What is a "movement"?
 

At what point does a political emotion coalesce to the point of being a movement?

Tonight I watched The Daily Show and my take away was that the guest asked viewers to ponder the difference between having a hero and subscribing to a movement. Movements live. Heros die.

My first idea of a movement probably happened when I started using the phrase "passing the torch". That was about ten years ago, give or take. At the beginning I wrote on the internet and patted myself on the back for at least being courageous enough to argue with my friends. That was easy. My political debates were limited to managing an online gaming community and watching how spheres of influence formed and popped; like foam. That was easy because it was about math. The debates centred on how votes would be allocated in the community.

But in my heart I knew that there was more than math that decided the victor. Somewhere in the mathematical foam was an element of dance in all of its beauty. In the rhythm. In the foregiveness of mistake. In expecting performance. In feeling guilt for screwing up.

The dance, to me, was the beginning of my political feeling of a movement. The first time that I had to take the stage was when I was in my forties. My employer sent me to Germany on a business trip. It was time for me to stop talking smack and show how to dance on the autobahn. Every stage fear bubbled to the surface as I took the keys of a rental car with was entrusted with the lives and peacefulness of American passengers in a foreign land for the first time.

We navigated together to get away from the airport. That was a little tense. But after that we were cruising on the autobahn at 100 mph in a minivan; in the right lane. That was a Zen moment. I heard my dad say that a soldier's job is to keep his team mates calm. I heard my mom knitting in the passenger seat at 100 mph. I heard ponderings of how dancing at 100 mph can be more peaceful than whatever it is that is supposed to happen at 55.

It was on the autobahn at age 40+ that I finally felt what it meant to be part of a movement. And the movement was about dance. Not numbers.

Love you guys.

A movement is a shared feeling. Dance embodies feeling. Numbers, not so much.

100mph, with your mom knitting in the passenger seat - are you certain about this recollection?

It's easily possible on the Autobahn, particularly on stretches with light traffic. When I was back in Germany in September, 100-105 mph was the sweet spot for my rented Audi A4 Avant and I frequently had cruise control on at 160-170 kph. My wife and daughter were in the back seat, chatting innocently while oblivious to the speed.

I feel far safer driving 100 mph on the Autobahn than driving 65-70 mph on I-95.

I think an example of a more or less "pure" movement was (note the past tense) the Occupy Movement. There was never a concrete goal or agenda. The people in Occupy had merely identified what they perceived to be "the enemy", entrenched monetary power, and tried to make their lives miserable by hanging around outside some of the temples of power.

What they lacked was a leader, your "torch bearer", ebacon. Movements can form spontaneously like soap bubbles but, like the bubbles, they pop without leadership and direction.

Fifty people a day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m57gzA2JCcM

Sometimes what appears a "movement" is just a self-serving temper tantrum, like the Tea Party, supposedly initiated by Rick Santelli's notoriously shameless televised blame-the-victims rant on the mortgage market collapse.

Sent from my SM-N900V using Tapatalk

The whole Tea Party thing was orchestrated by the Kochs. The problem is the oligarchs haven't figured out how to put the genie back in the bottle.

I think you don't always want to be taking ebacon totally literally.

"Under President Obama, Democrats have lost 900+ state legislature seats, 12 governors, 69 House seats, 13 Senate seats"
- That's a movement.