The Cheating Elephant, Part 2

This is a follow-up to my most recent post.  Lately, reality (both personally and as a U.S. citizen) has been so stressful that I've taken to watching YouTube videos of musicians making music from countries outside the Anglo-Euro-Slavic orbit.  Seeing them make their music and seeing how happy and mentally balanced they are is therapeutic for me, especially when I don't have the time to make my own music.  One thing I don't like, however, is YouTube ads which are political in nature - especially when they promote Donald Trump or Fox News or other right-wing sewage.

Tonight there was an ad on YouTube sponsored by Facebook promoting their new "Voting Information Center."  Whenever Facebook says that they are trying to do something good, I get suspicious.  The new Facebook Voting Information Center is supposed to provide accurate fact checks on statements made during the U.S. election campaigns.  But according to Vox, in August of this year Facebook had not yet fact-checked or contradicted Donald Trump's false statements about voting by mail.  That makes me wonder what else they have not yet fact-checked.  Also, they have not blocked Trump from making Facebook posts.  To me, it still looks somewhat like Mark Zuckerberg and Donald Trump are still joined together in unholy union.  I'll check my own facts, thank you.

The Cheating Elephant

I don't have the availability to write a long post this weekend - especially a post that involves heavy research.  But I want to point out an item that appeared in a community newspaper in Southern California.  According to an article on the front page of the Mid-October 2020 issue of the Fullerton Observer, a regional field director of the California Republican Party was caught advertising illegal election ballot drop boxes as places for voters to drop their ballots.  The drop boxes being promoted as "Official Ballot Drop Boxes" by the California Republican Party are in fact not official, nor are they sponsored, installed, or sealed by the California Secretary of State or any County Registrar's office.  The California Secretary of State has issued cease and desist orders to the Los Angeles, Orange, and Fresno County Republican Party offices ordering them to stop telling voters to drop their ballots in boxes that have not been designated official ballot drop boxes by the California Secretary of State or registrars of any County governments.

This leads me to wonder what election fraud tactics and ploys the Republicans are trying to pull in other states.  This is the party that says it is the defender of true Christianity and that accuses everyone else of breaking the commandments of God, thus giving the Republicans the "right" to exterminate the lawbreakers (and to seize their possessions!).  Yet the Republicans have broken the commandment that says, "You shall not bear false witness."

Thoughts Upon An Emergent Occasion

(My title being a nod to the poetry and prose of a British guy who has been pushing up daisies for the last 400 years or so...)

When I shop for groceries, I sometimes pass a couple of the many homeless encampments that have sprung up in my city between 2017 and now.  This year, at each of these encampments, there has been a tent whose owner attached an American flag so that the flag has been flying over the tent.  That has struck me over the last few months.  

I don't think that most homeless people anymore are homeless because of drugs or laziness.  But I do tend to think that many members of the "dominant culture" in the United States who believed the promise made by a certain man who promised to "Make America Great Again!"  are now getting a rude awakening.  Yet they still believe in their dream and the man who hypnotized them.

I was reminded of flag-waving this evening by a man I saw on I-205 in Clackamas County, an elderly man standing in the emergency lane of the freeway next to one of those sorts of large trucks which many men like him try to substitute for actual manliness nowadays.  The man was wearing sunglasses and a cowboy hat and staring resolutely at the oncoming traffic while waving a big sign that said "TRUMP - PENCE.  KEEP AMERICA GREAT."  As I passed him, I wondered at his definition of "greatness."  What I've seen over the last ten months or so doesn't look very great to me - unless you count a pandemic in which the United States has been for several months the world leader in infections and deaths, a pandemic which continues to hobble and hollow out the American economy, a nation which contains homicidal and corrupt police, a nation whose refusal to acknowledge climate science led to horrific wildfires and air on the West Coast that was so foul that for several days there were carbon monoxide and particulate smoke warnings from the Canadian border down to Southern California, a nation which has been slammed repeatedly by hurricanes.  Certainly the dominant culture and the people now in power are capable of making great big messes and of committing great evils.

And I was thinking of the foundations of American "greatness" this evening when, during my regular Bible reading, I was reading 1 Timothy 1.  In the version I read, in verse 10, among the people whose sins Paul condemns are those who are referred to as "kidnappers."  But I looked up the original Greek and discovered that the correct term is actually "slave dealers."  So a key part of the foundation of American greatness is something that is actually condemned by the Good Book which many American patriots claim to believe.  Now the foundation is beginning to crack, the poorer members of the "dominant culture" are finding that the bill is coming due for them, and the alpha wolves whom they tried to imitate are starting to chew on them.  I hypothesize that over the next year or so, much of the "greatness" to which Americans have become accustomed will evaporate.  How many of us will be able to take it in stride?

From D to D, Chapter 3 (Continued): Centers of Democratic Power

In the previous post in this series, we looked briefly at the mechanism by which the power of an oppressive regime is destroyed: the mass application of defiance and noncooperation by the citizens or subjects of the regime.  This was illustrated by the 14th century Chinese fable titled, Rule By Tricks (renamed "The Monkey Master fable" by Gene Sharp in his book From Dictatorship to Democracy which I have shortened to From D to D in my posts), which described how an old man fed himself by enslaving a troop of monkeys, and how the monkeys killed the old man - not by a violent physical attack, but by escaping from him.  For in enslaving the monkeys to serve him, the old man had become dependent on them - thus granting them a certain power over him, a power which they applied in refusing to serve him any longer.

We then moved on to a discussion of the institutions and groups which comprise an oppressor's institutional base of power, as well as those institutions and groups which comprise the base of power of those who resist oppression.  Obviously, these two bases of power are in opposition to each other.  And each of these is engaged in a contest to strengthen itself and to dissolve its opponent.  In the oppressor's base of power, there are three groups of people.  The first group consists of those who are so ideologically, socially or psychically wedded to the oppressor's cause that they are unreconstructable - they will never repent of their desire to oppress and dominate, and they will never abandon the oppressor.  The second group consists of those who may side with the oppressor as long as the oppression is personally beneficial to them and their associates - yet who can be persuaded to abandon the oppressor when their allegiance to the oppressor begins to seriously cost them.  As an example of this second group, many "Red" state Republicans in the U.S. who have decided to vote for Biden did so because their allegiance to Trump began to seriously cost them - especially as a result of the trade war with China and the spread of COVID-19 into Trump country.  The third group consists of those supporters of the oppressor who are sincerely deluded, yet who can be persuaded by moral arguments to withdraw their support.

Similarly, the society ruled by an oppressor is composed of three groups of people.  The first consists of the oppressor's base of support.  The second consists of those who are neutral as far as their actions are concerned - who, regardless of how they feel about the oppressor, continue to obey him due to social inertia or unquestioned, unexamined submission to the oppressor's authority, the long-standing subconscious conditioning by psychological and ideological factors which produces that submission.  The third consists of those who have been activized to resist the oppressor and to disintegrate his regime in order to replace it with something better.  These activized people comprise what is known as the struggle group.  In order to disintegrate the oppressor's regime by nonviolent means, the struggle group must work through the society's independent institutions and groups to persuade a critical mass of people to withdraw their cooperation from the oppressor's regime.  That noncooperation can be social, political, or economic, yet when it reaches a certain critical mass (and is accompanied by a compelling "vision of the future" articulated by the struggle group), it causes members of the formerly neutral population to take notice and to begin to join the movement of noncooperation.  As the noncooperation movement begins to gather strength, it causes the pragmatists and the sincerely deluded who are members of the oppressor's pillars of support to begin to question their allegiance.  This is especially true as the support provided by members of the oppressor's base begins to get costly for the supporters.  It is by this means that the psychological and ideological factors which cause people to grant authority to the oppressor are neutralized.

Let me repeat: it is through the society's independent social groups and institutions that mass noncooperation must be applied.  (Note: the word "independent" means free from dependence on or control by the oppressor's regime or its agents.)  As Gene Sharp says in Chapter 3 of From D to D, "Isolated individuals, not members of such groups, usually are unable to make a significant impact on the rest of the society, much less a government, and certainly not a dictatorship."  So let's examine these independent institutions and groups in more detail.  In addition to such obviously political organizations as political parties, trade unions, and human rights organizations, Sharp mentions a number of other types of such groups, including those which are not obvious change agents such as families, sports clubs, religious organizations, gardening clubs, and musical groups.  Yet the existence of such groups and institutions - even when they are independent of the oppressor - does not automatically guarantee the emergence of a successful movement for liberation.  In other words, the existence of these groups is a necessary, but not sufficient condition.

To see what more is needed, we need to turn to another social movement scholar, namely, feminist scholar Jo Freeman, who wrote two essays that describe additional necessary ingredients.  The name of one of these essays is "On the Origins of Social Movements," and the other is "The Origins of the Women's Liberation Movement."  In these two essays, Freeman delves more deeply into the subject of how a movement is constructed from pre-existing conditions.  For a movement to emerge from pre-existing independent groups and institutions which are not necessarily "movement" organizations as far as their origins, three things must be present:

• A preexisting communications network or infrastructure within the social base of the organizations.  If such a network does not exist or only partially exists, then an organizer or team of organizers must create that network.  
• The network must be "co-optable to the new ideas of the incipient movement."  To co-opt a group is to turn that group from its original purpose and agenda to the agenda of the co-opters.  As Freeman says, "To be co-optable, [the network] must be compsed of like-minded people whose background, experiences, or location in the social structure make them receptive to the ideas of a specific new movement."  These like-minded people must also be able to imagine channels for social action which can realize movement goals.  Or, as Freeman says, "A co-optable network, therefore, is one whose members have had common experiences which predispose them to be receptive to the particular ideas of the incipient movement and who are not faced with [or, my note, who know how to overcome] structural or ideological barriers to action.  If the new movement as an 'innovation' can interpret these experiences and perceptions in ways that point out channels for social action, then participation in social movement becomes the logical thing to do."
  
• This network must find itself in a situation of strain in which action can be precipitated - either by a crisis or by an organizer or organizers who "begin organizing... or disseminating a new idea."  The organizers' job is easiest when they have "a fertile field in which to work".  This fertile field is characterized by emerging spontaneous groups who are acutely aware of the issue around which the organizer seeks to organize.  If these spontaneous groups do not exist, the organizer's first job is to create them by bringing together the people most affected by oppression, to begin to talk about their common experience, or, in other words, to "raise the consciousness" of the people most affected.

A few closing remarks are in order.  First, for the co-optation of a co-optable network to take place, there must obviously be one or more "co-opters."  These are the activized members of the struggle group for whom continued passive existence under oppression is an intolerable and unacceptable option, and who therefore engage in the work of co-opting preexisting organizational networks to a new purpose.  For it must be recognized that many of the sorts of independent organizations listed by Gene Sharp in Chapter 3 of From D to D do not start out as social movement organizations.  For the leaders of such organizations, the idea of working together to radically re-imagine and re-structure society is a radical new idea.  Not all independent institutions and organizations will be receptive to such an idea - especially when the implementation of that radical idea involves risk.  That is, not all of these groups will be co-optable - even when they are formed by the oppressed for the oppressed.  Jo Freeman cites the example of the Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs which refused to become a movement organization even though it shared many of the same grievances as the members of the more activist organizations in the American women's movement.  And in the biography America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century, author Gabriel Thompson notes how Fred Ross was suspicious of organizations composed of the middle and upper-class members of oppressed communities of color, as these were dependent on "both sides of the tracks.  They could talk a good game, but many advocated 'gradualism, patience, endless conciliation and discussion; in short, anything but direct, purposeful action.'"  Ross was talking of the Latino community, but I can say the same thing most emphatically about many of the long-standing and now moribund organizations of the African-American community.

Yet there have been social groups which have seemingly been in the hip pocket of the oppressor, but which were successfully co-opted by savvy and skillful organizers.  Two examples come to mind.  The first is case of the State-sponsored Communist trade unions in Poland during the 1970's and 1980's, several of which were actually taken over by the Solidarity (Solidarnosc) trade union movement against the wishes of the government, as cited by Gene Sharp in From D to D.  The second example is the case of the Nashi (Наши) youth movement which was created in 2005 by the government of Vladimir Putin in order to co-opt burgeoning Russian opposition movements.  The trouble for Putin is that Nashi began to take on a life of its own, and the youth who were its members began to attack the practices of the most privileged members of Russian society, as these practices caused suffering for average Russians.  Thus they began to bite the hand that was feeding them, leading to the cutting of government support for Nashi and the er, ah, "complication" of relations between Putin's government and Russian youth.

Lastly, as Jo Freeman states, "The role of the organizer in movement formation is another neglected aspect of the theoretical literature" - a statement which was true at the time she wrote her essays, but which by now is somewhat out of date.  At this time we have a somewhat larger body of knowledge about the role of the organizer in constructing a social movement.  We will explore this topic in more detail in the next post in this series, God willing.  The organizer is such an important topic because as Freeman says in her essay, "The art of 'constructing' a social movement is something that requires considerable skill and experience."  The organizer's skills can overcome structural barriers to movement formation.

From D to D, Chapter 3: Whence Comes The Power?

This is the third installment of my commentary and "study guide" on the book From Dictatorship to Democracy by Gene Sharp.  (In my series, I am shortening the title of the book to "From D to D.")  In the last post of this series I made the following statement:

The goal of the organizers of effective resistance against a dictator is to turn a large number of their fellow sufferers into a coherent, focused source of effective non-cooperation, and to focus that non-cooperation on one or more of the dictator's pillars of support until the pillars start to shatter.

The key to effective resistance against a dictator is therefore a strategy of focused, coherent non-cooperation and defiance by a large number of the citizens of a country against its ruling dictator and the dictator's institutions of power.  The question therefore that arises from this realization is how to persuade that large number of oppressed citizens to withdraw their cooperation from the dictator.  Chapter 3 of From D to D begins to answer that question.  But the chapter starts first with showing the reader what that noncooperation might look like - and the devastating effect that such noncooperation would have on the power and survival of anyone who might wish to live by oppressing others.

Sharp presents a fourteenth-century Chinese fable titled, Rule By Tricks, about an old man who made his livelihood by enslaving a group (pack? tribe? barrel?  Ah, it is a troop!) of monkeys.  Without spoiling the fable for you, let me just say that in exchange for his exploitation of the monkeys, the old man became dependent on the service they provided.  Therefore, the monkeys were able to kill the old man - not by a violent attack against him, but simply by withdrawal of their service.  This illustrates a principle stated by community organizing scholar and teacher Dr. Marshall Ganz - namely, that systems of oppression always depend on those whom they exploit.  The Monkey Master fable (as Sharp calls it), has become very popular among those who study and seek to bring about the disintegration of dictatorships, as can be seen here, here, and here, for instance.

Every state or polity has institutional bases of power which enable its leaders to foster the cooperation of the citizens or subjects of that polity.  In addition, in free societies, the citizens or subjects have  bases of power which are separate from the leaders of the polity and which can potentially act as a curb or brake on excesses committed against the subjects or citizens by the leaders of the polity.  To quote Dr. Sharp, the ruler's bases of power include the following:

• Authority, the belief among the people that the regime is legitimate, and that they have a moral duty to obey it;
• Human resources, the number and importance of the persons and groups which are obeying, cooperating, or providing assistance to the rulers.  (Not: these obedient persons and groups cannot exist at all unless there is a base of the population who believe that the regime is legitimate, and that they have a moral duty to obey it.)
• Skills and knowledge, needed by the regime to perform specific actions and supplied by the cooperating persons and groups;
• Intangible factors, psychological and ideological factors that may induce people to obey and assist the rulers.  (Note: it is vital to understand the psychological and ideological factors which underlie the loyalty of the dictator's human resources noted above.  These may vary from regime to regime.  This is why opponents of the dictator's regime must learn to study their opponent.  Or, as a character in a mildly interesting 1990's action movie once said, "Полезно знать что думает противник, не правда ли?")
• Material resources, the degree to which the rulers control or have access to property, natural resources, financial resources, the economic system, and means of communication and transportation; and
• Sanctions, punishments, threatened or applied, against the disobedient and non-cooperative to ensure the submission and cooperation that are needed for the regime to exist and carry out its policies.

Note the interdependencies of these bases of power.  Without authority, the ruler has no human resources.  Without the requisite psychological and ideological factors, the ruler has no authority.  Without skills and knowledge, the dictator's human resources are useless.  Without human resources, the dictator has no access to material resources.  Without human resources or material resources, the dictator cannot apply sanctions.  The members of the dictator's regime who are committed to him comprise his human resources and are known institutionally as his pillars of support.

On the other side of the equation are the bases of power that are independent of the government and are held by the subjects or citizens of a free society or of a group of oppressed people who seek to liberate themselves.  These consist of the groups and institutions that have been founded by citizens or subjects and that are not under government control or dependent on government support.  When these groups become weak or begin to disappear from a democratic society, that society becomes increasingly vulnerable to democratic backsliding and authoritarian takeover.  In Chapter 3 of From D to D, Sharp notes that dictatorships frequently target these independent groups for co-optation or destruction, but such groups can die by means other than deliberate destruction at the hand of a dictator.  Thus it is that in the United States, independent groups such as strong trade unions have been deliberately weakened or disintegrated by the application of State power and the power of the filthy rich.  But American social life has also been disintegrated by a culture that is addicted to electronic entertainment, excess mobility fostered by the automobile, and other factors which were not necessarily deliberate, but rather emergent properties of certain technologies.  

The first task of democratic resisters against dictatorship is therefore to re-build independent groups and institutions in the oppressed society.  Let me repeat: this is the FIRST resistance task, the prerequisite to all that follows of successful strategic nonviolent resistance, just as bread is the prerequisite before you can have a sandwich.  As Gene Sharp says, "Their continued independence and growth [that is, the independence and growth of these independent groups] is often a prerequisite for the success of the liberation struggle."  Note also that Mohandas Gandhi said much the same thing in outlining his program for nonviolent liberation of India from British rule.  Gandhi started his organizing by organizing Indians to come together to meet their needs collectively without reliance on the British.   He called this approach the "constructive program," and said that "... my handling of Civil Disobedience without the constructive programme will be like a paralyzed hand attempting to lift a spoon."  

This is why basing a liberation struggle solely around mass protest marches and rallies is such a losing idea.  It lacks the prerequisite strength for long-lasting success.  Even when it seems to succeed, as in Tahrir Square in Egypt in 2011, the "victory" is fragile and thus easily taken over by a new round of would-be dictators as the Muslim Brotherhood and later, the Egyptian military, did in the aftermath of Tahrir Square.  (For a couple of commentaries on the failure, see this and this.  Note that I do not endorse everything these authors say.  Take them with a few grains of salt.  YMMV.)  (Second note: I am a great fan of the OTPOR! nonviolent revolution that deposed Slobodan Milosevic.  However, I would say that one potential weakness of the OTPOR! strategy and of the CANVAS Core Curriculum is perhaps a failure to look at the prerequisite of building or re-building independent groups and institutions by the democratic nonviolent resisters.)

The building (or re-building as the need may be) of these independent groups and institutions is such an important topic that my next post in this series will focus on this subject.  And I will refer to some additional sources that will shed light on the subject of institution-building from multiple angles.

Apologies for a Delay

This past weekend I had fully intended to post my third installment of my commentary and "study guide" for Gene Sharp's book From Dictatorship to Democracy.  But last Friday, I allowed my computer to perform an operating system upgrade that broke more things than it fixed.  So I spent a number of sleepless hours over the weekend trying to figure out what was wrong.  Finally I gave up in disgust and loaded a fresh copy of the latest version of Linux Mint.  I like troubleshooting computers almost as much as I like working on cars - which is to say, not very much.  At least things work now.

While I was thus occupied, it seems that Donald Trump was hospitalized because of a COVID-19 infection.  I just found this out yesterday.  Although the situation is still quite fluid, I believe that the study of strategic nonviolent resistance is still relevant for those who are members of oppressed and marginalized peoples.  Regardless of what happens to Trump (and I hear that he "released" himself from the hospital yesterday and returned to the White House), we must remember that Trump himself is merely a symptom of a larger disease.  Therefore, I will publish that third post this upcoming weekend, God willing.

In the meantime, please check out the following recent posts of mine:

• Nihil Nixed
• The Go to Jail Truth

Link - All The Wiser Interview With Dawn Smith

For those readers who may still be involved in the toxic dump known as White American evangelicalism, I have a resource that may detoxify you.  Here is a link to an interview I just listened to.  The subject of the interview is a person I knew back in the day when I was involved in a toxic, abusive evangelical cult - a cult which made me for a while a toxic, abusive person until I learned to walk away.  The language in the interview is mostly family-friendly (except at the very end), and I agree with almost everything the interviewee says - especially her critique of White American evangelicalism.  As for me, as a person of color I will never join a White church again.

From D to D, Chapter 2: The Dangers of Negotiations

This post is the second installment of my "study guide" and commentary on Gene Sharp's book titled, From Dictatorship to Democracy.  For the sake of these posts, I will shorten the title to "From D to D."  Chapter 1 of Gene Sharp's book discusses the most common options to which people look when they find themselves living under a dictatorship.  Among these common options are resorting to violence in order to try to achieve liberation, hoping for liberation through military coups, hoping for liberation through elections, and hoping that foreign "saviors" will intervene to free the oppressed population from the dictator.  The point of Chapter 1 is to convince us of the inadequacy and risks of pursuing these options.

Chapter 2 explores another common option to which people resort when they find themselves suffering under dictatorship.  That option is to try to pursue negotiations with the dictator.  And here again Dr. Sharp seeks to cure us of romantic notions of what negotiations can actually accomplish in dealing with evil holders of concentrated wealth and power.

If you have read the chapter, you will note that Dr. Sharp does not say that negotiations are always useless.  Rather, he says that negotiations work best when one understands these things:

1. The magnitude and nature of the issues being negotiated, and
2. The relative balance of power between the negotiators.

And so we come back to the psychodynamics of the various sides in a conflict.  In some labor disputes in which a strike is deployed by workers, one side consists of greedy, money-grubbing slave drivers, and the other side consists of people who don't want to be worked like dogs for nothing more than dog food.  Yet if the money-grubbers look at their money-grubbing simply as a certain kind of business philosophy, they will be most willing to alter that philosophy once their employees show them that their philosophy will drive them out of business due to the withholding of employee labor.  In this case, the business philosophy of the business owners is not such a core element of their identity that they are willing to hold onto it at all costs.  Therefore, the amount of non-cooperating pressure which employees must apply tends to be limited, and negotiations are therefore frequently the end-game of labor disputes.

But it must also be noted that the outcome of such negotiations will not be settled by the rightness or wrongness of each side's claims.  Rather, the outcome of negotiations in this case is determined by how powerful the union is relative to the management - that is, the magnitude of resources that can be withheld for a long enough time by one side from the other side.  (The reason why the labor movement in the United States is so weak just now is due to the fact that many labor leaders have been co-opted by management, which has succeeded in the creation of a robust "business unionism" that can accomplish nothing.  That is why the results of labor negotiations nowadays are frequently very disappointing.  The unions of the early 20th century were much more powerful.)

There is also a category of struggle in which negotiations are practically useless, because the core interests of one or both sides in the struggle are at stake.  In such cases, at least one of the two sides will not be willing to engage in truthful, fair negotiations.  In fact, they may not even be willing to give the appearance of trying to negotiate.  This is especially true of a DSM-IV malignant narcissist dictator of the ethno-nationalist kind who refuses to share the world equitably with other people, but seeks to make his chosen people great at the expense of all the other people on earth.  This, for instance, was the reason why the imperialist Winston Churchill steadfastly refused to relate to Mohandas Gandhi as a fellow human being.

The most dangerous situation of all for people resisting dictatorship comes when they are dealing with a dictator who truly has no intention or desire to submit to any will other than his own, yet who knows how to psychologically "play" people.  For then, the negotiations will be subject to gaslighting and all kinds of other psychological tricks.  In the words of Dr. Sharp, "The offer of 'peace' through negotiations with the democratic opposition is, of course, rather disingenuous."  Those who resist dictatorship are therefore likely to be very disappointed by the outcome of negotiations with the dictator.  

One observation therefore that must be made about people's ideas of strategic nonviolent resistance is that such resistance is not, and does not depend on, negotiation.  This is a key point which is frequently missed.  People who hear the term "nonviolent resistance" frequently conjure up images of M. K. Gandhi and Martin Luther King as "spiritual" people and assume that the call to such resistance is a call to try to win your oppressor to your side by showing how "spiritual" you are.  They equate a call to such resistance with a call to the kind of "spirituality" that can "melt the hearts" of oppressors.  In other words, they see strategic nonviolent resistance as a form of negotiation.  (BTW, I am all for spirituality as long as it is the right kind.  See 1 Corinthians 2.)

It is much more accurate to view strategic nonviolent resistance (called "political defiance" in From D to D) as a means by which those under tyranny shatter the power of the tyrant without violence - and without negotiations.  For this to happen, the mass of oppressed people must become unified around a small number of extremely concrete goals, and must withdraw cooperation from the tyrant in specific, coherent, coordinated ways - ways that are determined by, and that follow, a wise grand strategy.  In this respect, strategic nonviolent resistance is very much like laser light.  Consider for a moment a typical suburban house of the 1950's.  In each room of the house, there would have been light fixtures with one or more incandescent bulbs rated from 60 to 100 watts apiece.  Thus, the total amount of power drawn by the house for the purpose of lighting might be as high as 1 kilowatt if all the lights were turned on.

Now 1 kilowatt of power devoted to lighting up such a house might make the house bright, but it would not accomplish anything else except maybe driving up the electric bill of the homeowner.  This is because the light is emitted over a wide range of frequencies and in all directions.  But the light of a laser is coherent, focused, monochromatic, and unidirectional.  This is why a 1 kW laser can cut through steel plate, whereas ten 100-watt light bulbs can only make your house bright.  The goal of the organizers of effective resistance against a dictator is to turn a large number of their fellow sufferers into a coherent, focused source of effective non-cooperation, and to focus that non-cooperation on one or more of the dictator's pillars of support until the pillars start to shatter.  How this is done will be discussed in my next installment in this series, God willing.  If you want to read ahead, read Chapter 3 of From D to D.

A 5 kW handheld laser cutter

Causes of Cognitive Dissonance and National Narcissistic Rage

Here's another "quickie" post.  And it has to do with White American foreign policy under Donald Trump and the perceptions of other nations which have been created for American consumption by its most powerful media outlets.  I want to make one suggestion and one observation.  The suggestion: the foreign policy of the United States against China is actually an expression of White supremacist narcissistic rage against China on account of the fact that a nation of over one billion non-White people has made itself an independent success.  That was not supposed to happen.  Rather, China was supposed to live forever in the thrall of the United States, because China was supposed to be forever dependent on the United States.  The United States was supposed to be forever the dominant player, dictating to everyone else on earth what they can and cannot do.  China is neatly contradicting that expectation.  You may not know this, but China has successfully orbited two space stations and sent a robot probe to the moon, and has launched a robot mission to Mars. 

And China is not the only nonwhite, non-European nation to have begun its own exploration of outer space.  The United Arab Emirates has also launched a robot probe to Mars.  China and the UAE join India in the successful development of demanding technologies for space travel.  

But the most pleasantly surprising news is much closer to home.  When COVID-19 first broke upon the world scene, many commentators in the Global North expected that the pandemic would decimate the nations of Black Africa, who were seen as perennial "savages" perennially in need of rescue by White "saviors."  However, it now appears that the nations of the African continent have done very, very well in containing the pandemic and limiting both infections and deaths.  Living on the African continent is becoming safer than living in the United States.  This is due to the commonsense approaches of various African governments to the challenge of providing health care for the common good.  (For what it's worth, I should also note that according to one source, the nations of Africa have a better airline safety record than Russia.)

In short, the rest of the world seems to have learned in large measure how to live (and to live well!) without the United States.  This will undoubtedly deprive Trump of the narcissistic supply he had hoped to enjoy by withholding access to America and its resources from people whom he deemed to be much more needy than America.  Instead of that enjoyment, Trump now finds himself in the position of the evil mother in the Grimm fairy tale Snow White.

Some Cats You Don't Mess With

The Internet seems to be abuzz lately with news stories and opinion pieces about Donald Trump's efforts and intentions to make himself President for life.  Some of these pieces cite Trump's attacks on Black Lives Matter organizers as his attempt to construct a "Reichstag moment."  (Note to BLM: If Trump succeeds in doing so, it won't be because he is very smart and very powerful.  Rather, it will be because of your repeated failures of strategic thinking, as I have repeatedly pointed out to you.  Read some books on strategic nonviolent resistance and effective community organizing!)

The tone of these stories and essays began to bother me this afternoon - first, because when people get hysterical, their hysteria can become contagious.  Hysteria prevents people from getting necessary work done and turns them into zombies glued to their screens - a good thing for advertisers and media companies, but a bad thing for the zombies.  Second, the tone of these pieces seems to subtly convey the message that Trump is such an overwhelming threat that resistance is useless.  Thus, if you can't turn yourself into a successful refugee to another country, you may as well kiss life goodbye.

I have a problem with that point of view.  I have chosen not to try to become a refugee.  I know moreover that there is an entire suite of things an oppressed people can do to shatter the power of a dictator who rises up over them, and that this suite of things is effective because it does not depend on violence to succeed.  Doing these things involves hard work and sometimes significant suffering and risk, and there is always the possibility of failure.  However, it must be realized that there is always also the possibility of success.

I am thinking just now of several YouTube videos and news stories about cat owners or members of families who own cats in which one of the family members was threatened or attacked by a dog and the cat in the house righteously thrashed the dog.  (See this also.)  If cats could talk, the cats who choose to throw down on dogs might explain themselves thus: "If I just give up and do nothing, horrible things will happen.  If I choose to resist, horrible things might still happen.  But there is also the possibility - however slim - that I might win.  So let's throw some blows!"

If a cat can be that brave, then maybe some of the humans in our midst should take a deep breath and get a grip.  In the face of the threat posed by Trump, the following questions should be asked:

1. Are we who are among his targets willing to resist?
2. Are we who are willing to resist also willing to study the most effective methods of resistance?

If you answered Yes to both of these questions, then watch this blog for my comments on Chapter 2 of "From D to D."

From D to D - An Introduction

As I promised several posts ago, today starts the first of a series of posts I would like to write as a study guide and commentary on a key text on strategic nonviolent resistance.  Today also seems to be the first day in which Blogger won't have their legacy posting interface available, so I hope I can make it through this post without too much pain and suffering on my part.  

The text I want to walk us through is From Dictatorship to Democracy by Gene Sharp.  It can be downloaded for free from the Albert Einstein Institution, or you can download it by clicking on the link in the first sentence of this paragraph.  If you're too busy to be able to spend a lot of time reading, you can download a free audio recording here.  

Today we'll focus on the first chapter, titled, "Facing Dictatorships Realistically."  And it is important to note that the first edition of this book was published in 2002, while the fourth edition was published in 2010.  The period from 1989 to 2011 was indeed marked by a number of impressive victories for those who were struggling for democracy in many autocratic regimes which existed during that time frame.  However, as many scholars have noted, the period from 2011 to the present has been characterized by a period of intense democratic backsliding, defined by one source as "a...decline in the quality of democracy...caused by the State-led weakening of political institutions that sustain the democratic system."  It is important to note that democratic backsliding does not originate only from the obvious members of a State government.  When capitalism is allowed to run unchecked, private interests can become powerful enough to buy off governments.  This is called regulatory capture, and it is a game that the world's richest people can play with ease.  (You may not know this, but the world's 26 richest people "own" (or lay claim to) as much wealth as 50 percent of the world's population.)

Therefore it is quite likely that if you're an ordinary stiff like me, you either have awakened, are awakening, or will one day soon awaken to a nation and a world which you didn't sign up for, a world or a nation ruled by people who think you would look good barbecued and stuck between two pieces of bread.  You may also discover that you are a member of an entire people who have been designated for exploitation by the wealthy and powerful.  The question then becomes what to do.

Scholars of strategic nonviolent resistance have a general answer to that question, yet they realize that much of the world's population has been conditioned by myths of redemptive violence to see violence as a means of righteous and effective social change.  (For examples of this myth in action, just watch a week of American television.)  In severe cases of injustice and oppression, the oppressed may come to see violence as the only effective answer to the oppression.  Therefore, in Chapter 1 of From Dictatorship to Democracy (shortened in this series of posts to "From D to D"), Gene Sharp takes us through an exploration of the various options available to ordinary people who find themselves victims to ruling powers who want to exploit them.

Sharp examines four possible responses to repression: 

1. Hoping for change via the intervention of another rival power (or, hoping for "foreign saviors" to intervene)
2. Hoping for change through elections and other seemingly democratic tools
3. Hoping for change by forming an armed militia to achieve regime change by killing a bunch of your opponents
4. Strategic nonviolent resistance (which Gene Sharp called "political defiance" in his book)

Let's focus on response #3 for a moment.  As a Christian, I am forbidden to advocate or choose violence as a means of liberation.  However, there are people who might look at such a prohibition as unrealistic moralizing, just as such people, if they were kids, might have called me a "Momma's boy" when I was a kid because I brushed my teeth three times a day or because I looked both ways before I crossed the street.  To such people I would answer that people who refuse to brush their teeth or who refuse to look before trying to cross busy streets on foot sooner or later learn that their parents had very good reasons for admonishing us kids the way they did.  And the reasons for refusing to use violence for political or economic liberation have been very well documented by social scientists such as Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan in books such as Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict.  

But in case there are people who are not convinced, let's try a little thought experiment.  Say that you are a member of a historically marginalized group in the United States, and you chafe against an environment in which the President of the U.S., the members of many law enforcement agencies, and a number of redneck militias are trying to target you because of the color of your skin or your language of birth.  Say moreover that you have decided that a violent response is your only chance of changing your situation.  Immediately you run into a problem, namely, that in order to apply violence, you'll need weapons.  Given the current state of armaments among belligerents, you'll need at the least a good assault rifle.  A decent assault rifle costs around $1,000.  So you'll need to smash your piggy bank (and maybe a few other people's piggy banks) and eat ramen noodles for a few months if you just want to equip yourself.

Now violence is more effective at achieving political change when a number of violent actors join forces and pool their resources.  But if you are just starting from scratch, equipping a decent force with assault rifles will quickly get rather "spendy" as they say where I live.  For instance, equipping a 1,000 man force will require you to spend a million dollars.  And that's not counting the cost of ammunition.  Ammo will in fact be a recurring cost, because you'll need to practice regularly with your weapons in order to get good at using them.  Where will you get the money for all of that?  

(Wanna be insurgent goes to bank to take out a loan.  Insurgent to loan officer: "Uh, I need some money..."  Loan officer to insurgent: "How much do you need?"  Insurgent: "Uh, a million and some change..." Loan officer: "What do you have for collateral?"  Insurgent: "A two-bed, one bath house, a 25 year old car, and a German Shepherd who's missing a few teeth."  Loan officer: "Ohhh,... and what are you going to do with the money???"  Insurgent: "Uh, make some noise...?")

 A further problem arises when you actually start your "revolution", namely, the very much non-zero probability that you or your compatriots will get shot.  If that happens, you lose your $1,000 per rifle!

But it gets even better.  Your opponent will have much more than 1,000 men to match your 1,000-man force.  For starters, he will have other things besides assault rifles.  Take mechanized infantry fighting vehicles such as the M2 Bradley.  Do you want to match your opponent's capability here?  You too can have an M2...for around $3.2 million.  Try taking out a loan for one of those!  Note also that many police forces in this country have similar vehicles at their disposal.  And if you somehow manage to scrape together enough for a (very small) fleet of M2s, you've still got to deal with attack aircraft ($46.3 million for an A-10, $94 million for a budget version of the F-35, $4 million for a combat drone).   In other words, if you're trying regime change through violence, the violent option is very, very spendy!

Moreover, the violent option is no guarantor of righteous, effective change, even in countries whose militaries are not anywhere near as capable as the Unites States military.  In weaker countries, low-level guerilla war very often degenerates into decades-long "conflict traps" which lower the quality of life for all citizens while leaving ruling elites still firmly in power  Far too many of these guerilla uprisings end in failure.  Just ask the Zapatistas.  

Next post (God willing): Chapter 2, "The Dangers of Negotiations."  Feel free to read ahead.

Firebugs Of A Feather

 

What a devil!

Human dysfunction tends to run in patterns.  And this blog has noted several times the similarities in the types of dysfunction that characterizes Russia in the age of Putin and the United States in the age of Trump.  So my curiosity was piqued today when I checked the stats for this blog and discovered that I had gotten a lot of hits from Russia over the last 24 hours.  "Someone over there," thought I, "must be very interested in my most recent blog post.  Or maybe they just have a general interest in my blogging!  Who could it be, and why???"

I could think of only two reasons why people in Russia might be interested in what I have to say.  Either those reading my stuff are members of the FSB who have put a price on my head, or there are ordinary, everyday Russians who are facing the same deadly dysfunction which has characterized the United States under Trump.  Because I am a very little fish in a very big pond, I concluded that it must be the latter.

So I Googled "wildfires russia 2020" and came up with the following interesting hits:

• "Wildfires in Siberia have burned down an area larger than Greece," CBS News
• "Another Intense Summer of Fires in Siberia," NASA Earth Observatory
• "Russia's Wildfires Double in Size Within Week", TASS (via the Moscow Times)
• "Nearly 300 wildfires in Siberia amid record warm weather," phys.org

To the ordinary people in Russia who want to just live and let live - to those who are not interested in building an empire or trashing people who are not white and not Russian - I extend my sympathy to you this fire season.  I hope moreover that I can provide some consolation to you, knowing that "the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished in your brotherhood that is in the world," as the Good Book says.  We have our climate arsonist to deal with, and unfortunately you have yours as well.

And to those in the United States and elsewhere who continue to drink Trump-flavored Kool-Aid, let's do Russia a favor.  Trump blames the overwhelming severity of wildfires in the United States on "poor forest management," suggesting that we ought to send people into our wildlands to rake up leaves.  Let's send Trump to Siberia to do some raking.  Just make sure he doesn't have any matches.

A Bed In Sheol

 Twilight comes early.

Sunset choked to death on clouds of ash. 

"Eat the fruit of this tree

and you shall be like God" -

but the idol of our godhood,

kindled by that pyrotechnic tree,

burns now to the ground.

I live in a city which hasn't seen blue sky or stars now for the last five days and counting.  I have been inside my house for about the same amount of time, and during that time there has not been a day in which the air has not smelled like smoke.  I should have gotten a lot done in that time (including house cleaning and repair, writing a blog post, and other business), but instead I must confess that I've been somewhat glued to websites like this:

• Portland Oregon Weather Underground
• Oregon Department of Environmental Quality - Air Quality Monitoring Data
• Oregon Smoke Information
• AirNow Interactive Map of Air Quality
• Smoke Forecast - FireSmoke.ca

Call my preoccupation a fetish, but as Samuel Johnson once said, "Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully."  This year is beginning to feel to me like the run-up to a mass execution.  First, the stupidity and malignancy of Donald Trump.  Then the coronavirus.  Then the emergence of a blatant, murderous racism reminiscent of the American South in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including the very public murders of unarmed African-Americans.  Now massive wildfires for those of us in the American West, and a very active hurricane season for those on the eastern and southern seaboards of the United States.

A few facts about the wildfires.  First, for the last three days, the smoke has produced widespread areas of pollution levels that have been designated as hazardous by State and Federal agencies.  That's "hazardous", as in, "Any exposure to the air, even for a few minutes, can lead to serious health effects on everybody. Avoid outdoor activities."  Second, the three biggest pollutants of concern have been smoke particles with diameters of 2.5 microns and below, smoke particles in the 10 micron range, and carbon monoxide.  The presence of carbon monoxide is especially troubling because CO is only produced when there is not enough oxygen present to ensure at least a stoichiometric mix of oxygen and carbon-bearing materials.

Many of the fires have been caused by downed power lines or by lightning.  Many of the fires have also been caused by typical human activity.  But the fires have also become yet another occasion for political posturing by the American Right.  Trump claims that this season's wildfires are the result of "poor forest management," but the facts don't support him.  Many of the wildfires that have started this fall did not originate in forests.  And there is overwhelming scientific evidence that the worsening fire seasons worldwide are a consequence of manmade climate change.  Much of that evidence was compiled over the last two or three decades by national laboratories funded by the United States Government.  Names like Livermore, Berkeley, and Argonne come to mind.  These national laboratories are now the victims of Trump budget cuts.  Therefore I expect that like the coronavirus, or deteriorating social relations, or fraying social safety nets, or a declining currency, Trump will willfully and deliberately botch his response to this exigency also.

And that had me thinking at 4 am this morning.  You see, these things don't just impact me as a series of facts that fit into an analysis.  (Even though I'm rather strongly geeky!)  I am thinking of how last Monday I enjoyed an evening walk through the neighborhood and spent time in my backyard watering the veggies and playing my guitar beneath a clear twilight sky with two cats at my feet.  That was my chill time, my therapy which enabled me to cope with a world that has recently become chaotic because of rich and powerful doofuses who want to Make Themselves Great Again due to long-standing inferiority complexes.  Trump is such a doofus.  But I thought I had learned to take him in stride even as I saw through his attempts to cause chaos.  Now the consequences of his doofus chaos have flared up in new and unexpected ways - much like the re-emergence of flames from a fire that was not properly put out.  And it's not just his doofus-ness.  It's his constant gaslighting, his absolute refusal to tell the truth about anything, lest he lose what he perceives to be the advantage of pulling the wool over the eyes of those who listen to him.  It's getting to be a bit much.

So because I had a hard time sleeping at 4 am, I was searching the Web for stories of Americans who have left the country for good within the last few years.  And I was checking out what it would take for me to emigrate to Canada.  (I found out that I'm just a few points shy of the minimum needed for a technical professional to be allowed to emigrate.)  But then I thought of the people I'd be abandoning if I did such a thing.  And I thought of how even the world's best places did not start out that way.  They were built by the sweat equity of those who were willing to sacrifice to try to construct a righteous order in the midst of chaos.  I also thought of how some of the world's best places are under attack from those who want to impose their chaos on what was a righteous order.  Becoming a refugee is a temporary protection at best.  And one can't be a refugee forever.

But trying to build or defend a righteous order in the midst of the chaos that is the United States just now seems to me like trying to make my bed in Sheol.  (Or if you like the King James Bible, it seems like trying to make my bed in hell.)  At least the Good Book promises that though I make my bed in such places, there is One Who is with me.  And the art of making a sleep-worthy bed in unpleasant places will become a valuable skill as the great societies of the world run up against the reality of resource constraints and as their leaders grapple with the involuntary ending of their dreams of godhood.  On that note, I'm going to lie down and try to take a nap.

P.S. Here and here are a couple of links to some interesting articles on wildfires and climate change.

The Omar Wasow Re-Election Strategy

I don't watch or listen to news much these days.  (Even I have limits on how much garbage I can swallow in a day!)  So it was surprising to me to hear that the entire city of Portland, Oregon is "entirely ablaze all the time."  Thus says our orange-haired President of the United States, a man who I am sure has never told a lie in his life... Question to self: if Portland is entirely ablaze, why did I not see dozens of fire engines trying to put out the blaze as I went to the grocery store today?  Why was the store not on fire?  Why did I sleep so well last night?

Yet there have been fires - deliberately set by rioters - oops, I mean, "violent protesters" recently.  These "protesters" have also made appearances in several cities throughout the United States, as I am sure you are all aware.  Their modus operandi seems to be to cause as much provocative, polarizing property destruction (including tearing down statues and setting fires) and cause as much provocative, polarizing unrest as possible.  Some of them are no longer even pretending to be associated with Black Lives Matter or with the struggle against racism.  According to one source, the Antifa has made its reappearance among these "protestors".  Note that according to some sources, these who are causing property damage are White.  (Additional note: I have deleted the source I originally cited.  He has since turned out to be unreliable.)

Let me suggest that it's useless telling these people that they are actually helping the cause of Donald Trump as he seeks to demonize those who are opposed to him.  They already know that - which is why they are doing what they are doing.  Their tactics are reminiscent of the staged battles between the Antifa and various right-wing groups in Portland and elsewhere during the 2018 mid-term elections.  They are also reminiscent of vandalism perpetrated by Russian agents in Ukraine.

Why does Trump think that injecting violence into American society (and especially into the protests against racist oppression) will help him?  (For yes, there is overwhelming evidence that people aligned with Trump are behind the injection of violence into American politics in 2020!)  Let me suggest that even though Trump probably doesn't read anything much more complicated than coloring books, he has advisors who do know how to read.  And I'm sure that they have heard by now of a man named Omar Wasow.  Mr. Wasow is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics at Princeton.  He also did a study which is by now quite famous among students of strategic nonviolent resistance.  That study showed that the 1960's civil rights struggle achieved its most impressive gains when it was most strongly non-violent.  That study also showed that when protests began to become violent, the violence actually hurt the cause of the protestors and helped Richard Nixon to win the 1968 presidential election.

And that is Mr. Trump's only hope of a road to a legitimate election victory this November.  You see, even dictators can learn new tricks (or at least try to recycle old ones), as Will Dobson documented in his book titled, The Dictator's Learning Curve.  And for the last ten years or so, dictators around the world have been staying up all night studying how to thwart strategic nonviolent resistance.  By the way, I highly respect Dr. Wasow and his work.  It's a shame to see his work put to evil uses.  

But will Trump's gambit work?  Let me suggest that in 1968, there was not a coronavirus pandemic or its resulting economic fallout to deal with.  Let me also suggest that Slobodan Milosevic lost the election which deposed him even though he also resorted to dirty tricks.  And lastly, let me note that the Democrats flipped the U.S. House of Representatives in 2018.  Also, Dr. Wasow has two pieces of very good news.  First, the current data show that 93 percent of anti-racism protests this year have been peaceful and nondestructive, according to a recent Washington Post article.  Second, Trump's gambit does not appear to be working, according to additional recent articles in the Washington Post and on NPR.

Narcissism Vs. Democracy

I have a project which is due on Tuesday of next week, so today's post will be short.  But I want to note two things which follow from last week's post.  First, I want to repeat what I said about the role of structure in effective social movement organizations:

In order for a social movement organization to succeed in achieving any goal, therefore, it must have structure.  For the social movement organization to achieve democratic goals, the structure must be both explicit and formal, and it must be formally ratified by each of its members.  That structure must also include a formal, explicit, democratic method of decision-making.  The creation of such democratic structures is not a spontaneous process, but is deliberate, conscious, and goal-oriented.  Movement organizers who create such structures create movements that actually accomplish things.  "Movements" which don't are like an amoeba having a seizure.

To this paragraph I would add that the members of a democratically run social movement organization must be willing to be bound by the results of the democratic method of decision-making.   And this willingness to be bound by the results of democracy provides a key to the motivations behind those people in high places who have launched successful attacks against democracy both in the United States and elsewhere.

For those who have grown used to life as dominant power-holders and whose lives of privilege have produced an unhealthy narcissism tend to regard the emergence of a diverse population as an existential threat - especially if the members of that population have equal access via democracy to the power held by the dominant.  To guard against that threat, the dominant must damage or cripple democracy - through such things as the revocation of voter protections, the sabotaging of national postal services, the selective disenfranchisement of dark-skinned ethnic minorities, and other means.  This is why the American Right has been engaged since 2008 in what appears to be a project to tear the United States apart.  For even when the dominant remove the threat of the powerless by denying the powerless access to pre-established structures of democracy, this is no security to the dominant.  Instead, what is very likely is that the dominant will themselves self-destruct by means of in-fighting among the members of the elite, each of whom is saying to himself or herself that it is better to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven.  These elite members will be unwilling to be bound by the results of anyone else's decision-making - even if the decisions are made by the other elites.

Second, in regard to the weakness of "leaderless" movements, here are two more articles to chew on:

• "Analysis: Do 'leaderless' revolts contain seeds of own failure?", Reuters
•  "What Successful Movements Have In Common," Harvard Business Review

Spontaneous? Or Successful?

Among the many essays and opinion pieces that have been written for major media publications during the last few months, quite a few have quite understandably focused on the mass protests that have occurred in the wake of several high-profile police and vigilante murders of unarmed African-Americans in this country.  These echo articles written within the last two years about the strength of "leaderless protests" worldwide.  Check out the short list below:

• "The George Floyd Protests Show Leaderless Movements Are The Future of Politics," Slate Magazine
• "Today’s Activism: Spontaneous, Leaderless, but Not Without Aim," New York Times
• "The Common Element Uniting Worldwide Protests," The Atlantic
• "Leaderless rebellion: how social media enables global protests," Financial Times

Note that the Slate article heralded such protests as "the future of politics."  If such protests are seen by the powerless as "the future of politics," then let me just suggest at the outset that the powerful and the dominant have nothing at all to fear from the powerless.

As long-time readers of my blog know, I have been touting the power and potential of strategic nonviolent resistance for the last three-and-a-half years.  But I find lately that I need to add a cautionary note to my praise of strategic nonviolent resistance.  For those who want to engage in resistance nowadays seem to be guilty over and over again of the same two basic mistakes repeated ad nauseam.  The first mistake is to assume that strategic nonviolent resistance consists solely of protest marches and rallies.  The second mistake is what I want to tackle in today's post.

Let me take you first to a TED talk given by Zeynep Tufekci, titled, "How The Internet Has Made Social Change Easy to Organize, Hard to Win."  Ms. Tufekci is a sociologist and associate professor at the University of North Carolina, so she's no lightweight.  In her TED talk, she examines the wealth of "leaderless," spontaneous protest "movements" which erupted throughout the world from the 1990's to the mid 2010's.  She noted that these "movements" (of which the Occupy "movement" was a prime example) scaled up very quickly from one or two people to many mass gatherings of tens of thousands of people.  However, they achieved no long-lasting gains.  I think it safe to say that the Occupy "movement," for example, did not accomplish a bloody thing.  Why is this?

Zeynep suggests that "movements" which are easily and hastily thrown together by means of a few mouse clicks are largely composed of people who have not learned to work together and to make decisions together as a collective unit.  Therefore, they are unable to form a coherent strategy or to adjust their tactics to overcome strategic challenges that arise in their struggle.  Thus they have no staying power.  In another place (I can't remember where just now), I believe Ms. Tufekci likens modern, easily thrown-together "movements" to a car that can accelerate quickly to high speed, yet has no steering wheel.  She compares the protest rallies of these modern movements with the March on Washington in which Martin Luther King gave his famous "I have a Dream" speech.  The 1963 march was not just a march, but it was a signal to dominant power-holders of the capacity of a large number of people to act collectively in a coherent, long-term, strategic manner.  It served as such a signal precisely because back before the Internet, organizing things like a march, a strike, or a boycott required people to work together for a long time and to figure out how to work together long-term without falling apart.  It required people to create formal processes for deciding on goals, for analyzing power, and for mapping and implementing strategy.  These were not spontaneous processes.  Today's protests seem at times to me to be more like a bunch of kids throwing a spontaneous open-air tantrum!

So let's talk about learning to work together and make decisions together as a collective unit.  And let's begin with a question, namely this: how are decisions made in a group of people who want to achieve something?  Or in other words, can there ever really be such a thing as a "leaderless" movement?  To answer that question, we must turn to another sharp woman, feminist scholar Jo Freeman.  Ms. Freeman wrote an essay titled, "The Tyranny of Structurelessness."  Her essay, which was written in 1970, shows that leaderless, structureless groups have long appealed to those who are trying to escape from systems of domination and oppression.  However, Ms. Freeman shows that such leaderless, structureless groups quickly become neither leaderless nor structureless.  What happens instead is that in place of formal, universally acknowledged means of making decisions, an informal network of decision-making always springs up.  And this informal structure is always created by those members of the group who are the most dominant - either in personality or in wealth of pre-existing resources.  These dominant members become the group's "elites."  Once that happens, bam!  You're right back in a structure over which you have no control unless you're one of the "elites."

In order for a social movement organization to succeed in achieving any goal, therefore, it must have structure.  For the social movement organization to achieve democratic goals, the structure must be both explicit and formal, and it must be formally ratified by each of its members.  That structure must also include a formal, explicit, democratic method of decision-making.  The creation of such democratic structures is not a spontaneous process, but is deliberate, conscious, and goal-oriented.  Movement organizers who create such structures create movements that actually accomplish things.  "Movements" which don't are like an amoeba having a seizure.

And this is why I don't hold out much hope of lasting change from many of the protests now taking place, not only against oppressive White supremacy, but against many other evils.  Nor will I have hope until the organizers of such resistance actions begin to grow up, to get over their Millennial sense of entitlement to their opinions, to stop trying to re-create Woodstock, and to start reading some books.  Because their "movements" are "leaderless" and "structureless", they can be very easily co-opted and hijacked (for instance, by agents provocateurs who cause violence at protests), and their message can be derailed by their enemies - enemies who have both leaders and formal structures and who therefore succeed.  We have already seen this happen.

Let me leave you with a quote from Srdja Popovic, former leader of the OTPOR! movement which successfully overthrew Slobodan Milosevic.  Srdja said, "There are only two kinds of political movements in history: they're either spontaneous or successful." Chew on that.

The Fall of Liberty's Libertine

Libertine: a person, especially a man, who behaves without moral principles or a sense of responsibility, especially in sexual matters.

- from Dictionary.com (Emphasis mine.)

I am trying to read a technical document just now.  It's for a proposal I'm putting together for an environmental project, and it is a very dry document.  Dry documents tend to make me sleepy, so I indulged myself in a quick bit of Web surfing to distract me from my overwhelming desire to snooze.  (Yes, I know - a better tactic would be to drop and do 25 push-ups.  I'll try that next time.)

My web surfing (when I indulge in it, which is not often) frequently takes me to a consideration of the 1980's, which were a high point for the Republican Party and for the freak show known as white American evangelicalism.  So I googled "evangelical scandals 1980's pastors" and came across a surprising bit of present-day news.  In case you didn't know it, Jerry Falwell Jr., son of the Jerry Falwell who founded and led the "Moral Majority" of the 1980's, resigned this week from Liberty University.  His resignation was not voluntary, but came as a result of the revelation of his involvement in a few sex scandals, and the revelation of a photo of himself and a woman who is not his wife posing together with their zippers down.  (Literally!)

It is no secret that the junior Falwell is racist.  It is also no secret that he has been a rabid supporter of another serial adulterer named Donald John Trump.  Falwell is like many white Evangelical mouthpieces in saying that we must support Trump because he is "a chosen vessel whom God has raised up for a glorious purpose" - and "if God could use a wicked king like Cyrus or Nebuchadnezzar for His glorious purposes, God can use Trump to carry out His mysterious plan!"  Note that in saying such things, both he and others like him are bad-mouthing not only God, but Cyrus and Nebuchadnezzar.  How ironic that in showing himself to be just as slimy as Trump, Mr. Falwell has brought consequences upon himself.  And I expect that Liberty University will not itself survive unscathed.

In my march through the reading of the Old Testament, I am now reading the book of Micah.  And what Micah says is a direct contradiction of Falwell, and of other sketchy people like him, including Franklin Graham.  But I do not write this to moralize.  Rather, I want to make a psychological observation.  Jerry Falwell Jr. seems to me to be yet another manifestation of the pathological, narcissistic raging of white supremacy against a world that is inexorably changing around those who wish to remain supreme.  Like Trump, Falwell Jr. is a symptom of a larger American disease.  He is also yet another example of the outworkings of damnation.

And now, back to work!

Repost - The Sunk Costs of Stinkin' Thinkin'

A blog is a voracious beast, and feeding it with high quality material can seem at times like hoisting 50 pound sacks of elephant feed at a zoo.  While I enjoy the workout, there are things I need to fix and clean at my house this weekend, along with two fruit trees that I need to finish harvesting ASAP before the fruit spoils.

Therefore, I'd like to present you with a post I wrote back in 2015.  This post highlights some of the dysfunctional societal results of what had been until recently a highly effective long-term campaign of lobbying and propaganda by the National Rifle Association and the American Right.  (Note also how these two entities were helped along in their efforts by a certain foreign government.)  Enjoy.