Talk:Reckless escalation of adversity
- "their persistent defamations and verbal assaults are adverse to goodness"
- That attempt to define adversity (specifically the adversity perpetrated by so-called Banana Republicans) seems something like ...
- "The use of terms such as "evil-doers"
- ???
So if the defamations and assaults are adverse to bad there is no Reckless Escallation of Adversity? And does capitalizing the phrase somehow lend it more authority? It appears the goal here is not to isolate and classify disinformation techniques, but rather to catch certain political interests in the act of using those techniques.
How do the Miami police uniforms comprise a reckless escalation of adversity when demonstrators who attempt to deny entry to buildings, who demonstrate in areas where they did not obtain permits for public gatherings, who come prepared with gas masks, and who promote demonstrations among urban networks they know will attract violent demonstrators ... how are they not recklessly escalating adversity? Is it the claim of demonstrators that municipalities have no right to regulate public gatherings that can impede the normal flow of traffic in congested areas, or where technologically amplified noise or crowd noise is likely to interfere with the rights of others to enjoy civil rights? Do demonstrators claim municipalities have no interest in assuring that organizers of public meetings are prepared to afford sanitation and security for the crowds they attract? Or have the Miami police been singled out for enforcing public welfare laws that liberals otherwise advocate? If Amy Goodman's "Democracy Now" account of the demonstrations is the measure, those goons have been singled out for derision - demonstrators spoke in excited tones about how they were attacked by police while there was no effort to explain crowd movements in the context of Miami's laws. Apparently the residents of Miami have no rights when Goodman and the saviors from the Left arrive in down to escalate adversity in a non-reckless manner.
Or the students who worked from 1985 to 1989 to stir unrest in Bejing's main plaza ... how is it that the largest public demonstration in world history, which continued for longer than any government of modern record has ever tolerated a mass occupation of its public facilities, and the leaders of which missed several opportunities to end the demonstration in manner consistent with the peaceful strategy they claimed, and who repeatedly disarmed soldiers and police sent to restore basic civil services to downtown Bejing, how are they not complicit in reckless escalation of adversity? But the government, mindful of the need to maintain civil services, and which repeatedly tried to manage the occupation without the use of force, and which used common urban warfare techniques employed armies world-wide, somehow was the reckless escalator? More likely the complicity is much more mutual than leftist pundits (or are the Green pseudo-leftists here - who knows) dare admit. As such, the rhetoric of the left does become thinly veiled hate speech, and the collective political dialogue from all quarters becomes, as hit has, a parody of politics comprised exclusively of slogans designed to evoke emotional responses.
It appears elite politicos on both sides of the fence, identified often by the dominance of academians at the helm of political groups that include no working class representation (i.e. - Sierra Club, Green Peace, and most of the so called "environmental movement") exploit reckless escalation of adversity to pull the emotional strings of young followers. In such an environment, a decidedly non-political music event - Woodstock - the leaders of which paid Abbie Hoffman not to politicize the event and where Charlie Daniels kicked a disobediaent Yippie off the stage - in such an environment where escalation of crowd activity in itself is considered some sort of success - an event such as Woodstock became a high mark of some loose political collectivity. Yeh - we went to Woodstock and learned we can party hardy and still work as capitalists. Whatever land reform efforts arose from the Woodstock crowd quickly disintegrated within a few years into unaffiliated hovels in the woods, due in large part to a lack of forward planning, or of any strategy beyond escalation of adversity to further their political goals.
I dare say if one surveys working class followers of the academic-led environmental or anti-war movements, one will find a majority who claim the only route to success in political reform involves "reckless escalation of adversity". In surveys this week, a respondant claimed "the only way things will ever change is if we get everyone out in the street." The response is routine. Virtually any suggestion I attempt to offer to casual leftists of lower economic classes inevitably is rebutted with the reply that we must mobilize mass action. Escalation of adversity, from Woodstock to Bejing to Miami, has been the upper class ideologues way of preventing an organized redistribution of land and opportunity that could undercut the power of the ruling liberal - and conservative - elite.
There are alternatives. Business alternatives. We can focus our pressure, like the Iraqi resistance has, on collaborators more so than on the invader. We can pressure liberals, leftists and regular concerned citizens to support community corporations, to establish locally integrated production networks for basic consumer needs, we can establish - and pressure wealthy philanthropists to support - community banks and community trusts that will hold wealth and property under guidance of community-controlled boards of directors. We can organize cultural reforms without appealing to congress.
These things aren't happening because the likes of Rampton and others would have us focus on the politics of the "bad guys" - identified by catchy slogans that indeed reduce the humanity of these opponants. The American political system of two approved parties and a catch-bin of acceptable third parties insures that conflict will dominate public discussion. Liberals and leftists are as complicit in perpetuating that dangerous conflict as are their so-called enemies. Anyone who classifies political players into "good" and "bad" is complicit. Any expose of disinformation techniques that is only able to find the techniques employed on one side of the political spectrum is likely the work of agents of disinformation. Indeed, this is an encyclopedia of disinformation.
As Neil Young eventually admitted in song, "The wooden ships were just a hippie dream". We never choose, as the song claimed we must, to "Get ourselves back to the Garden."
And during the investigation of allegations of police misconduct during an anti-war rally, we found survival advice for cops posted on a State Police district bulletin board. The message - relayed in private among working cops - recommended "a lifelong commitment to avoidance, de-escallation and conflict resolution."
the Bible - "a text entirely devoted to compassion" ?
Oh yeh? The "bible" i read included an historic account of the supposed creator of the universe telling one group to kill every man, woman and child in Palestine. The patriarch of the entire royal lineage of the bible was ordered (again by a disembodied "God" who ostensibly controls ideas that emerge in the minds of men as the "Word of God") to commit human sacrifice OF HIS OWN SON. When Abraham passed the test, an angel ostensibly stayed his knife-weilding hand, after son Jacob already tied to a sacrificial alter. The act would be recognized as child abuse by today's laws. In the case of Job, this so-called God killed his family and took his belongings, merely to test his loyalty. Women were to obey males, capitalism was endorsed as a sacred holy order - it was just not the compassionate text some claim it to be.
