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The passage that caught my eye in the entry you linked to was this:
“marching on and sitting in the local offices of our respective congresspersons would be very effective IMO.”
So I see you are thinking of forms of direct action in a Gandhian sense/MLK sense, perhaps. I immediately think of the civil rights movement when I think of real social change. But it is hard to see how that could be ignited in a specific way in our current circumstances. That makes me think of what DCLaw said in this thread, that I was referring to:
“The anger - personalized, direct, concrete, and intolerable - is nowhere near approaching the level required for a sufficiently potent and widespread campaign of civil disobedience.The last major example I can think of - opposition to the Vietnam War, which had mixed, delayed results - was undeniably in large part a product of the terrible draft that was sending so many young men off to actually die for the government's policies.A bit before that, the civil rights movement had an overwhelmingly compelling moral message, and opposed clearly, blatant injustices and the vilest political adversaries. Even then, its success was far from certain and - Clinton had a point - did require federal political and judicial action as well. Also, the initial political avenues were not working, adding pressure, popular outrage, urgency, and increased moral intensity to the movement until it reached a tipping point.Today, although we cannot predict the outcome, we have had significant electoral changes come about in 2006 and of course 2008 - the latter historically unprecedented - and this has rendered notions of effective civil disobedience on a massive enough scale implausible, barring added injustices and conditions so grotesque as to defy current description.In such a state, the inch-by-inch efforts of petition, scrutiny, and targeted political action are the tools of the trade.”
To that you say if any purported plan "entails working within the system then it is not a plan with any legitimate hope of success.”
So my question is: how do you define success? Again, a real question. I find myself sometimes thinking if I can't change things fundamentally, then what is the point? And then I despair. But then I think of the civil rights movement, and I feel some hope. I remember now some old exchanges you had with others over incrementalism, and I certainly do not mean to rehash that: I am merely wondering what you mean by sucess in your statement there.
