So here's where another ADHD confluence of ideas happened as I was reading Dean Baker's essay "Loser Liberalism versus Power Populism" and then listening to a podcast of Thom Hartmann Show from May 7th with guests David Korten (When Corporations rule the World, The Great Turning), Francis Moore Lappe (Democracy's Edge, Getting the Grip) and Tom Hayden (Ending the War in Iraq). Hayden and the others were attending the Praxis Peace Conference (From Empire to Global Community) in Dubrovnik, Croatia. He has been working on an idea and a frame about Machiavellians and Social Movements. He uses an "M" frame.
Social movements, he says, start on the Margins like the anti-Iraq War movement. Only a few people spoke out after 9/11 and some like Bill Maher were fired. But the communities of Meaning start forming. As they grow they become a movement and then they finally become the Majority that we are seeing now. When they achieve their goals, they then mostly disperse. Within social movements there are the radicals, for which there is never enough reform, and there is the rest of the movement that wants to achieve a reasonable goal. With Iraq, it would be to pull out the troops rather than end all wars for all time.
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