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   Ciggy Bringer of Smoke (ciggysmokebringer@kolektiva.social)'s status on Friday, 03-Nov-2023 04:07:01 JST Ciggy Bringer of Smoke

   https://kolektiva.social/@ricardoharvin@mstdn.social/111183789414113238

   This kinda thing bothers me too but I also feel it in my core sometimes...

   One of the engagement dynamics present is this kind of 'Bandwagon Observer' POV, where you if you are not functionally in the trenches fighting the good fight, you don't appreciate that anyone is because you aren't there to witness and fight.

   And extended, if there is not an open offer or open gate access to join something in the trenches that also has obvious self evident potential to fight for big wins, it's nothing at all, just parochial discontent.

   So there's a defeatist truth on the table that nothing really has a puncher's chance out there, and is actively throwing the big haymakers that connect, and that is there for them to join up with and maybe bring a buddy or two along. And it stinks and is alienating and defeatist, but...

   It hints at a large engagement problem that Bandwagoners have - if you only wanna back winners who have won and show potential to win even more, you will always be a day late and they'll be dead because Power doesn't suffer winners who won against them for very long.

   And we are certainly not of the mentality, yet, of 'Next Comrades Up' which certainly is grim but how you make a sort of peace with fight.

   • Håkan Geijer repeated this.
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     Ciggy Bringer of Smoke (ciggysmokebringer@kolektiva.social)'s status on Friday, 03-Nov-2023 04:07:25 JST Ciggy Bringer of Smoke

     in reply to

     I felt this in 2020, where I was like...there is way less here operationally than stated or even imagined, like we really are making half this shit up as we go along, and it is what it is, lets give a good fight and make it hell out there.

     A huge element of that is personal Opsec and this peekaboo game of those being on the ball not wanting the daylight that reveals them being so on the ball and attracting eyeballs to their set, but...it certainly makes movement building in the shadows where the seasoned and adept are basically ghosts kinda difficult, ya know?

     Håkan Geijer repeated this.
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     Ciggy Bringer of Smoke (ciggysmokebringer@kolektiva.social)'s status on Friday, 03-Nov-2023 04:07:37 JST Ciggy Bringer of Smoke

     in reply to

     Other insurrectionary movements generally, quite generally, usually work in reverse where you have predicate community that moves into the shadows for fight, rather than starting in the shadows entirely as strangers. Just saying.

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     Ciggy Bringer of Smoke (ciggysmokebringer@kolektiva.social)'s status on Friday, 03-Nov-2023 04:08:09 JST Ciggy Bringer of Smoke

     in reply to

     This is all to say that if you're on the bench waiting for a team or the team to pull it together so you might walk onto the field and play yourself...ahp ahp ahp, doesn't work like that. The first to the field aren't running out headlong because they think they'll win, but the effort is worth it even in potential defeat and long odds for a win.

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     Ciggy Bringer of Smoke (ciggysmokebringer@kolektiva.social)'s status on Friday, 03-Nov-2023 04:08:10 JST Ciggy Bringer of Smoke

     in reply to

     I posit the reason so many of us did turn out in 2020 is that we hadn't tasted the sting of defeat directly ourselves, lotsa shit was happening all at once, and there was some daylight of potential with the just-so reckoning of 'what the fuck do we gotta lose, fuck the cops, fuck The State, fuck everything - its lies and oppression top to bottom' and we got stymied to a huge degree in effect. We collectively accelerated retirements and transfers to a degree and I'm still gonna wag my tongue that SPD doesn't have all the the brutes it says it needs and once had, but...no Big Obvious Direct Wins in hand for the effort.

     Håkan Geijer repeated this.
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     Ciggy Bringer of Smoke (ciggysmokebringer@kolektiva.social)'s status on Friday, 03-Nov-2023 04:20:08 JST Ciggy Bringer of Smoke

     • Håkan Geijer

     @hakan_geijer Thanks for the notice - it's something that gnaws at me because I was very much in the lamentable 'nobody is doing anything' place for most my life, but basically paralyzed from extending myself into anything that was at least trying to.

     2019, I finally started taking baby steps putting myself out there with lending a hand to campaigns and an org, and by June of 2020, it was full on strides that were kind of drawn out of me by circumstance and conditions and what I did in 2019 was obviously always going to be inadequate and playing around the edges of where the game really was afoot.

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     Ciggy Bringer of Smoke (ciggysmokebringer@kolektiva.social)'s status on Friday, 03-Nov-2023 04:40:51 JST Ciggy Bringer of Smoke

     • Håkan Geijer

     @hakan_geijer There's a joke from a cartoon where one of the main characters, totally wracked by indecision and doubt has the epiphany - "There's nothing more dangerous than a man who knows what he wants".

     Once its decided, everything else follows.