This is a brief overview of a lengthy article currently posted at AlterNet. I was shocked and pleased to see it because I ask myself the same thing daily and am always thrilled to find out I'm not alone and I'm not off-base, despite some feedback I may get from time to time to the contrary.
Texas just bum-rushed an ugly anti-abortion law through despite large vocal protests but the Republicans won, like I (and others) knew they would.And then after the vote, the police attacked the crowd, beating women and tasing people.
Disagree if you wish, the democratic process in ALEC-controlled staes in hobbled; it is an old Trans Am up on bricks in the front yard. Standing around chanting "Shame" is a huge and ineffective waste of time.
It's a long piece so I'm just taking a couple of morsels and you will have to go read it yourself. Remember, I'm just the messenger - somebody else wrote this.
Crash the fancy orange gate.
The article is so long that the 4 paragraph excerpt is never going to do justice to it. I am excerpting the "why " passage. The article focuses on Media, the "Radical Rich", and other elements and then has a prescription for increasing awareness.
Let me make this clear, since some seem to be more focused on this than getting things done:
THERE IS NO CALL FOR VIOLENCE IN THAT ARTICLE NOR IN THIS WRITE UP.
There. On with the show.
Why Are Americans So Passive?
The rest of the world is rioting in the face of massive inequality and injustice. Have we absorbed the oppressor's consciousness?
Why?
Wealth inequity and other economic injustices are the product of deliberate policy choices – in taxation, Social Security, health care, financial regulation, education, and a number of other policy areas. So why aren’t Americans taking action?
The “change” theories Krugman mentioned don’t tell the whole story. For one thing, it’s not true that the lives of the majority are frozen in an ugly stasis. Conditions continue to become objectively worse for the great majority of Americans. But these ongoing changes – in actual wages, in employment, in social mobility and wealth equity – have received very little media attention or meaningful political debate.
It’s not that things aren’t changing. It’s that people don’t know they’re changing. And without that knowledge the public becomes a canary in a coalmine, only aware of its declining oxygen supply when it keels over and dies.
It’s an almost classic state of alienation, in which people may be acutely aware of their own increasing difficulties (although sometimes they can be numb to that as well) but experience them in a state of isolation. That turns the anger inward, leading to crippling reactions like guilt and despair. And repeated individual failures – failures made increasingly likely in a skewed system – lead to a sense of learned helplessness.
The article ends with proscriptions I find still greatly lacking, but the emphasis on increasing media coverage of reality and how it affects the Common Person is of huge importance. Many people all suffer the same thing but they feel they are mostly alone: They think most others aren't suffering as well. As indicated by my first sentence in this post, I was surprised to find I am not alone.
Wendy Davis and the Texas Anti-Abortion protests are a spark that needs to grow. The North Carolina "Moral Mondays" is an awesome vehicle for at least getting people out of their homes and in front of the capitol building to EXERCISE ttheir First Amendmet rights to
FREEDOM OF SPEECH
FREEDOM OF ASSEMBLY
and - most important here
THE RIGHT TO PETITION GOVERNMENT FOR A REDRESS OF GRIEVANCES.
And dammit, grievances we got by the trainload.
Standing around chanting "shame" to shameless sociopaths intent on ramming their policies through despite your verbal disapproval is useless. You "can" do it, but you can also piss in the ocean for all the good it would do.
And I went down to the demonstration
To get my fair share of abuse
Singing, "We're gonna vent our frustration
If we don't we're gonna blow a 50-amp fuse"
Encouraging more vigorous, sustained protests and finding other ways to actively bother and agitate the bastards is the way to go for those that just have nightmares about "violence".
And no - I am not encouraging violence. The article linked does not encourage violence. Stop with that already.
Police bring the violence. They brought violence to #OWS, they brought violence to Texas women on a HEALTHCARE ISSUE. They banned tampons.Then beat and tased people.
You cannot shame these people, so, really, find something uglier to say to them.
My 2 cents.
Go read the well-done article.