Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
From Terri, a story from Ed Morrissey about order, chaos, valiant crusading, and becoming that which you loathe most:
“[The high school] couldn’t teach,” explained Josh Nelson, a 27-year-old occupier from Nebraska. “And we’ve had issues with the drummers too. They drum incessantly all day, and really loud.” Facilitators spearheaded a General Assembly proposal to limit the drumming to two hours a day. “The drumming is a major issue which has the potential to get us kicked out,” said Lauren Digion, a leader on the sanitation working group.
But the drums were fun. They brought in publicity and money. Many non-facilitators were infuriated by the decision and claimed that it had been forced through the General Assembly.
“They’re imposing a structure on the natural flow of music,” said Seth Harper, an 18-year-old from Georgia. “The GA decided to do it … they suppressed people’s opinions. I wanted to do introduce a different proposal, but a big black organizer chick with an Afro said I couldn’t.”
To Shane Engelerdt, a 19-year-old from Jersey City and self-described former “head drummer,” this amounted to a Jacobinic betrayal. “They are becoming the government we’re trying to protest,” he said. “They didn’t even give the drummers a say … Drumming is the heartbeat of this movement. Look around: This is dead, you need a pulse to keep something alive.”
The drummers claim that the finance working group even levied a percussion tax of sorts, taking up to half of the $150-300 a day that the drum circle was receiving in tips. “Now they have over $500,000 from all sorts of places,” said Engelerdt. “We’re like, what’s going on here? They’re like the banks we’re protesting.”
All belongings and money in the park are supposed to be held in common, but property rights reared their capitalistic head when facilitators went to clean up the park, which was looking more like a shantytown than usual after several days of wind and rain. The local community board was due to send in an inspector, so the facilitators and cleaners started moving tarps, bags, and personal belongings into a big pile in order to clean the park.
But some refused to budge. A bearded man began to gather up a tarp and an occupier emerged from beneath, screaming: “You’re going to break my fucking tent, get that shit off!” Near the front of the park, two men in hoodies staged a meta-sit-in, fearful that their belongings would be lost or appropriated.
As Morrissey notes, the stick-it-to-the-man, outside-the-corporate-world shantytown is building up an oppressive rulebook of its own:
And how did organizers of this free-speech demonstration react? By, er, telling people they couldn’t talk to the press:
As the communal sleeping bag argument between Lauren Digion and Sage Roberts threatened to get out of hand, a facilitator in a red hat walked by, brow furrowed. “Remember? You’re not allowed to do any more interviews,” he said to Digion. She nodded and went back to work. But when Roberts shouted, “Don’t tell me what to do!” Digion couldn’t hold back.
“Someone has to be told what to do,” she said. “Someone needs to give orders. There’s no sense of order in this f*****g place.”
George Orwell would be proud. Anyone with an assigned reading project for Animal Farm should really be taking notes.
They have unlimited freedom of speech so they can demonstrate all day and all night, but you can’t film them doing it.
Once again, I experience some confusion about the message. Do they seek to demonstrate that, when the law only applies to a few among us rather than to everyone, pandemonium ensues? Because if that’s the whole point of the exercise, you don’t need eleven days to demonstrate that. Let me organize the event, and I can get that point across in under an hour.
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From Jeff Goldstein: http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=31469
“All occupiers are equal — but some occupiers are more equal than others. In wind-whipped Zuccotti Park, new divisions and hierarchies are threatening to upend Occupy Wall Street and its leaderless collective.
That’s the ostensible thesis — and we as conservatives/classical liberals are supposed to take great pleasure from the confusion of the rabble’s “movement” — but in reality, let me propose that what is happening here (and in other stories like this) is that the progressive media is laying the foundations for what they’ll argue is the considered necessity of a new leadership class — a movement elite, if you will — that controls the message, organizes the army of slavish followers, and ultimately takes over as the architects of The Cause. Among that elite? The progressive media itself, naturally.”
I always have a hard time believing that any 5 people can be so organized and in lockstep to come up with plans like this, but it a t least explains it.
- tgoon | 10/21/2011 @ 19:39More parallels to communism emerge out of this “movement” every day.
We must overthrow the oppressive, tyrannical czar….so that we can move into power and establish an even more oppressive, tyrannical regime than the one we’re replacing. Put us in charge. Power to the proletariat….or something. (Pass the weed.)
- cylarz | 10/22/2011 @ 01:45I always have a hard time believing that any 5 people can be so organized and in lockstep to come up with plans like this
My friend, let me introduce you to the scariest book ever written: The Moulding Of Communists : The Training Of The Communist Cadre, by Frank S. Meyer.
Meyer actually was a cadre in the American communist party in the 30s; he saw firsthand how it was done. As Cylarz notes, these guys sound disturbingly communistic… until you read the various exposes of their “organizers” — they really are communists. The creepy chanting, the lockstep message control, the “General Assembly” stuff — all straight out of the Comintern playbook.
And all it really takes is for a few of them to put power first, weed second, and you’ve got the potential for some nasty stuff indeed. (But don’t worry — if you’re sexually assaulted at an “Occupy” site, they’ll be sure the rapist gets counseling).
- Severian | 10/22/2011 @ 09:49Oh yeah, everyone can speak, except to reporters, and except (unverified) white hetro males-who are encouraged instead to reflect on the historic tyranny of the patriarchal social injustice by smart, and/or intelligent, and/or actually pay taxes, and/or fight-protect-guard, and/or put out the fires, and/or pay the mortgage, and/or co-sign the college “loan”, and/or run for office, and/or studied math-chemistry-engineering, and/or built the shelter, and/or etc. etc. etc.
“Sorry, this (ant-built) podium is only for grasshoppers” per order of the righteous apple-distributioncommittee”.
I’m thinking more “We The Living” than “Atlas Shrugged” on THIS occu-pie version of historic “people-it’s-allowable-to-irrationally-hate-instead-of-us” thing.
(Don’t MAKE me use the “N” acronym)
Or kinda’ like the (college enrollment?) contract where “both parties irrevocably agree”, THEN one side produces “the rules”, retroactively. (or “Pass the legislation so we can see what’s in it”?) Oh wait, didn’t SHE have some (lame attempt at co-option) nice things to say about those crazy kids?
With “Tea Party” folk, no-one has to ask “Hey!, Who’s gonna’ actually clean up this mess?” THOSE democratically elected “janitors” are in office, with more to follow. Admittedly, there are probably more than a few supernumerary goofball TP attendees (as seen on MSNBC) now occupying space with the latest cause celebre, as not seen on MSNBC.
- CaptDMO | 10/23/2011 @ 22:37