{"id":383724,"date":"2018-11-05T03:21:51","date_gmt":"2018-11-05T02:21:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/how-the-rats-revolt-ratting-out-democrats-electoral-extortion\/"},"modified":"2018-11-05T03:21:51","modified_gmt":"2018-11-05T02:21:51","slug":"how-the-rats-revolt-ratting-out-democrats-electoral-extortion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/how-the-rats-revolt-ratting-out-democrats-electoral-extortion\/","title":{"rendered":"How the Rats Revolt: \u201cRatting Out\u201d Democrats\u2019 Electoral Extortion"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p><strong>Introduction: The Rat as a Compelling Symbol of Needed Revolt<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In his recent Truthdig piece,\u00a0 \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.truthdig.com\/articles\/the-rats-revolt\/\">The Rats Revolt<\/a>\u201c, journalist Chris Hedges discusses a fable for activists just published by legendary political dissident Ralph Nader. I haven\u2019t read <a href=\"http:\/\/ratsreformcongress.org\">Nader\u2019s book,<\/a> but it\u2019s enough for organizers like me to know that two of the left\u2019s leading public intellectuals are united in calling for revolt. And (since symbols are vital to movements) that they\u2019ve given us a highly effective symbol for organizing current revolt: the <em>rat.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>With crucial strategy to discuss, it would waste precious time to dwell long on movement symbolism here. But, besides its adoption by leftist opinion leaders like Hedges and Nader, the rat splendidly serves the purposes of organizing revolt. In the face of onrushing climate apocalypse, we are <em>all<\/em> rats on a sinking ship. And to the elites blithely ignoring climate apocalypse\u2014<a href=\"https:\/\/www.greanvillepost.com\/2017\/08\/19\/its-party-time-on-the-titanic-and-screw-the-slobs-in-steerage\/\">partying on the Titanic<\/a>\u2014we who care deeply about the matter are clearly noxious vermin; the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/2018\/sep\/20\/keystone-pipeline-protest-activism-crackdown-standing-rock\">brutal treatment of the Standing Rock water protectors as terrorists<\/a> (championed by Republican pols with scarcely a murmur of protest by Democrats) is both telling and typical. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.utne.com\/politics\/climate-activists-zm0z13sozlin\">My family\u2019s experience resisting fracking under PA\u2019s Democratic governor Rendell<\/a> (Virginia Cody is my wife) was parallel.<\/p>\n<p>But\u2014provided the revolt movement chooses appropriate action\u2014there\u2019s a positive, active side to the rat symbol; it needn\u2019t just represent passive victimhood. Indeed,&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/dissidentvoice.org\/2018\/11\/how-the-rats-revolt-ratting-out-democrats-electoral-extortion\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Introduction: The Rat as a Compelling Symbol of Needed Revolt In his recent Truthdig piece,\u00a0 \u201cThe Rats Revolt\u201c, journalist Chris Hedges discusses a fable for activists just published by legendary political dissident Ralph Nader. I haven\u2019t read Nader\u2019s book, but it\u2019s enough for organizers like me to know that two of the left\u2019s leading public [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2525,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-383724","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2525"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383724\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}