The Best Lack All Conviction
Amanda has a very thought-provoking post and a fascinating comment thread up on the topic of political hopelessness, following Riverbend’s reappearance in blogging and Billmon’s frank admittal that he considers he’s failed in not opposing Bushco strongly enough:
[…]
It?s easy to think up excuses now ? we were in the minority, the media was against us, the country was against us. We didn?t know how bad it would be.
But we knew, or should have known, that what Bush was planning was an illegal act of aggression, based on a warmongering campaign of deception and ginned-up hysteria. And we knew, or should have known, what our moral and legal obligations were:
Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity as set forth in Principle VI is a crime under international law.
We were all complicit. I was complicit. Because I was afraid ? afraid to sacrifice my comfortable middle class lifestyle, afraid to lose my job and my house, afraid of the IRS, afraid to go to jail.
But not nearly as afraid, of course, as the thousands of Iraqis who have been tortured or murdered, or who, like Riverbend, are forced to live in bloody chaos, day after day. Which is why, reading her post today, I couldn?t help but feel deeply, bitterly ashamed ? not just of my country, but of myself.
And he’s right to feel that. All Americans of conscience should. You didn’t do enough because you weren’t prepared to pay the potential price and it’s way past time to look yourself in the mirror and admit that. While you’re there you could maybe ask yourself another question – am I prepared to put myself on the line for what I believe?
The weight of history is behind principled dissent, but the history is of sacrifice for a greater good. Nothing ever changes without sacrifice, even if it’s only on the domestic scale. For example if you can’t stand up for your principles at home, where your moral character counts most, then where can you? Which of course is not to say I advocate browbeating your nearest and dearest, except maybe where they’re being particularly politically meatheaded, just suggesting that you can’t doff your principles at the door as you do your coat. But what about at work? Socialising? Just standing up and being counted? Did you have the guts to be against Bushco when it wasn’t so popular or was it easier to go along to get along – and are you still doing that?
Political convictions mean nothing if you don’t act on them. A little inspiration for fainthearts might be found in this man, who’s firmly in the tradition of working-class oppositional radicalism that the US is heir to and which seems sadly lacking these days. He continues to live his politics – but living your principles isn’t easy, as Amanda bravely acknowledges; it’s painful and difficult and it’s too often more expedient to opt for an easier life . And after all, isn’t life hard enough already?
Well, no, actually, it isn’t. It’s going to get worse. That’s a given regardless of party politics and elections. Global warming holds sway over all while a de facto neofascist coup has occurred in the world’s most influential country, the nation that could’ve had some influence to reverse the phenomenon had they so decided. That affects us all, as does the fact that your government believes its writ runs everywhere. They’re riding roughshod over international law in detaining other countries’ nationals in secret, indefinitely and without trial. And then there’s the torture.
None of us is safe now, not even those happy fundies in their gated communities with their cctv’s and panic rooms.
I hear people wondering what it’s going to take to rouse the public, forgetting that they themselves are the public. Will it be the arrest of prominent journalists or bloggers? Well, no – Greg Palast’s already been arrested and charged and that caused barely a ripple. What if, say, Olbermann were assassinated, what then? Or is it going to take something much bigger, like another Kent State – though it’d have to be on a pretty spectacular scale since the public is so jaded with massacres by now – to rouse the American people to start taking creative, non-violent direct action? Maybe the destruction of Miami by hurricane? Riots at the polling stations next month? The draft? What? How bad does it have to get?
This feels like a time of waiting. The progressive US left seems to be wondering when and if the first move against the political opposition is going to come.
It’s really important to us in the rest of the world that when and if that move is made and your principles as expressed in the Constitution come to the test you don’t chicken out. We’ve kept faith with Americans so far despite the horrible actions of your government, because of our sincere hope that what US progressives say is what they’ll do. Although your government’s policies put us in danger too we have no power over anything the US does and can only sympathise powerlessly and be scared shitless at a distance.
Faith and patience in America run quite thin though. when no-one in the progressive opposition seems prepared to go to the barricades for what they say they believe in. When your continued collective failure to act against such a dangerous regime can have such terrible implications for the survival of the rest of us worldwide you can’t blame us for saying ‘If not now, when?’.
We are on the verge of planet-wide historical and sociological shifts caused by climate change, much of which can be blamed on the continuing overconsumption of your country. (Sorry, nothing personal but that’s the way it is.) Your current regime continues to blithely encourage this despite the clear scienetific evidence of impending catastrophe. They just don’t care that there’ll be natural disasters, mass deaths, crop failures and economic collapse, energy wars and horrible conflicts over land and resources. They have the nukes.
The question of who”ll be in charge of the largest nuclear arsenal when the world is in climate chaos is a crucially important one. At the moment it’s in the hands of madmen, out and out scheming sociopaths who’ve shown no compunction whatever in attacking a sovereign nation without cause for no other credible reason than that they wanted to and who regularly threaten other nations with the same treatment. As the world’s political situation becomes ever more unbalanced, driven by climate change and our rulers’ sociopathy, so those sociopaths become ever more unstable. We could all be annihilated in an instant at the whim of a Bush or Cheney.
It’s not just your own personal future at stake here; its much bigger than that. If you do screw your courage to the sticking point and resist your own government’s tyranny be under no illusions: the state will oppose you with every means at their command – and they don’t play nice. You as individuals will have a lot to lose, but we all have even more to lose if we let the fuckers win. Sacrifices will have to made for the common good – but are you prepared to be that sacrifice?
Will you be a good German? Sheep or goat? The time is coming when you’ll have to decide.
Yet my mind was not at rest, because nothing was acted, and thoughts run in me that words and writings were all nothing, and must die, for action is the life of all, and if thou dost not act, thou dost nothing.
Gerrard Winstanley
*For the avoidance of doubt the phrase ‘go to the barricades’ is a metaphor and not a call to armed insurrection. Got it, spybots and CentCom operatives?
Read more: US Politics, Progressive Blogosphere, Climate Change, Global Warming, War on Terror
