I have read with interest your little dialogue with Che, and Glenn’s with Che too, I guess, and I am trying to think through it.

So Che writes that: “This is a game of power. What works is asserting power with those who have power in any given situation.” And “It requires going to the top, making your case as certainly as possible, and demonstrating what will happen if orders are not issued immediately -- from the top -- to correct the situation.”

You then draw the comparison that this is the DLC move, the “old top-down” etc., and draw the contrast with “bottom-up, people-powered, grass-roots, e pluribus unum, loosely-organized, many-faceted, multidimensional politics, not centralized top-down politics, which is the right's approach.” You also said earlier, characterizing Che’s viewpoint: you (Che) think that “there's nothing that us puny people can do about it, unless and until we accumulate equivalent power.”

Then you ask: how can we make the media fear us? Remember how the Right did it? By slowly and incrementally giving them a sort of bottoms-up hell, making it unpleasant for them so that the corporate bosses will see “that maybe this isn't so good for business.” You further emphasize this point a little later (about the influence of the bosses): “And, well, to a certain extent the establishment media will never fully behave honorably, because it has vested interests to pimp that it will never stop pimping.”

Are you saying that Che’s way of applying power is wrong, in the sense that the way power is really applied is incrementally, like with the super tanker analogy? But power is power, right? I mean incrementally applied power is also a way for us puny people “to accumulate equivalent power.” So you and Che agree about the essentials, the need to influence the top, but just disagree about the methods. What I first thought you were getting at was that if we use the methods of the right we become the right, and so destroy our souls, etc., losing the battle the instant we win it, and so forth. But as I re-read your post it seems to me you are not saying that at all: just that the bottom up method is a more effective use of power. Or am I misreading you?

Or have you misread Che’s point, which is not that the situation is hopeless, but that it is hopelessly misdirected until we seek to influence those with power at the top in the proper manner?

Why do you think bottom-up power is the right approach? Is it solely because you think it is more effective? ODo you disagree with Che’s remark that “This is a game of power. What works is asserting power with those who have power in any given situation”? You wrote: “We do not seek to accumulate enough power to call and beg Mr. Immelt or Mr. Wright or Mr. Stengel and tell them to knock it off, tell their rediculous underlings to knock it off. We knock THEM off. We do not seek their time. We seek their compliance. You entirely miss what this is all about. When we are reduced to waiting for a Bill Clinton to make that call to the heads of these corporations to set things right, we are doomed. Which is why the DLC approach was always wrong and self-defeating.”

In other words: that approach doesn’t allow the expression of real power, and that is the distinction. If we wait on bosses to tell bosses to back off, then we are still being run by the bosses. But is a crowd that has the power to tell the boss to back off different in some essential sense? Is that what you mean? That that kind of power is preferable for some reason? But what would make it preferable? Is your real disagreement just that becoming a boss to influence the bosses doesn’t work the way the bottoms-up method does? Or are you thinking there is something qualitatively different?

You wrote: “But since you seem to have invested so much mental energy in coming up with reasons for why we're permanently and irreversibly fucked, I don't expect any of this to have any impact on you.” But clearly Che’s point as I have been able to understand him, is that we are fucked as long as we don’t address the real centers of power in ways that are effective: which seems to be your essential point as well. You both pretty much agee on the goal but think the other is misguided in his method.

Well, anyway, I have just tried to write out my confusion as I tried to sort through the exchange you guys are having. I am interested in any responses you might have. Personally, I am beginning to think we ARE fucked, but that we should speak up anyway out of a sense of personal integrity: as I think of it, so that I do not die ashamed. Maybe things will change for the better and maybe they won’t, but even if they won’t that is not the deciding point. That perhaps to enter the power game, rather from below or above, is to enter a dynamic that is self-defeating on a whole other level. Is a different kind of politics possible, or is it all looking for the right levers to pull to project power? These are things I am always thinking about.

Anyway, thanks to all commentators, and of course Glenn, for the interesting discussion. Respects to all, even the funny trolls (who on my optimistic days I think are straw men employed by agent provocateurs to serve as examples to educate the innocent, and on my gloomy depressed days I think represent the majority of all mankind).