Am I remembering this correctly?

[kirisutogomen]

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to camp out in your park, strew trash all over, and forcibly block the local farmers' market.

Comments

[arcanology]

Assemble, of course, means only to come together in groups of white property owning males for coffee and light speechifying, including the consumption of one (1) alcoholic drink of no more than 70 proof.

[kirisutogomen]

Also, "religion" refers to a flavor of sorbet, and "speech" means a postage stamp commemorating the discovery of Hotson's Brush-tailed Mouse.

At some point the sarcasm gets so thick that communication grinds to a complete stop and they might as well put us on CNN along with the rest of the shouting nitwits.

[arcanology]

I was just trying to fit with the theme of the post.

The nonsarcastic version is: messy free speech is a lot better than a populous that lies around whining quietly in their rooms like bloated seals on a beach.

Nonsarcastic but still filled with weird metaphor. I can't quit that.

[kirisutogomen]

Your point would be relevant if we were being offered the dichotomous choice between the two options you suggest. As it is, it's an instructive example of a false dilemma.

And I do sincerely appreciate weird metaphor and would never ask you to stop.

[arcanology]

The things people complain about politely don't seem to happen. I'm excited that they're excited enough to be rude.

The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity

[kirisutogomen]

See, I think you're entirely wrong about that. They're very excited, yes. But their principal accomplishment to date is the sabotage of a regular community gathering that used to allow small farmers to sell locally grown produce directly to people with no corporate middlemen. That's a pretty screwy way of "representing the 99%".

And I would say that for most of the big real recent changes I can think of, polite dialogue was absolutely key to getting it done. Maybe you can enlighten me as to how quiet, thoughtful people have floundered uselessly while angry mobs of peasants with pitchforks and torches have saved society.

Re: The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity

[arcanology]

I think if you call a bunch of people having inconvenient long meetings and sitins with rhetoric in a public place angry mobs of peasants with pitchforks your mind is pretty much made up. Although it might be accurate in the other way in that maybe we need to burn frankenstein's financial monster to save the village. ;)

The civil rights movement had a lot of being where you are not allowed to be in it, over and over and over. This is not as noble as the civil rights movement by any means but... it is not just a pile of people demanding payouts and screwing up farmer's markets.

Re: The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity

[kirisutogomen]

Jesus fucking Christ on a croissant. I didn't call Occupy Foo angry peasants with pitchforks. I'm rejecting your general claim that "The things people complain about politely don't seem to happen" and asserting instead that in the recent past in Western democracies in the area of creating genuine significant change, reasoned dialogue has been more effective than heated invective has

Re: The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity

[arcanology]

You had me for the middle paragraph, that was pretty good. I say if you've got lawyers, also deploy the lawyers, but I the comparison there is thought-provoking. Then you went right off the rails.

Of course how are people currently at the age to be out in the streets going to learn how to take collective action? Of course that's going to be a mess. I hear in the 60s there were a lot of dumbass protests too but I think in the end some good came out of them.

Re: The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity

[firstfrost]

(Rosa Parks did have a lawyer, though. :) )

Re: The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity

[arcanology]

And it turns out she didn't take her action spontaneously, the whole movement was primed and working to make an incident.

But it was still important anyway.

Re: The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity

[arcanology]

What are recent major changes brought on by reasoned dialogue? I'm actually trying to put something in that frame but I'm not coming up with anything.

Re: The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity

[kirisutogomen]

I suspect that for anything I come up with you will crank the cynicism up to eleven and claim it's meaningless cosmetic change and a pathetic shell of what it could have been before the special interests got hold of it. So I'm tempted to just throw it back at you and ask if you believe if anything at all ever changes or if we're really all pawns of the Reptoid Jew Illuminati and any appearance of progress is a red herring to placate the addled masses

Re: The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity

[firstfrost]

And the Stonewall riots and gay rights demonstrations and protests and marches and National Coming Out Days have had nothing to do with any of the progress made?

Sure, I don't think anyone is saying that holding a sign magically gets you a tenth vote on the Supreme Court, or that Occupy Albequerque should get two Senators. But I don't think the effect of visible public action on the opinions of the public and the people they elect is negligible.

If nothing else, I think that the Occupy movement has carved out some mindshare again for populist liberal opinions, in a way that the Tea Party had previously managed to define populism as conservative and liberalism as only held by out of touch ivory tower seal-hugging academics and Washington insiders.

[arcanology]

I would actually put those both down to people being rowdy plus having good ideas. I don't think you get change done without both. It used to be that gays were quiet within the system that didn't accept them and nothing happened. Then they were loud enough that people had to notice they existed and also willing to take it to the courts and legislatures and so on. There are probably still people making the argument that pride parades are disgraceful and shouldn't be in public and don't get anything done anyway.

So I'll give you that progress is not made entirely by noisy rudeness, that's very true. But I don't see it being made without some noisy rudeness either, much as I would wish you could just present a good idea and make progress with it, it doesn't seem like you can get traction until you're willing to make it inconvenient to keep ignoring you.

I can't really talk intelligently about the end of the 60s, I'll have to go do some reading.

Re: The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity

[psychohist]

I can give some cynical examples. The New York Times' reasoned, albeit factually mistaken, series of articles on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq got Iraq invaded. Reasoned arguments got the TARP bailouts that the Occupy movement so objects to. Maybe the whole problem is that the people on the Occupy movement's side have failed to make reasoned arguments.

That said, the Tea Party movement elected an influential 25% of the House largely through popular protests. The main reason the Occupy movement is ineffectual is that they are tiny - their rallies are 1% of the size of the Tea Party rallies, for example.

Of course, maybe it's not the size, but that the Tea Party protests didn't turn popular opinion against them by leaving behind a lot of litter and tolerating rapists.