Of technocrats and black blocs.

This, about Dubya’s America, remains a lesson yet to be learned in today’s post-Dem America.

The truly rich are so used to instant gratification that they’re consumed with fury when the technocrats inform them reality won’t grant them their every desire. Rather than accepting they can’t transform the entire mideast into a society that worships Tax Cut Jesus, the rich blame the technocrats for purposefully obstructing their cunning plan.

What’s happening now is the technocracy is organizing itself to fight back. MoveOn, the Obama campaign, blogland—that’s the technocracy in action. But the only way they’ll win is by allying themselves to the 80% of Americans who have essentially no power. And technocrats can almost never bring themselves to identify downward. (I didn’t get a PhD in mechanical engineering so I’d have to join no union!) Meanwhile, the 80% can smell the fact that many technocrats do have contempt for them and have no intention of sharing real power—making the 80% vulnerable to rhetorical attacks on the technocratic elite.

It’s time to venture out of our comfort zone, in thinking first so that the principles and assumptions behind our involvement are checked for validity against today’s reality and its trajectory. The following might be easier to digest for us devotees of civility if represented as “coloring outside the lines” and “thinking outside the box”:
Neo-Nazi Richard Spencer Got Punched—You Can Thank the Black Bloc

We were heading south when riot cops cut us off just a few blocks from the unimpressive inauguration crowds. We ran, altogether, for some short minutes, which felt long. The Metropolitan Police Department doused us with pepper spray and dispensed flash-bang and smoke grenades, and finally trapped a large section of the bloc against a wall. These members of the black bloc were kettled there for over four hours, forced at various times to form human cubicles around those detainees who could no longer hold their bladders. The bloc never found full force en masse again, but clashes with cops, mild altercations with rowdy Trump supporters, and attacks on property continued throughout the afternoon and evening in fits and starts. At some point, someone punched Spencer. While the over 200 arrestees were held for 24 hours, jail support volunteers waited for them patiently while the Women’s March filled DC streets and then dispersed. The J20 detainees have been released, some with felony rioting charges to be tried in DC Superior Court next month—a harsh prosecutorial reaction that seasoned DC activists had not expected.