Stop Me Before I Vote Again

"Progressive"? "PROGRESSIVE"?!?! Slooowly I turned....

...step by step... inch by inch... AND, I -- ...uh, excuse me. Sorry.

I caught the new spiffy Wisconsin recall commercial on Rachel Maddow's (spit) program, I think it was, and for the teensiest split second I thought hot damn diggety, a recall campaign! ...shortly after which I came to my senses and remembered that yeah, they're going to throw out the GOP and replace 'em with... Democrats...progressive DEMOCRATS.

Progressive Democrats... sloooowwwwly I turrrnnnnn... uhhh, 'scuse me. I need to get back to work on this cartoon about the '12 Obummer campaign kickoff. The phrase "Are You In?" is rattling around in my head like a pick trapped inside the DW's guitar and, like the DW's old Guild, I have to turn my head upside-down over the sketchbook until an idea falls out.

G'night, folks.

Change it. "Are you in? Yet?" Show an unemployment line, a food stamp office, a cardboard box beside a bank repo 'for sale' sign in front of a distant bungalow. etc.

Boink

This fork reminds me of an old fork, when factions of the college-educated New Left took up embedded proletarianization, only to find that the proles were much more interested in what looked like embourgeoisification than they were in Marx and Mao. The parade on the left fork met the mob on the right fork and the New Left survivors staggered away from the collision muttering about false consciousness.

The recall is in its way the smart choice in this. It's conservative, safe and the failure of it won't get anyone hurt. It won't secure any concessions and it won't be a springboard, but you can't have everything, now can you? The general strike is risky, but has a chance of securing concessions. It would be very risky for anyone in a managerial position, whether it worked or flopped. That alone makes it worthwhile.

I dunno. Any time I've seen anyone invest in the architecture, it ends up making new house servants. Better to burn the house down and take our chances with the barbarians.

And pinging off Al - the Teap Arty might be a bunch of honky well to dos, but they know how to speak the vernacular.

i think you covered the picnic area rather nicely

Al
if in a darkish sardonoic cloth

--------------

yes mates the agitators and activist nogoodniks of west consin and environs
have an ostensive choice here

a choice
between a wistful figment and a
melting fragment

----------------------

let me suggest something however
about both

first
about the fragment :

you 'll note
there's lots of urging on about building
something lasting org wise "out of this" ..well it's pure puffery
yup as you say Al it ain't gonna be
no springboard
not even a plank across a small gap

to me
in my declining sway backed years
such hopes
-- sweetly deluded as they are---
may still be a good thing

urge to build something
is not just a beaverish compulsion

its
quite a nice urge in fact

but without any notion of just what to build
and how

well ???

lets face it
not only was rome not built in a day
it wasn't built out of a bunch
of over night lean tos either

leafless cross lashed birch jobs
kept lovingly operational
night after night week after week
year after year decade after decade
like a mohawks canoe

to the point

a recall fight is just that
a lean to
and nothing more

and if you want to build something
that will last and take us as they say
"to the limit"

its called a vanguard party ass holes !!!!

"but that's another story "
as lou jacobi sez

http://www.wearysloth.com/Gallery/ActorsJ/8599-9601.gif

--------------------------
now for the figment ie the general strike ...

first off:

this isn't the sort
of general strike
most lovers of the general strike dream about is it ??
is this what their heads and hearts .crave ..is it ??

General Strike freaks
want to fuse economic struggles
with struggles against "the state "
right ??
its one big ball of wax to them
and you go at it bottom up

use base level unit level often job site organizing
but ultimately to do political battle
with the whole damn system

breakin the LAWWWWWW is job one
for them

well tinker belles
with a days growth of stubble
are the only souls wispy of mind enough
to believe u can bring off a systemic capitulation
just by agit prop
and a plan like a bank heister
makes on a napkin

back ground:

general strikes are predicated on a fairly straight forward notion

"if we all just stop doing our jobs
the whole fuckin set up
comes to a hault eh ??"

nice
but nope

as "the general" famously said
--more or less ---

i'll stipulate you can pull off
the grinding haul part
okay its stopped
the whole production and distribution system is in park
at parade rest
on indefinite break time
closed for business
shuttered
sleeping beauty-ed

profit flow has ceased

" ...now what ??"

-------------------------

but we're way ahead of the wave here

GENERAL STRIKES even the sensible ones
with only some feasible win-able concessions in mind
aren't constructed
out of raw human material
that happens to find itself all heated up
over conditions and prospects

all this piping hot conciousness meat
can't get whipped together
into a targeted frenzied spear
in a fortnight

no matter the temperature of the souls involved

now don't miss understand me here

there are times when all the institutions
come tumbling down
but its more like they implode of their own
weakness
the institutions desert the people
b4 the people can desert the institutions

the system completely mal functions
breaks down
there is disorder everywhere
the trains are late
the garbage un collected
the main course is cold
the army defeated
and heading for the hills
or shooting its generals
in a phrase
the social contradictions have gotten so sharp
so literal
as old timers use to say
"its beyond hittin nerves here
its gotten to the point of romantic chaos"

well
right about then
the establishment abdicates

takes an executive 86

and there's bliss ful anarchy in the streets ...
....for one or two historic moments

its only the beginning

sure as hell
the bad guys at the end of their run
no matter how long and far it is
will rally
catch their breath
and come back roaring or tip toeing
but come back all the way back

then you gotta have organization eh ??

and not the kind that pulls off a recall vote

you need something like ...

click link please

http://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/sections/australia/iww/open-letter.htm

Who cares about Rome? Built in day, built in a year, built across a dozen generations - would be better that it never was.

Known Pain | April 7, 2011 3:33 AM:
...Show an unemployment line, a food stamp office, a cardboard box beside a bank repo 'for sale' sign in front of a distant bungalow. etc...

Actually, you're pretty close. I'm imaginging a homeless unemployed guy begging on the street, a couple sitting at the curb surrounded by their belongings in front of their foreclosed house, a hooded prisoner in Gitmo, a couple of dead Afghan civilians with their guts blown out with a Predator soaring overhead... "Are You In?"

"would be better that it never was."

right jack

all you and i really need is bath tubs
to clown around and make a point in

but we're sour patch boys at heart

what about all the other permutations of humanity

at a bare minimum
you need a few whore houses
and gambling parlors
with lavish wet bars
and good hvac

gotta have a place to watch some of us kill each other too
and

oh the list gets long quick

Jack, this one's for you:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExWfh6sGyso

the institutions desert the people
b4 the people can desert the institutions

I remember Dmitry Orlov saying something about that, a few years back.

Al, I am in awe of how this paragraph distills and clarifies a problem the nature of which has produced libraries' worth of "literature" and befuddled bloviation:

"This fork reminds me of an old fork, when factions of the college-educated New Left took up embedded proletarianization, only to find that the proles were much more interested in what looked like embourgeoisification than they were in Marx and Mao. The parade on the left fork met the mob on the right fork and the New Left survivors staggered away from the collision muttering about false consciousness."

Suitable for framing.

cz:

you can't be old enough to have gone thru that shit ..are you ??

if so im surprised you strike me as younger by a generation that us woodflock nitwits

but i agree with you Al has a way with putting
struggle atages in a bottle

like my great uncle scupper paine
who after years of putting
tiny replicas of lobster boats and cod smacks in beer bottles
put his wife in a bottle too

well in several score bottles

thanx holy roman

but besides that
what have U
ever done for .....SMBIVA

In all seriousness, though, gang... I'm totally down with this Davidson guy. It's like he's reading my mind. "Elections" as they're run these days only serve to keep the renegades from getting off the reservation, to suck the life blood out of burgeoning movements by diverting their energy into electoral kabuki theater. My experience with the '00 and '04 slagfests has taught me that the phrase "election fraud" is a redundant expression.

As far as the proverbial "fork" goes, I've been down the election fork -- too many times -- and I'm anxious to see what's down the more militant fork, the general strike fork, the road taken by people in Europe and elsewhere who are tired of being played by politicians and are ready to organize a real peoples' movement. I know there's no guarantee of success in a general strike, but, f'crissakes, we know what's at the end of the electoral side of the fork -- so stick a fork in it.

Flugnaut the wobbly

Great Scott lock the plant gates seal the mine shaft
Wedge the revolving front door to the glass tower

The spawn of long dead bill hay hay heywood are headed our way

General strike meet private parts

Op: younger, yes. But surrounded by your likes my whole life. Raised by your likes, in fact.

peace be with you cz

Thanks, CZ, for the compliment on my distillation. Sometimes the saddest thing about official history is that it really does get written by the winners— who, for marketing purposes, recruit historians from the talent pool that adamantly refuses to learn.

I think the prole framework deserves a better look than it's gotten. There's no false consciousness to wanting to be your own boss, wanting security that can't be stolen and a risk aversion that's literally beaten into the framework.

Al, I am recalling now one such college-educated New Lefty who took up embedded proletarianization --- a PhD who told me he'd become a truck driver to "join the proletariat." Long story short: after the inevitable collision, he found his way to various teaching positions, but the collision clearly left him addled. Last I remember --- before we went off to meet Karl M in the Great Socialist Utopia in the Sky (or Wherever It Is; The Sky doesn't seem quite right), he was mumbling some vaguely supportive words about the Nicaraguan contras.

And one wonders who has false consciousness.

All consciousness is false consciousness, by definition; to apprehend is to misrepresent. But at any given time, there are some false consciousnesses that are better than others, though equally false.

"I'm anxious to see what's down the more militant fork, the general strike fork,"

its a figment flugger
as to "ready to organize a real peoples' movement"
ala " the road taken by people in Europe...
who are tired of being played by politicians and are ready to organize a real peoples' movement"

don't mistake more " advanced "
forms of struggle
for substance

there's no convincing evidence so far
euro forms bare better results
then norte amigo forms

take the french out bursts
last year
seems to have
reached an impass
stopping sarko seems to have not happened

how is that much above
what the unions et al may accomplish
or not accomplish in madison and columbus
etc etc

as the GOP state level anti pub sec union moves continue this assault is pretty bold
and hasn't the union response shown a higher level of mobilization that many would have expected ??

i doubt however a general strike even makes sense as a target

the best mobilization here b4 madison was the undoc moblization in spring '06

but building to the next level requires latent energies yet to be there among te people

you don't want to get so far ahead of the main body of change oriented souls
you end up abdicating mass leadership
of win able actions
to nothing much more then
union careerists
tattered donkeycrat elements
and other squash pies

flug you are all about agitation
and debunking

these are reform movements
or defensive actions
neither suits your take on what's worth doing

but surely you'd like to see a few reforms or
blocking actions
NOT led by the jack asses robots ...no ???