Stop Me Before I Vote Again

Working class allies, my ass. Coldtype is the exception. The job attracts bullies.

Yeah. What hideous brutes they are, huh? The helmets, the bulked-up flak jackets, the clubs. All that restless twitchy body language -- domination junkies deprived of their fix. The lowest of the low.

It would be untrue* to suggest that everyone stuck by the cop's baton is radicalized - some just yield, which is no judgment against them, that shit hurts - but every time the club hits flesh, the potential for an enduring resistance becomes kinesis.

* - I wasn't political the first time a cop struck me; but I didn't forget.

Awesome, fuckin' awesome. Looks kinda like some Cairo footage I've seen.

I didn't have to actually be hit by a cop to become political; all I needed was to see the pictures and hear the stories.

Remember the old joke about how a conservative is a Liberal who's been mugged? Well, lately, I've joked that an anarchist is a Liberal who's been pepper-sprayed.

Anonymous should start doxing EVERY law enforcement and government official in the state of California (and anywhere else any of these incidents happen).

Make it intolerable for them to engage in arbitrary violence via collective punishment.

Then the occupations should start setting up truth and reconciliation commissions.

I've gone for a somewhat uncharacteristic stroll on the troll patrol and removed a few particularly demented comments. I'm getting a little impatient in my old age. So little time left...

PS: I may have inadvertently trashed one or two I'd rather keep. Apologies to any welcome guests who may have been caught up in the purge. Errors Were Made(tm).

"I've gone for a somewhat uncharacteristic stroll on the troll patrol and removed a few particularly demented comments. I'm getting a little impatient in my old age. So little time left..."

You're way more patient with that shit than I am MJS.

I fucking hate sock puppets.

I'm actually OK with 'em, up to a point. There's something to be said for stirring the pot. But then sometimes it gets so sick I just don't want to see it any more.

I've managed to deal with the troll and sock puppet issue in my own space quite simply and elegantly: I don't allow comments at my blog. I did early on, but it took less than a week for me to become fed up with scraping out all the troll posts, sock puppet posts and dating-site spam. I shut off the comment threads on my YouTube channel for the very same reason.

I set up that blog to exhibit my cartoons and let people download 'em if they dig 'em -- not to provide a trough for every goddamn' troll, sock puppet, tinfoil hatter and spammer on the 'Net to crap into. If someone really really needs to send me a comment, my email address is on the "About" page.

I know that's not very "Web 2.0" of me, but tough shit. That's just the way I roll, man.

My silly idiosyncratic 'Hillary' test took care of the spambots, though it wouldn't work for long if this place ever got on the radar. Actual human commenters have mostly been tolerable and more or less relevant, though a few recent ones have kinda turned my stomach, and were duly shitcanned. Either the sock-puppeteer is decompensating, or I'm getting less tolerant. Or both, of course.

I've had rather extensive personal experience with the 1%, particularly the "executive class." Because of my hue, schooling, looks (not G Clooney by any means, but sufficiently Anglo Saxon), height, and graying hair, that class has tended to let slip their innermost thoughts around me...and no, not just about Those People.

Came to this conclusion long ago: all they respond to us fear. It's all they (grudgingly) respect. They'll do almost anything to make the fear go away.

Right now, OWS is mostly an inconvenience, something of an affront to their delicate sensibilities. Power is surely afraid enough to have, say, given the police org $4.6 mil in protection money.

But the threat of violence ---- leaving "all options on the table" as it were --- will get Power and Capital's attention. The reality of violence, if it comes to that, even more so.

The Occupy movements should worry far less, if at all, about backlash or the ghastly obsession with How We're Perceived, and more about "negotiating with ourselves" and taking options away.

Think only: What inspires fear. Because fear is the only thing that will change anything.

CZ,

That's my experience, as well. I never quite made it into a boardroom, but my upper ranker bosses only really had two modes between periods of ennui: growth-glee (or, victory gloating) and terror.

Both can be used against them.

Jack, another thing Power understands: defeat. Outright, unequivocal, unmistakable defeat. That's why it's imperative to root for the Vietcong, Castro, the Iraqi insurgency, etc. It's imperative to take sides.

I never made it to the boardroom either, but it's amazing what people will tell 6'3" graying white guys around the proverbial water cooler. I learned this too back in my days as a reporter: the desire to confess and/or impress is insatiable.

CZ,

The first time where it really sunk in for me was while dealing with a local alderman (now the mayor, natch) trying to get some recompense for an employee's son who had a cop's bootprint in his back. I don't mean, in his shirt. I mean, during the winter, through his coat, sweatshirt, tee-shit - on his bare skin, back - fucking clearly a boot print, in his flesh. The kid got caught with a small amount of pot, and made the mistake of being not-white and mouthy in New Hampshire.

After the alderman had finished his "investigation," he called me back at the store to inform me that the officers had been absolved of all wrong doing, because the boy (he was sixteen, IIRC) was clearly resisting arrest with his words.

It should be noted that he was stomped while on his stomach, with his hands cuffed behind him, face in the snow.

The only way that boy was going to get any recompense was if the cops couldn't sleep at night. And they take great goddamned pains to make sure nobody is stupid enough to put them in that position, don't they.

The second time I really understood this argument, was upon reading Goff's "Full Spectrum Disorder." Invaluable tome, that - perhaps moreso now that Goff's gone all Jesusy and pacifist.

Re: Goff and his Christian-pacifist eco-localist turn. He had his reasons, and I respected that as long as he was still churning out intellectually and politically thought-provoking stuff. But now underway in the US is the biggest shit to hit the fan in quite some time, and Goff is virtually silent. And I don't get the sense that it's simply b/c of life-phase contingencies. How relevant he could have been, and how mute he is turning out to be. From dissecting the social thermodynamics of capitalist rule, to occasionally linking to DIY home gardening tips on his facebook page. Sad.

Violence® has been patented by the state and its adherents. Anyone else accused of employing it is infringing upon trade and will be dealt with accordingly.

I'm liking this comment thread quite a lot.

Violence® has been patented by the state and its adherents. Anyone else accused of employing it is infringing upon trade and will be dealt with accordingly.

There was a time, in the not too distant past, when some people had no qualms about challenging that trademark and committing piracy.

I don't know if the conditions are quite right at this particular moment to revisit the past, but a few years worth of unemployment has a tendency to get one's mind straight.

Happy Jack,

Piracy has the added virtue of making a virtue of its vice. The pirates were a collectivist lot - though the word democratic should not sully their devices - and their fondness for equal shares and equal reprisals are inspirational, if not aspirational.

Piracy? I've got the boat. Any volunteers?

By piracy, I meant stealing the "property right" of cracking heads.

"Piracy? I've got the boat. Any volunteers? "

Now which side was starboard again?

I get seasick, but will cheer from the dock. (No, this isn't a bourgeois metaphor; I really do get seasick.)