Friday, June 02, 2017

From The Baffler:
Flakes Alive!

I heard about this article via Freddie deBoer, who tweeted:




The thrust of the article, for anyone who is too lazy to read it, is that there sure are a lot of crazy people on the Left.

I hate to say it, but indeed there are.

From my old activist days, I remember the week I spent in Philadelphia protesting the Republican National Convention.

On the bus ride to Philadelphia, I met other protesters who did not seem to be entirely in touch with reality.  One couple tried to tell me that Marlboro cigarettes was affiliated with the KKK because their were hidden Ks on the box. When I asked them why they were going to the protest, the guy in the couple began, "Well, I was at this Pink Floyd laser light show…" The story ended up being that he was on magic mushrooms at this show, and on the way out he passed a tree, and somehow he knew then that he was supposed to fight for justice everywhere.

That same week, another incident happened at an organizing meeting.
The people not in affinity groups were told to pick an affinity group and chose a spokesperson. One of the girls nominated herself as spokesperson, but nobody chose her. She claimed it that she wasn't picked because she was a woman, and that it was discrimination.  The facilitator of the meeting (who was also a woman) questioned her right to speak, at which point the self-appointed spokesperson became very emotional and called the facilitator a dictator. She raised such a fuss that the facilitator let her stay "fine, you can be a spokesperson and represent two people." Later the facilitator made mention of that argument, and the woman became so enraged at being singled out that she started screaming and yelling and tried to attack the facilitator.  She finally left after a lot more crying and yelling. She later believed she would be singled out by the police for arrest because of the outburst, and again tried to attack the facilitator.

Anyway, the point is that for whatever reason, Leftist activist meetings tend to attract a lot of mentally unstable people.
Which makes it difficult to do any serious organizing work.

What to do about this problem, however, is a difficult question.

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