The Occupation of Wall Street Spreads

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Wow, really? I mean, fucking really? Did you look at the picture? The students are sitting on the ground, there are several spots in that picture alone where there is, at most, a foot of student body to clear. Those poor cops were obviously driven to such drastic (but entirely reasonable and far less harmful than any other conceivable method of resolving the pressing issue of literal student-speedbumps) measures by this unpatriotic, so very close to almost having the vague potential to turn violent, absolutely illegal by any and all made-up standards protest!

Reminds me of a video, actually:



If only that dog had some pepper spray, this could have all been resolved.

[Alerik the Fortunate]

Just saw this bit about UC Davis on the news, apparently the cops only started using pepper spray after they were surrounded by 200 students who linked arms and refused to disperse.

Just out of curiosity, what news source reported this? I haven't heard much detail about the incident.

[Shroom Man 777]

@ Oni:

If a SWAT team had busted the door down and shot that dog to death with a JDAM, then this could have all been resolved by that dumb video never having been made in the first place.

It doesn't matter if OWS makes concrete demands to be heeded or dismissed by the phoney baloney political apparatus of your country. If it changes how people see things, if it changes how they act and think, then it will have achieved something far greater. Look at the protests in the late 60s and 70s. A decade ago, the country was full of prudes in coats and ties and working stiffs who wouldn't even go to the same malt shops and Pop Tate's as black people. By the end of the whole aimless messageless hippie shitpiece anarchist protests that Zinegata Sr. and Chewbacca I also ironically derided, everyone in America was doing drugs and listening to black people music and wearing afros and high collars and platform shoes and bell bottom pants, and the US soldiers who were so valiantly defending the world from communism got spat on, according to Stuart Slade's eyewitness accounts for he was actually there(!). All your paranoid McCarthyist anti-communist and racist bullshit got shat on by groovy ass long haired flower childs doing LSD and excreting psychoactive feces from their cocaine-rimmed asses.

Similarly, OWS will do the same thing once again. Like, how this board evolved and became so flippantly smarmy and now people who computate the biggatons of their turboblasters are strakked for having faces made out of spherical masses of irons, and how people are now bleating that the board's atmosphere has become so fucking hostile to Hypocritical Psycho Conservative Americans who were once bestselling authors here (boo-fucking-hoo), similarly if OWS succeeds in this angle that most deriders and ironic fucks can't fathom, then a huge spectrum of people will end up also having changed perceptions towards how they see the government apparatuses and corporate masters who they once lauded and worshiped and adored, along with the people on the other side, the Pharisees who even now are hurling shit towards these good people.

The whole sociocultural atmosphere will be changed and all you squares and prudes and daddy-os will be laughed at by a horde of smarmy OWS assholes wearing afros and bell-bottom pants and medallions the size of hubcaps. It'll be hydromatic. It'll be ultramatic. Why, it can be greased lightning!

We'll be discoing while wearing roller skates, while you dour boring unimaginative pieces of square legos will be stuck square dancing like a bunch of loser McCarthyist shmucks from the 1950s. A bunch of black and white claymation dinosaurs now choke-slammed and piledrivered by a multicolored technicolored Barney on high definition. Fuck you all.

This isn't assymetrical warfare. No, it's not penetrating only your ass. It's gonna go in your ass, your urethra, and your fucking mouth at the same time. Better get your KY jelly ready, cause it's time for tri-symmetrical class warfare!

[weemadando]

Just saw this bit about UC Davis on the news, apparently the cops only started using pepper spray after they were surrounded by 200 students who linked arms and refused to disperse.

The police marched into the center of a group of already seated protesters. The pictures clearly show the officers stepping directly over the protesters and spraying them from outside of the circle. That you are willing to buy any possible explanation that absolves police using pepper spray on non-violent assemblies, even when clear photographic evidence is on this page says a lot about you.

Yeah, I mean, there they were, before dawn, Charlie all around them and no air cover. Out of ammo for their M-16s and only a few cans of pepper spray to help break the passive, seated line of citizens around them.

FUCKING HEROES.

Look, I can understand that this is technically an act of "aggression" towards police, as they were "cornering"/"surrounding" them (if that part is even fucking true), but that kind of reaction - that's fucking bullshit.

Please, someone, explain to me why these people were such an imminent threat of bodily harm to the officers or others that they warranted use of pepper spray. Or why it was so necessary to use the spray to break the line and "escape" when you could have easily fucking stepped over.

Or is this just more of the "herp derp POLEEEZ" shit where we are expected to believe that this action is 100% warranted because the (questionably legal on grounds of freedom of speech/assembly and definitely pointless in terms of actually achieving anything) orders of the police were ignored.

And before KS or some other shitbag has a go, look back over threads and see how often I've defended police actions. But nearly everything about the way the police response to the occupy movements has been handled is somewhere between incompetence and thuggery.

[Terralthra]

Also, I should point out that on multiple occasions, the 9th, 10th, and 11th Circuits of the US Court of Appeals have held that pepper spray can not be used on the "verbally non-compliant" or "passively non-compliant".

Specific findings include "The chemical agent is intended for use in those cases wherein a member of the Department is attempting to subdue an attacker or a violently resisting suspect," and "The need for arrest as a government interest was insignificant since the protestors were only guilty of trespassing, a minor offense."

edit: grammar.

[Shroom Man 777]

Holding hands and sitting down counts as violence, you dangerous leftist liberal communist shitpiece piece of shit of peace. These are cannibals we're dealing with, cannibals on cannabis. You think our brave boys in blue are just doing routine arrests on peaceful assholes in the streets of New York? Fuck you. Kamikaze Sith and SVPD are operating in fucking Papua New Guinea, and as intelligence officer Zinegata so accurately reported, the natives are feasting on human flesh and long pigs with long dicks, and I'll be damned if you'll McNamara them with your fucking complacency and limp-dickedness. Cannibals can chew on limp dicks easier than hard ones, and by god we're gonna give these fucking local domestic insurgents a whole lot of fucking jaw breakers. Balls blurted Bart Blade indeed.

[Shroom Man 777]

Please, someone, explain to me why these people were such an imminent threat of bodily harm to the officers or others that they warranted use of pepper spray. Or why it was so necessary to use the spray to break the line and "escape" when you could have easily fucking stepped over.

Or is this just more of the "herp derp POLEEEZ" shit where we are expected to believe that this action is 100% warranted because the (questionably legal on grounds of freedom of speech/assembly and definitely pointless in terms of actually achieving anything) orders of the police were ignored.

And before KS or some other shitbag has a go, look back over threads and see how often I've defended police actions. But nearly everything about the way the police response to the occupy movements has been handled is somewhere between incompetence and thuggery.

The appearance of law must be upheld, especially when it's being broken.

[Connor MacLeod]

Of course not - have you seen how much it costs to rent an airplane these days?

(I am kidding)

Clearly this is a job for a trebuchet.

[Connor MacLeod]

Anyhow: The police picture puts three thoughts into my mind:

On one hand, its fantastic PR for the OWS side and against those in power. I mean context is utterly utterly irrelevant in that point - all you are seeing is a cop who is spraying people who are sitting doing nothing. It doesn't have to "make sense" and you can try to rationalize it as you can, but it's going to invoke some pretty fierce emotion from people one way or another. So even if for some reason this was a perfectly legit response to the protestors, its still going to be bad PR simply by how it looks. It doesn't have to make sense at all to be effective.

The other point that crops up is that alot of the recent discussion highlights a sort of "us vs them" mentality between the law enforcement and the protestors. Not that I'm condoning what the police are doing per se, but backlash against those actions and pictures like this is probably going to make police want to close ranks, which woudl play into the hands of the sort of people who want OWS to go away as well. It can be really easy to see the cops as "the enemy" here and that they're all just thugs, but like with the picture that sort of attitude just polarizes things further. I'd like to think it could be helped, but I'm pessimistic enough to think it can't, and this will just help making things harder for OWS.

Edit: I also had a third thing that hit me. As much as you can make parallels between the past like the civil rights movement and what is happening now, I'd have to wonder if the Civil Rights movement would have had as much success now as they did back then - less violence maybe, but there would be a hell of alot more propoganda to cope with. And propoganda is a potent tool in the US (look at how it has been used to prevent things from universal health care to gay marriage, after all.)

[Shroom Man 777]

Heck, it's like that picture of that horribly burned child in Vietnam, (since ray245 likes immolated people so much). The US forces never did the airstrike in that question, I think it was the Vietnamese air force that napalmed in that occasion, and the Americans were actually treating injured civilians there I think, but the ugly portrait and the shocking picture it painted just crystallized something in the public conscience.

Edit: I also had a third thing that hit me. As much as you can make parallels between the past like the civil rights movement and what is happening now, I'd have to wonder if the Civil Rights movement would have had as much success now as they did back then - less violence maybe, but there would be a hell of alot more propoganda to cope with. And propoganda is a potent tool in the US (look at how it has been used to prevent things from universal health care to gay marriage, after all.)

The establishment has propaganda, but it's always had propaganda. The street man's never before had such a useful tool of disseminating information and communicating with others as those of us today have, however.

The game has changed, son of Flynn!

[Connor MacLeod]

Heck, it's like that picture of that horribly burned child in Vietnam, (since ray245 likes immolated people so much). The US forces never did the airstrike in that question, I think it was the Vietnamese air force that napalmed in that occasion, and the Americans were actually treating injured civilians there I think, but the ugly portrait and the shocking picture it painted just crystallized something in the public conscience.

Yeah. It's going to be pictures like that which are going to be galvanizing factors if anything are. I really don't expect anything concrete or decisive from OWS other than to simply exist and be visible. I mean this hasn't even been going on that long as far as protests go, and they are opposing something that is a long-time and deeply entrenched part of American society. Rooting it out, if at all possible, is going to be incredibly difficult, as things up to this point have proven. Simply having these people still around (and visible) by next year will be a victory all by itself, frankly. If it does.. there might be a chance. But if it dies down... *shrugs*

The bad vibes towards the cops in all this is just another facet of the whole propoganda angle. America loves that "conflict" sort of thing. It has to be an "us vs them" mentality, even if it is going to create more problems than it solves. Could there have been a way to avoid becoming enemies with the cops, I dont know. But from my position I find it hard to view them as being Jackbooted Thugs either, if that makes sense. That cop could be a Right Wing Limbaugh loving conservative asshole, or he could be a man who is doing a job because he has a family to support and making a stand could cost him his job. Yeah that's selfish but that sort of crap isn't uncommon in America - Tribalism again. I can also feel a bit sorry for the cops for being put in this position and coming out looking like thugs in pics like that (because that is how they do look) and still hate them for basically doing the things that make them look like thugs. It's not like they don't have a choice even if the alternative is a bad one.

The establishment has propaganda, but it's always had propaganda. The street man's never before had such a useful tool of disseminating information and communicating with others as those of us today have, however.

The game has changed, son of Flynn!

Yeah, but I've gotten to the point in America (or maybe I'm just cynical) that I wouldn't trust the American Public to not turn this into another "Death Panel" thing. I mean fuck we already have that "WE are 53%" shit, that alone should show how much inertia in American society there is to overcome if we're going to change. I like PeZook's stockholm syndrome analogy.

Must bea ll that 40K I'm reading. Next thing you know we're going to be enshrining the President in a golden throne and forcing him to radiate AMERICAN FREEDOM AND PROSPERITY through the entire globe to act as a beacon of change for all other societies. Or something.

[Shroom Man 777]

Well, you're already sacrificing shitloads of people with JDAMRAAMs and shit, so might as well let the bloodshed and wasted souls of the slain spiritually empower your Decider, and call it profit maximization or some shit. Maybe if it goes all 40ky, you can do a line by line breakdown of America's paragraphs and computate the yield of its freedom and democracy based on the star spangled prose it's written in.

"The 5.56mm round fired by the American soldier tore the Iraqi child's guts out of her abdomen."

Assuming a normal human's intestines weigh XYZ kilograms, and assuming a malnourished Iraqi child's guts weighs one fourth of that, this means M16 rounds have ABC amount of kinetic force if they have the momentum to eviscerate Arab children for freedom.

"They canted the prisoner's gurney just so, and poured the water down at an angle to stimulate his gag reflex and simulate the sensation of drowning."

Knowing the specific gravity of water, and basing on the fact that CIA torture manuals specify the use of isotonic saline solutions to minimize cellular dehydration amongst their inmates to promote health and maximize the length of their stay in Guantanomo, and knowing Earth gravity's acceleration as 9.8m/s, all this combined tells us that fundamentalistic muslimism can only withstand XYZ gigajoules of dihydrogen monoxide before it is vaporized (or more accurately, dissolved, as water is the universal solvent!) and turned into a confession.

With plenty of canon visual evidence on hand, like Apache gun camera footage with accompanying frat boy-like dialogue, I bet your calculations on America will be more accurate than your calculations on 40k.

Purists and minimalists will bitch about it, because they think the true canon only exists in shitty 1970s screencaps from F-4 Phantoms vaporizing asteroids Vietnamese villages, but these are superseded by G-canon infrared IRST footage that also allow us to compute the thermal yields of napalm sticking to children and white phosphorus more accurately.

America.

[Connor MacLeod]

Yeah I suppose it's true that this is just a variation of the sort of stuff that happened in other countries America has messed in, and its no different because its Americans doing it. Funny how I hadn't even thought about that til you mentioned it, but some parallels are there. What I was actually thinking of (or was it reminded of) was the fallout from the whole Prop 8 thing when the vote had been taken. There was alot of justified anger and resentment, but that lead to alot of lashing out (at some who it was justified at, and some whom it wasn't) - and that was highly polarized too in a disturbing way, because you have to juggle the fact you're in the same group as the oppressors even if you don't agree with them, and you understand the anger is justified.. yet you don't like the fact you become a target of anger however justified it is. How do you balance that? Same can be applied to dealing with the reactions of non-Americans to americans over all the shit America does to non-american countries too.

BTW: How long does it take you to compile a "debate argument by allegory" style approach anyhow Shroom?

[Shroom Man 777]

I guess dehumanizing is universally ungood. But a bunch of armed and dangerous and institutionally protected assholes who are untouchable and who cannot be hold accountable, unless through a long-ass legal process wherein the institution will try its hardest to cover its ass, if these guys dehumanize their enemy, well, then it's just another piece of shit to add to their septic tank already backflowing with abhorrent shit. A bunch of naked homeless hobo shmucks whose only "violent" weapon is sitting down and holding hands and urinating on the streets, if they dehumanize their enemy, well, I guess it's wrong, but that piece of shit is just going to be floating around rather lonely-y in a rather empty toilet bowl in contrast to the former guys.

I think guys with tanks and guns and stealth fighters and JDAMs and shit are gonna be bigger assholes than guys whose worse offense of shitting and pissing and jacking off in public are things I can see in any sidewalk around here.

It doesn't take me long at all to debate by weird ass bizarro fucked up allegory. I guess my brain works by allegories and by comparing horrible things I see around me all the time.

[Connor MacLeod]

I guess dehumanizing is universally ungood. But a bunch of armed and dangerous and institutionally protected assholes who are untouchable and who cannot be hold accountable, unless through a long-ass legal process wherein the institution will try its hardest to cover its ass, if these guys dehumanize their enemy, well, then it's just another piece of shit to add to their septic tank already backflowing with abhorrent shit. A bunch of naked homeless hobo shmucks whose only "violent" weapon is sitting down and holding hands and urinating on the streets, if they dehumanize their enemy, well, I guess it's wrong, but that piece of shit is just going to be floating around rather lonely-y in a rather empty toilet bowl in contrast to the former guys.

Heh. The sad part is I can totally see this leading to a "War on Occupation" or something... some big 9/11 style analogy to Wall street being "occupied" or something. NEVER FORGET. Oh and freedom fries. Lots of freedom fries.

It doesn't take me long at all to debate by weird ass bizarro fucked up allegory. I guess my brain works by allegories and by comparing things I see around me all the time.

Okay, because you're so damn good at it I dub you "Shroomfucius" from now on. You can only speak in bizarro fucked up allegory from this point onwards. I know that will be a huge transition but if you ever make sense I'll... damn I'll think up a properly American threat later. Probably involving JDams.

This also makes me wonder if there is some Bizarro world version of Shroomy who is like a bible-thumping, properly attired, and completely coherent conservotard. He probably has a ming the merciless goatee as well.

[TithonusSyndrome]

The bad vibes towards the cops in all this is just another facet of the whole propoganda angle. America loves that "conflict" sort of thing. It has to be an "us vs them" mentality, even if it is going to create more problems than it solves. Could there have been a way to avoid becoming enemies with the cops, I dont know. But from my position I find it hard to view them as being Jackbooted Thugs either, if that makes sense. That cop could be a Right Wing Limbaugh loving conservative asshole, or he could be a man who is doing a job because he has a family to support and making a stand could cost him his job. Yeah that's selfish but that sort of crap isn't uncommon in America - Tribalism again. I can also feel a bit sorry for the cops for being put in this position and coming out looking like thugs in pics like that (because that is how they do look) and still hate them for basically doing the things that make them look like thugs. It's not like they don't have a choice even if the alternative is a bad one.

The cops? They're barely the tip of the spear here. Yes, they're the ones thrusting batons in the stomachs of peaceful assemblygoers in proximity enough to make out every facial detail and be perfectly aware of the human misery they're inflicting, and have to come up with ways of rationalizing that to themselves, but if someone really needs to be reviled it's the low and middle income cheerleaders of the 1%, the sadists who can only get hard when they see brown people being bombed or hippies being brutalized. They don't make much of a case for their being anything other than lizard-brained savages completely emotionally invested in making shows of their tribal supremacy. To them, the emotional satisfaction of feeling that they belong in union with their ideal embodiment of success and achievement and the consequent effect it has on their ego is more important than actually moving up in life and living better than before. John Wayne might've been a brute with the brain of a hammerhead shark, to paraphrase Hunter Thompson, but he and his ilk were few compared to the many who reveled in seeing him "beat into bloody, screaming hamburger" anything it didn't understand. If it won't salute, stomp it. Break it. Destroy the goddam queer dirty thing.

To the battered housewives of the 1%, OWS footage is a fucking pulp cowboy movie and the OWS protesters are just injuns for the clobbering, for the dehumanizing and inferiorizing, and the usual concerns about a mix of decent and sadistic cops facing complex problems in the NYPD near Zucotti Park don't concern me half as much as the people who crave a John Wayne to call one of their own and act out their perverted fucking domination fantasies on their dehumanized ideological outsiders.

Yeah, but I've gotten to the point in America (or maybe I'm just cynical) that I wouldn't trust the American Public to not turn this into another "Death Panel" thing. I mean fuck we already have that "WE are 53%" shit, that alone should show how much inertia in American society there is to overcome if we're going to change. I like PeZook's stockholm syndrome analogy.

Bullshit the 53%. 53% is as made up as the looming health and sanitation threat posed by the stray dookie, particularly contrast to the risk of an accidental firearm discharge courtesy of a Tea Party patriot brimming with all kinds of brains to apply to the task of firearm safety. The real number of interest is 18%, which represents the portion of the US public who erroneously believe that they are in the top 1% of income earners. If we enter into a war of rhetorical devices that ends up as tedious as the suffix "gate" is today then I might regret coining that in response, but I'm not going to resist on grounds of taste any more than I would yield to Godwin's Law when confronted with genuine Nazism.

[Shroom Man 777]

Heh, Tith described those hypocritical psycho conservative Americans in a nutsack.

This also makes me wonder if there is some Bizarro world version of Shroomy who is like a bible-thumping, properly attired, and completely coherent conservotard. He probably has a ming the merciless goatee as well.

I was schooled, pre- and primary, in a place full of properly-attired, well-mannered and very coherent bible thumping psychos.

Being a Bible-thumping rhetorical asshole is easy.

Heh. The sad part is I can totally see this leading to a "War on Occupation" or something... some big 9/11 style analogy to Wall street being "occupied" or something. NEVER FORGET. Oh and freedom fries. Lots of freedom fries.

For more than a century, America's hands did nothing but maim and disfigure and eviscerate. In between its slickened fingers are the desecrated viscera of nations and people, like the butcher whose likeness I wear in my avatar and sig to honor these great United States. So, the ultimate irony is when all this comes down not by the hand of any other, but by America's own bloody hands. America will embrace itself. God bless you.

[Connor MacLeod]

Heh, Tith described those hypocritical psycho conservative Americans in a nutsack.

Yeah. Although I'm not sure I could blame just them. That's sort of what bugs me. Things like this are big, complicated issues, and there's lots of blame to go around. It's something that has evolved for decades because of the way Americans act, think, etc. Some people actively pushed for it in various ways to ensure it happened, but there's also all those people who ignored it or did nothing about it. Should they be reviled too?

I also can't help but think its perversely.. "American" to have the first thing pop into your head "identify the enemy to be destroyed" or something. Because you can't declare war if you don't have a properly identified enemy, right?

I was schooled, pre- and primary, in a place full of properly-attired, well-mannered and very coherent bible thumping psychos.

Being a Bible-thumping rhetorical asshole is easy.

so you were a former Jehovah's witness who turned into freakazoid Good to know

For more than a century, America's hands did nothing but maim and disfigure and eviscerate. In between its slickened fingers are the desecrated viscera of nations and people, like the butcher whose likeness I wear in my avatar and sig to honor these great United States. So, the ultimate irony is when all this comes down not by the hand of any other, but by America's own bloody hands. America will embrace itself. God bless you.

well you need someone to drop JDAMS on. Even if it is yourself.

[Shroom Man 777]

Some people actively pushed for it in various ways to ensure it happened, but there's also all those people who ignored it or did nothing about it. Should they be reviled too?

I guess we can just try mocking them. Or enseeding them with the same human outrage that fuels people to take to the streets and cry out against sociey's wrongs? So, next time, they won't ignore or do nothing about it when society goes wrong?

I also can't help but think its perversely.. "American" to have the first thing pop into your head "identify the enemy to be destroyed" or something. Because you can't declare war if you don't have a properly identified enemy, right?

Well, part of your national identity is in never having been humbled, ever (at least not noticeably in the last century), and the whole paradigm of you being destroyers of all your enemies has entrenched itself in your minds precisely because your nation can - and does - destroy its enemies or conquer them.

It's a fundamentally different mindset from everyone else, because while some nations and peoples have had the same highs of being undisputed masters, they've also been humbled time and time again by history. We have been the enemies who got destroyed, we have been the conquered, and for better or worse this has also enshrined itself in our identities.

You are gods on Olympus. We are shit, nothing but mud lining the banks of the Styx.

The mountain is crumbling.

[TithonusSyndrome]

Heh, Tith described those hypocritical psycho conservative Americans in a nutsack.

Yeah. Although I'm not sure I could blame just them. That's sort of what bugs me. Things like this are big, complicated issues, and there's lots of blame to go around. It's something that has evolved for decades because of the way Americans act, think, etc. Some people actively pushed for it in various ways to ensure it happened, but there's also all those people who ignored it or did nothing about it. Should they be reviled too?

Of course not just them; even if that were the limits of my claim, the idea came from the most obvious culprits in this equation, the 1%. A lot of parties share the guilt for this to some extent, it's just that I find the 1%'s battered housewives to be the most cruelly twisted and darkly unnatural of the lot, in their way. Did OWS engender a PR disaster by not having sanitation facilities? Probably. But when the worst you can say about a group is "they triggered the other side's predilection for finding fault with their opponents no matter what", then it starts to look like a bit of a fool's errand to even bother.

I also can't help but think its perversely.. "American" to have the first thing pop into your head "identify the enemy to be destroyed" or something. Because you can't declare war if you don't have a properly identified enemy, right?

Lots of other nations used to think this way, and many still do. From that perspective, the interesting question to ask is why America didn't join the ranks of those who moved on. I've always felt it comes back to the mythos of America being Number One - if you're the best, why fix what ain't broke? This is why America lags behind not just the usual suspects in social issues like Denmark or Sweden, but in some areas doesn't even measure up to paragons of backwardness - South Africa legalizing gay marriage or Bolivia giving nature "human rights", for instance - because those countries felt pressure to perform and improve and grow that America doesn't feel, at least not universally.

[Connor MacLeod]

Of course not just them; even if that were the limits of my claim, the idea came from the most obvious culprits in this equation, the 1%. A lot of parties share the guilt for this to some extent, it's just that I find the 1%'s battered housewives to be the most cruelly twisted and darkly unnatural of the lot, in their way. Did OWS engender a PR disaster by not having sanitation facilities? Probably. But when the worst you can say about a group is "they triggered the other side's predilection for finding fault with their opponents no matter what", then it starts to look like a bit of a fool's errand to even bother.

True. That does open up the ominous idea that what we're seeing is a deliberate attempt at provocation. Having OWS break out into violence or anger would pretty much play into the hands (and prejudices) of that 1% - it gives them an excuse to remove a threat, as well as confirming in their own minds they are justifed in thinking and treating the movement as an enemy. I think that's what bugs me about it: It's not just either/or, although it degenerates into either/or quite rapidly.. but its both. The Police can be acting within the letter of the law and still be oppressing the OWS movement. That's what makes it so disturbing to me, because its a very devious way to go about it.

It's the sort of thing that is just the perfect fucked up situation. You have alot of angry and frustrated people wanting to instigate change, people who dont want things to change because they like the way things are and... tribalism I guess. As Broomstick said its a recipe for violence.

Lots of other nations used to think this way, and many still do. From that perspective, the interesting question to ask is why America didn't join the ranks of those who moved on. I've always felt it comes back to the mythos of America being Number One - if you're the best, why fix what ain't broke? This is why America lags behind not just the usual suspects in social issues like Denmark or Sweden, but in some areas doesn't even measure up to paragons of backwardness - South Africa legalizing gay marriage or Bolivia giving nature "human rights", for instance - because those countries felt pressure to perform and improve and grow that America doesn't feel, at least not universally.

Americans don't seem to take well to outside influences, even if it is a good idea. Too much over-emphasis on "rugged individualism" I think, or maybe its too much entrenched belief in our own superiority and our own glorious past. I mean we kicked the British out, and we are taught we did the right thing so... America must always be right?

[Connor MacLeod]

I guess we can just try mocking them. Or enseeding them with the same human outrage that fuels people to take to the streets and cry out against sociey's wrongs? So, next time, they won't ignore or do nothing about it when society goes wrong?

Or fall in with the rest of the 1% when you start hearing the rallying cry of "support the troops" It did work last time. It's the political version of Miss Manners bullshit. One side keeps (politely) sniping and prodding the other until it lashes out in anger then it takes the moral high ground because you dared to use bad language. Remarkably effective propoganda tactic to win a debate. Only this time its with clubs and pepperspray rather than words, I think.

Well, part of your national identity is in never having been humbled, ever (at least not noticeably in the last century), and the whole paradigm of you being destroyers of all your enemies has entrenched itself in your minds precisely because your nation can - and does - destroy its enemies or conquer them.

It's a fundamentally different mindset from everyone else, because while some nations and peoples have had the same highs of being undisputed masters, they've also been humbled time and time again by history. We have been the enemies who got destroyed, we have been the conquered, and for better or worse this has also enshrined itself in our identities.

You are gods on Olympus. We are shit, nothing but mud lining the banks of the Styx.

The mountain is crumbling.

Dunno. I think we might have been humbled more than a few times (Vietnam?) And we've humbled ourselves by fucking up. The thing is.. we just won't admit it. That's what leads to the "stockholm syndrome" thing again in part - when you live your life a certain way for decades and then you suddenly discover that the way of life you've lived wasn't so great and noble and perfect there's a strong temptation to stick your head in the sand and ignore the truth, and that can be a strong unifying factor.

I mean look at how many throne gelt have been funneled into the Kuat Drive Yards to build more BallstStars for national defense and deep oil mining. It might cost us health care and social safety nets but we can keep our TIE Raiders running on good ol gas and be secure that we can blow the shit out of anything from kilomiles away with the MEGATONZ. I think thats ag ood tradeoff isnt it?

[Shroom Man 777]

Vietnam was a slap to the face that reddened your cheeks, while other nations have had their faces demolished by rifle butts, till the bone and cartilage have disintegrated and mixed with the bloody pulp, eyes are coming out of their shattered sockets, noses are collapsed and spurting bubbling blood, and mouths are rimmed with caved in teeth and severed tongues.

You got "humbled" by losing a war far from home, so you get a whole bunch of dead or wounded or fucked up soldiers and your country is all demoralized, while the other guy's country is ripped to fucking pieces. That's not really the humbling I'm talking about. That's more like getting caught farting in church and laughing it off, tee-fucking-hee!

[Connor MacLeod]

thats what you get for not properly investing your throne gelt in testicular superweapons.

So what about domestic situations? I'm pretty sure America manages to embarass itself repeatedly with those. In quantity if not quality. Especailly over the last decade. I'm pretty sure the whole "USA is #1" thing is globally received in the same way the Black Knight from Monty Python was winning.

[Shroom Man 777]

I don't know. It's hardly like the suffering and devastation plenty of other nations have endured. Other nations have been invaded or atrocified or bombed to the stone age or whatever, all the damn time. They also do embarrassing domestic shit in between getting atrocified, because everyone has embarassing domestic shits all the time.

I'm just saying that these other people's and other nations' characters are deeply shaped by getting fucked in ways that your nation can't even begin to imagine. You've never had to endure the degree of fucking other guys have had to, by the hands of others or by their own hands.

The USA is #1 thing is received in the same way as the Black Knight, if the Black Knight had economic and military superiority over the rest of the fucking world and if the Monty Python skit involved that other guy shitting himself and wetting his bed at the mere sight of that Black Knight. We believed in that crap. We looked up to you!

That's why we're so fucking bitter now.