In summary, I don't object to the letter of any of it.
But its spirit looks flagrantly propagandistic to me. More specifically, it looks like a flag-waving, disingenuous piece of propaganda that's almost exclusively oriented around appeals to fear and unstated assumptions. All of which I strongly object to. Very strongly.
You could be totally right, of course - you could also be quite wrong and it might turn out that they are not on the whole disingenuous, (allowing of course for the nutjob factor that
every sufficiently large group of people will contain at least one mental fruitcake.)
One metaphor for the Constitution is that it is the ground rules for a 'ship of state'. Where it goes and how it gets there are up to the people on it, but the 'rules' are at the level of
1 If you see a big iceberg do ANYTHING to avoid it
2 Have a place in the life boats for every person on board
3 Do not ram other ships
4 Do not throw people overboard as punishment
5 Dont be a pirate and dont let yourself be pirated
Rules that help maintain the integrity of the ship.
If people in the engine room and stewards see people being thrown overboard, other ships being rammed etc and then lifeboats being sold - even though they may be the people selling the lifeboats or throwing others overboard, in their quieter moments they may realise this is now a ship culture that thinks' icebergs dont matter'. For whatever reason the culture of the ship is being allowed to break down. They care about the ship.
What to do?
From
their point of view, they
are scared, because they see many signs that point to a potential disaster in the making.
...that's pretty transparently got nothing to do with promoting the consitutional principles they espouse. In that there's no real attempt to, for example, educate or empower people via non-partisan outreach.
What would this look like to you? What structures would need to be in place to satisfy you that a genuine attempt was being made to do this?
And it's even more transparently about building a political power base that has all the GATV accoutrements from mailing lists to volunteers in every state just waiting for the word to wave signs, make phone calls, hand out literature, or protest and vent and carry on when HQ says jump.
The same process would be used to also build a genuine organisation. How is this different from attributing motive to behaviour
And to feel like they're part of a special club for doing it, because they have a certificate suitable for framing and a laminated membership card. Which is just so fucking patronizing, come on. Also: Three bumper stickers? That's not about the constitution. That's about establishing national brand recognition.
That sounds like you dont like marketing services as an activity. While at one level I agree with Bill Hicks that marketing people should just die now, it also helps to grow an organisation and certainly this organisation will have to be a lot bigger if it seeks to have an effect IN THE EVENT of the iceberg.
PostPosted: Sun Dec 13, 2009 2:27 am Post subject: Reply with quote
23 wrote:
"So seeing someone in a flag or with a beard or hunting rifle may be subconscious triggers to patterns unrelated..."
Which is why choir lofts, where everyone sings by the same song sheet, and echo chambers aren't particularly good for one's health. Harmonious vibrations need discord, from time to time, to jar themselves out of the rut of similarity.
And back to topic:
I do not think the Oath Keepers are issuing propaganda with the aim of building a popular base of support from which to commit the military coup d'etat that they say they're not going to because I saw a picture of a man with a beard.
I would agree; the process is out of conscious awareness. The patterns that were already in existence before you even saw the Oath Keepers website will have had a huge effect on how you perceive the site and what you pick out of it.
Similarly for myself. I do lots of web tech work, so I like to look 'under the floorboards'. I look initially at a website not in terms of content but architecture and software - cant help it!
Looking at the source code in FireFox of various pages in the site is instructive:
This is an organisation that has been going for six months and seems to have very little money behind it judging by the website software.
Look at their email marketing approach:
http://www.constantcontact.com/learning ... /index.jspThis is not in house, this is a cheap, common hosted service, suitable for a Mom and Pop operation or a local council. FFS
The form is from FormSpring
http://www.formspring.com/pricing.htmlThese are for small business outfits, probably recommended and set up by a friend.
I think it because those oaths rhetorically appeal to fear;
as well as to the desire for the sense of order and comfort that come from knowing that Good Dad is home now and will tell us how we can take care of the mess we've been too overwhelmed by to know how to clean up ourselves, even though living in it is making us absolutely miserable; as well as to something that's a little less sympathetic and a little more egotistically jingoistic than that; as well as to the eternal hope and longing that lunges from the human heart and hurls itself into the arms of anything that looks like the One True Answer that will cleanly and effortlessly solve all our problems and cure all our ills simply by encompassing us in the warmth of its Ten-Oath embrace every single damn time we see it, again and again and again.
We differ here. I think the Oaths appeal to a vision of people being the best they can be, of being someone who might be the only person to stand up and be counted, but for whom living under a jackboot militaristic thug is not something to be talked about but actively fought against, who has realised that Mummy isnt there to make me feel better and that it's cold and grey and raining and frickking cold and it's getting colder because I can even see the icebergs while the people Im serving say "Icebergs? Make mine scotch on the rocks Hahaha!" and chastise me for being fretful.
And I also think it because when I look at the Oath Keepers and remember exactly what commodities I recognize and know for their true worth -- which include my right to freely assemble with myself and freely speak my own thoughts
secure in the knowledge that it is equal to everyone's -- it takes me about two seconds to see that appeal is all, entirely, utterly and one-hundred percent rhetorical.
It walks, talks, acts, fundraises and is organized like a political movement that sees the military as the ruling class that is itself by right, nature and definition completely above the laws that it says it's going to make sure get enforced.
This reiteractes some of the earlier points about organisation - you see it only as a political movement. My premise is that if this was a big bad far right stalking horse it might have some err money behind it, because the factual evidence is there in the source code that it doesnt.
You also dont like mar-com, I dont mind it, I see it as something I wish was done on R.I. so Jeff frickkin Wells could make a lot more money and have holidays in the sun where guilt and tequila daquris and men in the bushes with binoculars would engender a state of mind resulting in MORE POSTS!
Which very noticeably fucking do not include any of the laws that members of the military are actually violating right now. At present. As we speak. And equally fucking noticeably limits its ten oaths to NOT obey orders that -- chance being a fine thing -- none of their superiors are ever going to make them prove themselves by issuing. Because all of their superiors have already sworn oaths not to give those orders or to obey them already. As have they them-fucking-selves, if they were and/or are either members of the military or officers of the law.
I disagree on the likelihood of them being asked to carry out these style of orders. I think you are projecting into the future based on 'past performance' which is that things are going to continue getting slightly better or getting slightly worse. In those scenarios I agree with you.
How there are two other scenarios types. One is an unexpected event along the lines of a 9/11 but bigger. This might be Israel doing a surprise attack on Iran or a nuke false flag event in the US or Europe or both. It could be a more serious version of the Ukrainian flu (that is one WEIRD story) This to me is the true Reichstag fire scenario. I think that we are woefully unprepared for it, but that institutions like the Army with its rehearsals for combat in US URBAN AREAS are not.
I think that it is likely that this organisation is founded in the cognisence of this type of scenario.
The other scenario type is an indeterminate fog, where it is very hard to see what the forces in play are, what direction. I think the MIC would really like this because for a period it would enable them to make money. I am unsure how the Oath Keepers would function in these circumstances.
So tell me: Why do you think they're swearing them again, exactly?
For the reasons put forward in the 'wild card' class of scenarios above.
I would like to ask you, if you are wrong, AND if the 'wild card' scenario as above does happen, then how would there be active resistance without having people in the services following principles, rather than Executive dictat.
<melts> 
