General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: To the older folks at DU from a 20-year-old, about protests, confusion, and love for one another [View all]Waiting For Everyman
(9,385 posts)Otherwise, you'll end up being the same as the sharks you're struggling against.
Don't neglect to question the motives of compatriots as much as the opposition because some among those at your side (in any group) do not have the common goals in mind, but their own. Your own side is just as corrupt as the one you're fighting because humans are humans, remember that. Keep an eye on those who start climbing the ladder of influence. Don't get cynical but be observant and become a good judge of character. Be objective, and think for yourself, always. Find all the programming in your head that you can, no matter where it comes from (including the pc variety), and get rid of it. Don't tell everything you know, especially about yourself.
Figure that you have roughly 20% for-real people, 20% judases, and about 60% bandwagon riders -- they're in it for as long as it's the cool thing to do.
As someone upthread said, don't damage your whole future life on an immediate objective. It isn't a bad idea to create an alternate identify before you start out on activities like this, but it may already be too late as I gather your own side already knows you as yourself.
Have very good lawyers. Study OWS, they learned a lot, and it's recent. If you haven't already, read the Church Committee report, and you'll know the kinds of things that go on, and what you're up against. It's much bigger than you think, and different that you think. Always follow the money.
If you are effective, first the powers that be will try to bribe you. Usually that works, but if it doesn't the ptb wants you one of 3 ways: either dead, institutionalized, or discredited. Yes, they will flat out set you up, to do that.
I am 65, class of 1968. Look at what happened to my age-group, and you'll avoid a lot of potholes (MLK riots, Chicago Convention riots, Kent State, marches on D.C., etc.). A lot of clips of these things exist right on youtube. There were the public protests, like those, which everybody knew about and then there was the at least equally effective underground which never had its story told to this day. Believe it or not, it wasn't violent, it was economic. (Few people remember that an entire counter-economy was created then, and it was massive.) It grew steadily up until 1972 or so, when Nixon suddenly started using heavily armed black ops mercs. But enough was already done and the war did end anyway -- later than it would have. The public never knew the names of the figures behind the underground. Those remaining chose to live to fight another day, so to speak. There's no gain in being an unknown martyr.
I'll leave you with this. The music of that time wasn't just catchy tunes on the radio as people today think of it, it was about our current reality, and our music overall told our story "between the lines" because it couldn't safely be written. We were hunted in our own streets (even being white), and that's an eye-opening education in itself, maybe something we have in common more than you think... which continued more sneakily well into the next decade.
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We were fighting to reverse a coup d'etat -- a coup that happened in broad daylight, right on tv, and nothing was done about it (similar to 9/11).
Many wouldn't call it reversing a coup, but other commonly stated causes boil down to that, including ending the war. It still hasn't been reversed, though we did seem to get close in the 70's with the Nixon/Agnew impeachments and the Watergate and Church investigations etc. But they didn't go far enough fast enough, and the culprits remained and got a second wind with Reagan/Bush and the creation of the RW church movement to elect them. (That's another story though.)
Without drawing any conclusions, I'll simply state this: did you know what Hillary's career got started as a staff lawyer on the Watergate Committee? Did you also know that Bush Sr. headed up the CIA during the Watergate aftermath? And who's running for president now? And that's AFTER 3 terms of a Bush, and 2 terms of a Clinton. And if we count the office of VP, it's 5 terms of a Bush and 2 of a Clinton -- 7 terms, close to 3 decades at the top of this government, almost all of the time since the investigations, except for Obama's 2 terms. One last name on each side of the fence, and what do people say, "both parties are alike"? I'm sure it's just a coincidence.
I believe in your cause, although I have very deep misgivings about BLM. But I will be watching how it develops, with interest. I want to see what happens with the Farrakhan march, for one thing.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027079137#post17