There's a Riot Goin On

Recently, Frances Fox Piven wrote a brief essay for "The Nation" in which she seeks an explanation for the lack of "mass protests" here in these USA by the un- and under- employed, as well as by those who everyday losing out because of  ne0-Liberal policies. Stanley Kurtz, well-known buffalohead, read this as an incendiary call for the violent overthrow of these United States, or something like that.  Glenn Beck, as is his wont, decided that this was more proof, should proof be needed, that the Left is planning a revolution, which led to some ugly rhetoric and, it seems, death threats against Piven. Barbara Ehrenreich then wrote an Op-Ed piece in which she blamed the lack of an organized response to the worsening political and economic situation on the rise of Beck's army of extremist who see criticism of a failed economic system as a form of treason.

Conor Friedersdorf weighed in by mocking Ehrenreich for worrying about Beck inspired lunatics because

[s]ay what you will about Glenn Beck, but it's odd to criticize him for lessening the grass-roots mojo of Americans: he's the guy who filled the national mall with his fans, a huge backer of Tea Party rallies all over the United States, and the inspiration for the Jon Stewart counter-rally for that matter. What a weird moment to write a long piece about how Americans aren't taking to the streets anymore.

Her concern about gun owners threatening protesters is ludicrous

Given the membership of the NRA and the profile of Tea Party demonstrators, it sure seems to me like gun owners are more likely to engage in politics in addition to buying guns, not less likely because they feel as if they've already said their piece by arming up.

I hope you get this, worrying about Beck's influence on politically active gun nuts is wrong because gun nuts who are politically active are so because of Beck's paranoid rantings.

He then insists that

What nonsense. An American street protestor today, whether on the right or left, is significantly safer from physical violence than the Civil Rights era protestors or the kids at Kent State or the San Francisco dockworkers or Salinas lettuce strikers of the Great Depression.

Indeed

Along the way he opines that

[d]ecades later, it's easy to romanticize protests where American laborers took to the streets in times of economic turmoil. But as I well know from reading up on Depression-era labor strikes in California alone, those events were often driven by the desperation of people without anything resembling the safety net Americans enjoy today, and they often turned violent, sometimes due to rabble rousing protestors, other times because of overzealous riot police. Street protests themselves signal a failure of politics and policy, not a triumph.

I leave it to your judgment to discern if Ehrenreich are romanticizing earlier protests or lamenting their absence because, if nothing  else, they give un- or under- represented  groups a voice in the debate.  I will, just note in passing, that in a situation where the official unemployment rate is 9.something and throwing in the discouraged, no longer counted, and under employed gives a number considerably higher; to say nothing of continued tax breaks for the very rich, promises of further cuts to the already tattered safety net, several wars declared and other, might be taken, by someone in touch with reality, as evidence of politics and policies that have failed or are failing.