{"id":5374,"date":"2011-11-12T23:46:24","date_gmt":"2011-11-13T07:46:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=5374"},"modified":"2011-11-12T23:51:00","modified_gmt":"2011-11-13T07:51:00","slug":"but-fool-em-twice-then-shame-on-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=5374","title":{"rendered":"\u2026But Fool 'Em Twice then Shame on Them!<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

In eartly August, I wrote of how most of the political left had lost its sense of conviction<\/em> in the decades following the '60s, of how their ability to believe<\/em> had been restored by the 2008 Presidential campaign of Barack Hussein Obama, but of how that sense of belief was disintegrating in the face of the actual Presidency of Mr Obama.<\/a> Well, a large share of the left has since found something new from which to draw Hope<\/span> — the Occupation movement.<\/p>

It's widely noted that the Occupation movement lacks a programme<\/em>. They've made it plain that they think that there's a 1%<\/q> who are the Enemy<\/span>; but, aside from the intention to somehow beat wealth out of this group,[1]<\/span> the movement as a whole is short on specifics. Individual members or groups within the Occupation movement may espouse something more precise, but other members deny any sort of responsibility for those proposals. There isn't even meta-agreement within the Occupation movement on a protocol for agreement.<\/p>

In lieu of a programme<\/em>, what the Occupation movement gives us is a sort of attitudinal posture<\/em>. That ought to remind<\/em> people of something. In particular, it ought to remind people of Barack Hussein Obama in 2008.<\/em> Granted that, in his case, the ambiguïty was a deliberate choice, whereäs in the case of the Occupation movement it results from collective indecision. Still, once again, a large share of the political left has invested itself in a cypher<\/em>.<\/p>

[1]<\/span> The urging of state action may not itself be immediately<\/em> violent, but the whole point<\/em> of using the state is to employ its capacity for violence<\/em>, to threaten<\/em> or worse.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In eartly August, I wrote of how most of the political left had lost its sense of conviction in the decades following the '60s, of how their ability to believe had been restored by the 2008 Presidential campaign of Barack Hussein Obama, but of how that sense of belief was disintegrating in the face of […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,9,104,4],"tags":[1095,135,1093,1092,1094],"class_list":["post-5374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-ideology-philosophy","category-news","category-public","tag-barack-hussein-obama","tag-barack-obama","tag-occupation-movement","tag-occupy","tag-political-left"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5374\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}