Are you saying that BebopO has the trots?

Are they contageous?

I worry for Pedinska and the MC.

Oh!, Woe is me.

Trouble is that these specifics that have been cited here and elsewhere over and over and over again are not "enough" for those who question the call to action. What I'm saying is that nothing is enough to satisfy the skeptics of direct action, no litany of specifics will satisfy them. It's a game. The brass ring is always out of reach.

I find all this highly analogous to the people that are pushing third party candidacies like Ralph Nader at the top of the ticket without building a party at the school committee level. It doesn't start at the beginning, and then wonders why there is no broad based support. And I say that as someone who does engage in some protests, does get on the phone, does go to rallies, and does do advocacy and try to take action.

Crane Brinton's 4 stages of revolution start not with the Paris Commune, but with the leafleting stage. In that stage, the only support base is the intelligensia, and the goal is to disseminate information about both the agenda and, more importantly, about the list of social wrongs. I don't see how the blogosphere isn't that form of leafleting? (grrrrhhh, I'm really sick of spellcheckers that conform to Microsoft Standard Spelling of no double consonants before -ing!)

For that matter, Brinton's stages correspond well to the more successful Reagan Revolution: We are now in the Thermidorian reaction, the return to center, after the reign of terror, when the excesses of the revolution cause destruction of society that force the population to react against them and their leaders. The biggest question is, where will the center be?

So if you are trying to foment a revolution, peaceful or otherwise, you haven't finished stage one unless your leafleting has caused broad popular support, and you can't jump ahead to the Paris Commune, even though you'd like to get ourselves back to the garden. Concentrate on educating the million year old carbon, first.

Good post. Now we have to teach our children well. :-)

Note to GC: modern usage allows for "kids" in place of "childern" these days.

nothing is "specific" enough. You just proved it.

All of the organizational "specifics" you wonder about already exist. How would "I" organize it? I don't have to; the structure and organization is already there. Look around you. It's hard to live in the People's Republic of Alameda County and not know that. Come on.

The problem is not structure or organization, it rarely is. We don't have to reinvent the wheel here. We aren't starting at square one. The problem is that there is no "will" among a broad enough cross section of the public to make these tactics effective on a large scale. Prevention of that "will" from ever developing (again) was an important objective of the Reagan Revolution. What happened in the '60's scared the bejesus out of them, and they were determined that it NEVER happen in this country again.

So far, so good.

People take action all over the world, bring down rotten and repressive governments right and left, but not here. Ain't gonna happen; can't.

Reaganites made sure of it.

BUT, on the small scale, on the local scale -- even right there in the People's Republic -- resistance and change and all the rest of a Tiny Revolution can happen, is happening, and has been happening for a good long time.

Lame?

Compared to what? The completely ineffective effort to force the Dems in DC to stop being complicit with the Autocracy?

All righty then....

How spineless is that? Is America a nation that embraces torture or not? The answer shouldn't depend on what the President says. I don't know if it's laziness or party unity or more loyalty oaths, but we've got entirely too many legislators who just do what they're told.

"The problem is not structure or organization, it rarely is."

If your goal was to prove you have no idea what you're talking about, and no real interest in making these goals come to pass, you just scored a hundred.

I'm not much in to manifestos. I had hopes Glenn would give it a shot, being as that he is a dynamite polemicist and is becoming more radicalized by the day. But still there is the resistance to going that far, potentially triggering something beyond the standard fare: phoning, faxing, voting, giving money to candidates and causes. Anything more than that is potentially dangerous.

Utter horseshit. No kidding you're not into manifestos. You're apparently "in to" blathering on. And "I had hopes Glenn would give it a shot." Get off your ass and do it yourself. And "potentially dangerous"--huh, this is rather like a schoolmarm reprimanding her revolutionary students for not spilling their blood fast--or copiously--enough.

When the Bushevik Regime was new and weak and fragile, THAT's when fighting back might have made a huge difference at relatively slight cost. Now? They've had years to consolidate their objectives -- with the active assistance, don't forget, of the entire political class -- and it's really too late to do anything about it easily or through regular channels.

And that's pretty goddamn convenient--there was a time when but, alas, no longer.

I don't even know why I'm responding to this balderdash except that armchair revolutionaries with screen names like Che really irritate me.

Well, well. This is just another demonstration that reality has a conservative bias.

[...]

Happily, as expected, a vote for Obama has resulted in a pragmatic approach to government.

"Pragmatic" and "conservative" in the same post is an oxymoron, like "jumbo shrimp".

Cheers,

The problem is that there is no "will" among a broad enough cross section of the public to make these tactics effective on a large scale.

Ché, if you are expecting this "will" to spring - fully formed like Athena from the forehead of Zeus - out of nowhere, then yeah, you're going to find exactly what you expect to find.

Every successful revolution, bar none, has been the end result of patient organizing. None has ever come about as a result of people giving up before they've even tried.

One good starting place: how about a coherent set of demands? One of the things that fascinates me about the Chés/adnotos of the world is their complaint that people aren't rising up in support of... what, exactly? Give people a reason to fight before you castigate them for being "sheeple."

This whole thing of so-called revolutionaries who love "the people" in the abstract but seem to dislike people in specific is as old as the hills...