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>> It would make me more progressive if I saw that. What are the economic, political, social forces that are causing that? [EDIT] TLDR: I never committed crime

>> It would make me more progressive if I saw that. What are the economic, political, social forces that are causing that? [EDIT] TLDR: I never committed crimes or hurt people when I was poor as fuck. When I was 20 I would've maybe thought this. I was a left anarchist, and my leanings are still in that direction. It's not wealth that made me less progressive. I wrote a novel when I was 24 that brought the world down on me; it was a satire that involved a rock band murdering Bush and Cheney at a gala at Bohemian grove. It got thousands of hits from .mil sites and I got police going through my trash cans, my apartment raided. I left the country for 15 years. And railed against the military/industrial complex. It's progressives who made me less progressive. During my exile I worked, I created things. It was hard. But I never lost my dignity. I never acted like a savage. I did lots of drugs and drinking but I never blamed anyone else; I worked out what it was that I needed to do. I've worked every day since I was 15. I wasn't handed anything. My parents were born in complete poverty. So when I see a 20 year old beating his dog and literally taking a shit on the sidewalk, and then screaming at me that "how dare you tell a homeless person he can't shit here unless you want me to use your bathroom", when the City of Portland and me put a porta-potty on the corner thirty paces from where he's shitting for him, what I see is an able-bodied guy with a facebook and instagram account who's LARPing as an anarchist and needs to go through some form of hardship which he's obviously not experiencing yet. I don't blame anyone for anything I could reasonably - or unreasonably - see someone doing. Slapping someone for making fun of your wife's hair is bad but it's not incomprehensible. Beating a dog is outside the sphere of what I can understand, though. So is shitting on someone's porch. I've started to think the main thing is that people in their early 20s are being told this is an acceptable form of rebellion. It's not the peaceful Drop out, tune out of old times. It's an aggressive attempt to assert rights to dominate everyone around them - to terrorize peaceable people - without any kind of understanding of what terror people like me went through to be here. The one thing you won't find among these Portland youth is any kind of understanding of the immigrant experience. Just (mostly white) entitlement, wrapped in a thin veneer of "woke" speech. With no thought behind it. Social forces that drive it? Poor education, stupid parents, I don't know. They're a threat to the working order of society. I would say that even more if I were homeless; I say it as a homeowner. [Edit] Two side thoughts: 1. Just announcing you're a homeowner in Portland is cause for being attacked these days. As if no one deserves to reap any reward for anything they've done. 2. Someone on Nextdoor here last week complained that she was sleeping on her kitchen floor because the same guy had broken into her apartment three times in a week and once started a fire in the bathroom; other people asked why she didn't call the police, and she had, but they didn't respond. Someone asked why she didn't have a baseball bat at least. She recoiled and said she didn't want to hurt anyone. Is that a way to live your life?

SpodGaju 5y ago
Fellow anarchist here who was the Hassled by the feds after 9/11. So you’ve taken up the I’ve pulled myself up with my own bootstraps defense. I don’t demean that at all, but you did not grow up the same way as a 20 year old in your yard did. To be a progressive, and I’m not talking about these progressives that you think you have in the Portland government, is to understand that we all don’t share the same life experiences. You were lucky growing up in the time You did and probably you were lucky growing up in a time in Portland actually embrace community. Tell me all these horror stories does not do anything to address the fundamental problems that are causing the horror stories in the first place. Can you talk about this peaceful rebellion that took place in the past. What? What rebellion? Those people turned into the boomers that bought up all the property in Portland as investment vehicles. These people aren’t revolting in any positive or not coordinated way. Their revolt is more primal and therefore A true rebellion. It is an unconscious rebellion and that scares people into conservatives.
- noduerme 5y ago
  You know I just had an argument with three union reps at a bar tonight - basically around the idea that "you were lucky..." but the outcome as phrased by one of them was "individual thoughts don't matter, I have no interest in that. Everything is systemic". I've staked my entire life on being an individual who won't support a team, a religion, or a social movement (beyond individual points I agree with). I happen to believe that if everyone acted this way, we'd have a lot fewer problems as a society. I refuse to take the side of a movement that claims some holistic righteousnes, just like I refuse to accept religion and race. So on a case-by-case basis, I decide what seems fair. I should note that before that dog-beating kid drove his van into six cars, I went out there with a gun and a six pack of beer which I distributed to his 17 year old homeless friends, who I sat around with while they told me he was a crazy shithead. I think that was what really drove him mental. Individuals. That's how the world functions. Everything else is theory. So my rebellion didn't work? It did. I was gassed in the street in 2004 protesting the Iraq war. Everyone hates neocons now and hates that war, don't they? Did I do nothing? An argument is ridiculous if it asks every person to pawn everything they ever did to the next struggle in the future. Portland is a shit show in the real estate market, but where isn't? It's by leaps and bounds the most progressive city in America. The boomers' homeless and ultimately functional children grew up richer than I did. They need to come halfway and see that acting savage and refusing completely to partake in society is not an ultimately winning strategy. They're not going to win some revolutionary war where they suddenly abolish all private property - and if that's their goal, they've really got to become more coherent and stop doing so much heroin, because I can't even understand what they're saying. [edit] my contention is that the 20-yo shitting in my yard's problem is that he is spoiled and rich, by every standard I've seen everywhere I've traveled in the world. And that's why I can't relate to the conditions that led to him, or sympathize with his plight.

SpodGaju 5y ago

Fellow anarchist here who was the Hassled by the feds after 9/11. So you’ve taken up the I’ve pulled myself up with my own bootstraps defense. I don’t demean that at all, but you did not grow up the same way as a 20 year old in your yard did. To be a progressive, and I’m not talking about these progressives that you think you have in the Portland government, is to understand that we all don’t share the same life experiences. You were lucky growing up in the time You did and probably you were lucky growing up in a time in Portland actually embrace community. Tell me all these horror stories does not do anything to address the fundamental problems that are causing the horror stories in the first place. Can you talk about this peaceful rebellion that took place in the past. What? What rebellion? Those people turned into the boomers that bought up all the property in Portland as investment vehicles. These people aren’t revolting in any positive or not coordinated way. Their revolt is more primal and therefore A true rebellion. It is an unconscious rebellion and that scares people into conservatives.

noduerme 5y ago
You know I just had an argument with three union reps at a bar tonight - basically around the idea that "you were lucky..." but the outcome as phrased by one of them was "individual thoughts don't matter, I have no interest in that. Everything is systemic". I've staked my entire life on being an individual who won't support a team, a religion, or a social movement (beyond individual points I agree with). I happen to believe that if everyone acted this way, we'd have a lot fewer problems as a society. I refuse to take the side of a movement that claims some holistic righteousnes, just like I refuse to accept religion and race. So on a case-by-case basis, I decide what seems fair. I should note that before that dog-beating kid drove his van into six cars, I went out there with a gun and a six pack of beer which I distributed to his 17 year old homeless friends, who I sat around with while they told me he was a crazy shithead. I think that was what really drove him mental. Individuals. That's how the world functions. Everything else is theory. So my rebellion didn't work? It did. I was gassed in the street in 2004 protesting the Iraq war. Everyone hates neocons now and hates that war, don't they? Did I do nothing? An argument is ridiculous if it asks every person to pawn everything they ever did to the next struggle in the future. Portland is a shit show in the real estate market, but where isn't? It's by leaps and bounds the most progressive city in America. The boomers' homeless and ultimately functional children grew up richer than I did. They need to come halfway and see that acting savage and refusing completely to partake in society is not an ultimately winning strategy. They're not going to win some revolutionary war where they suddenly abolish all private property - and if that's their goal, they've really got to become more coherent and stop doing so much heroin, because I can't even understand what they're saying. [edit] my contention is that the 20-yo shitting in my yard's problem is that he is spoiled and rich, by every standard I've seen everywhere I've traveled in the world. And that's why I can't relate to the conditions that led to him, or sympathize with his plight.