Doesn’t the militant left show up every time there’s a G8 summit? You know, the d-bags who burn down McDonalds and chuck rocks at police?
The problem (or blessing) is that the extreme left is predominantly young kids with no money, influence, power or jobs. They seem to moderate as they age.
NPR is pretty centrist, but Public Radio International can be fairly extreme and dogmatic. I can’t count how many times I’ve had to endure allegedly humorous songs about American troops killing civilians and the like on PRI.
Corollary: political activism in youth is also very much a (mostly male) mating strategy - showing off your intelligence, caring, risk-taking, and charismatic ability to rally people. It just happens to be optimized for people without any actual money and influence yet.
And all I can muster is a hearty :rolleyes: for anyone who thinks the only forms of violence that matter are when those fucked over by the system finally break and throw a rock or two, yet are willing to sit back happily for years counting the profits while society violently abuses many of its citizens.
One of the most effective recruiting posters for the anti-Vietnam war movement was the one of Joan Baez and her 2 sisters, with the title “Girls say Yes to Boys who say No”. That probably got more young men into the anti-war and anti-draft movement than any speeches!
I’d rather have to deal with broken windows and burnt-out cars than a military-industrial state that thinks spending over 20% of its budget and 6% of its GDP is a means to achieve “justice”, especially since it has not suffered a serious invasion in almost two hundred years.
I can live with a few hundred thousand punks throwing rocks and burning cars rather than a few hundred thousand teenagers being taught that dropping bombs from a drone while sitting safely in a bunker a thousand miles away is a means to achieve “justice.” And that any civilians ‘accidently’ killed are collateral damage rather than manslaughter.
Hell, I can live with a few million punks throwing rocks and causing billions of dollars of property damage. I don’t advocate it, but we can replace windows and build more cars a lot faster than then families can replace lost sons and daughters who were attending their wedding only to see it turn into a funeral.
We need to have a strong army to break the human cycle of regional wars and to prevent war crimes all over the world. In Afghanistan for example we went in after we were attacked, in the Balkans to prevent ethnic cleansing and murder. We have a moral duty to prevent long-term human suffering.
I disagree. Let me sum up - I think a militant left in the US that confined itself to property damage would be far less dangerous to the world than what that government has created in the absence of one.
We don’t need a militant left to engage in those tactics. That would be the worst case scenario. But we do need one that will advocate and organize general strikes, massive city-wide if not nation-wide protests, and engage in subversive politics such as mentioned in the books above. We need a left that has the courage and determination equal to the protesters in the Middle East and Africa. And the price we pay for not having one increases everyday, but most of the casualties aren’t good ol’ American boys, so the majority of the public has not gotten angry enough to demand a change to the status quo.
I have no problem with the military engaging in disaster relief and humanitarian missions, but most military forces are used for suppression. And we did nothing to prevent ethnic cleansing in the Balkans until it was almost too late; we just went in with a mop afterwards to clean up the mess those cleansings made. Our operations in Afghanistan have now caused almost as much turmoil as the Taliban. Our efforts certainly have not anything to less the violence in that region.
The way to break the cycle will be through non-violent civil disobedience to overthrow the regimes that partake in those regional wars and using diplomacy to establish the rule of democratic law to prevent their re-occurrence. And that will take a force far different from the military.
De nada, comprade! (Your user name reminds me of Pancho Villa - my mom’s favorite folk hero.)
Our policy of using overwhelming military force to crush anyone who threaten peace like cockroaches has worked in overthrowing tyrants in World War II, Panama, Grenada, Persian Gulf War, Korean War, and dozens of other interventions. Civil non-disobedience only works when you know there’s a big military power morally supporting you-if not you get something like Hungary in 1956 or Czechoslovakia in 1968.
I’m OK with you throwing rocks and burning cars as long as you promise to throw a rock at my house and try to burn my car. Thanking you in advance . . .
Hm. So you’re not going to count the dictatorships we’ve supported (Chile, Argentina, Nicaragua, Iran…“and dozens of other(s)”), but only look at the one’s we took out?
In fact, Panama and Iraq were dictatorships we supported the hell out of until we got pissed at them, and then took them out. Maybe you should argue that American firepower as well as erratic foreign policy, inconstancy and very short memory should be the thing to make dictators think twice. It’s not that we’re a friend to democracy, it’s that we’re a fair-weather friend to dictatorship.
After World War II, Germany and other European countries quickly rebuilt their inner cities that had been destroyed. Considering I was there, myself, only 33 years after the war ended, I have to admit it’s a little inspiring that they were able to do it as quickly as that–which statement, itself, will no doubt sound like a huge joke to people in those countries.
In the same period, we went to work dismantling our downtowns, especially in the western part of the country. Freeways were built, low income residents sent packing, and old, pedestrian- and transit-oriented neighborhoods were gleefully leveled, often to be replaced by brutalist civic structures and bland plazas that have all the warmth and vibrancy of a Di Chirico painting–and which are only used by office workers between 12 and 2pm on weekdays as they eat their sack lunches.
The reason I bring all that up is this: I suspect for all the scary radical demos to truly have an effect, you need to have some semblance of a pedestrian culture. Even the radicals would undoubtedly drive cars, or most of them, at least. Where the heck will they all park for the demonstration? I’m only intending to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek here. Suburbanized America isn’t exactly a fertile ground for revolution.