September 18, 2007 9:28 AM
An "Enduring Relationship"
Posted by Tom Tomorrow
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Gee, Tom; now you know how it feels to be me.
Every half-dozen years or so, I’ve outreached to you, to Tom the Dancing Bug, to the Nation, to Noam Chomsky, to Working for Change, to Z, to Utne Reader, to The Progressive, to whatever fly-by-night MoveOn.org the Democrats set up as their latest Progressive façade, and to other organizations that dared call themselves “American” and “Progressive” (a patent contradiction in terms). All of them I could find on the Net.
Invariably, I found the lot of you obsessing over “short-term controversies and manufactured outrages.” Dead centrist conservatives all, longing for a magical return to the 1960’s sans Vietnam. Nothing else was acceptable to you, to the deliberate exclusion of holistic transformation. Transformation means change, means risk-taking. None of you were up to it. I might as well have banged my head against a brick wall. Now you know how it feels. Maybe you and your friends will pay attention, this time. Otherwise, we will await the next October Surprise radioactive punchbowl, together. Maybe THAT will up wake the lot of you!
Don’t deny it. You did, too; you just won’t admit it. Me and my work you’ve ignored up until now, are proof of it. LEARNERS: On the Move from WeaponWorld to PeaceWorld has been published on the WWW since 1985. 1985! Count them: twenty years of systematic neglect while I perfected my schpiel. I’ll bet you don’t even recall my last outreach to you, a half decade ago, which you ignored without acknowledgement, like all your “American Progressive” buddies. You had SO MUCH BETTER IDEAS, right? Look where they got us.
So beware calling the kettle black, Mr. Pot and your many friends. Holistic transformation has to start somewhere; the lot of you have shown yourselves entirely resistant to it. Don’t blame Bif the Public for your own shortcomings. You are the info vanguard, you are supposed to find and support new ideas for Bif to adopt subsequently. None of you have honored that task. Whereas, I have worked hard on mine; just see for yourselves.
Stop blaming everyone else and get to work on real progress. Luxuriant do-nothingness and saintly superiority have run out of time. Make progress happen or die. There is no time left to tap-dance in between. Please forgive this truth-teller’s brutal speech; I am not a diplomat out to seduce you with smooth talk. I am in deadly earnest. Are you; is anyone with any sense out there?
http://www.peaceworld.myfree100mb.com/020TABLEOFCONTENTS.htm
(from markmuligan at 1)
Me and my work you’ve ignored up until now, are proof of it. LEARNERS: On the Move from WeaponWorld to PeaceWorld has been published on the WWW since 1985. 1985! Count them: twenty years of systematic neglect while I perfected my schpiel. I’ll bet you don’t even recall my last outreach to you, a half decade ago, which you ignored without acknowledgement, like all your “American Progressive” buddies. You had SO MUCH BETTER IDEAS, right? Look where they got us.
--------------------
Gee, mark. Maybe this pugnacious approach is the best way to win our hearts and usher in an era of lasting peace. Possibly.
Please bear in mind where I am coming from. I keep yanking on random arms, just as hard as I can, to pull their progressive owners from Interstate traffic they keep stepping into as if in a daze. Wondering why they keep getting run over. I’m sorry if your shoulder’s sore, I truly am; but that is not the real point, is it?
Anyone who projects World Peace as some kind of lollypop, cotton-candy land has another think coming. PeaceWorld will be, if anything, more disputatious and ‘dirty politics’ than WeaponWorld. Given virtually free arbitration services on a walk-in, store-front basis, acrimonious litigation will become an indoor sport. It will just be less murderous less often and on less industrial scales. False politeness will serve less often to mask and prepare the ground for mayhem. No need for sweet-talking saints or godly-perfect prophets to create it, but sweaty, fallible, often pugnacious human beings doing the best they can: no more and no less.
Anyone who sells a different vision of World Peace is pawning lunar real estate. Hold onto it; it might become valuable in a few centuries. I am not attempting, nor do I need pointers on syrupy, corporate-style flattery. Surely you get enough of that from the opposite side while it puts us all to sleep and rips us off. Do yourself a favor; heed your unknown friends, no matter how judgmental they may sound, compared to professional flatterers we are all familiar with, obvious enemies.
Plus, if you or anyone you know has better ideas, ideas that forecast the triumph of progress instead of its serial and worsening defeat, I’m all ears. If not, you and your friends should be. I rest my case, just like I did last time.
You may hear from me in another decade. “Good riddance,” I hear you say. You are throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
Mark,
I understand your frustration, but I think your tone could be revised to be more positive. Not the false-hope positive of rose-colored glasses, but positive suggestions how things could be done better. Your diatribes create only enemies, of which there are just too many in today's world. And that is the biggest problem that we have to overcome today. The situation has developed into polarized, with-us-or-against-us, black and white opposites trying to out-mouth BillO and friends.
My impression of your first reply is that you think similarly, but then you jump right onto the frustrated bandwagon and piss and moan yourself. Don't denigrate people with whom you wish to change the world. If you have any hope of recruiting them to your stand, that's probably the worst way to go about it. Try co-opting them. Try attracting them to your point of view, not telling them how badly they do it. It would probably help if you presented that point of view. I didn't quite get it from either of your rants.
I think that the only way we're going to get this turned around is to turn it around together. We can't be at each other's throats. "We must all hang together, or we will most assuredly be hanged separately." Please offer some way we can all do something positive, something more than "obsessing over 'short-term controversies and manufactured outrages,'" more than complaining about the latest and ugliest.
In short, offer an alternative, not a rant. Let's see if we can turn these black-and-white poles into an endless grey scale of real human beings willing to work together, not just complain together. (My apologies to Mr. Franklin, whose quote I paraphrased.)
Steve
Mark,
I understand your frustration, but I think your tone could be revised to be more positive. Not the false-hope positive of rose-colored glasses, but positive suggestions how things could be done better. Your diatribes create only enemies, of which there are just too many in today's world. And that is the biggest problem that we have to overcome today. The situation has developed into polarized, with-us-or-against-us, black and white opposites trying to out-mouth BillO and friends.
My impression of your first reply is that you think similarly, but then you jump right onto the frustrated bandwagon and piss and moan yourself. Don't denigrate people with whom you wish to change the world. If you have any hope of recruiting them to your stand, that's probably the worst way to go about it. Try co-opting them. Try attracting them to your point of view, not telling them how badly they do it. It would probably help if you presented that point of view. I didn't quite get it from either of your rants.
I think that the only way we're going to get this turned around is to turn it around together. We can't be at each other's throats. "We must all hang together, or we will most assuredly be hanged separately." Please offer some way we can all do something positive, something more than "obsessing over 'short-term controversies and manufactured outrages,'" more than complaining about the latest and ugliest.
In short, offer an alternative, not a rant. Let's see if we can turn these black-and-white poles into an endless grey scale of real human beings willing to work together, not just complain together. (My apologies to Mr. Franklin, whose quote I paraphrased.)
Steve
Mark,
I understand your frustration, but I think your tone could be revised to be more positive. Not the false-hope positive of rose-colored glasses, but positive suggestions how things could be done better. Your diatribes create only enemies, of which there are just too many in today's world. And that is the biggest problem that we have to overcome today. The situation has developed into polarized, with-us-or-against-us, black and white opposites trying to out-mouth BillO and friends.
My impression of your first reply is that you think similarly, but then you jump right onto the frustrated bandwagon and piss and moan yourself. Don't denigrate people with whom you wish to change the world. If you have any hope of recruiting them to your stand, that's probably the worst way to go about it. Try co-opting them. Try attracting them to your point of view, not telling them how badly they do it. It would probably help if you presented that point of view. I didn't quite get it from either of your rants.
I think that the only way we're going to get this turned around is to turn it around together. We can't be at each other's throats. "We must all hang together, or we will most assuredly be hanged separately." Please offer some way we can all do something positive, something more than "obsessing over 'short-term controversies and manufactured outrages,'" more than complaining about the latest and ugliest.
In short, offer an alternative, not a rant. Let's see if we can turn these black-and-white poles into an endless grey scale of real human beings willing to work together, not just complain together. (My apologies to Mr. Franklin, whose quote I paraphrased.)
Steve
Your blanket dismissal a priori leaves me thunderstruck, as usual. You have no idea the frustration I have endured, from your compassionate knife-twisting to those serial of the rest of the progressive community.
Deep breath... My proposals are laid out in carefully layered and reasoned depth at the link below, meticulously stripped of rant, I promise. Please allow me to repeat it, since you obviously missed the reference last time:
http://www.peaceworld.my100freemb.com/020TABLEOFCONTENTS.htm
If you've got something or someone better on tap, I would be glad to stop shouting down this deafening progressive hush.
markmulligan-
Since you're the one asking us to listen to what you are saying, it behooves you to summarize your actual position for us rather than directing us to the site containing your manifesto. I followed your link- more than many would do, I assure you, and done only because I have an inordinate amount of time on my hands- and found little on the front page in the way of a thesis statement. I skimmed your summary- which really should be on the front page, in edited form, so as to inform visitors what you are actually about- and found a few bulleted lists, which I'm copying and pasting here, for your benefit. As this can easily be construed as quoting out of context, let me remind you once again that you are the one who should be summarizing your own positions.
"I foresee a new world soon to be provided with:
"· one duly elected World Mayor’s Office with its enormous grass roots Administrative Council also duly elected, (note my italics: no Big Brothers need apply. It will be our group responsibility and personal pleasure to replace them with tribal leaders more worthy);
"· one watchful and humane Judiciary, controlled from start to finish by randomly selected juries; and
"· one superbly professional and well-regulated Police Force: the best warriors on Earth, hand-picked to guarantee peace.
"They would govern this whole planet all by themselves, the way we run our best cities."
You propose a Utopian society. All right. Tell us how your Utopian society will be different from the attempts at Utopian societies we have seen before, many of which failed to live up to their own expectations. Tell us how you will keep your Utopian society from becoming a Distopian one. And, most importantly, tell us exactly how you think present day policies should change. Give us your position on specific issues in this world, as it is now.
You go on:
"Of course, we’re going to need these other things:
"· A set of peace religions that understand and embrace each other passionately. Are you a religious bigot preaching exclusion and brutality in the name of God? YOU’RE FIRED!
"· A World Militia on the Swiss plan. It would encourage each of us to defend our home, hometown and home planet against any Aggressor. It would halt armed crime and organized aggression in every community that signed up for it.
"· A 1-800-MY-RIGHTS telephone number direct to the World Court. It would investigate every hate crime and act of tyranny, and arrest every criminal at the source and early. Especially if local militias started acting like loose cannon.
"· A World Agora of information politics and Learning operating from the grass roots, a thousand times more delicate and responsive than anything we are used to, well coordinated by computer and as trustworthy as municipal water.
"· At least one advanced college degree for every child by puberty. The way we honor musical prodigies today. All children would be prodigies in at least one topic of their choice if we encouraged their interests early and never quashed them.
"· Child raising would become a sacred religious obligation. So would the ritual purification of water by filtering it through biomass or some other “miraculous” technology. There’d be others …
"· A guaranteed public health service with enough food, clothing, shelter and medical care for everyone. Simply because. As I say further on, a practical charity. We’d be sharing the wealth of Geneva here and not the penury of Mogadishu, both multiplied to planetary scale. More than enough to satisfy everyone's primary needs with a thousandfold left over.
"· Free, store-front mediation and arbitration, both religious and non-denominational/public, available automatically to anyone with a grudge or dispute. No civil dispute would go before a jury until it were documented in this way.
"· Climax biome restoration in every available habitat; and
"· Space exploration in earnest."
Those mostly sound like very nice things. Now explain to us where we will get them. Tell us how you would get enough of all the other human beings on Earth, particularly the ones who already have wealth and power and see no reason to change, to follow these dictates. Tell us how you would pry wealth out of the hands of the wealthy, and redistribute it in a way that gives all citizens of the world equal access to necessary resources, food, clean water, shelter, and the justice they deserve. And tell us how, short of mind control or outright military force, you are going to get enough of the world to accept what is basically an entirely new set of religious doctrines, when most of the human beings on Earth already have their own religions and are probably uninterested in changing them.
Before you take me to task for not reading your entire web-page, let me make one thing clear: I am doing your work for you. I should not have to. You should be able to lay out and defend your own arguments in an actual dialog with other people, not just on your own webpage. If you want people to listen to you, you really need to improve your own communication skills.
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