I shall continue to be an impossible person so long as those who are now possible remain possible. - Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin

Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. - Jesus, in John 8:32

Saturday, May 4, 2013

BEING PUSHED INTO INSURRECTION

I have a good friend, a conservative (yes, it's possible) with whom I carry on extremely interesting dialogues.
He shared an opinion with me, and I want to share my somewhat angry partisan response with anyone who's interested. I have been brutally honest in my response.
------------------------------------
He said, "I get the sense that a lot of conservatives are feeling "backed into a corner" to the point where violence is beginning to look like a viable option to almost half of them. "

MY RESPONSE
"Backed into a corner..." How? And how should the left be appropriately and adequately servile? By having their personal rights abridged? By having money poured into wealthy coffers while too many poor people hunger and each day more are foreclosed or evicted? By slashing funding for education? By taking relatively inexpensive meals away from children? By legislating limits on women's rights to determine their own health care? By gerrymandering certain voting blocks out of existence?
I am damned tired of a partisan political position based on superiority and exclusivity and greed insisting that they are being 'damaged' by those who call for more equity and justice. If the conservatives feel they are being backed into a corner, that's because that's EXACTLY what the far right leaders WANT them to believe. This is an orchestrated chasm.
Tell me realistically what pressure the left is exerting on the right.
Tell me realistically what understanding the left is failing to show.
And tell me where the left has failed to meet in the middle, while the right diligently reaches across the aisle.
Hell, we have a man in the White House who is a traditional moderate Republican. He fails to use the veto, he fails to use executive orders, he has capitulated on just about EVERY major economic and social issue during his tenure.
OK, time for a little honestly, since we're talking about a subject as monumental as armed insurrection; the right is looking for a reason to fight just to reclaim class superiority, and the sad thing is they don't have to reclaim it. They have it. But in modern American psyche, that's not enough. They want to cement it and see themselves as the conquering heroes of the white, Euro-centric, entitled American dream. Willing to kill because their so-called leaders have told them that the left wants to take away their white picket fence.
We have way too many people in this nation who are concerned about nothing other than themselves (and possibly their family). We no longer house Americans who are concerned about their neighbors, their community, or even their country if their country isn't doing their bidding. And we certainly don't house Americans who see themselves as Christian in the real sense, embracing the idea of being part of all creation and caring about others in the world.
We're now seeing the beginnings of the cyclic return to the Civil War. And all of the phony rhetoric of that era, used to mask the real goals of economic greed and cultural superiority is being replaced with new phony rhetoric, that masks the same goals today as then: economic greed and cultural superiority.
It is my opinion that for the most part and with very few exceptions, the far right has become the very worst that our nation would permit them to be. Self-absorbed, entitled, vain, angry, greedy, with a totally perverted concept of the equanimity of democracy and the decency of Christianity, and willing to kill to maintain their superiority and position. God help us.