{"id":367,"date":"2018-10-10T16:04:03","date_gmt":"2018-10-10T20:04:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/?p=367"},"modified":"2018-10-10T16:04:03","modified_gmt":"2018-10-10T20:04:03","slug":"angry-mobs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/?p=367","title":{"rendered":"Angry Mobs"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is an angry mob:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Photo by Andrew Shurflet\/The Daily Progress<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This is not:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Photo by Andrew Caballero-Reynolds\/AFP<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

<\/p>\n

Anger certainly drives the Tiki-torch marchers.\u00a0 They justify their anger with the rhetoric of the oppressed, but in fact simply hate and fear those they would themselves enslave.\u00a0 They\u2019re mad from hate and fear of women, people of color, homosexuals, Jews, and others they consider less than human.\u00a0 They believe themselves simply superior genetically, and form mobs like this one to demonstrate and enforce that superiority.\u00a0 Members of these mobs carry symbols of slavery and fascism to instill fear by memorializing social movements that enslaved and killed millions of people.\u00a0 They also carry weapons, including firearms, which they use on opponents.\u00a0 For this angry mob beating and shooting people they hate and fear is acceptable \u2013 even necessary \u2013 behavior.\u00a0 Thiers is an existential anger \u2013 for them civilization itself depends on asserting their power. \u00a0But it lacks moral authority, discipline and control.\u00a0 Every citizen who challenges their demand for unearned privilege should all fear this angry one.<\/p>\n

A different kind of anger motivates these women.\u00a0 They\u2019re tired of men treating them as objects and robbing them of agency.\u00a0 Corporate, religious, and political leaders make rules that restrict female bodily autonomy \u2013 and I\u2019m not just talking about reproductive rights.\u00a0These rules privilege males over women with superior qualifications and expertise.\u00a0 They stigmatize women who have a desire to take on traditionally male social roles or otherwise violate male preferences with regard to female sexuality.\u00a0 Men bond with each other through slut-shaming and fat-shaming without regard to how this affects women.\u00a0 Women grow more and more angry with this, and justifiably so.<\/p>\n

These women want real equality and full freedom to live as they please.\u00a0 American society has to accept this claim as valid If we truly believe in the principles of liberty and freedom we pay lip service to.\u00a0 Yet the Kavanaugh confirmation process demonstrated once again that men who control institutional power will ignore them when they speak and push them aside when they challenge America\u2019s institutional preference for male social privilege \u2013 in particular, but not exclusively \u2013 white male social privilege. \u00a0We should therefore expect their anger \u2013 and expect them to act on it.\u00a0 It\u2019s a righteous anger, full of moral authority, discipline, and control rather than violence and intimidation.\u00a0 Only politicians \u2013 and others who would deny their claims \u2013 should fear them.<\/p>\n

Social change drives the anger on both sides.\u00a0 The power of wealthy white males to control institutional power in America eroded as they lost control of the factors that drive changes in shared understandings and social norms.\u00a0 The conservative movement has become more reactionary as norms shifted and institutional power began devolving to others.\u00a0 Some try to protect what\u2019s left, with support from angry mobs that intimidate and attack, by packing institutions like the Supreme Court with reactionaries.\u00a0Americans who welcome social change that expands liberty and freedom to heretofore oppressed minorities will work to protect it, with support from disciplined and organized groups of women, by packing Congress with progressives.\u00a0 I know what side I\u2019m on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is an angry mob: This is not:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[139,74,138,140],"tags":[141,126,143,142],"class_list":["post-367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alt-right","category-norms-and-shared-understandings","category-norms-and-social-change","category-womens-rights","tag-alt-right","tag-blue-wave","tag-norms-and-social-change","tag-womens-rights"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=367"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":372,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367\/revisions\/372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}