The Trollocracy

[Star Man]

Chris Hedges' Columns
The Election March of the Trolls
https://www.truthdig.com/report/item...olls_20110829/

Posted on Aug 29, 2011 at Truthdig

Illustration by Mr. Fish

By Chris Hedges

We have begun the election march of the trolls. They have crawled out of the sewers of public relations firms, polling organizations, the commercial media, the two corporate political parties and elected office to fill the airwaves with inanities and absurdities until the final inanity—the 2012 presidential election. Journalists, whose role has been reduced to purveyors of court gossip, whether on Fox or MSNBC, descend in swarms to report pseudo-events such as the Ames straw poll, where it costs $30 to cast a ballot. And then, almost immediately, they blithely inform us that the Iowa poll is meaningless now that Rick Perry has entered the race. The liberal trolls, as they do in every election cycle, are beating their little chests about the perfidiousness of the Democratic Party and Barack Obama. It is a gesture performed not to effect change but to burnish their credentials as moralists. They know, as do we, that they will trot obediently into the voting booth in 2012 to do as they are told. And everywhere the pulse of the nation is being assiduously monitored through polls and focus groups, not because our opinions matter, but because our troll candidates understand that by parroting back to us our own viewpoints they can continue to spend their days lapping up corporate money with other trolls in the two houses of Congress, the White House, the Supreme Court and television studios where they chat with troll celebrity journalists.



The only commodity the troll state offers is fear. The corporate trolls, such as the Koch brothers, terrify the birthers, creationists, militia lovers, tea party militants, right-to-life advocates, Christian fascists and God-fearing red-white-and-blue patriots by proclaiming that unless they vote for Perry or Mitt Romney or Michele Bachmann or some other product of the lunatic fringe of our political establishment, the American family will be destroyed, our children will be corrupted and the country will turn socialist. Barack Obama, who they whisper is a closet Muslim, will take away their guns, raise their taxes and bring homosexual couples into kindergartens.


For those, usually liberals, still rooted in a reality-based world, one that believes in evolutionary science, the corporate trolls offer a more refined, fear-based message of impending doom: If you abandon the Democrats we will be governed by Bible-thumping idiots who will make us chant the Pledge of Allegiance in mass rallies and teach the account of Genesis as historical and biological fact in our nation’s schools.
And underneath it all runs the mantra chanted in unison by all the trolls—terror, terror, terror. The troll establishment spins us like windup dolls and laughs all the way to the bank. What idiots, they think. And every election cycle we prove them right.


“The only people who grasp the distinction between reality and appearance, who grasp the laws of conduct and society, are the ruling groups and those who do their bidding; scientific, technical elites who elucidate the laws of behavior and the functions of society so that people might be more effectively, albeit unconsciously, governed,” wrote James W. Carey in “Communication as Culture.”


The trolls dominate or have neutralized every major institution in the country on behalf of their corporate paymasters. The press, education, Wall Street, labor and our political parties are managed by trolls or have been destroyed by them. Sometimes these trolls speak like liberals. Sometimes they speak like conservatives. Sometimes they are secular. Sometimes they are Christians. But the language they use is a cover for the relentless march toward a totalitarian capitalism and a kingdom where the trolls, if not the rest of us, live happily ever after. Rick Perry and John Boehner overtly make war on Social Security. Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi say they would like to save Social Security but are sadly powerless before the decisions of a congressional super committee they helped form. The result, of course, is the same. We get to choose the rhetoric and manner in which we are deceived and disempowered. Nothing more.

All cloying appeals to the Obama administration to use stimulus money to build public works such as schools, libraries, roads, clinics, public transit and reclaiming dams, as well as to create jobs, are about as effective as writing heartfelt appeals in the era of the old Soviet Union to Uncle Joe Stalin. The trolls have gamed the system. There is no economic, political or environmental reform, from campaign finance to environmental controls, that can be implemented to impede the march of the corporate state. The rot and corruption at the top levels of our financial and political systems, coupled with the increasing deprivation felt by tens of millions of Americans, are volatile tinder for revolt. And the trolls are prepared for this too. They have put in place draconian state controls, including widespread internal surveillance, to silence our anemic left. They know how to direct the rage of the right wing toward the last pockets of the cultural, social and political establishment that cling to traditional liberal values, as well as toward the most vulnerable among us including Muslims, undocumented workers and homosexuals. They will make sure we consume ourselves.


A society is in serious trouble when its political pariahs have at the core of their demands a return to the rule of law. This inversion, with our political and cultural outcasts demanding a respect for law, highlights the awful fact that the most radical and retrograde forces within the body politic have seized control. These forces demand that we serve the dictates of the marketplace. They are destroying all legal impediments to corporate exploitation and profit, as well as dismantling the regulatory agencies that once protected the citizen. They defend torture, offshore penal colonies, black sites and kidnapping (they call it “extraordinary rendition”) of state enemies. They protect and abet financial fraud. They wage pre-emptive war. They refuse to restore habeas corpus. Without warrants, they monitor, eavesdrop on and wiretap tens of millions of citizens. They order the assassination of U.S. citizens. They deny due process. They give corporations the status of persons. They ignore the suffering of the unemployed and the poor, slashing basic social service programs while doling out hundreds of billions in taxpayer funds to corporations. On these key issues, the only ones that really matter, there is no disagreement among trolls from either the self-identified left or the self-identified right. All their public disputes in the election cycle are a carnival act.



All conventional forms of dissent, from electoral politics to open debates, have been denied us. We cannot rely on the institutions that once made piecemeal and incremental reform possible. The only route left is to disconnect as thoroughly as possible from the consumer society and engage in acts of civil disobedience and obstruction. The more we sever ourselves from the addictions of fossil fuel and the consumer society, the more we begin to create a new paradigm for community. The more we engage in physical acts of defiance—as Bill McKibben and others did recently in front of the White House to protest the building of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would increase the flow of “dirty” tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada, to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico—the more we can keep alive a new, better way of relating to each other and the ecosystem.



Most important, we must stop being afraid. We have to turn our backs for good on the Democrats, no matter what ghoulish candidate the Republicans offer up for president. We have to defy all formal systems of power. We have to listen closely to the moral voices in our society, from McKibben to Noam Chomsky to Wendell Berry to Ralph Nader, and ignore feckless liberals who have been one of the most effective tools of our disempowerment. We have to create monastic enclaves where we can retain and nurture the values being rapidly destroyed by the wider corporate culture and build the mechanisms of self-sufficiency that will allow us to survive. The corporate coup is over. We have lost. The trolls have won. We have to face our banishment.


In William Shakespeare’s play “Coriolanus” the Roman consul is deposed by the mob. Coriolanus, whatever his faults, turns on those who thrust him from power to declare a valediction we should deliver to our class of ruling trolls and all those who remain in their embrace.

Brutus:
There’s no more to be said, but he is banish’d,
As enemy to the people and his country:
It shall be so.
Citizens:
It shall be so, it shall be so.
Coriolanus:
You common cry of curs! whose breath I hate
As reek o’ the rotten fens, whose loves I prize
As the dead carcasses of unburied men
That do corrupt my air, I banish you;
And here remain with your uncertainty!
Let every feeble rumour shake your hearts!
Your enemies, with nodding of their plumes,
Fan you into despair! Have the power still
To banish your defenders; till at length
Your ignorance, which finds not till it feels,
Making not reservation of yourselves,
Still your own foes, deliver you as most
Abated captives to some nation
That won you without blows! Despising,
For you, the city, thus I turn my back:
There is a world elsewhere.

Chris Hedges is a weekly Truthdig columnist and a fellow at The Nation Institute. His newest book is “The World As It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress.”
_________________________________________________________________________
Citizens! Listen up! Electoral politics is dead. Let us have a revolution of non-participation in the dominant system. Let us work for Time Dollars in local businesses of our creation. Time Dollars cannot be taxed, so let us opt out of taxation (we're certainly not represented) and starve the military-industrial-bureaucratic beast. Let us grow our own food and eschew Safeway. Let us cut up our credit cards. Let us educate our children ourselves in local schools run by citizen-teachers. Let us bicycle everywhere and choose not to go anyplace we cannot reach by bicycle. Let us turn off our TVs and learn all over again how to amuse and entertain ourselves. Culture is a lie! Culture is spectacle! Cease participation in the spectacle.

Star Man

[zenekar]

Chris Hedges' Columns
The Election March of the Trolls
https://www.truthdig.com/report/item...olls_20110829/

Posted on Aug 29, 2011 at Truthdig

Illustration by Mr. Fish

By Chris Hedges

We have begun the election march of the trolls. They have crawled out of the sewers of public relations firms, polling organizations, the commercial media, the two corporate political parties and elected office to fill the airwaves with inanities and absurdities until the final inanity—the 2012 presidential election. Journalists, whose role has been reduced to purveyors of court gossip, whether on Fox or MSNBC, descend in swarms to report pseudo-events such as the Ames straw poll, where it costs $30 to cast a ballot. And then, almost immediately, they blithely inform us that the Iowa poll is meaningless now that Rick Perry has entered the race. The liberal trolls, as they do in every election cycle, are beating their little chests about the perfidiousness of the Democratic Party and Barack Obama.

....
_________________________________________________________________________
Citizens! Listen up! Electoral politics is dead. Let us have a revolution of non-participation in the dominant system. Let us work for Time Dollars in local businesses of our creation. Time Dollars cannot be taxed, so let us opt out of taxation (we're certainly not represented) and starve the military-industrial-bureaucratic beast. Let us grow our own food and eschew Safeway. Let us cut up our credit cards. Let us educate our children ourselves in local schools run by citizen-teachers. Let us bicycle everywhere and choose not to go anyplace we cannot reach by bicycle. Let us turn off our TVs and learn all over again how to amuse and entertain ourselves. Culture is a lie! Culture is spectacle! Cease participation in the spectacle.

Star Man

Thanks, John, for posting this article. Hedges' perspective needs to be understood by more folks, so I posted it on Facebook.

[theindependenteye]

So am I reading this correctly? The bottom line is that there is no hope whatever in the electoral process: we've lost, and that's it. So don't be duped by the Democrats into preventing Perry or Bachmann or Paul from being President, because it'll make absolutely no difference: the corporate monolith is unified and unstoppable. So the best we can do to form "small monastic communities" that will hopefully not be noticed by the neofascists.

In my humble opinion, the man is either suicidal or he's been commissioned by the Perry for President Committee — I'd guess the former, and he's looking for company. One post suggests a "revolution of non-participation." I guess I've read too much history and not enough science fiction to understand that one. I'm all for undertaking small-is-beautiful and community-building initiatives, but in the meantime I'm going to risk making an utter fool of myself and vote for the lesser of the two evils, as I've done all my adult life — and seen a few incremental positive results among the vast wasteland of garbage. Think it can't get worse under the Rabid Republicans? You'll probably have a damned good chance to find out, as did all the squabbling German Leftists in 1932.

Cheers--
Conrad

[zenekar]

...a few incremental positive results among the vast wasteland of garbage..

Cheers--
Conrad

That's about the best we can hope for. George Carlin's assessment is also bleak but I dare say, right on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYIC0eZYEtI

[hieronymos]

To advocate total non-participation in the political system is imo self-indulgent nihilism. Yes, the Trolls are ascendant. But that does not absolve people of heart from their responsibility to help subvert the dominant paradigm. My guess is that similar debates about participation and non-participation in a broken political system also took place in Germany in the years leading up to 1934.

And what about the Green Party? To not advocate support for the Green Party for Lefties--and Libertarian Party for Righties--is pretty shortsighted. Even if each was lifted up from their current total insignicance to be minor parties in the shadow of the Elephant and Donkey, they would still do a lot to help keep the two corporatist parties a little more honest. Well worth the effort I say.

By all means grow food, ride bikes to work, and live cooperatively; but do not under any circumstances abandon participation in the political process.

This coming winter could very well see a great deepening of the "recession" into the Second Republican Great Depression. The first time it happened, the great societal pain it caused created the New Deal, a progressive tax structure, and an overall huge swing into democratic socialism. If history is to repeat itself, it will need our participation.

["Mad" Miles]

Recently, in my other online life in my waning days (literally days) of paid unemployment, I opined that Chris Hedges has a great diagnosis for our social, political and economic ills. I enjoy his Jeremiads and mostly agree with him. But he does not present a prescription for a cure, nor a course of treatment.

He's big on describing and denouncing. I love his work for that. He's light on making recommendations for viable action.

He's not alone in this, of course. None of us have all the answers.

I have a two track strategy. The Green Party for symbolic reasons, to send a message.

And calling for massive, organized, coordinated and sustained Non-Violent Direct Action to oppose our "sea of troubles".

Talking tens, hundreds, thousands of thousands in the streets, fields, forests, etc.

Not Passive Civil Disobedience. Not Symbolic Protest and Lobbying electeds.

Blockades, Occupations, Disruptions. The real deal.

Now, much easier typed, than made manifest. No doubt of that. Lot's of details to work out. Everybody get to work!

My brother has a milk goat. "Monastic Enclaves"? Please, I've seen, "Name of the Rose", too many times. And knew all about the Medieval period by the age of 12. They didn't call it The Dark Ages fo nuttin'!

We'll cross that bridge when we have to. Doesn't hurt to prepare. But angry revolutionaries have been predicting the economic "End Times" for centuries, millenia. I've done it myself. History has proven us wrong, although punctuated equilibrium and expansion can be total beeaaatttccchhhh.

(If you're offended by my reference to female canines, I apologize. I'm just using the vernacular for effect. Can't be PC all the time. Wouldn't even want to! No fun!!! Give me credit for referring to a general humongous condition, and not a person. I tend to avoid that, unless sorely and unavoidably provoked. No fear of that here!)

[Star Man]

To advocate total non-participation in the political system is imo self-indulgent nihilism. Yes, the Trolls are ascendant. But that does not absolve people of heart from their responsibility to help subvert the dominant paradigm. My guess is that similar debates about participation and non-participation in a broken political system also took place in Germany in the years leading up to 1934.

And what about the Green Party? To not advocate support for the Green Party for Lefties--and Libertarian Party for Righties--is pretty shortsighted. Even if each was lifted up from their current total insignicance to be minor parties in the shadow of the Elephant and Donkey, they would still do a lot to help keep the two corporatist parties a little more honest. Well worth the effort I say.

By all means grow food, ride bikes to work, and live cooperatively; but do not under any circumstances abandon participation in the political process.

This coming winter could very well see a great deepening of the "recession" into the Second Republican Great Depression. The first time it happened, the great societal pain it caused created the New Deal, a progressive tax structure, and an overall huge swing into democratic socialism. If history is to repeat itself, it will need our participation.

The SYSTEM itself is evil, and it has attracted evil, stupid, self-aggrandizing people to itself. You mention the Green Party. (For the record I remain a registered Green Party voter). The system co-opted and destroyed the Green Party by planting agents provocateurs within it who fomented dissension that the wide-eyed liberal membership failed to recognize, and taking sides, joined in the destruction of the party. (I know there are WaccoBBeans who disagree with this assessment, but their virulent disagreement will not dissuade me from restating my belief.) I will vote in the next election, and I will vote for the lesser of two evils and hope and pray that the greater of the two evils (e.g., Perry-Bachmann) does not prevail (or that the Supreme Court does not intervene and install Perry-Bachmann). Have you noticed, that there appears to be no disclosure, however heinous or idiotic, that can derail these preeminent Stupidocrats? At the same time, I will work for all forms of opting out. The great democratic experiment has become an addiction to power, and all citizens who participate also participate in the addiction.

["Mad" Miles]

"The system co-opted and destroyed the Green Party by planting agents provocateurs within it who fomented dissension that the wide-eyed liberal membership failed to recognize, and taking sides, joined in the destruction of the party. (I know there are WaccoBBeans who disagree with this assessment, but their virulent disagreement will not dissuade me from restating my belief.)"

There you go again Star Man!

Your "belief" whatever you base it on, has never been supported by you other than by assertion. If you have evidence to prove it, produce the evidence.

Otherwise you are spreading rumor, lies, slander and dissension.

I have been involved, a member, active and inactive, but always observant, in The Green Party since 1987. I know for a fact that agent provocateurs had nothing to do with the internal conflict after 2000. The conflict was pretty much of the nature we see here, passionate people disagreeing and trying to support their opinions and goals, devolving to name calling when overly frustrated or provoked.

Unless you can back up your "belief" in a Cointelpro operation in the GP in the last ten years, you are serving as just such a wrecker, a provocateur, a virtual agent.

I'm sure you're sincere. I'm sure you think you're right. But, stop slandering my political party without a shred of evidence. It goes against most of you have to say and share here.

And please, my opposition to you has nothing to do with untreated unresolved childhood emotional and/or physical trauma. Do not psychologize me, and I'll return the favor.

[Star Man]

"The system co-opted and destroyed the Green Party by planting agents provocateurs within it who fomented dissension that the wide-eyed liberal membership failed to recognize, and taking sides, joined in the destruction of the party. (I know there are WaccoBBeans who disagree with this assessment, but their virulent disagreement will not dissuade me from restating my belief.)"

There you go again Star Man!

Your "belief" whatever you base it on, has never been supported by you other than by assertion. If you have evidence to prove it, produce the evidence.

Otherwise you are spreading rumor, lies, slander and dissension.

I have been involved, a member, active and inactive, but always observant, in The Green Party since 1987. I know for a fact that agent provocateurs had nothing to do with the internal conflict after 2000. The conflict was pretty much of the nature we see here, passionate people disagreeing and trying to support their opinions and goals, devolving to name calling when overly frustrated or provoked.

Unless you can back up your "belief" in a Cointelpro operation in the GP in the last ten years, you are serving as just such a wrecker, a provocateur, a virtual agent.

I'm sure you're sincere. I'm sure you think you're right. But, stop slandering my political party without a shred of evidence. It goes against most of you have to say and share here.

And please, my opposition to you has nothing to do with untreated unresolved childhood emotional and/or physical trauma. Do not psychologize me, and I'll return the favor.

"Naive": unsophisticated, lacking street smarts, credulous as in "a little too quick to believe something," easiest to deceive. (From the Oxford Desk Dictionary).

A fundamental principle of corporatism states that competition must be eliminated and markets thereby controlled at all costs. On the political level -- where corporatism becomes corporatocracy -- a third party has and always will be seen as a competitive threat to the false two-party system. The markets that are being controlled comprise the voters. The Republicans and Democrats are like Ford and Chevrolet: they will fight as a unified front to prevent any threat to driving in cars in America. The motor vehicle industry is a good metaphor, as the competitors unified to destroy public transportation in America during the 30s and 40s.

The Left and Progressive movements in America have been infiltrated and neutralized, and I observed this with my own eyes in Berkeley in the Free Speech Movement and in the Vietnam Day Committee. Agents Provocateurs always appear at peaceful rallies, e.g. the Seattle WTO protest, to smash windows and provide an excuse for the police to attack the peaceful protestors, to give a reason for authorities to restrict the Right of Free Assembly, and to allow politicians to terrorize citizens with the specter of anarchy.

I believe it is naive for anyone to believe that the corporatocracy suddenly relinquished the principles that have assured its ascendancy to power in the case of the Green Party. The outcome evidences the argument. The Green Party provided a viable, attractive, reasonable alternative to corporatocratic policy on war, military spending, taxation, environment, jobs, and civil rights. The Green Party offered hope (true hope, not Obama's corporatocratic pseudo-hope) for relief from the oppressive rule of the corporations and their congressional lick-spittles. Within the space of a couple of years the Green Party was on the ballot in all 50 states. Nader (I voted for him) garnered 5% of the vote. Suddenly, factionalism appeared, sides were taken, and the Green Party disintegrated to its present marginalized, neutered, ineffective state.

I do not have specific evidence about the players, the conversations, the machinations. I cannot name a single agent provocateur. I don't really need to, because the evidence is obvious on its face: danger (to the corporatocracy), dissension (appearing within the party), disintegration (of the party as a national force). I read the news reports at the time of the break in the Green Party's unified front, and I wondered, "Where is the voice urging the party to unite for the common good in the face of covertly created dissension?" There was no such voice.

It's particularly difficult to admit that the Green Party didn't understand the Who's lyrics in "We won't get fooled again." It's particularly difficult to acknowledge that well-meaning, environmentally conscious citizens were flummoxed once again by the corporatocracy. It's especially difficult if a person knows some of the players personally. I think Progressives have real difficulty understanding how brutal the opposition is. The corporatocrats are not neurotics, they are not nice people who just happen to have different belief system. They are personality disordered, unconscious animal beasts in deceptively human form. If you doubt this analysis of the Green Party debacle, just ask yourself, "What would Dick Cheney have done?"

I am not serving as a wrecker, Mr. Miles. I am trying to wise up Progressives. If Progressives do not understand the opposition, they will get fooled again.

Star Man

[hieronymos]

Star Man, if I understand you correctly, you're espousing an I-Chinq-esque, "in the face of such evil, retire from public life..until the storm passes" ethos, based on our current neocon/neo-fascist/corporatocratic dilemma. I wholeheartedly agree with you that:

1) The GOP and most of the non-progressive caucus Dems are wholly owned and paid for by the Corporatocracy Complex.
2) The CIA and Organized Crime have formed a seamless "Mafio-cratic" whole, infiltrating every level of federal, state, and most local governments to oversee the importation, wholesale distribution, and laundering of most illicit drugs.
3) That every U.S. president since Jimmy Carter has been a creature of the Mafio-cracy first, the Military-Industrial Complex second, and the general Corporatocracy third.
4) That this "Complex" behaves just as you specified, doing their damnedest to divide and neutralize any and all opposition, or potential opposition, using any means fair or foul at their disposal, like Cointelpro.
5) That the Corporate Press (print and electronic media) is the wholly owned mouthpiece of the Complex.
6) That 911 was 100% created by the Military-Industrial wing of the Complex (NOT Al-Qaeda) to manufacture more wars and an increased budget for itself.
7) That an NSA computer is logging this thread even as we speak, and cross-referencing all posts and posters to existing persons-of-interest watchlists.
8) That the emerging crises of Global Warming (with 40' sea level rises) and Peak Oil will create famine and population dislocations on a massive scale that will used by the Complex to justify total authoritarianism.

Star Man, probably most of the sorts of progressive people who subscribe to this thread will agree with much/most of what is elucidated just above. Yes, we are collectively in deep shit. But so what? It's David vs. Goliath for sure. And we have the free will to do what we choose to do, even if that is to go hide in a commune in the hills. But should you choose to do so, the authorities know who you are and will hunt you down just the same, should the shit truly hit the fan.

That you are attempting to make fellow lefties aware of the utter sociopathic ruthlessness of the Complex in looking after its own interests is imo laudable. But even if your assessment of the fracturing of the Greens in 2000 is correct, it does not justify Greens giving up on trying to reform and improve their party. If you're a small kid standing up to a schoolyard bully, you're going to get knocked down. Perhaps repeatedly. What's important is that you keep getting up and landing some punches in return. Appeasement--or hiding--does not work.

One dynamic you fail to give credit to is that the Complex is currently in DEEP TROUBLE. When the economy was "good", it was business as usual. But now, the $600 billion military budget combined with the $1 trillion annual giveaway to Big Business (subsidies and tax breaks) is no longer sustainable. Their congress critters are looking to balance the budget on the backs of the poor, with deep cuts to social programs. But even if these programs were 100% eliminated, the budget can NOT be balanced. Furthermore, the increased hits on the poor will cause excrutiating pain--the only force that tends to wake up the politically unconscious. Around Christmas, the economy is somewhat likely to "double-dip", creating a replay of 1932 with 25% unemployment, etc. That is when the Complex will be most vulnerable to progressive/socialist reform, and when all hands will be needed on deck to attempt to create the New New Deal..

IF/WHEN THAT HAPPENS Star Man, your help will be sorely needed to help direct and shape emerging political consciousness as an "agent-provocateur" for the Left. You won't be of any help if your're out gathering wildflowers in the Sierras...

You also make the repeated point that the SYSTEM is evil. You need to elaborate: is it because the system is a form of Capitalism? Or just that is has been co-opted by evildoers? Or that it is representative (and not participatory) democracy?

["Mad" Miles]

So, SM, you have no specifics regarding internal conflict in the Green Party in the last eleven years. You talk about Cointelpro in the Sixties, which is well documented, The Church Commission, first hand accounts by those targeted, news reporting and historical accounts.

You produce nothing of the kind with regard to the GP. Only your, "looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, must be a duck" argument. Your assessment, your hunch.

Problem is, even if your claims were true, which I have seen no evidence for, and I know for a fact that they are not, I was privy to the internal debates in the GP leading up to the '04 and '08 major elections, here's the rub.

The nature of "Black Ops" is such that they are kept hidden. And since they are designed in part to create dissension and destructive infighting, if you base your claim on the "results", then all and any dissension and infighting becomes the fault of agent provocateurs.

This is an endemic problem in the left. Not the existence of actual agents (which admittedly is a real danger, but not the only one) but a paranoid Security Culture that marks all disagreement, all deviation from the consensually validated "line", as the work of conscious disruptors. This "culture" is as disruptive as any actual police agent.

There are organizing techniques to handle the threat of agent provocateurs. Just google: Direct Action Security Culture for resources.

What those resources do not discuss, is that in open, democratic, public organizations, such as The Green Party of the U.S.A., a focus on security culture, beyond the bounds of normal discretion and protection of individual privacy, can be as destructive as actual "wrecking" from the outside.

When people start calling each other names such as traitor, tool, agent, cop, toxic person*, fascist, etc. This is as destructive, if not more so, than programs of disruption coming from repressive forces. And of course, agent provocateurs are trained to exploit that very flaw. But it does not take them, does not require their existence, for paranoid and hostile individuals to play a destructive role.

* Been hit with that one myself! In early '03 in the local anti-Iraq War / Peace movement.

In recent days on FB, I've been called a "tool of Imperialism" and accused of "siding with the Rulers". The latter from a Belgian friend with whom I have a lot of agreement on many matters, matters that most people aren't even aware of because most people haven't read modern left political philosophy.

I have committed the standard heresy, for which I deserve to be cast into the outer darkness. I've argued in support of a military intervention backing a popular revolt against a military dictator, who at times has called himself a Socialist. Even if him being such a thing couldn't be farther from the truth. Now, back the the main topic.

When I was talking about the infighting in the local Green Party back in '02, with a couple of fellow activists from East Timor Action Network, at a benefit at La Pena. One of them told me something that I marked.

"There are people who can no longer get a hearing from their family, friends, co-workers, neighbors because of their constant complaining and tendency to engage in aggressive or passive aggressive social relations. Some of them gravitate towards open community organizations. People like that can destroy an organization."

Or, as I've said and heard many others say for several decades. The cops don't have to pay for agents to disrupt movements and organizations. There are plenty of people willing to do it for free, and need no direction from the cops at all!

When it comes to The Social, things aren't quite as simple as biological morphology.

You have no proof to support your claims. The function of your claims is to dismiss the Green Party as a failed, destroyed, organization. That is not true. It is a lie, whether you believe it or not. Stop it. You are acting as a functional police agent, provocateur, wrecker (in the old school parlance).

In doing so, sincere as you may feel and think you are, you discredit yourself and the causes you take up here. Causes I share and do not want to see discredited.

Put up or shut up. Describe specific events, people and positions, that you think constituted subversion within the GP in the last eleven years (or at any time in our history. Believe me, there has been plenty of internal debate, factional infighting to pick from. Just like in the rest of the Left and politics in general.).

Explain why you think those events were caused by plants seeking to subvert and destroy the party.

If you cannot, or will not. Stop spreading false rumors.

There are plenty of partisan democrats doing that already, with regard to the Green Party. They don't need your help.

Based on the affinities you have claimed, why would you want to help them?


Hieronymous,

Nicely put! I'm in pretty much provisional* agreement (*I'm a trained Social Theorist and Political Philosopher with decades of activism under my belt, what can I say? Everything is problematic! And provisional.) with seven out of your eight position claims.

I am not a 9/11 Truther, I am agnostic on that. Don't want to debate it here. Been there, done that.

Excellent concluding questions.

I think Capitalism is Evil, if you're working class, poor or an indigenous person in an area where resource extraction is grinding up the ecosystem your people have been dependent on for all time. But the efforts to supplant it by the Marxist-Leninist movements, have proven as bad, if not far worse. And then there's China...

I advocate mixed economies, arrived at through Social Democratic political means.

Decades ago I flashed on the idea that, "After The Revolution", if we socialized all basic human needs: food, shelter, clothing, education, medical care and a certain level of culture and entertainment, then once all of those are met for everyone, a market in extras, luxury goods, tchotkes, art, high fashion, gourmet food, high level entertainment, abstruse literature and academic pursuits, etc. should be allowed, encouraged, to flourish.

And if those engaged in the market achieve a level of prosperity which allows them to pay a living wage to others to carry their share of the collective burden, that should be allowed. When I told a Liberal Democratic Party partisan friend of this idea recently, he quipped, "Isn't that what we've got?"

I also used to like to say that until machines did the necessary work that nobody wanted to do, we will not be free. Not that work people loved couldn't be done by them. Just the scutwork that nobody does by choice. Yep, read a lot of SciFi growing up. Utopian Socialism has its seamless appeal. And I know when I'm dreaming.

Since the seventies the idea of Socialism has been off the table in the public arena, at least in this country. Complex history as to why, won't belabor it. And my idea above has many obstacles both in execution and in persuading people to even countenance it. As we all see here on a regular basis, Socialism = Communism = Fascism = Liberalism, while Capitalism = Freedom = Democracy = The only viable economic system known to Humans, etc. Those received truths are undeniable and immutable, in the minds of some. I do not bother arguing such matters with those who think that way, any more. Vexatious Disputation, despite all appearances to the contrary, is not my cup of tea.

I do discuss politics, economics and related topics within the parameters of the dominant consensus (if such a thing exists and matters, as you point out we're cruising for a humongous bruising) within the bounds of collectively conceived political possibility. Even if I do not accept those limits. To quote the cliché, I'm capable of entertaining two, or more, conflicting ideas at the same time.

My brother has a milk goat!

Cheers, H, HS44, SM and everybody else reading.

Lagos Roots Afrobeat Ensemble at HopMonk in four hours everybody! See you there!

[hieronymos]

Well put "Mad" Miles!
What I think SM doesn't quite get is that participatory Democracy is inherently messy. Really messy. And that's where the Left tends to go more than the Right, as the Right is often totally in the pockets of totalitarian organizations like corporations and the Vatican. The percieved messiness of democratic debate is exploitively portrayed by the Complex as chaotic disorganization. Hitler did the same thing in the run up to '34, painting the Nazis as forces for order. Once strict forms of command and control start exercising themselves in any political party, things start getting tidy. Walking in lockstep is so sanitary. That the Greens are discussing--and vigorously debating--policy, is a sign of health, imo.

But regarding total withdrawal from the political process, Plato said it best when he stated that "People who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are more stupid than they are." SM's injunction to retire from the political process makes a lot of sense in a totalitiarian society. But not so much here where we still have some semblance of a functioning Democracy.

Asking SM to provide some proof of current cointelpro ops vs. the Greens (or anyone else for that matter) could also be problematic in the unlikely event he takes you up on your offer, as incorrect analysis could cause him to finger an innocent. Better to wait for the inevitable wikileak, and in the meantime follow your excellent advice to remain openhearted and resist the temptation to accuse everyone we disagree with as a narc.

["Mad" Miles]

Thank you for your understanding and clarity Hieronymos,

If it appears I was demanding names from Star Man, I was not clear. He only needs to describe the specific conflicts, what the positions were, what local Parties were torn apart by those debates, just a bit of history.

No one need name names. I am in no way a narc or a reincarnation of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy. Let alone Roy Cohn or Richard Nixon!!!???

But he won't provide supporting details, any evidence at all. Cause he can't. He made it up.

There's a guy in my local GP, who I cannot stand, and the feeling is mutual. After the fallout debacle from the 2000 election, things got tense in general.

I, because I was insisting we follow our consensus process, was pushing for new fundraising efforts to keep our new office, and didn't think we could or should vote by email (in violation of our consensed process) became the "designated asshole". (I'm sure there are no surprised readers here who can't imagine how that could happen!!)

Relations became so strained I realized I was not going to be able to help. I was too much of a focus. I resigned and took a year off. Then I offered to return, not really asking, just seeking feedback. Permission was not required the GP is an open association free to anyone who does not cause problems that are irresolvable. (And yes, that's highly subject to interpretation! Read on.)

One of my non-fans (another history there, that I won't summarize, not relevant to this discussion. And there's some dirty laundry I will not air. Notice I've written nothing about why the first guy I mentioned and I don't care for each other. Those who know, know.) put together a letter that he got the coordinating council to sign, saying I should not return. There was some pretty painful language in that letter.

A year or so later, when I checked again, the guy I first mentioned quoted the modal phrase at the end of that letter. All of the people on the CC back then, are long gone. For many years now I've been repeatedly told that I'm welcome back. I've been very busy with work, and the first guy was still around. I walk away from unnecessary fights.

I advocate for my party, as everyone knows. I get the county party's emails and contribute information to the listserv (currently I appear to be the only one doing that. It's how I ended up with my nom de keyboard, for those already hip and sick of me recounting the story. I suspect the local GP listserv is moribund.)

The guy who I can't stand has been around all this time, partly because of his modus operandi, many others have drifted away and those still hanging in, have affirmed my opinions about the role he plays. I could go back, things are slow. I'm considering it. But I have other priorities and responsibilities. Primarily the need to generate income.

Now, why vaguely air that dirty laundry? Cause at no time in the course of the last eleven years of local Green Party internal conflict or dysfunction, do I recall anyone accusing anyone else of being, a cop, a plant, an agent, etc. I am firmly convinced that the conflicts were solely due to personality clashes and differences of opinion about direction, focus, allocation of resources, process, etc. The nitty gritty of organizing. By the way, if any local party was ripe for disruptive targeting? We were, we were one of the most successful and effective county GP parties in the U.S..

On the left you get people who are angry and frustrated, fairly well informed, verbally articulate and tenacious. Not our only qualities, we are also committed to Peace, Love, Cooperation, Democracy, Environmental Protection and Survival, Social Justice, Tolerance, etc. But when you put a bunch of people in a room with the characteristics I first listed. What follows is inevitable.

That's where clear understandings about agreed upon decision making processes, and good facilitation/moderation at meetings (something I've gotten compliments for) become essential.

Even so, when a major blow has been struck (not qualifying for Federal Matching Funds in the case of 2000, plus dealing with the prevarication of Democratic Party apparatchiks pinning the blame for Gore's loss on us, without a scintilla of proof) and people are feeling particularly angry, frustrated and confused, shit happens.

No matter how good the process and the participants are.

How we handle that shit, determines our future association. Being told the shit was due to outside interference, without evidence of any of that? That just multiplies the shit and keeps it rolling.

No shit! Sherlock!!

[Iolchan]

There is Something Here:

Chris Hedges wrote:

A society is in serious trouble when its political pariahs have at the core of their demands a return to the rule of law. This inversion, with our political and cultural outcasts demanding a respect for law, highlights the awful fact that the most radical and retrograde forces within the body politic have seized control. These forces demand that we serve the dictates of the marketplace. They are destroying all legal impediments to corporate exploitation and profit, as well as dismantling the regulatory agencies that once protected the citizen. They defend torture, offshore penal colonies, black sites and kidnapping (they call it “extraordinary rendition”) of state enemies. They protect and abet financial fraud. They wage pre-emptive war. They refuse to restore habeas corpus. Without warrants, they monitor, eavesdrop on and wiretap tens of millions of citizens. They order the assassination of U.S. citizens. They deny due process. They give corporations the status of persons. They ignore the suffering of the unemployed and the poor, slashing basic social service programs while doling out hundreds of billions in taxpayer funds to corporations. On these key issues, the only ones that really matter, there is no disagreement among trolls from either the self-identified left or the self-identified right. All their public disputes in the election cycle are a carnival act.

All conventional forms of dissent, from electoral politics to open debates, have been denied us. We cannot rely on the institutions that once made piecemeal and incremental reform possible. The only route left is to disconnect as thoroughly as possible from the consumer society and engage in acts of civil disobedience and obstruction. The more we sever ourselves from the addictions of fossil fuel and the consumer society, the more we begin to create a new paradigm for community. The more we engage in physical acts of defiance—as Bill McKibben and others did recently in front of the White House to protest the building of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would increase the flow of “dirty” tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada, to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico—the more we can keep alive a new, better way of relating to each other and the ecosystem.

And Here:

"Mad" Miles wrote:

And calling for massive, organized, coordinated and sustained Non-Violent Direct Action to oppose our "sea of troubles".

Talking tens, hundreds, thousands of thousands in the streets, fields, forests, etc.

Not Passive Civil Disobedience. Not Symbolic Protest and Lobbying electeds.

Blockades, Occupations, Disruptions. The real deal.

Now, much easier typed, than made manifest. No doubt of that. Lot's of details to work out. Everybody get to work !

Especially like the words: "...in the streets, fields, forests, etc... Occupations (=) The real deal..."

To Which I Suggest :

Iolchan wrote:

Could a five-point platform today, as the basis for non-violent, revolutionary political change on a national and global level, address the pressing needs all the common people in North America - and indeed all the people of the World? Could such a Movement take state power in the United States today?

That is the Question.

The following five-point program could be a possible Agenda for a Coast-to-Coast Non-Partisan League in the present:

1. The Government, of the People, for the People, and by the People, should issue sufficient non-interest bearing U.S. notes to purchase back the capital stock of the Federal Reserve Bank from its current private owners. In agreement with Article 1, Section 8, Clause 5, of the U.S. Constitution, henceforth the Government of the People should control its own credit and cease issuing interest-bearing notes, bonds, and securities. Pension-fund, and Ma and Pa and holders of U.S. Savings bonds should be paid off in full, but no bank or trust company holding securities against the U.S. Government debt shall be paid more than Seven Per Cent in full, on the bonded indebtedness of the face value of the U.S. Treasury Certificates they were holding, when the Debt-Repudiation finally takes place.

It must take place, Citizens ! We must Force it on Congress, if it is the Last thing we do.

2. The American People should move for immediate legislation to cancel All fictitious International "Debt" owed by any nation - including this nation - to the Prime Banks of the First World. And to Declare, Collectively, in chanting, resonant Unison, that the Year 2012 shall be, not only the Day of Reckoning: but also, the Year of Jubilee - for the release of all nations from the bondage of debt to the international commercial banks.

3. We should also move to take decisive steps to dismantle the military budget & press towards immediate peace-time conversion of the industrial sector towards the pressing needs of our own decaying infrastructure and millions of homeless citizens, needy families and also, increasing numbers of newly-needy elderly.

4. The People must consider and address the issue of Land Reform, and Move, to Liberate the millions of acres that were fraudulently given to the Railroad corporations in violation of the Homestead Act of 1862, as well as the additional millions of acres that were swindled by the timber barons by fraud, - again, in violation of the Homestead Act of 1862 - which theft, is described in the book, Looters of the Public Domain, by Steven D. Puter.

These lands should be made available for Homesteading to every American who wants a Homestead. A just and reasonable Portion is Four Acres per Couple. Furthermore, we should endeavor to provide Just Compensation - in land, not money - for lands stolen from all the tribes of Native Americans. To this ends, the International Indian Treaty Council should Receive, for the Red Man, the Restoration of All the Lands granted in the Medicine Lodge Treaty of 1867 - the {Original} Wind River Reservation - to be a Sovereign, Indigenous, Indian Nation, in North America.

5. The People must begin the painful process of learning how to live on the earth in a manner that does not destroy it. We must learn again the ancient rhythms of seed-time and of harvest. We must strive to create a sustainable civilization upon the earth, in the World-After-Oil. This last point is both a turning inward, and a return to ancestral patterns that existed before the invention of the internal combustion engine and the automobile. It is a point that can only be done by each and every individual him or herself. It is, nevertheless, highly political.

UN-Agenda 21 does not want us to live in rural areas. We, the People, however, must Insist that We Must. Thus, Land Reform = the Slogan being "Four Acres and a Tax-break" = is the Genuine Arena of the Authentic Revolution, in the Present.

And, if we are unable to implement Points 1-3, because we are unable to Unite the Masses in a unified Program for effective Class Struggle, then we, who are able to make the Move, must Occupy the Land, by ourselves, in fulfillment of Points Four and Five, if the Current Pharaoh, O'Bama, will not allow us to dwell on the top of the mountains, as a separate = but equal = Nation, in this, our modern, latter-day Egypt.

Mark Walter Evans