Mastodawn

Mx. Chara Aznable (they/them) of Pnictogen

I do not exactly label myself an adherent of #anarchism, but I am intellectually curious: I would very much like to know if social harmony might not require Law.

That is what we are taught, as Americans raised and schooled and entertained with conventional American values: society is impossible without Law, without obedience.

I remember to this day having a liberal political science teacher in high school, a fellow I appreciated because he assigned an entertaining variety of texts (including a somewhat goofy 1970s environmentalist tract, Ernest Callenbach's Ecotopia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecotopia) who told a story of an animatronic Abraham Lincoln at a Disney park, programmed to tell visitors to obey the law.

Ecotopia - Wikipedia

Mx. Chara Aznable (they/them) of Pnictogen 2d ago

I have no idea whether Disney's animatronic Abe Lincoln actually commands people to obey the law, mind you. The high-school political science teacher, I think, wanted his students to regard the Disney display as propagandistic and unseemly: Lincoln's best and most quotable moments are about principles other than obedience.

My point is that obedience to the law is broadly taught as a fundamental principle of U.S. society and daily behavior. The #Democrats are useless and fatally compromised, as pollitical opposition, because they've become overly attached to The Law, the established systems of recognized authority and legal enforcement, as the universal standard of truth. They speak of the U.S. Constitution as if it were the Bible. There is a civic religion, a irrational reverence of the governing traditions and legal precedents of the United States.

But there comes a time when one must break, totally and completely, with the old ways. The Founders were not gods; they did not found a perfect government and an infallible system of Law.

Mx. Chara Aznable (they/them) of Pnictogen 2d ago

The U.S. federal government has been seized by a gang of criminals. All the institutions and traditions established and maintained by that government must already have been fatally flawed, if they were able to be warped so readily to the advantage of the Republican fascists.

That's my view, anyway: the U.S. #Constitution defined a government shot through with exploitable weaknesses, and surely it's relevant that most of the people who agreed to the Constitution were slave-owners and schemers in business and property. Hasn't it been ridiculous to regard the political writings and doing of such men as if they were the deeds of geniuses and great philosophers, beyond question and off-limits to alteration by later generations of purportedly lesser citizens?

@mxchara Charles Tilly wrote a paper in 1985 in which he argued that all nation-states are protection rackets, aka criminal enterprises. What we have in the "United States of America" is a nation-state, a protection racket undergirded by violence and threats of violence. Also: David Graeber's short "Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology" is what got me into anarchy more than any other book or writing. He writes about "structural violence" or how violence is so much a part of our lives that we don't even really think about it.

Rick d Card 2d ago

@mxchara Any other better way to have humans live together can't work because it requires a huge majority of people to engaged with it and most people are not willing to do that. That's why we end up with systems that are ruled by a minority who set the parameters within which we must all live.

Mx. Chara Aznable (they/them) of Pnictogen 2d ago

@Rick_d_card "most people are not willing to do that" is an extremely vague statement

Rick d Card 2d ago

@mxchara Well, I guess I could have expanded the text but mastodon only allows so many keystrokes. I could say, in my experience I'm guessing 90% of the people who I speak to about politics and getting involved say similar things to, "oh, I hate politics; I don't care about all that" or, "I've got too many other more important things to think about".

@Rick_d_card
The question is whether this would also be true if people actually felt like them engaging with it actually made a difference rather than just bring grief of being ignored and disposed over and over (Politikverdrossenheit).

Naturally, I do not know the answer to this.
@mxchara

Rick d Card 2d ago

@curiousicae @mxchara Kind of a chicken and egg scenario; people don't get involved because they don't believe it will change things and things don't change because people don't get involved. AAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGGGG!

Jonah Gibberish 2d ago

@Rick_d_card @mxchara thats not really true, thats more of the same propaganda the minority use to maintain their control. a very american cultural bias.

Rick d Card 1d ago

@jonahgibberish @mxchara I'm ok with you having that belief

Mx. Chara Aznable (they/them) of Pnictogen 1d ago

@Rick_d_card @jonahgibberish aren't these soluble problems? society is not static. political issues have been presented to the people in a poisoned manner, through advertising and campaigning in which dirty tricks and deceit are considered normal. reasonable persons avoid engaging with political struggles partly because the currently accepted style in political discourse is intolerably abusive and dishonest. but this can be changed, surely? is it not possible to change the culture of politics?

Rick d Card 1d ago

@mxchara @jonahgibberish Yes. If even 15-20% of the voting public were relentlessly contacting politicians about changes they wanted, kept the pressure on for maybe 3-6 months I believe change would come. Politicians need to know people are engaging with issues. Now they mainly hear from corporations/rich who can afford lobbyists to pressure them. I personally don't even know many people who are willing to take the time to look up petitions and sign them let alone emailing/calling their MP's

Rick d Card 1d ago

@mxchara @jonahgibberish Most people I know are fully aware of the truth and what the problems are. They choose not to get involved. I know this because I speak about stuff like this to people I know so, I am guessing most people are like them based on what they've told me. I have no idea what it would take to move them into action; I'm guessing life would have to get much worse before they have the incentive to begin pressuring politicians for change.

Jonah Gibberish 5h ago

@Rick_d_card @mxchara no, you're not ok, its obvious to everyone except you.

Rick d Card 5h ago

@jonahgibberish @mxchara now you're just being nasty because you're nasty