top down vs bottom up?
continuing the pointless pontifications on association:
more recent comments have tried to differentiate between associations that are conscripted "top down" vs those that are joined "bottom up". one example given was the catholic church, (top down), and an excuse was being mooted for joinees of the "tea party" movement, suggesting the "bottom up" nature of the group offered reduced responsibility for association since its membership is primarily formed without required adherence to dictated dogma or ideology or politics.
well, you know there's always a web wise guy who sends the rhetoric straight to hitler whenever you're having a discussion on the web, but i figure i'll be lazy and keep it closer to today's headlines, and i'll crassly point out that al quaida has been going to a "bottom up" recruitment and organization strategy these days, ostensibly because it's harder to track and control or to assess or enforce specific responsibility, and that's something to think about. personally, i can't wait until one of 'em stands up in court and says "THOSE guys blew up that building--I didn't blow up that building--we're "bottom up" around here, and i can't be responsible for that".
yeah, inexcusable hyperbole, but it's exactly my point, and that's all the responsibility i'm willing to take on this one, since i've always been a "bottom up" kind of organizational guy.
my opinion? if you take the name, whether for convenience, glory, infamy or ease of club/chapter/cell recruitment, you're taking on a responsibility that is shirked if you don't address both your similarities and differences from others who take that same name. i should hope a judge would see it that way in court, and i should hope local "bottoms uppers" would see it that way too, and take some time to pay back the benefits of their association with the "tea party" designation, by making an effort to clarify whether they're with the fox news sound byters, or distancing themselves from them with substantial expressions of policy and position.
can't have it both ways.
more recent comments have tried to differentiate between associations that are conscripted "top down" vs those that are joined "bottom up". one example given was the catholic church, (top down), and an excuse was being mooted for joinees of the "tea party" movement, suggesting the "bottom up" nature of the group offered reduced responsibility for association since its membership is primarily formed without required adherence to dictated dogma or ideology or politics.
well, you know there's always a web wise guy who sends the rhetoric straight to hitler whenever you're having a discussion on the web, but i figure i'll be lazy and keep it closer to today's headlines, and i'll crassly point out that al quaida has been going to a "bottom up" recruitment and organization strategy these days, ostensibly because it's harder to track and control or to assess or enforce specific responsibility, and that's something to think about. personally, i can't wait until one of 'em stands up in court and says "THOSE guys blew up that building--I didn't blow up that building--we're "bottom up" around here, and i can't be responsible for that".
yeah, inexcusable hyperbole, but it's exactly my point, and that's all the responsibility i'm willing to take on this one, since i've always been a "bottom up" kind of organizational guy.
my opinion? if you take the name, whether for convenience, glory, infamy or ease of club/chapter/cell recruitment, you're taking on a responsibility that is shirked if you don't address both your similarities and differences from others who take that same name. i should hope a judge would see it that way in court, and i should hope local "bottoms uppers" would see it that way too, and take some time to pay back the benefits of their association with the "tea party" designation, by making an effort to clarify whether they're with the fox news sound byters, or distancing themselves from them with substantial expressions of policy and position.
can't have it both ways.
posted by kad barma at 9:28 AM
2 Comments:
Well, in a way it is a little tough to get at the "national" group in that "tea parties" started out as small, individual events and only later did some entrepraneur decide to coopt the name and have some sort of a "national" organization. Unlike al Qaeda or the Provisional IRA (as opposed to the good IRA back 100 years ago), which are top down, but for organizational reasons have cells, we didn't start top down. And, unlike al Qaeda, we are not a cell in Yemen or Somalia that wishes to associate with the national group.
Nor are we like local Democrats, who have to carry the burden of John Kerry and Nancy Pelosi and Robert Byrd, or local Republicans, who have to carry the burden of the late Richard Nixon.
We are more like independents who happened to get together to have a local tea party, since everyone knows what a tea party is. I hope we are not going to condemn all those millions of mothers who have tea parties with their four year old daughters. We wish to have the same courtesy.
Regards — Cliff
oh, i could think of a lot more recent names for R's to be carrying than good old tricky dick. and i'm not sure it's quite fair to place JFK in the same bucket with nancy and bobby b. but i take your points, and offer to you that this little fit of my pique is to remind you that you DO carry the burden of the anti-anything-left-of-barry-goldwater sound-byters using the designation to attract attention to themselves and their partisan politics.
there's nothing less attractive about your organization than its conspicuous lack of rhetoric as to why certain "liberal" pronouncements, like al gore's about the strategic importance of energy independence and it's necessity to solving our imbalance of foreign payments, are babies not to be thrown out with "AGW" bathwater. it's especially offensive, since "conservative" voices, such at t. boone pickens, prominently agree. (wouldn't hurt as a solution to our expensive foreign entanglements in certain oil-proximate wars that cannot be won, either).
and, on a personal note, some public support for ron paul would go a long way towards assuaging my petulance, too. we have a fundamental economic problem in this country caused by our profligate bi-partisan government pork-barreling, and unless we address fundamental issues like currency valuation and debt control, we are going to be in a very dangerous rip tide of forces that will be impossible to defeat. (see recent examinations about the finances of greece, portugal, etc. etc. etc. for clues).
and, lastly, about your joke about motherhood and four-year-old girls: nobody at your shin-dig (that i know) was sipping imaginary brew from mismatched china cups and seated at undersized dining tables festooned with lace doilies and populated by barbies, raggedy anns and cabbage patch kids, so the comparison is just a little bit lost on me. ;-)
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