I’m going to mourn the loss of transformation as a path forward.
As am I. But during and since the election I’ve come to the conclusion that we have no choice but to cheer.
I still do believe in incremental change but I no longer feel that we have the time. And I realized that asking a generation or two to be patient enough to let that play out is just too big of an ask.
We didn’t need to be patient. We didn’t effectively use the nonviolent tools are our disposal. They were too boring.
Killing is exciting though, so lots of us are cheering and thinking this tool will quickly make our lives better. If it was an effective tool, America would already be a utopia. We have guns and killings already, but no one is choosing the “good” targets.
I can’t tell if those cheering are trying to sabotage the left, so the right can continue to paint the left as violent. Or are they psychopaths? Or do they just have fantasies of LARPing as the Hollywood movie’s underdog hero? What I don’t see if them putting their money where their mouth is.
And they trash any sentiments that question if this enthusiasm is a good idea. I’m not even saying they shouldn’t be enthusiastic. I’m just (again) in the position of justifying not sharing that sentiment.
If non-violence is always the better answer, then why is it universally accepted that violence is the best answer when the government has a boogie man to catch?
Bin Laden, Hitler, Saddam…you’d think that with all the money and alliances that governments have at their disposal, they could have helped the countries that harbored these people and ensured they were brought to justice and judged by a jury of their countrymen. But that isn’t what happened. They used violence because violence is effective in creating drastic change quickly.
Non-violence hopes for change slowly, but often is just a tool that gets manipulated to preserve the status quo—just look at the “approved protest areas” that happened with Occupy Wallstreet. They were more than happy to tell those people exactly how to be nonviolent so the impact was meaningless.
Meanwhile, Luigi’s bullet had plenty of impact and plenty of meaning, as evidenced by the outcry of support from common people of both parties. This may be one of the only issues that the far left and the far right actually agree on.
Meanwhile, Luigi’s bullet had plenty of impact and plenty of meaning, as evidenced by the outcry of support from common people of both parties. This may be one of the only issues that the far left and the far right actually agree on.
Two things:
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The constituents of populist wings of both left (such as it exists in the US) and right have generally the same concerns but radically different views on what to do about them and how to do it. So executing a health insurance CEO from a company known specifically for denying care at a much higher rate than other insurance gets approval all around even if one side wants to solve the problem by nationalizing healthcare and assuming the government will fix it and the other by deregulating it and assuming the market will fix it.
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This is the best kind of political violence - the sort where it’s clear and obvious what the issue is, what message is being sent and there’s a clear line between the problem and the violence that goes right through the message. As opposed to say burning down a pawn shop with someone inside in the name of mistreatment of black people by law enforcement (Montez Terriel Lee, during the second night of BLM 2020 protests in Minneapolis).
We didn’t need to be patient. We didn’t effectively use the nonviolent tools are our disposal. They were too boring.
I disagree… change takes time. We’ve made tremendous incremental progress over the past 50-60 years. But it takes time to change laws and even longer to change cultures. Nonviolent protest and similar actions are useful and effective at building communities and cohesion, but less so at effecting change. For effective, long-lasting change we need to educate and advocate, which means engaging in the political process. I don’t know what magical “nonviolent tools” are at our disposal that can turn things around now a time frame that matters to us.
In the last 10 years or so we’ve been steam-rolled over by neoliberal and neoconservative forces bankrolled by the wealthy. The sophistication of this effort and the mechanisms employed are incredibly hard to oppose. You need only witness the recalcitrance of the Dems to shift toward even the most basic progressive goals.
Before the recent election I was advocating hard for Harris not because I don’t consider her essentially a neocon but because the alternative is going to be horrible. Pretty weak, I acknowledge. I also made similar statements as you with regard to not voting for her, even while I shared the feelings of betrayal, simply because it was so clear how much harder any progress was going to be under Trump.
We’re faced with an administration that will set us back decades on every front imaginable. We have 4 years or less to do everything we can to ensure that at a minimum we get to vote them out in 2028 and that the damage is as contained as possible. This isn’t the time for slow incremental change. This is the time to put politicians and the wealthy on notice and make sure they understand the consequences of engaging in even deeper fleecing of the American public.
That doesn’t mean we don’t do the hard, boring work of winning elections and engaging in the political process. To me it just means that isn’t enough right now. It probably won’t be enough for a long time to come. This is going to be a hard fight.
At this point, asking a generation or two to be patient is too big of a RISK. There are too many bad actors with overwhelming money and power working against us.
At this point, asking a generation or two to be patient is too big of a RISK.
1000% agree. But I wouldn’t even call it a “risk” because that implies there’s a chance it won’t suck. I think it’s a forgone conclusion where this administration is going and a forgone conclusion that the damage will take a generation or two to undo. And worse, I watched in abject horror as MAGA populism dragged the Democrats far to the right along with them. Fucking hell.
This is not a “fair” fight any more. We don’t get anything we want by being polite.
