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

Fri Aug 12 11:47:39 CDT 2011

It's important to get things right, to call things by their right names.

In the absence of an accurate analysis of the situation, the best will in the 
world can do the right thing only by accident.

Consider all the good-hearted people who thought that they were working against 
the war and for economic justice by supporting Obama.

They were the more deceived.   --CGE

On 8/11/11 11:30 PM, Laurie Solomon wrote:
>> Contemporary communications technology is an advance over the soapbox and 
>> megaphone, even though the latter produced progressive revolutions in the 
>> capitalist era.
>
> Yes, but only in a technological sense.  I would suggest that the older 
> technology was more effective in its era than is contemporary communications 
> technology in today's environment where people are overloaded with messages, 
> jaded and numbed with respect to being shocked by any content or presentation, 
> and are only interested in entertaining sound and video clips.
>
>> 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.
>
> Of course, cheerleading for any established belief systems and/or institutions 
> can be (and often is) regressive and conservative; and it is not only the 
> social sciences (or as you call them the ideological disciplines) that are 
> overwhelmingly servants of power.  One only has to take a look at the natural 
> sciences and engineering disciplines and their academic and contract research 
> activities in the development of technologies that advance weaponry, spying, 
> governmental control, and the promotion of capitalist profits.  One only has 
> to look at the sorts of testimony that natural scientists and engineers  has 
> furnished in official hearings to support the goals of the establishment 
> powers and authorities.  The arts are not completely free from the same sort 
> of criticism either; they often are also cheerleaders for the establishment 
> and servants of power.
>
> -----Original Message----- From: C. G. Estabrook
> Sent: Thursday, August 11, 2011 7:28 PM
> To: Laurie Solomon
> Cc: Peace-discuss List
> Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] But I'm a Cheerleader!
>
> 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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