Going to let my imagination run, see what kind of ideas come up. Not worried about practicality, just brainstorming freely. You know, I like to do thought experiments.
JackRiddler » Wed Oct 05, 2016 8:13 pm wrote: It's the political mood that must arrive, not some conventional piece-by-piece building of hierarchical organization vetting politicians. The most meaningful effort on the electoral front after November would be to challenge ballot restrictions, push for IRV, public campaign finance, etc.
I envision an occupy-style groundswell with a detailed platform addressing many fronts, as opposed to the (refreshingly) original occupy platform of 'no platform.' A movement that deliberately
allows itself to be channeled into electoral politics.
Every occupy-area grows its own political party. It's understood from the start that these parties are not conventional parties, they change constantly, merge, split. There's planned obsolescence built into some of them. Others have that distinctly discordian flavor (Guns and Dope. Is it a political party or a joke?) They're all temporary tools by design.
This is Smart-politics, a new utilitarian way of thinking about how to apply political pressure. Flood the market. Don't play the establishment's political games, make up our own games and make them more fun than theirs. The new system is fluid, a mutant organism. Greens and Libertarians are forced to struggle to keep up if they want to stay relevant. In the future things can move fast. Do try not to get stuck in the past.
It's the political mood that must arrive. Occupy may have started as an ad campaign, but it grew unpredictably, spontaneously. Be prepared to make suggestions next time. Or watch it happen, if you like. Your observation will be noted by the data-collectors. That will help, too.
Democracy may arrive, walk through the door and own their shit, one day soon, as it almost did this year. If that means it's a huge bunch of people suddenly involved who had never before done a thing for the Democrats (out of entirely understandable reasons, of course), or who had never before bothered with anything political, then too bad for all the hard-working hacks and bureaucrats and servants to business interests and careerists who put all those years of work in just to have it appropriated by the frightful mob of the majority.
The Lucky Black Cats say the media is the pivot point. So much money and effort has been invested in creating the media 'hardware.' Yet cheap, effective, quality 'software' can be plugged in by anyone.
Corporate pr strategies are at a disadvantage in the now future. Heavy-handed marketing requires more and more, for less and less result. The best programs be subtle, transparent, invisible. Planting ideas, manufacturing desires, and influencing minds is best when practiced by individuals on shoe-string budgets. Capital can't compete.
How does this response have to do with the quote above it?
This was the real struggle of the primaries in 2016, besides the top-down rigging, and I'm not thinking at all that it proved they were invulnerable when the Sanders challenge was finally defeated. It made their weakness obvious.
I agree. It also made the peoples' weakness obvious. Naive idealism. Imagining the democratic system to be a holy institution
doesn't help. The political machine doesn't think in those terms, to their advantage.
Hopefully the people take this lesson to heart. The system is simply another tool for making political changes, nothing more, nothing less. Mystical, sentimental ideas about democracy need to be dispelled.
I'm not going to condemn anyone who votes for Clinton if they do so thinking to stop the beast, long as they don't fool themselves about her and her establishment or delude themselves about what must follow. That means movement building first, that's the way to get a party that might actually change something. (The awesome loss of nerve or corrupt reveal of Syriza once in power could be used as evidence against my argument, of course.)
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It does come down to not fooling ourselves. Reminding people to think in a new way is key.
All votes are tactical.
Any party once in power has already served its purpose and quickly becomes a hindrance. Strategies need constant revision, endless updating. We're in space in the future. There's no ground, we're constantly moving.
Both his words and manner of speech seemed at first totally unfamiliar to me, and yet somehow they stirred memories - as an actor might be stirred by the forgotten lines of some role he had played far away and long ago.
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