Quote Originally Posted by Eric C. View Post
Here it goes, how far can one go following implementation of his/her ideas, and what's meant by the "blood part"?
Well, these are pretty heavy questions, but I respect where you're coming from.

How far can one go in implementation of his or her own ideas? It depends on what you believe of history, and what you feel we can draw from it. Sun Tzu and Confucius, Caesar, Jesus, Machiavelli, Charlemagne, John the Baptist, Ghandhi, Ben Franklin, Tesla, Patton, and so on.. There are a lot of people to try to draw an answer from the records of.. "Far," is a fair but facetious answer, "but not everywhere:" . You can get a lot done on your own, but not everything. Most of the people on this list got to BE on this list not because of the solidarity of their own ideas, but because of their a) ability to communicate those ideas to others and b) the receptiveness TO those ideas found in the crowd at that time and place.

It can be dangerous to say the right thing, if you have a), but not b). I believe Michael Moore was more or less just that - a non-leader, who got it in his head to say the right thing [ "a)" ].. but to the wrong crowd, at the wrong time, and certainly (by choosing himself) with the wrong mouthpiece. It's been said a good general must show that he can do all he asks his troops to do, and more. Moore in that respect is a poor show, and even if the words appealed to the intellecutal facet of his audience, his appearance and self-respect level soured him against the INSTINCTUAL facet of his audience. I knew from external research that he'd been pulling a lot of the right threads with his first movie. But I didn't even need to get hit with the poison-pill campaign that followed; after getting to know who he was, I didn't like him as a leader, and this made me intellectually struggle with listening to him, even as I knew a lot of what he was on about was dead-on.

Beyond a certain point, I'd bet Ramil will be right, that without a decent leader (and the ACLU doesn't count as such), this movement will fizzle, like any army without a general.

But just like the guy on the receiving end of Groucho Marx' "tutti frutti" grift, I know that we can't beat them at their own game; we can't out-gamble a cheater with his own loaded dice. So, as much as my moral heart might grind at the idea, SOMETIMES THE BEST WAY TO DEAL WITH A BUNCH OF CARD CHEATS IS TO THROW THE TABLE OVER, grab your money, and storm out. Then, at least, when the table's picked back up, the guy doing the cleaning up thinks real hard about preventing such CHEATING next time a gambling outfit is set up.

Since you can't show enough people at one time the insidiousness of the system of laws, bills, and bills-tacked-on-back-of-bills, and logrolling, and congressional/commercial/industrial hand-shaking that goes on, and still be dealing with the minds of THE MASSES instead of a handful of really bright individuals who are able to conceive so many moving parts at once, essentially you can't show everyone at the table that they're being cheated, until you get close enough to the cheater to draw the hidden aces from his sleeve.

Sad as it is, that would require blood. And if we had a leader capable of this sort of direction, I wouldn't be afraid to help achieve that end.

But it's a bit of a moot point, because without a leader, we're really just as Ramil said, more of a danger than a help. Wish it weren't so.

Maybe a leader will come, pull the sword from the stone of wall street, and then we'll see. It's not over until the fat lady sings.