(no subject)
Click to viewThis is a video from the Occupy Atlanta protests. It's about ten-and-a-half minutes long, but worth your time. Of course, depending on which side of the political spectrum you're on, you'll either find it hilarious or an object lesson in how the left works.
Once you've watched it, then we can discuss...
Ah, I see you're back. Let's begin...
First, there's a problem here. The moderator and the group are under the impression that being in consensus means being in unanimous agreement.
consensus
noun
1. an opinion held by all or most
2. general agreement, esp. in opinion
The reality is that getting unanimous agreement on anything is nearly impossible. So if your idea of consensus is that every single person in attendance has to agree, then you're not going to get much done. EVER.
I realize the media and the president like to talk about how obstructionist the Republicans or the Tea Party are being when they refuse to support whatever the administration wants, but the fact is that sometimes good people disagree. Disagreeing doesn't make you evil or even wrong.
The only way you can ever work through your differences is to debate and work toward consensus. Start with a premise you can agree on and then move forward from there. For example, we can all agree that, if the current rate of payments versus contributions continue, Social Security probably won't be able to pay benefits to people in twenty years' time. If you can agree with that statement, then you can agree that, if we want to save it, then we have to look at how much money is spent paying fraudulent claims, how much is wasted by an oversized bureaucracy, and how much is being skimmed. If we all agree that we want Social Security to exist in 20 years, then we all must also agree that the solution isn't a partisan one.
See... that's how one builds consensus. It isn't something that can immediately be reached. And it requires a synthesizing of ideas into one big plan or goal, which itself is made up of many parts.
You can't reach consensus if you believe the other side is disagreeing simply to make political points.
One object lesson for lefties after watching the above video should be that even if people generally agree politically with one another, they're still going to disagree about the particulars. You can't snap your fingers, or spend a few minutes making proposals and counter proposals and then get fed up that everyone isn't unanimous in their desire.
That's even more true if people are pretty far apart on the issues. You can't just say, "Let's pass the bill" and expect that to happen instantly. Discussion and debate take time. Reaching consensus takes even longer.
If you'll notice, what happens in this process is that there's a proposal (to allow John Lewis to speak to the assembly). Then there's a block to the proposal (that they should stick to the agenda and forget about having a speaker. Especially since he's no better than anybody else.) Then there's a counter proposal to the block (that we agree he's no better than anybody else but we want to hear him speak). So then there's a vote, do we have him speak now, or do we continue with our agenda and have him speak later?
What's the outcome of this several minutes' wrangling? The moderator ends up making an arbitrary and unilateral decision to go ahead with the agenda, while John Lewis leaves, seeing they're not going to get anything done and he has a meeting to attend later anyway...
Notice something: for all the talk about democracy and consensus, what happens is that the moderator just makes his own suggestion and takes it. He's decided they can't reach "consensus" and therefore there's no point in even finding out what the majority wants and doing that. He's given the crowd the sense that they're making democratic decisions, when in fact they aren't. He's deciding what they do.
Clearly, the moderator wasn't expecting such disagreement over such a trivial matter. I'm sure he expected the crowd to happily and unanimously agree to listen to Lewis speak and had no idea how to get them to agree once the block was made. His frustration is apparent near the end, but they've all agreed that consensus means unanimous agreement, and that can't be reached. Even the fact that Lewis can't be available later to talk doesn't sway some in the crowd.
In the face of not reaching unanimous agreement, it's apparently okay to just take unilateral action. So much for reaching consensus. For that matter, so much for democracy and the idea that majority rules.
But the worst offense is that, once the moderator decides that they'll go ahead with their agenda, when people speak out in protest or to apologize to Lewis for the slight of not allowing him to address the gathering, he shouts over them, "Mic check, mic check!" so their dissent can't be heard.
I'll leave it at that for now, though there's certainly more to say about all this...