Give me a break. How can you sincerely compare miscarriages of justice to willful, wanton violence upon the people

(I know this will drive you crazy, but I saw this and didn’t bother reading the rest of your inane drivel)

Moving the goalposts yet again and trite semantic bullshit arguments?  Is that ALL you got?

Apparently.

Agree to disagree or continue to be boorish and pointless, it’s up to you. Go ahead, keep going, you apparently love to hear yourself talk about basically nothing… go for it drivel-master.

Chaotic doesn’t mean that they had no goals.  All of the Arab Spring protests had at least two clear and obvious goal.

Talking straight out of your ass again. ALL of the Arab Spring protests?  Citations.  None of them started as general unrest similar in any way to the Wall St. protests at all?  Prove it or back off that ludicrous statement.

Why are you even arguing this point to death, anyway?  What purpose does this serve?  Just wondering if you have some goal in mind or just like to argue with people.

Sure, in the case of Tunisia there was an event that started a small snowball that was without a clear goal,

You’re not helping your case here.  Whoops. Go up there and read you first quote.  You’re contradictiing yourself badly.

The NYC protests don’t have this feature.  The whole city could riot, and I still don’t think they would know what they want.  Mucking around in economic systems is hard and less than intuitive.  “Remove that asshole from power” is easy.  “Fix the economy” is hard.

Just because you are absolutely clueless at this point what the message is, doesn’t mean the rest of the country is going to be obtuse.  And, despite your dire predictions… you’re wrong, the struggle is resonating and spreading:

Cities supporting the Occupy Wall Street resistance are national and worldwide: Madrid, Spain; San Francisco, California; Los Angeles, California; Toronto, Canada; London, England; Athens, Greece; Sydney, Australia; Stuttgart, Germany; Tokyo, Japan; Milan, Italy; Amsterdam, the Netherlands; Algiers, Algeria; Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel; Portland, Oregon; and Chicago, Illinois.

Cities in the process of joining Occupy Wall Street are: Phoenix, Arizona; Montreal, Canada; Cleveland, Ohio; Atlanta, Georgia; Kansas City, MO; Seattle, Washington; and Orlando, Florida.

So I wonder what else you’re wrong about?  Maybe you should wonder that too?

Bitch and moan that I don’t have a magic answer all you want, but it doesn’t change the simple fact that protests with no clear goal fail – always and without exception.

You’re wrong.  And, you proved yourself wrong when you mentioned the humble beginnings of Tusnia.  And, you are being actively proven wrong as this spreads all around you despite your bewilderment.

If you REALLY want a “goal” they could champion, I would suggest something plausible and that can be made easily palatable to the vast majority of the population.  I would offer up that they advocate re-jiggering corporate governance.

Then DO IT.  Why are you wasting your valuable time with this thread for something so beneath you?  Prove everyone wrong with ACTION.   I mean, obviousy proving everyone wrong is your goal above all else anyway… gawd…

GO FOR IT, DUDE.

Instead of looking like a bunch of incoherent hippies getting stomped on by NYC’s “finest”

Well, that’s nice and condescending.. but I guess you’re going to focus on what you’re good at.  Yes, the corporatist media focuses mostly on the “hippies” in the footage, and apparently you’re lapping it up instead of actually thinking for yourself and taking another look:

Here’s a 77 year old and from Prarie, Illinois who might just laugh in your face if you called him a hippy: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimkiernan/6180108091/in/photostream

But no, go ahead and cheer on the current incoherent protests.  In a year, let me know how it turned out and what they changed.

Speaking of ineffective…. Ok, be a condescending ass to people and see what action you can scare up beyond a jealous bowel movement.  Your attitude sucks.

I believe I just explained it more clearly. Perhaps not. To break it down further:

I said, “…other than we already have the freedoms they were fighting for…”
Then I said, “Please let me know which freedoms Tunisia… [etc] enjoyed before the Arab Spring that we currently do not.”

I said we already have the set of freedoms the Arabs wanted for their gov. You said this was “debatable”, which means to me you don’t find my statement true. If you feel my statement was incorrect, it would lead one to logically conclude you believe the converse is true – that the Arabs enjoyed the freedoms that we don’t have already.

Rereading everything, you clarified what you said with, “As far as saying we already have all the freedoms they were fighting
for…  I say that’s also arguable because we still have a long way to
go ourselves and continue to go backwards and many different people
within the Arab Spring are still pursuing different levels of
‘freedoms’.” This would lead me to ask how one could say that given the most basic of freedoms the Arabs wanted – the ability to elect their own leaders, ousting those who appointed themselves in power – we have as a cornerstone of our political system.

You want to show examples of the US behaving badly in regards to our freedoms. That is all well and good (er, bad), but I still can’t see how one can make an honest comparison. You can call both Bernie Madoff and a kid who takes $20 from his mom’s purse “thieves”. But to put then in the same league with one another is preposterous.

Using your verbage of going “backwards”, in the race of freedoms we are ahead by miles compared to any of the Arab states with unrest. Even with us slipping backwards and committing more trespasses on our freedoms and rights, we are still in a different league and I can’t see how one can sincerely compare the two.

re: “…tell me how much worse it is in other countries ad nauseum.”

I’m looking for an honest comparison of the two. It doesn’t excuse anything done in the US.

re:  I said that the Us is “… not killing its own citizens”

Your reply: “Our government
does, indeed, kill its own citizens.  It’s called capital punishment
and innocent people have died because of this draconian practice that
puts us behind more civilized nations.”

Give me a break. How can you sincerely compare miscarriages of justice to willful, wanton violence upon the people, ordered by the top leaders?  I mean I thought I covered this with the Kent State example, but I guess not. Show me a dozen people wounded from military or police bullets from a protest and then I will say you have a legit comparison of the two.

re: “How do you know? ”

I don’t. I am considering history for an idea of how this will shake out.  This isn’t the first time we have had civil unrest. The average person is placated. People with nothing to loose are the ones who lead revolutions. Perhaps that number will increase to a tipping point, but I highly doubt it. I would bet $100 in 5 years time we will not have seen anything resembling the Arab Spring with a change of gov. or leader because of public demand.

Like I said, I’d like to see real grassroots change in gov., but we aren’t “hungry” enough yet.

http://www.hlsr.com/about/attendance.aspx

For sure we have had the most disenfranchised youth since I can remember.  If the economy stayed this stagnate for… what, maybe 10 years – I think we would have a better shot at seeing some significant grass roots change. How many decades did the Arabs endure?

Yes.  Most of the Arab Spring protests in the beginning.  It was very chaotic.  Actually, this goes for nearly every movement I can think of.

Chaotic doesn’t mean that they had no goals.  All of the Arab Spring protests had at least two clear and obvious goal.  They all wanted the removal of whatever asshole “war powers” were in place that let their “president” stay in power for decades without competitive elections, and once they saw that the powers that be were starting to crack, tossed in the new goal of “get the asshole out now”.

Sure, in the case of Tunisia there was an event that started a small snowball that was without a clear goal, but once it picked up any steam the goal was clear.  Even when they were just starting to protest with more minor demands, “remove that asshole and install a democracy” was always the obvious final destination, even if people feared to think it could be possible.

The NYC protests don’t have this feature.  The whole city could riot, and I still don’t think they would know what they want.  Mucking around in economic systems is hard and less than intuitive.  ”Remove that asshole from power” is easy.  ”Fix the economy” is hard.  They could gather up all of the critical mass in the world (they won’t) and it isn’t going to do a lick of good because no one knows what to do with it.

Whether you care to recognize it or not, there is no coherent message to the protest and it isn’t working towards a final goal.  Ask one person, and they will tell you that the ‘goal’ is to elect more democrats and keep Obama in power.  Ask another and they will tell you we need to end the capitalist order.  A third will tell  you about their pet corporate governance law they read about in a popular book they want passed.

Bitch and moan that I don’t have a magic answer all you want, but it doesn’t change the simple fact that protests with no clear goal fail – always and without exception.

If you REALLY want a “goal” they could champion, I would suggest something plausible and that can be made easily palatable to the vast majority of the population.  I would offer up that they advocate re-jiggering corporate governance. The methods by which boards and CEOs are elevated and paid is controlled by laws, and that shit doesn’t work.  It is a big warm incestuous circle jerk where billions of dollars get passed around by well networked individuals.  A law to rewrite how those boards can be chosen, how pay and benefits get decided, and how many and what flavors organization a single person can be on would go a long way to breaking up that entire fucked up system of entrenched power.  

Someone with more knowledge than I would need to plow through the details, but it would limit how many power structures a single person can be in.  It would likely involve forced disclosure of pay, and likely involve some sort of greater shareholder oversight of such pay.  It would likely regulate who can move up and down top power structures inside of a company.  

Instead of looking like a bunch of incoherent hippies getting stomped on by NYC’s “finest”, they would have a clear political demand, and likely have the majority of Americans on their side.  Victory obviously would be no sure thing, but it would at least have a chance.  If they won the first round, it would open them up to press other demands.

But no, go ahead and cheer on the current incoherent protests.  In a year, let me know how it turned out and what they changed.

Their stated goal is to express the economic injustices that have occurred on and by Wall Street and the top 1%. It’s not a storming of the Bastille. For if it were, trust me, no amount of pepper spray would be able to stop that.

What led the crash of 2008 was not capitalism. Capitalism involves taking capital, investing it — with risk — in order to make a profit. These bankers sold packages with absolutely no backing, made a ton of money, and then crashed the economy because time eventually caught up. Then, when they were on the brink of collapse (which is what capitalism dictates comes as a consequence), they were bailed out. By you and me. Our taxes paid for their greed and, in effect, vaporized all the risk involved. They privatized profits and socialized losses.

Now tell me, is that a cause that’s worth any less than some person wanting the latest toy?

But you still have people camping out on a public street and that’s what the police has been using as a reason to arrest people.

You’re spot on that the numbers are small and the issues are not the same, and I certainly don’t mean to cheapen the struggles in Syria, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and such with the comparison.

Let’s put it this way: your right to freedom of assembly and the right to petition for redress of grievances doesn’t automatically trump someone else’s right to use the public streets.

Welp, let’s cancel all the parades.  Let’s start with the Thanksgiving parade.    We certainly wouldn’t want to upset PapayaSF’s right to use the public streets during that time.

Give me convenience OR give me death!

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61qQIM858bL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

I do not agree with all of it. If you do, fine …  if you require strict lockstep.

You are letting your emotions get the best of you instead of thinking this through.  Just because people don’t agree with you about your trite semantic argument over defining “brutality”, it doesn’t mean they suddenly agree with literally everything the protestors are doing in “strict lockstep”.

You should step back and think about what you say.  You’re spouting off, being insulting, not making sense and blaming everyone else for it.

I don’t care if you shared a bunk bed with Bernie Sanders in band camp…  trite semantic arguments are a bore no matter where they come from… because, in the end, they are unproductive, divide and frustrate people.

Can you literally name one protest without a clear goal that achieved anything?

Yes.  Most of the Arab Spring protests in the beginning.  It was very chaotic.  Actually, this goes for nearly every movement I can think of.

What do YOU want?  You seem to have lots of criticisms minus constructive ideas.  Let’s hear your grand ideas on what should have been done (that you haven’t done yet).  Or maybe you should get hustling and DO IT instead of ranting incessantly about how this protest doesn’t live up to your glorious standards?

Cute response.  Now, let me go ahead … [and bloviate on and on... without addressing your response.]

I suppose now you want to have an exciting and nonproductive argument about how I didn’t respond to you.  Well, I did, but you simply chose to ignore my point.  So we’ll just have to agree to disagree.  Or you can continue your masturbatory rants that go on and on…  it’s up to you.

As it stands, these protesters have brought to light that everyone thinks people on Wall Street are assholes.  Good job.  What is next?  A lecture on how the sky is blue and that no one likes lawyers?

If you can’t see what else has been accomplished thus far, it’s because you won’t see it.  And, there’s nothing anyone can do to help you.  You’ve got some kind of hostile mental block.  Keep whining about the protest, see if that helps.

They won’t fund your anarco-socialist utopia, but they might get behind a law to restructure corporations, if it makes sense and there are some sane people with credibility who can defend it.

Anarco-socialist utopia? Ah… troll alert.  I looked through your drivel, stumbled upon this and realized you’re just a waste of time.  Bye, troll.

A friend of mine went to law school on, as she puts it, “a scholarship from the NYPD”.

Always nice to hear from the “I’m not saying they had it coming, but they had it coming” crowd and their insistence that any protest be orderly, well-behaved, polite and preferably non-existent.

Wut? Are you serious?

See I actually prefer more socialism, and the more that word gets thrown around, the less people are freaked out by it.

The recent behavior of the Republican part can be viewed as using this strategy as well.

I am an American. I am undecided on all aspects of politics, laws and rules. I’m so ashamed of my country. I’m embarrassed. As a whole my country is awful. It’s a facade. It’s the set of a movie. It’s a beautiful building in the front but in the back its ugly and fake. 

I do love science and my community. I am proud of my art and my friends. I enjoy good ideas and conversation. Small communities, good community leaders, science and positive social solutions I can really get behind. 

I just don’t know what to do anymore. I volunteer- I’m part of collectives and I support those who are protesting. 

I’m really bummed out today.