares about the crowd only because the crowd can unseat him, so he throws the crowd a bone (the Leviathan becomes The Prince), otherwise there would be no quasi-Pareto optimality, there would just be Leviathan optimality (Oligarchs would benefit only themselves). 

Living off bread crumbs handed out to keep us from revolting is not only not satisfying, it is also not dignified.  You give up your human agency in this condition.  Kant would recommend against against this status because you would not be an end-in-yourself.  You would merely be an annoyance dealt with and occasionally a means to an end.

So no, it is not permissible for the rich to be richer while the rest of us are status quo ante.  Their wealth is off of our backs. 

Jumping in with a question here, although perhaps I should address it to MN. Has there ever been a system in which the wealthy did not, at least in a general way (there are probably always individual exceptions), attain or increase their wealth at the expense of the poor? I'm not really making a statement here. I'm not entirely certain myself about the answer to my question.

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them. --Paul Valery

Though no historian, I imagine not (I was trying to defend MN against what I perceived to be an unfair changing of terms). 

It seems to me that even if there could be situations in which the rich gained their wealth without others being the worse off for it (I think Rawls was right about that), there remains the question of what they do with that wealth when they have it.  Although many individuals with great wealth use a considerable portion of it for the betterment of society (eventually), on balance, it strikes me as obvious that wealth generally gets used to perpetuate inequity.  If you had a situation where wealth was fairly earned and didn't squelch opportunity, that would be unobjectionable, I think.  But the gap between what is logically possible and what really happens is of course great.

On February 7, 2007 - 9:35pm hoppycalif2 said: The assassinations. The brutal police response to demonstrations. Those were turbulent times.

We were resisting the "MONSTER"

Excerpts from the Group “ Steppenwolf”

MONSTER - SUICIDE - AMERICA

From the 1970 release "Monster" Words and music by John Kay, Jerry Edmonton, Nick St. Nicholas and Larry Byrom

(Monster)

And though the past has it's share of injustice

Kind was the spirit in many a way

But it's protectors and friends have been sleeping

Now it's a monster and will not obey

(Suicide)

The spirit was freedom and justice

And it's keepers seem generous and kind

It's leaders were supposed to serve the country

But now they won't pay it no mind

'Cause the people grew fat and got lazy

And now their vote is a meaningless joke

They babble about law and order

But it's all just an echo of what they've been told

Yeah, there's a monster on the loose

(America)

America where are you now?

Don't you care about your sons and daughters?

Don't you know we need you now

We can't fight alone against the monster

© Copyright MCA Music (BMI) All rights for the USA controlled and administered by MCA Corporation of America, INC

Luigi,

The key words in my phrase are "western" and "standard." Southern and eastern Europe had very different post-feudal marriage patterns. So did aristocrats, who are the ones we hear about most, because they left the most voluminous records. Demographic historians marvel over the fact that entire cultures waited that long to have sex; it's one of the great cultural mysteries of self-discipline. (Scandinavians didn't marry until first birth; slightly different pattern.) But remember, the middle-ish classes had to save up enough money to marry: girls went off to work from 14 until they'd saved enough dowry to help a husband start a shop or farm; at that point they became the "mistresses" and business partners who hired and oversaw lifecycle adolescent labor themselves. 10- to 14-year-old boys were sent out to be apprentices & weren't permitted by their guilds to become "masters" until they had a wife, a business partner who helped underwrite the business, keep the books, feed the apprentices, etc. Slightly different marriage and savings pattern for each occupation--farmers or vineyarders or Swiss shepherds--and for each era and religion, but you get the general picture.

Obviously I could go on & on. If you're interested you might want to take my marriage book ("What Is Marriage For?") out of the library & skim for the entertaining bits, or the bits that interest you. I found the history of marriage to be quite enjoyable; the research often it made me laugh out loud.

EJ

Never really went away. The Scandinavians drove the church crazy.

Ms. Graff: This thread has gone all over the map. I think your parting shot says it all:

Clearly my tone—meant to be cheeky but friendly—isn’t yet right for TPMCafe.com.

In other words, you're planning to tone down your advanced level of writing because we guys just don't get it. Speaking for myself. I didn't get the last one -- I wondered then and still do why you didn't respond contemporaneously when we were addressing you -- and I don't get it now.

Jan Knaus

Sorry, I read it the other way. Thanks for another view. I appreciate it.

Jan Knaus

I'm not going to get into this again. . . I really swear I'm not.

But as I remarked before, either directly or indirectly, it wasn't your attitude I objected to in the main, but your misreading of history...a misreading I feel still persists.

In 1969 you were an 11 year old...perhaps presciently aware for an eleven year old, but an eleven year old nonetheless.  1969, not 1979 marked the beginnings of gay pride and gay liberation.  I suspect at 11 Stonewall meant nothing to you. . .especially given the part of the country you claim as home, where stone walls are something of a rarity, I suspect.  I was twenty-eight, and the news (yes there was media coverage) was electrifying and heartening (and a little scary, too) back in Cleveland where I was in graduate school. The First Christopher Street Pride Day took place in 1970, when you were 12 years old.  I was 29.  You may have some personal memory of that.  For me, it is a visceral memory.  I Marched the first time in Boston in the early 1970s.

What bothers me is your sense that history seems to begin with your own participation and awareness. . .in 1979 maybe you marched...at 21, you would have been in college then, I guess, ready to go out and change the world.  You might have also gone a marching in 1987 (at age c. 29) and in 1992 (at age c. 34).  In 1979 some of us had been marching annually for nearly a decade.  During those years we were young and out to change the world, and you and your generation stood on our shoulders.  Some of us were still marching shoulder to shoulder with you.  We may have become a little shopworn and less certain that we could change the world, but we still saw trying, and trying in the streets, as a moral duty.

And I suspect what I'm seeing now is your generation becoming a little shopworn and weary.  The things you saw as valuable in your youth (as we saw as valuable in ours) you see less valuable today.  It is far easier to claim that "Everything is different now" than it is to admit being older and more world-weary.  

You see the march of 1992 as  "astonishingly effective".  1992 is fourteen years ago...closer to our era than it is to 1969.  Everything isn't different.  Those who went to Washington in last January were, by and large young--ready to go out and change the world...with some older folks who decided that being weary simply wasn't allowable. 

Grant them the right to believe that their history, and their actions are as important to them, as much a rite of passage and coming of age, as yours were to you and mine were to me.  That's really all I ask, and please don't claim that 1979-1992 was somehow an era apart, legitimizing protests in the street in ways less legitimate before and after.

aMike

Sorry to hear you say "... that demonstrations at this time are not in our best interests..."

According to Seymour Hersh the size of demonstrations against Vietnam convinced Henry Kissinger to advise richard Nixon not to use nukes in nuclear weapons in vietnam. Millions of people flooding the streets used along with many other tactics would certainly help pressure politicians to try to stop the madmen Cheney and Bush from bombing Iran. I think we need to use our time and energy to stop Bush rather than badmouthing demonstrations.

Tom

Some metaphors just don't work.  It probably helps to know the deep divided battles there have been in the primary use of this term.   Epiphenomena not only lies on the surface of some other phenomena, it also mirrors those other phenomena and has no possibility of independent causal force.  One need only look at the deep divide over Iraq that has developed in the US over the last 3 years to see that what happens there DOES have causal force here.

Using a word out of philosophical psychology metaphorically is iffy business at best.

As to the colonialism issue.  I am hardly the only person who has suggested that there are vestiges of colonialism in American foreign policy.  While we do not USUALLY occupy a territory and claim it for our own (although we have a substantial history with protectorates and we are occupying Iraq at the moment).  We have maintained colonial domination of Cuba, the Philippines, Hawaii (right, a possession until AFTER WWII), most of Central America (our dictators usually retired to Florida), much of South America, mineral rich Africa, for much of the 20th century.  Corporate colonies do not require burying a flag post.

Not to be unduly inflammatory, but what is the purpose of demonstrations?

I won't presume that this is THE answer, but I see demonstrations as a visual and auditory manifestation of cohesiveness. I can't tell you how many times I have written a heartfelt letter to my Senator or Congressman only to get an automatic response back. I doubt if they ever read my letters; the most I imagine is that on some list in their office my letter engendered a tic "pro" or "con."

We have no real idea how many people are writing those letters; how many care about an issue except for the "polls" [I for one, have NEVER been polled -- it is a passive rather than an active way to say what you think]. All politicians say they pay absolutely no attention to them, but of course we know we can't believe that. I do believe that people who rely on an electorate for their jobs DO pay attention when large numbers gather to say they are mad as hell about something.

Another aspect is the "tipping point" idea: It just may be that many people sitting at home and thinking that they are the only ones who feel the way they do -- upon seeing a few thousand people standing up to Bush et al -- might just join in, and form a critical mass.

Lastly, my kids can see that I care enough about something to get out from Mr. Laptop and make noise about something I believe in.

OK, I have not doubt that I'll be told I am silly and dumb, but I do believe what I said is true.

Jan Knaus

Jan and amike, thanks for responding.  I have been skeptical of protest as a form of politics, and I remain skeptical, but I'll grant that these are very good points.

My primary concern about protests is that it has become sort of the panacea of the left (that an litigation - I'd say that litigation has been more effective overall, but it's efficacy is itself a dangerous distraction from the task of changing people's minds).   I just don't see that protests, by themselves and as they exist today, are especially effective at changing anything.  Meanwhile, the fact that we continue to put so much resources into protesting - that the instant response to new outrages, in some ways, is to organize in the streets - means that we aren't looking for new and more effective tactics to affect the course of political affairs.  

It's not that street protest is a bad thing -I'm not so much into it, but I can see the benefits of association, and in many circumstances (with enough people, enough regularity, and the right political climate) they can be very effective.  I just don't see that this is one of those.  I think we need new tactics, I don't know what they are, and I wish, before we hit the streets again, we might put the collective brainstorming of us stormy-brained leftists to work to come up with it.

Incidentally, I'm no blog triumphalist on this score.  I think that individual bloggers like Josh do some very good work in attacking small-bore problems like social security.  But overall, I'd say that fora like the Cafe are an excellent form of civic participation - making all of us better educated, and strengthening the policy ideas and political ideals we have - but I'm skeptical of whether this will ever amount to the new thing that I hope we find. 

To a degree, I have to agree.  I think that the problem here is sort of a "forced false choice".  It isn't a matter of this, or that, or the other thing, really.  There is probably room for all three (and a few dozen more--some of which we haven't thought up yet).  People have different talents, personalities, and different inhibitions.  I think that by and large they will sort themselves out and do what they can and not do what they can't, on their own, regardless of what wise counsel anyone gives.

I don't think street protests are usually the first choice people make.  I would rather think the opposite...people choose that when they see nothing else available or working.  We're about to the fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq, Unless I missed something (I do nap on occasion) there has been one nationally organized march on Washington, and that within the last two weeks--or is it three.  It was coordinated with intensive lobbying with Senators and Representatives on the Monday following.  The senate is tied in knots (boo them) but the house will hold a nearly unprecedented full debate (certainly unprecedented in the last six year), so I'm certainly willing to wait for that to percolate through the American Political Consciousness before I get out the comfy shoes and corn plasters.  :-)

aMike

The problem of waiting for the House to act, is that’s exactly what they’ll do. ACT! Like they’re going to do something, just do something to appease the people.

Reinforce the leaders, who want to do more than talk about it. The Congress is under siege by enemies from within. Enemies who want the status quo. Those whose pockets are being lined with money to keep things going, just the way they are. Maybe they can fool the American people with a little tweaking around the edges.

REINFORCEMENTS are needed to take to the streets, DEMAND to be heard. STORM the Bastille ( Stand outside the Halls of Power) carry the signs and stick it in the Faces of those who are resisting the Will of the people.

If you don’t, expect nothing to happen, because those in power will assume, there is no groundswell of dissatisfaction, only whimpers and whiners.

Those in power will say “Let them eat cake” to go along with the whine.

A bit of smuggled copy from a [pro-protest] report I am right now helping to edit:

"In the late 1980s, researchers found that consistent negative media portrayal of protestors in Minneapolis-St. Paul “unfairly prejudice[s] their audience against the issues and ideas raised by protestors.”* Other research shows how press coverage of protest activites can actually increase public antagonism toward the cause over time.”**

Suppose this is true. It is fair enough to decry distorted media presentations for undermining legitimate social justice movements. But if your aim is to effect the aims of that movement, doesn’t it make more sense to take the results as a given, and think about other ways to be politically active that don’t end up alienating potential allies?

I guess if I’d been a boomer, I’d’ve been a ‘stay clean for Gene’ guy….

* Michael Barker “Conform or Reform? Social Movements and the Mass Media,” ZNet 2/7/07, citing Hertog and McLeod (1995).

** Ibid, Citing McLeod (1995) McLeod and Detenber (1999), Shoemaker (1982)

I agree with you about letter-writing - I really have no idea what would be effective, and it's not that, perhaps.  I think this is the central question for the left, and really for participatory democracy.

I was both a "Clean for Gene" guy and a participant in a number of large anti-Vietnam war protests. They were not mutually exclusive.

Tom

To be sure they aren't, or weren't as the case may be.

You can stay clean, but I guess the question is whether or not you can avoid the mud that will be thrown at you. Not that caving in on principle in the face of a smear is generally a good thing, but I think you have to assess the situation in terms of the gravity of the cause at hand. I'd argue that we owe it to those who would benefit most from progressive policies to advocate for them in whatever is the most effective way we can. I'm not sure that, right now, getting out in the streets (unless there are really a lot of us) is that way.