[Peace-discuss] But I'm a Cheerleader!

[Laurie Solomon]

I realize that your response is an attempt to trivialize and make fun of my 
observation; but in all seriousness, standing on a wooden box on a city 
street corner and harangue the passers-by in the fashion of London's Hyde 
Park is still acting like a propagandist issuing academic ideological 
polemics in contrast to being an actual activist who is involved in taking 
"real" actions rather than engaging in the action of talking about taking 
action - in my humble opinion.  Things like taking passive resistance, 
general strike, active boycotting of companies and institutions,  and 
disruption of normal daily life and its everyday activities are more like 
the substantive activities of an activist as opposed to the symbolic 
activities of protests, marching with placards, and engaging in debates and 
conversations which - in my opinion - are the activities of a polemicist, a 
propagandist, and/or an academic.  The latter fit your notions of 
cheerleading as much as academic Political Science - and for that matter all 
social science and some natural science - papers and presentations and 
military music.  All education involves indoctrination  and internalization 
of ideas, approaches, perspectives, points of views, beliefs,values, and 
ideologies; thus, the citing of articles, the reposting of articles the 
repetitively expresses various versions of the same information, and 
exercise of critical analysis for purposes of educating people is just 
another form of cheerleading for one's position as much as any other form or 
attempts to politically or otherwise educate the public and usually 
comprises preaching to the choir in terms of its effectiveness in changing 
minds.

-----Original Message----- 
From: C. G. Estabrook
Sent: Thursday, August 11, 2011 4:47 PM
To: Laurie Solomon
Cc: Peace-discuss List
Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] But I'm a Cheerleader!

Yeah, I liked it better when I could stand on a wooden box on a city street
corner and harangue the passers-by.

On 8/11/11 2:19 PM, Laurie Solomon wrote:
>> political science is to science as military music is to music - 
>> cheerleading, in both cases. --CGE
>
> As blogging and posts to list servers and mailing lists is to political 
> activism.
>
> -----Original Message----- From: C. G. Estabrook
> Sent: Thursday, August 11, 2011 12:47 PM
> To: Peace-discuss List
> Subject: [Peace-discuss] But I'm a Cheerleader!
>
> [In spite of the prose, the following letter to the NYT was not written by 
> an
> 8-year-old, but by a professor of political science at Ohio University -
> illustrating once again that political science is to science as military 
> music
> is to music - cheerleading, in both cases. --CGE]
>
>
> [It is] wrong to look backward to the New Deal for its contents. Your
> grandfather’s Democratic Party isn’t going to cut it in a world that has 
> been
> radically transformed by the Internet.
>
> The country needs President Obama’s leadership to help us look forward and
> address our economic problems in new ways that are every bit as creative 
> as the
> New Deal was in its day, but that aren’t the same as the New Deal.
>
> The world has changed, and our political parties need to catch up quick! 
> The
> gridlock we’ve been seeing is a form of hanging on to the past for both 
> the
> Democrats and the Republicans.
>
> SUSAN BURGESS
> Athens, Ohio, Aug. 8, 2011
>
>
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