I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to see the Galtians’ courtiers tremble like this (from Kaplan):
Of course, this is the opposite of what I believe: large-scale peaceful, and maybe sometimes only semi-peaceful, protest is the last, best hope for Western democracy. Hippies now or Jacobins later.
smintheus
Is this her idiotic piece at The Church of High Contrarianism today?
Dougerhead
@smintheus:
Yes, and it’s very stupid.
Chris T.
“We, The People” assembling peaceably to air grievances and perform other acts of democracy is absolutely certain to destroy democracy!
Linda Featheringill
@Chris T.: #3
Nah. Not destroy democracy. But it really might threaten the status quo.
Mark S.
I thought it was going to be George Will or Krauthammer, but it’s that asshole Anne Applebaum! To save everyone the trouble, Anne puts forth three theses in her column:
1. British people remind her of Monty Python.
2. Democracy is boring and legalistic. Ordinary people have no business getting involved in it.
3. Democracy and globalization don’t mix, so I guess democracy has to go. Or maybe not. I don’t know what Anne’s point is.
smintheus
@Dougerhead:
More could be said about it along those lines.
Davis X. Machina
@Mark S.:
An amazing coincidence. She has a theory. Which is hers. It is her theory.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Davis X. Machina: A theory about Brontosauruses?
David Koch
BWHWHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAH
Applebaum is a Roman Polanski child rape apologist.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Dougerhead: We mean it, man
David Koch
Of course this has nothing to do with a perceived threat to democracy, after all, since when is free speech and free assembly a threat to democracy, but rather, this is a last ditch, desperate attempt at demonization.
smintheus
@Mark S.: Her point is that democracy involves working through your existing institutions for reform rather than just demonstrating in the streets like twits.
Let’s see now…the very first democracy, in archaic Athens, was established by
working with the regime of the corrupt aristocratic tyrants, errmm…no, actually, by taking to the streets and demanding change, encircling the privileged class on the Acropolis and forcing them to cede power to the whole people.But, hey, what do Greeks know about the meaning of ‘democracy’ anyhow?
The prophet Nostradumbass
@smintheus: What are you talking about? Democracy appeared, fully formed, out of nowhere, on July 4, 1776.
JGabriel
Doug, I feel like a man encouraging a friend’s worst impulses here, but you have to check out the latest from David Brooks:
Here I thought birthrates were down because people were financially strapped and worried about how to afford kids, but no: it’s just that people stop having the sex when they’re gloomy.
Because they didn’t have video or mass-produced cameras in the 1820s, you fucking jackass.
It just astounds me that the NY Times gives this man premium op-ed space twice a week and a six-figure salary.
.
RareSanity
I can’t believe that OWS is pulling it off…and when I say that I can’t believe it, I mean that I am in awe of how what they started has inspired people all over the world.
I can’t believe it because it seems unreal…the same way the onlookers feel when the nerd finally had enough of being bullied, and clocks the bully with a right cross of pure, unadulterated rage.
Nutella
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
Not out of nowhere. It was all Burke’s idea. Everybody on this side of the pond just quoted him.
Spaghetti Lee
This is old hat for a professional worrywart like Appelbaum. She has the phrase “accelerate the decline of Western democracy” saved to a Word file, and she just punches in the morning’s major headline and meanders through 600 words as to why before a coffee break.
Loneoak
I would call that column execrable, but I wouldn’t want to insult solid bodily waste.
sherifffruitfly
I predict Cheney will be on Sunday talk shows within a month declaring OWS people to “constitute an existential threat” to the country.
Batocchio
Many members of the ruling class have never been fond of democracy.
Applebaum writes:
What an idiotic straw man. Most protesters are acutely aware of their national political systems – most of all those systems’ deficiencies. The protesters are objecting to plutonomy, and policies that benefit the richest 1% at the expense of the 99%. What a shock that Applebaum doesn’t identify the ruling class as the bad actor in this social contract. What a shock that she doesn’t call out the lack of patriotism among too many members of the ruling class, who never stop to consider how much their country has done for them, and certainly never ponder ‘what they can do for their country.’ Instead, the most privileged whine that they’re the most persecuted. The WaPo is always reliable for Establishment concern trolling.
danimal
I totally agree with this.
It’s amazing to me that the very learned, very ambitious, very well-read, very, very serious people are so utterly clueless about the historical trends that have repeated themselves in this past month. The Occupy movement is the most refreshing and relieving development to come along in at least a generation.
I’m stunned that the Very Serious People really don’t seem to understand it. I always thought they were being disingenuous; turns out they are just rock-stupid.
slag
It’s kind of funny…one of the chants that I got most tired of during the last march was:
because I thought it was too…obvious.
Apparently, I was mistaken.
Suffern ACE
@David Koch: Yes. When the Iranians were in the streets last year, the apologists were all aflutter with talk of awakening of Democracy! But the mostly washed masses show up around here and they might as well go home.
She shouldn’t worry so much. We actually liked our instituions for the most part. The aristocracy who’ve been in charge of them the past decade, not so much. We would like them to peacefully retire to hermitages to be alone with their thoughts. For some reason, though, I’m thinking a life of quiet self-examination would scare the crap out Ms. Applebaum.
Villago Delenda Est
If you define “democracy” in the way that the deserting coward wailed about during the invasion of Iraq…that is, a Kim-Il-Sung-esque twisting of the term to mean “mo money for my homies, scarfed directly from the treasury”, nominally for “privatization” of the support of the military that results in soldiers dying in showers with electrical shorts and being offered shitty contractor meals, then, yes, the “democracy” of the top 1% is endangered.
And good riddance to it.
jefft452
Roosevelt today
Or
Robespierre tomorrow
Villago Delenda Est
@danimal:
These stupid morons have no Bismarck to kick them in the pants and inform them that you are playing with fire…didn’t you people see the news from Paris during the Terror? That’s what you’re inviting, idiots.
Peaceful change or violent revolution. Take your pick, shitheads.
jwb
The way the media are squealing like pigs right now, I have to wonder if their ratings and traffic are down.
scav
@RareSanity: Please Please Please Please Please. I know what you mean and it’s good. But this did not originate in this country (although this particular naming of it might have, and it is not insignificant symbolically that ‘mercans have finally gotten off their duffs and into the streets). There have been massive demonstrations in Spain for a good while. The messier ones in Europe you’ve probably heard of. (Maybe not the Irish. The French are always out.) Plus the whole thing in the Middle East. The general economic situation has gone on long enough everywhere for people to start heading out to the streets so it’s probably useless to get into the minutia of who went first (as if it mattered) but I don’t think we’re really in the running for first out of the gate. It is indeed great and awe-inspiring that this thing is taking hold. But we’re a part of this, not leading it. It is acephalous and self-organizing in response to a global situation.
Dougerhead
@Batocchio:
It’s not all globalization either. That’s the Friedmanian dodge “oh, we can’t have Social Security because of the Chinese”. It’s all bullshit.
If anything, the dislocation caused by globalization calls for more of a government safety net.
Dougerhead
@jefft452:
I like it!
Martin
Ah, yes. Destroying democracy by removing the money and leaving it to the voters. The fuckers.
Q.Q. Moar
Oh, it’s Annie Apple. I thought perhaps it was Our Lady of the Dolphins, who had scolded the #OWS protesters for not being terribly civil or godly or something, even though they had no power or meaning. Oh, here’s the quote:
It gets better, because
So, all the rich people are old, and they’ll just split the comfy tax haven that is our beloved homeland and split to … where, exactly? Peggy doesn’t say. She does get perilously close to the truth though, when she says a real movement would say
Wow, that’s very much what the Occupy protesters are saying, but Peggy can’t hear them over the voices in her head.
David Koch
@jwb: They probably pissed over Saturday’s traffic jam in Manhattan.
It’s already hard enough to bounce from one NYC party to another, without the additional clogged cross-town traffic.
David Koch
@Q.Q. Moar:
Peggy would know. Saint Ronnie built his entire movement on hatred of minorities, unions, and government.
Martin
@David Koch: Anyone stupid enough to drive in Manhattan deserves to be stuck in traffic until they spontaneously combust.
Q.Q. Moar
Oh, here’s the link to the whole, vomitous mass of Noonan’s excrescence.
Mark S.
@Q.Q. Moar:
No thanks!
danimal
@Villago Delenda Est: It can’t happen here, I suppose.
Throughout human history, the rich have bought peace by throwing a few coins at the masses. Bread and circuses worked for the Romans for example. Now, our precious Galtians are crying because they aren’t loved as they hoover up our last dollars. Their pride is their undoing, and it’s about time.
Redshift
@Davis X. Machina: Is her maiden name Elk, perhaps?
Redshift
@Mark S.: Thank you. From the headline, it sounded powerfully stupid, and I didn’t want to read it for fear the stupid might be contagious.
Mnemosyne
@scav:
I think you could argue that OWS wouldn’t be having the success that they are now if the Arab Spring had failed. I think that seeing those people stand up to their corrupt governments gave people in the West a lot more hope that they could demand change at home and be listened to.
srv
Is there some rule that the 99% can’t go Galt?
RareSanity
@scav:
I didn’t mean it that way. When I say inspiring around the world, I meant the pictures from the far reaches of the world that say, “We are the 99%”. I know they haven’t inspired everything that’s gone on, more likely, they were inspired by those events.
But what they have stirred in this country, is something I didn’t think was possible.
slag
Can I just say something? If any one of you fp fuckers ever writes anything like this:
I’ll personally track you down and make you apologize. Truly. In theory, I love digby, but when your head is so far up your own ass that you start to say shit like this where other people can read it, it’s time to hang it up. You’re done. Good night, Gracie.
Edo
@srv: Yes, there is. Per the bylaws of our union thug overlords, we can’t go Galt. We’re only allowed to call it the One Big Strike instead.
MikeJ
@slag: I will slit the throats of any you miss.
Cacti
@Q.Q. Moar:
The libertarian paradise of Somalia.
Yutsano
OT: Hand to the FSM I talked to someone who lived on Palin Street in Galt, California. You seriously cannot make this shit up.
slag
@MikeJ: Really? I was thinking a wedgie or maybe an atomic wedgie would be sufficient to get the job done. I hear Cole breaks pretty easily.
MikeJ
@slag: OK. I’ll go with a noogie.
Calouste
@Yutsano:
Lol. That place also has a Rossi Drive, and the most inappropriately named park in the USA: Galt Community Park.
slag
@MikeJ: Come to think of it…a little “Why are you hitting yourself? Stop hitting yourself,” could also serve as it’s own reward. But let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.
Jenny
Obama topped 1,000,000 individual donors today.
One million donors in 6 six months.
That’s curious. Blogs keep telling me he’s lost the base.
Suffern ACE
@Cacti: I’m thinking Dubai. I thought that’s what it was there for.
Yutsano
@Calouste: It got better: the guy was acting all oppressed because he didn’t do what we originally requested…in April. He got levied twice and only now whined about it. He even discussed going Galt, which would have made the irony that much richer.
piratedan
here in Tucson, based on the evening news, they’ve started issuing trespassing citations to the OWS: Tucson folks. Supposed penalties up to 1,000 and naturally, a blight on your permanent record. The OWS folks plan to counter that Trespass on public property charge stating that the actual local statute doesn’t apply when in the act of performing civil disobedience.
Suffern ACE
http://www.lohud.com/article/20111017/NEWS03/110170329/Dozens-occupy-Suffern-solidarity-Wall-Street-protests?odyssey=tab%7Ctopnews%7Ctext%7CNews
DFH’s came though the Village. Fornicators in the town gazebo not reported.
The prophet Nostradumbass
I’m getting tired of people using the people of Somalia for the butt of a joke involving glibertarian idiots. I’m sure the people unfortunate enough to have to live there right now find it to be uproariously funny.
Spaghetti Lee
@Yutsano:
Google maps tells me it’s just north of A Street. Which = A Street, I presume. Maybe the universe does have a sense of humor.
Cacti
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
Tissue?
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Cacti: No thanks, I’m not interested in the tissue you jerked off into while you typed that.
slag
@Suffern ACE:
I laughed out loud. Apparently a message is amorphous when you need to use at least 10 words to characterize it. If you could do it in…I don’t know…8 words, then you have a clear-cut message.
Bill E Pilgrim
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
That’s true I saw it in a museum. Democracy was also riding a dinosaur.
This woman has been living in Europe for decades and she still writes things like this.
Yeah, and how’s that been working out? Oh wait, I forgot, for you and other financial aristocrats, just fine.
This comes to mind.
slag
@Bill E Pilgrim:
See now, two words are too few. We take the goldilocks approach to messaging here.
Suffern ACE
@slag: I know. I expect more from the Lower Hudson Journal News reporters. This isn’t the New York Times, where pretend reporting is allowed, and being daft to go along leads to a twice weekly columns. There is plenty of time to cover this in depth. Although maybe not. The vast Suffern ACE estate is only two blocks from the Gazebo and I walked by it three times on Sunday afternoon, but didn’t notice a protest to join.
r€nato
@The prophet Nostradumbass: I’ve never been there, but I think I can be reasonably sure that a country that has been pretty much without a national government for 20 years, where the per capita GDP is a few hundred dollars a year, where 3 out of 4 people don’t have access to sanitation services, where 98 fucking percent of the women have been circumcised (aka genital mutilation), and the average lifespan is around 50 years, is what the experts commonly refer to as, “a shithole“.
Cain
@Cacti:
For which end?
Spaghetti Lee
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
I don’t think it’s supposed to be uproariously funny. For me, it’s served to remind me what’s at stake.
Batocchio
@Dougerhead:
True! There’s hardly anything they won’t cite as a defense of the ruling class – because as Friedman and the rest will shamelessly argue, it’s really in our best interests, too.
I also like both:
Hippies now or Jacobins later.
Roosevelt today or Robespierre tomorrow.
Bill E Pilgrim
@JGabriel: It looks like they’ve removed the reference to cameras, without comment. It now reads:
It’s funny to me how Brooks and others love this idea that the 1960s actually had no effect, or the opposite effect from what people thought at the time, with the measure being “Richard Nixon was reelected President” followed by a lot of other Republicans in the White House in the many decades following, which really actually amounted to a Reagan/Bush cabal, including two from one family.
Yes, Richard Nixon was elected President again. He also then resigned, in disgrace. If anyone thinks that had nothing to do with the climate of anti-establishment anti-authoritatian protest in the era then he’s dreaming.
Feminism, civil rights, all of the things that changed during and since the 60s seem so second-nature now that people forget how different some of those things were before that, in the early 60s say.
Reagan ushered in a big new conservative era in many ways but it wasn’t a return to the really old school right, which is easily demonstrated by the fact that Reagan would be seen as a moderate these days.
Then there’s now, but the extremist GOP of now really is a tiny population, that’s sort of the whole point. It’s the collusion between them and the tiny percentage holding almost all the money that makes it so deadly. The general population actually comes out shockingly liberal about most issues when polled.
The country really hasn’t become more conservative, it’s become more dysfunctional and the whole thing more rigged for the right.
Bill E Pilgrim
@slag: Funny, seems about right to me. But then I was never a big porridge eater.
asiangrrlMN
@slag: Dude re-set his own shoulder after dislocating it. He may break easily physically, but emotionally? Whole different story.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Spaghetti Lee: I dunno, Cacti seemed to think so, from his reaction.
JGabriel
TPM:
Does anyone know what’s going on with Perry’s numbers in FL?
I can understand a drop in his polling numbers, given his debate performances, but less than 3%? Did someone start a rumor in FL that Perry was an anti-semite or something?
It just seems like, for his numbers to drop that low, there must be something going on under the radar in FL.
.
piratedan
@JGabriel: well based on Florida’s past history, either Perry isn’t enough of a crook for them or he’s simply not as crazy as they prefer.
JGabriel
@Bill E Pilgrim:
DAMN IT. That was line was a thing of moronic beauty. I hope it’s still the print edition.
They must have changed it after people started commenting about it — no comments have been published or approved yet, more than 3.5 hours after it went online — and noticed a lot of jokes about the camera line. I couldn’t have been the only one to notice it.
.
JGabriel
@piratedan:
But that’s the problem: Perry is clearly both of those things.
That’s why I’m thinking that something else must be going on in the FL rumor mill.
.
gocart mozart
Worse than an anti-semite, he’s an anti-socialsecurityite.
Also, the Jews and Catholics may not be too keen on his religious bigotry. “First he came for the Mormons . . .”
Tyro
I respect you immensely for not dignifying that op Ed with an actual link
gocart mozart
(shruggs shoulders) I did find this for what its worth which is not much.
http://www.statesman.com/opinion/peddling-perry-rumors-on-a-national-stage-1800515.html
SamR
“Morale was deteriorating and it was all Yossarian’s fault. The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them.” Catch-22, Chapter 39.
Suffern ACE
@gocart mozart: Maybe the support for the Rays is broader than usually reported and the state is bummed about being bounced by the Texas team.
gocart mozart
@SamR:
“You have the right to free speech as long as you are not dumb enough to actually try it.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jWWcxwNiKU
Odie Hugh Manatee
@JGabriel:
I think Bobobobobobo meant ‘birth rate’. Or maybe he’s serious in saying that being gloomy makes people less fertile? Too bad they deleted the camera comment, that was pure gold.
He “earns” a six-figure salary writing this drivel? It isn’t worth wiping my ass with but I’m sure that they think that they are getting their moneys worth out of this turd.
Amir Khalid
@JGabriel: Well, you know what they say at the zoo: animals only breed if they’re happy.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Amir Khalid: I think the reason is simple: If everyone feels like they’re already getting screwed, it just makes the whole thing less appealing.
arguingwithsignposts
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
Someone better screencap that paragraph before they change it.
Baud
@Bill E Pilgrim:
I fail to see the distinction you are trying to draw.
harlana
It’s awesome to know that “We the People” have that kind of destructive power! (You said it) Perhaps we ought to, ya know, respect and listen to them a little. Just sayin.
bjacques
There are lots of places rich tax dodgers can go that still respect the rule of money. The Netherlands aside (here’s hoping something gets done about that), there are the ‘Stans, China, Russia, the Gulf States, Chechnya…
What do those places have in common? They’re monarchies (or might as ell be). But the leaders there might take a dim view of some Big Swinging Dick gambling away the royal slush fund and feeling entitled to a second (or third) chance.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Baud:
Hah. Well it could have become both, it’s true. However, it hasn’t.
Most of the populace are not more conservative, or even as conservative, as people were in the early 1960s.
On the other hand we have a system wherein a minority of extremely conservative people can virtually control the entire country. That’s the dysfunctional part.
David Brooks’ argument is that no, the country is just conservative. Maybe not as extremely conservative as the current insane GOP, in his view, but he thinks it’s essentially a very conservative place and that explains everything. I disagree.
Cris (without an H)
@Batocchio:
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”
Can’t remember who said that, but I’m pretty sure it was some hippie trust-funder who hated America.
Barry
She changed the title.
Cris (without an H)
Fucking Ministry of Truth.
Death Panel Truck
God save the people who didn’t get the Sex Pistols reference in the title of this post. ;)
IrishGirl
FTW “Hippies now or Jacobins later”
cckids
@RareSanity:
I agree. I was visiting my dad in the hospital this weekend & in between football we saw coverage of OWS. He doesn’t think the sit-ins will work, but “they sure have made people think.” Now, though he grew up a Dust-Bowl Nebraska Democrat, he was turned to the dark side during Clinton, mainly by Fox News & that flaming asshat Limbaugh. For him to say ANYTHING positive about a movement like OWS absolutely knocked me down. They are reaching people I’d have thought lost to the cause.
TenguPhule
Might as well oil the Lady Gullet then. Because it will be long and bloody work.