Guitar Army

Just to warn you, the people on this forum are probably going to mock your idealism. I think you're definitely oversimplifying things, but your optimism is refreshing. On your profile it says that you're in Clarksville, Michigan; I'm from Grand Rapids, Michigan. I'm not sure how far away you are, but if you're interested Cheney will be speaking here in GR on Friday morning and SDS and a couple other groups are organizing a protest. I can give you more info if you want...

That makes me feel better about myself and less like a hedonistic douchebag. All this time I've been revolting without even knowing it! The workers would totally control the means of production by now if I had just done more of the fucking in the street part. But with all the surveillance cameras and shit, I don't want to end up on Americas Funniest Home Videos...

This strikes me less as idealism and more like gullible enthusiasm.

The same impulse that keeps Anti-Flag flush with t-shirt $$$.

The hippies and "freeks" of the late 60's were full of idealism. John Sinclair of course is from the MC5 and organized the White Panther Party and believed that they could launch a complete launch on culture "using any means necessary, including rock & roll, dope and fucking in the streets". Did it work? Well, in a way we certainly can say it did. Will another assault on culture be just as effective? Perhaps.

See what I mean.

I totally understand, though. After I read Catcher in the Rye, I wore a red hunting cap for a month.

what a coincidence, I used to carry around a copy of 'Catcher in the Rye'...

I never understood what was so appealing about Catcher in the Rye, yeah it's an interesting little story, but I found Holden to be a little pathetic.

K.o.t.A, since you seem to be so enlightened, do you also find groups like the SDS to be based on "gullible enthusiasm"? This group, like the White Panther Party, has its origins in the same political climate of the late 60's and had similar methods of "bringing on a revolution". The White Panther Party's views revolved around some different tenets (mainly borrowed from from the Black Panther Party) but ultimately had the same goals.

Yeah, the new SDS is different from it's original manifestation, but that idealism of changing the world, or as SDS states; "reorganization of our present society and fundamental transformation in the spheres of political, economic, cultural, kinship, environmental and international life" is still there. Is not the phrase "reorganization of our present society and fundamental transformation in the spheres of political, economic, cultural, kinship, environmental and international life" just another way of saying "we want a revolution"?

I was referring to you, actually, not the various revolutionary organizations of the late sixties.

Any desire to resurrect a movement so of its historical time is wasted daydreaming. There are reasons why it failed them, and even more reasons why the same thing would fail again today, assuming it were possible to even kick-start start it.

If you're not going to pay any serious attention to history, and if you insist on latching onto bargain-basement "revolutionary" aesthetics like smoking dope and fucking in the streets, then you're not idealistic. You're just a schmuck.

You want to know why many past revolutionary groups failed? Because they were a bunch of douchetastic white kids who couldn't admit when they were wrong.

You advocate good music, idealism, fucking in the streets and a shitload of acid and weed.

A movement founded solely on music accomplishes nothing and is easily co-opted. Just look at punk. How much has that really accomplished?

Idealism is important, yes, but so are realistic goals and doable tactics. Idealism will get you nowhere if you can't pull your head out of your ass long enough to figure out a way to get there.

You're going to advocate fucking in the streets in a time in which many women have no (or limited) access to contraceptives? When we have AIDS, but kids aren't being taught to use condoms and/or are being told that condoms fail/are worthless? Really?

Acid and weed are all well and good, until you see your friends become complete deadbeats because of it. Have you ever tried to play music or work on anything with people who smoke way too much pot? You go and everyone sets up/gets out their instruments and then someone pulls out a bowl. And after that they don't feel like playing or can't remember the tune they just came up with. Pointless.

Basically, you need to read more, listen to your elders, and shut up. People who have been involved in activism longer than you have know better what works and what doesn't. Shut your arrogant mouth long enough to listen to them so you don't repeat the mistakes of past revolutionaries.

pwned

Miranda must have read this clown's other posts.

No, I didn't bother. Idealism and naïveté are one thing. This asshole is being willfully ignorant and refusing to engage in any discourse that doesn't reinforce his faulty beliefs. If you don't know much, whatever that's fine; I won't look down on you. If you refuse to learn, you're a douchebag that needs to shut up.

I so love and respect this woman.

First off, my post was never meant to be a guide to revolution. I know damn well that "rock and roll, dope and fucking in the streets" will not start and or cause a revolution. What I said in that first paragraph was laced with sarcasm, I've read numerous books on and about organizations that are determined to have a revolution of culture, from Chairman Mao to numerous student activist associations from the 60's and 70's. The thing about "Guitar Army" is the amount of energy and enthusiasm that is conveyed through the book. John Sinclair and the MC5 were determined to take on the culture of the time.

On another note, the original leader of the SDS Todd Gitlin got much of his ideas from the White Panther Party.

Why the fuck am I reading a book about a movement that ultimately failed? Well you fucks, this "failed movement" ignited some movements that are still alive today, the SDS being a decent example.

Why would I mention "rock and roll, dope and fucking in the streets" in my post, this phrase appears on nearly every other page, along with the phrase "kick out the jams, motherfucker". The White Panther Party also took place during the sexual revolution, "fucking in the streets" was how John Sinclair decided to express complete freedom of love and rejection of cultural norms. "Dope" was also an expression of the "if it feels good, do it" type of culture that went with counter culture. He also felt that dope and pot were drugs that could be used to create that "brotherly love" and peaceful environment these people desired. And must I explain to you what decade that rock and roll was being seen as being more than a form of entertainment? Think Haight-Ashbury "if you come to San Francisco, wear a flower in your hair" and perhaps WoodStock? John felt that music could be used to convey the message of the counter culture in a way no other medium could.

http://makemyday.free.fr/whitepanthers.htm

To clear some things up,
1) I am not the original author of my first two posts, like I mentioned in another post - they were copied from defunct zines - for a damn reason (which I'll mention shortly).
2)You people are judging me based on a few blurbs and 5 posts from over a years time, two of which (read above) aren't 'mine' - and why would I want to reveal too much about myself here anyway? Using the responces from the earliest posts as a litmus test, I realized this site is no place to a) make friends or b)reveal personal tastes in anything.
Just because I didn't write a huge essay of background information doesn't mean I don't know what I'm talking about.

The more you say, the more you reveal that you have absolutely no fucking clue what you're talking about.

Explain yourself. What don't I have any clue about?

I am not advocating anything, if you took my original post so seriously, as if I believed it and wasn't attempting to reflect the energy in the book, meanwhile expressing some of my own frustrations that's your own fault.

First, Gitlin wasn't the "original leader" of SDS. Alan Haber was the first president, and Tom Hayden was primarily responsible for the broad political/philosophical platform of the organization. Hayden was also an early president. It wasn't until 1963-64 that Gitlin was SDS president.

Second, SDS formed in the early sixties, and was falling apart by 1968. The White Panthers were not formed until 1968.

Third, aside from some supposedly important legal decisions that eventually resulted from police repression of the White Panthers, the group was almost completely irrelevant. I mean, at least the Weather Underground broke Timothy Leary out of prison and blew up that awful statue dedicated to the cops killed at Haymarket in Chicago.

EXPLAIN YOURSELF!

IF YOU THINK I MEANT ANYTHING I SAID, THEN YOU ARE THE FOOL!

NYAH! NYAH!

GUITAR HERO ARMY

i'm a part of it.

don't fuk wit me.

Todd Gitlin, the original leader of Nintendo, was largely inspired by the Playstation 3.

Seriously, the only accurate things you've said in this entire thread could have been cribbed off the liner notes to an MC5 album.

most Americans are petty, hateful, and ignorant, and they won't change. Goes the same in pretty much every other Anglophone country, although not quite so bad as America. Other Westernized countries do better by not being able to understand MTV, but in general the average European or settler stater (Argentina does a little better, but only because things have gotten so bad) doesn't care what the government or big business are doing as long as they don't interrupt American Idol or cause McDonald's to close.

The revolution isn't coming here. Best to ghettoize ourselves in a fair-trade, local-business, anti-corporate neighborhood, play good music, tell interesting stories, drink microbrew beer, work together, and hope we don't get gentrified out too quickly.

haha I almost typed "god music" instead of "good music," how fucking awful would that be?

I think that's a pretty pathetic way to look at things, and it wrongly assumes that culture is a fixed thing rather than something that's fluid and prone to innovation and change.

I'd pretty much rather kill myself than adopt such a self-indulgent, defeatist way of life.

...but at the same time, I'm looking at "cultures," while you're looking at "culture," and I think we need to protect and expand ours, a few people at a time, until eventually the corporate one is abandoned because people realize it's vapid and asinine, rather than being forcibly smashed by outsiders. I've come to think of it as more of a struggle to push back their culture (because it sure isn't mine) than trying to change a monoculture that I'm involuntarily participating in. The dominant complex stifles innovation and change; if we do our own thing and it works for us, more people will follow, instead of what has an unfortunate tendency to become a rhetorical, impotent and largely symbolic struggle against "the machine."

Eschewing mass politics in favor of "doing your own thing" is a dead end in terms of accomplished real political/social change. Not least because it is pretty much inter-changeable with the individualist-consumerist model of modern capitalism that touts a highly segmented market that micro-targets cultural products to increasingly fragmented subcultures.

As far as me looking at "culture" and you looking at "cultures," you're not saying anything relevant. Obviously culture isn't monolithic. The point I was making did nothing to imply that it was. And I don't see any difference between pushing back someone else's (dominant) culture and changing a dominant culture. Unless you plan to push it back by exterminating people. Or unless you are suggesting a rearguard, cultural-defensive action that amounts to exactly the kind of inward-looking, lifestyle-politics that I was condemning initially.

is to do away with "dominant culture" altogether. Have a bunch of little cultures that are radically democratic and shaped by member participation instead of the command relationship of consumerism. Splintering, for me, seems like a good thing, and doesn't necessarily connotate mutual hostility - a group can retain its individualism while positively interacting and exchanging with the other groups.

Once culture is broken down into radically democratic participation by its members, politics will follow. In both Nazism and Stalinism, the ruling party sought to break cultural and personal bonds and replace them with loyalty to the state. Couldn't this also work in reverse? Once we do away with our Coke vs Pepsi material and artistic culture, our Coke vs Pepsi political parties won't look so attractive, and we can achieve actual plurality in politics.

Maybe this is just horribly misguided idealism. But I think smaller groups where people are more involved are stronger and more democratic, and the fact that there are more of them makes them that much harder to co-opt.

The point is that culture is a much bigger and pervasive thing than you are accounting for. The "splintering" that you are positing basically amounts to subcultures. Capitalism and its attendant cultural aesthetics constitute a dominant culture. Replacing it with a truly democratic alternative would require a that culture shift take place at the mass level, toward something that emphasizes more democratic values.

Whatever aesthetic choices people would make in such a society (and I assume they would vary greatly) they would still rely on common economic and political principles. And that is the whole point of mass politics -- to replace an economic/social/political system that structures all of our lives in very fundamental ways (no matter how hip out neighborhood is and no matter which microbrew we drink) with a system that allows for the greater political participation, greater social equality, and the fullest develolopment of the individual.

man you fruits will argue about anything.

Please explain to me when there ever was a time when all these "ingredients" combined ever incited a "decent revolution".

The revolution of the mind, maaaaan....