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Signs of Hope – A continuing series – Week 4, Jan 26th, 2017 January 26, 2017

Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.
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Any, any at all?

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1. yourcousin - January 26, 2017

My wife has managed to raise a happy well adjusted child in this very turbulent world who celebrated his 8th Birthday Saturday. I haven’t managed to bugger it up yet.

Though we still argue as he believes there are good kings and I support full out regicide.

That in reality is all the hope we need, they are why we do what we do.

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GW - January 26, 2017

Congratulations YC. My kids are facing into an adulthood in a world where their chances of a good life are receding. Anything little thing we can do to improve those chances is a reason to carry on.

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2. GW - January 26, 2017

We defeated TTIP. Now the Austrian referendum to force the their government not to ratify CETA or TISA. The majority of the Austrian citizens are against both these so-called ‘trade agreements’.

Why so-called? Because they are not about trade, but about taking power away from the (potentially) democratic sphere and handing it over to large corporations.

CETA has to be ratified by a number of national bodies (and some regional ones). As with any Brexit agreement.

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3. alanmyler - January 26, 2017

I haven’t been following the commentary here for the past few days, so possibly the whole debate about whether it’s acceptable to use violence against Nazis has already been done to death, but for me the best outcome of this, apart from the normalisation of a more radical anti-fascism than the liberals might be comfortable with, has to be the various soundtracks to which the punch video has been mixed. New Order’s Blue Monday is really excellent (apologies that it’s on FB):

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CMK - January 27, 2017

Apparently there is a second clip of Spenser getting punched, but I haven’t seen it yet.

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4. lcox - January 27, 2017

Trump is entering what would normally be a honeymoon period with massively lowered levels of legitimacy and support, esp. considering the monarchical way in which the US establishment normally treats its president.

Along with the J20 / J21 protests and their numerical dwarfing of the inauguration (and ongoing protests around attacks on immigrants and science), things from declarations of resistance by various cities and states around climate change and immigrants, resignations of key State Dept personnel among others and the various “rogue” Twitter accounts from NASA, EPA, National Parks etc. go along with a situation where Rep senators and congressmen are reportedly frustrated at media attention paid to Trump’s “alternative facts” as against the policy issues they want to be talking about.

What are normally important elements of the establishment (and of maintaining consent) like scientists, academics, civil servants and the mainstream media are in large part massively disaffected (as we also saw wrt performing arts around the inauguration) – and in some cases behaving more like a legitimate government in exile than the usual “just doing my job”. Of course given that all of these are areas where facts are awarded great prestige (whatever the reality in practice) there is quite a natural logic to this particular process.

Not suggesting by any means that this is enough to disrupt or even seriously impede Trump in the immediate, and a realist would note that it is far easier to threaten non-cooperation or disruption than to carry it out – but it is important in terms of the new administration’s ability to actually mobilise the various tools normally at a government’s disposal to push its policies through in the teeth of opposition, and in terms of the degree of support available for coercion of a more overtly “fascist” kind.

Put more simply the impression from outside the US (and realising that it is not always easy to estimate exactly what some of these things represent in practice) is that groups which would normally be part and parcel of the process of organising consent and delivering legitimacy to the routine operations of power are signalling that they are not willing to do so. This is very important for those groups which will find themselves in more radical and fundamental opposition and which risk greater levels of coercion.

“Signs of hope” might be too strong a term, but these levels of overt opposition this soon do not bode particularly well for Trump’s longer-term ability to implement the kind of society the Republican far right seeks to achieve.

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5. botheredbarney - January 28, 2017

Are you tired of bullshit i.e. political and scientific bullshit camouflaged by academic discourse? Here’s something to help you detect and call out bullshit. You need no longer be bamboozled by slick communicators in this Orwellian world.

http://www.openculture.com/2017/01/calling-bullshit.html

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6. sonofstan - February 3, 2017

http://www.rte.ie/culture/2017/0131/849101-something-for-the-weekend-paul-clearys-cultural-picks/

Paul Cleary’s cultural picks as told to the RTE website. Scroll down to ‘next big thing’

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