I knew that we had (and have!) beaten them like a drum. But I hadn’t realized just how complete their gelding really was until I read this post-from-exile by Matt Stoller about the tattered remnant of the pathetically small Wall Street protests. It’s like Stoller – and by extension, the people that he’s being an apologist for – has embraced every single stereotype ever made about the passive, excuse-for-failure-laden, shallow liberal whiner who thinks that a back-rub circle counts as ‘activism’ and that contemplating one’s navel is the true mark of the intellectual. Between the way that the last administration steamrollered these people, and the way that Obama has decided to be just like Bush (well, Obama has apparently decided to be just like an incompetent Bush), you can only conclude that the antiwar movement has finally gone to Dementia Manor and is now almost happily settling in. After all, they know their place now. They understand what is expected of them. They accept their fate.
Seriously. The last sentence of that Stoller piece should have been This gimp mask is surprisingly comfortable.
Moe Lane
PS: Make me take them seriously.
Link bad, Moe. It comes back to a moelane.com PNF.
Jeff: Fixed. Thanks.
How am I supposed to make you take them seriously while I snicker at them?
Hmmm. I can relate in a economic populist, anti-crony capitalism kinda way. If that was the only thing these folks where about I could support them, but it isn’t and I don’t.
Still, my heart goes out to them a bit. In many ways, as Moe put it, they have been gelded. For that they have my pity. They have lost the competition of ideas. Yet they persist in their beliefs as is their right and I wish them well and happy lives as I do most people in this world. I get from the article that they are seeking fellow travelers in an effort to show that their beliefs matter, when in the real world they don’t.
I’m glad they are doing it this way instead of going all Weather Underground or other violet groups of this type, with the plotting and bombing and shooting. Much rather have wet from the rain hippies in one spot then in direct action cells all over the city. I hope they keep it up and get it all out of their system and not have anything left over for the violent acts.
Ray, the reason they’re out whinging in the streets is that they don’t have the mix of courage and stupidity needed to go mano a mano with the FBI. Ayres and Dohrn are the exceptions to the rule; most of the Weather Underground terrorists were killed by their own ineptitude or high-speed lead poisoning.