View 582 August 10 - 16, 2009 (original) (raw)
Friday, August 7, 2009
Happy Birthday
I suppose it's all right to wish myself a happy birthday. Anyway I have done so. I seem to be under the influence of some kind of bug, but I'm fighting it. My birthday present was a call from the oncologist: my blood work looks fine.
The bad news is that swine flu is getting universal, and that may be what has laid Roberta and me low...
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I watched the Town Hall Riot http://www.zimbio.com/Town+Hall+Riot and I am not sure I know what I saw. There was little background data, and I didn't even see the date give, but I gather it was early August 2009 (i.e. a couple of days ago). What I did see was chaos. Clearly nothing useful was going to happen while dozens of people stood around chanting "Hear our Voice" -- that appears to be what they are shouting. Whether or not it was a good idea to close the doors to the meeting room isn't clear to me. The whole thing seems reminiscent of the days when I used to lecture in universities on the subject of Carter's Era of Limits and the national malaise: often a claque of students, sometimes students and faculty, would chant things like "Small is Beautiful" and "Soft Path" to see to it that I did not speak.
Sometimes the situation would sort itself out, and I could get on with the presentation. Sometimes nothing could be done: those who came to hear me talk weren't able to. I'm not sure what makes this situation different from then. A congresscritter attempts to hold a meeting with constituents, and a group shows up chanting slogans and making any kind of discussion impossible.
There are ways to show opposition, but what I see on that video is not one I would support. Of course I don't know what the chanting was in response to. I gather that some believe the meeting hall was too small and had been packed with pre-selected supporters of the congresscritter. I wouldn't be astonished to find this is true. I'm not sure that justifies closing down the meeting by chanting. I certainly saw no debate of the issues here -- in fact, if I hadn't been told, I don't think I would have known what the issues were.
I'm no longer a political manager and I don't have any advice on political tactics. I do try to address issues but my activities are pretty well confined to rational debate. I didn't see any rational debate going on at this disturbance.
I gather there are other videos of other conferences in which there were actual questions asked and unsatisfactory answers given. That, it would seem to me, would be a far more effective tactic than using chanting claques to disrupt a meeting. The health care bill is a bad deal; there are plenty of rational arguments against it. A great number of people voted for Obama because they thought he was some sort of moderate, a New Democrat, a kind of black Clinton. They did not believe they were voting for Jimmy Carter. Many are becoming disillusioned.
I would think the best tactics now would be to nail this down: Obama is far to the left of the American People, and so long as Obama and the current leadership control the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party does not represent the American people. I think this is now fairly obvious. It is not obvious that Town Hall Riots are a good way to make this demonstration. Better would be questions in Town Halls, and for there to be questions there has to be order.
Another incident: http://www.redstate.com/
erick/2009/08/07/russ-carnahan
-calls-out-the-seiu-to-fill-up-a-townhall/
Everyone should understand something: the Nazi Party was the National German Socialist Workers Party. It was not the Christian Democrats, or any kind of conservative or monarchist party. It was the Socialist Workers Party. In Italy, Mussolini built the Fascist movement, but Mussolini was a socialist from the beginning, and died a socialist.
Political riots, disrupting political meetings: these were tactics used to take power (by showing that government was ineffective, and wasn't working). Those tactics ultimately aren't useful to fundamentally decent people, because decency places heavy limits on how far one will go. We don't have enough goons to play that game.
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The heat wave has broken in Los Angeles. It's cool out. Of course I feel as if I'm freezing. I'm getting more certain that it's swine flu. I don't know if it's related to the weather, but:
It is 27 days since the last official sunspot. We have had a month of the blank sun.
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