NP - New Speedway

[Ian Livingston]

Huzzah. Well said Laura. To borrow from an old friend, "cosign."

On Mon, Oct 3, 2011 at 8:50 AM,  <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
> Costas and Ian and I and others here find inspiration from the fact that people in the US and around the world are protesting enforced austerity, economic imbalance, high unemployment and a roster of other issues.  Others, such as Alice and Malignd find the protesters risible, because they don't have a coherent agenda.
>
> In the US, in the '30s, there were militant strikes across the country, including the San. Francisco general strike, the sit-ins in Flint and Toledo, and huge work stoppages in  cities like Seattle and Minneapolis.  In 1934 alone, there were textile worker strikes in 20 states across the south.  At the same time, there was high unemployment and homelessness.  If you'd pulled any worker or hobo aside and asked who the enemy was, the answer might have been the name of a specific company.  Some would have blamed the Banks, or Rich Fat Cats, or Capitalism, or the Jews.  Regardless of who was being blamed for what by whom, Roosevelt looked at the big picture: broad social discontent and militancy that threatened the powers that be like a specter.  So the Government (whom no one expected much from in those days) enacted the safety nets that helped defuse the problem.  Now that these same safety nets are under attack, will Obama and Congress act to prevent the social discontent from spiraling out of control?  Or will they hope that eventually all the anger and frustration and desperation will just go away, as people settle down to structural double-digit unemployment, lack of educational opportunities and disappearing healthcare?
>
> Alice, you wax eloquent about the souls of Wall Streeters.  They're not a united front, each one has a nuanced ideology, hopes, dreams, loves, hates -- they're REAL PEOPLE. But then you attack the protesters for their range of ideologies. They're "more fractured and splintered than an effective and efficient protest needs to be."  If you're looking for movements where everyone agreed 100% with the program, you'll have to go over to the totalitarian side.  The protesters have the same range of opinions and human traits that your Wall Streeters do.  The 99% is a rallying cry about income disparities, which are real.  The discontent is real, not imaginary.  Aside from people who stand on the sidelines and call the protesters stupid and ineffective, there are probably few people in the country who couldn't find common ground with some of the issues they raise.  The social discontent is that far-reaching.
>
> Laura
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
>>From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
>>Sent: Oct 2, 2011 4:59 PM
>>To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>>Subject: Re: NP - New Speedway
>>
>>The world is more complicated and the use of ISM is a response to this
>>growth in complexity. The political landscape, for example, is far
>>more complex than your bianry of Wall Street and Big Government vs.
>>the rest of us.
>>There are some very good wall streeters. Some of them died in Iraq and
>>some in Afganistan and some are against the wars there and some are
>>not rich and some are very smart and some are fools and some are
>>idiots...and some are beautiful and some ugly ...like all other fields
>>and areas there are good and not so good.
>>
>>
>>That 99% vs 1% is an attempt to force everyone into one crowd and
>>march it to wall street. But, as the fine reports, including one from
>>our P-Lister, attest, the crowd is quite diverse and more fractured
>>and splintered than an effective and efficient protest needs to be.
>>This is owed, in part, to the complexity the ISMS try to name. But it
>>also owed to the fact that the 99% don't see a common foe in wall
>>street--whatever wall street is. What the 99% see is the darkness. We
>>see it and feel it. Itz got to give one way or another.
>>
>>Always an optimist, I have never felt this kind of gloom. This
>>darkness, the shadow of 9-11 cast over this nation, is darkness ten
>>times dark. I expect unemployment to rise and the value of real
>>properties to drop. I expect more wars over there and more violence
>>here.
>>
>>I got nothing left to say....my tounges a stone.
>
>



-- 
"Less than any man have I  excuse for prejudice; and I feel for all
creeds the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the
trust in reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments
of darkness groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates
than the simplest urchin in the streets." -- Will Durant