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

[C. G. Estabrook]

Contemporary communications technology is an advance over the soapbox and 
megaphone, even though the latter produced progressive revolutions in the 
capitalist era.

Cheerleading for national armies - or Obama - is regressive, and academic 
intellectuals - especially in the ideological disciplines like political science 
- have overwhelmingly been servants of power. But the few who haven't - from 
Wright Mills to Chomsky - have been important.

What may be an good opportunity for activism will occur in DC in October:

<http://october2011.org/welcome>.   --CGE


On 8/11/11 6:36 PM, Laurie Solomon wrote:
> 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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