tell me where there's sanity

"When you get older, you'll understand." So speaks the purported voice of "realism" when cautioning on the pitfalls of youthful idealism. The underlying message is that once one has "bought in" or "sold out" or however one wants wants to spin it, logic dictates that hungry radicalism must give way to a defensive stance. Lock the doors, man the barricades, and beware the ravenous hordes that covet your treasures.

The rousing, yet polite debate in the comments of the Crass post from the other day got me to thinking about politics, specifically where I stand on the ideological spectrum these days. I've dabbled with the various -isms on the left side of the dial over the years -- flirtations both tempestuous and mild with anarchist, socialist, and communist schools of thought. I'm a registered Democrat, but voted SWP and Green in a couple of elections, and have a lasting mistrust of self-labeled "liberals" and "progressives" over the recurring lack of conviction and undercurrents of paternalism on their part.

In the end, doctrinal semantics or theories built on wishful thinking matter less to me than a core principle, namely that everyone deserves a fair shake and equal access to essential goods and services. Egalitarianism is the cornerstone, and the rest is just trivia to be endlessly debated in closed, self-defeating circles.

Dogma and abstract theory have no purpose towards this end. My idealism is rooted in pragmatism forged by years of empirical evidence. Alliances and associations are made and broken depending on how well they serve the greater objectives, and if that means participating a electoral system that is fundamentally broken for the sake of seeing that rights are extended to those who deserve them or defended from those who would subvert them, then so be it. I would rather play a short term game for tangible benefits than a dubious long term strategy that hurts many in the meantime.

I'm with the Enlightenment thinkers on this: People will be people, no matter how educated they are, and the the best we can really strive for is to encourage the better angels of our nature and mitigate the impact of the worse ones.

No revolution, no shift in the political paradigm, no amount of education will eradicate the intrinsic pettiness of the human animal. Trust in socialist revolution and you end up with Year Zero. Trust in free-market self-interest and you end up with...well, take a look around at the mess we're mired in. Trust in mutual co-operation based on shared interests, and it's likely that you've never had to sit through the collective paralysis and bickering of a union gathering or town meeting.

Education and faith mean less than a modicum of awareness and a functioning sense of empathy. The framework of modern civilization has gotten so elaborate and the threads of interdependence so convoluted that it is too easy to fall into a false sense of moral hazard, so that even when the consequences of one's actions manifest themselves it is an easy enough matter to deny, shift, or ignore the blame.

Barring some massive depopulation of the species and a return to scattered tribes of hunter-gatherers, a shift from psuedo-free market capitalism to autonomous soviets or nationalized industries will not address the real problem. Indoctrination of the abolition of currency will not prevent the emergence of would-be Dick Cheneys looking for angles to exploit.

It's a classic Catch-22: Revolutionary change without a mass awakening in civic vigilance is pointless, but if the masses possessed such a sense of vigilance, a revolution would be redundant.

Ten Years After - I'd Love to Change the World (from A Space in Time, 1971) - The sound of the 1960s counterculture collapsing in on itself.

Comsat Angels - Waiting for a Miracle (from Waiting for a Miracle, 1980) - What's the difference between a miracle and the 134 bus? The 134 bus does show up on rare occasions. The only historical inevitability is that people will do foolish things for foolish reasons.

Friday Night Fights: Don't Ignore It

This week's contribution to Bahlactus's never ending battle (black and white edition) also doubles as my belated observance of International Workers' Day. My radical leftist beliefs may be tagged with all manner of pragmatic and pacifistic qualifiers, but that doesn't mean I won't rally to the black and red banners when the Internationale begins to play...or when the forces of exploitive reactionarism are on the rampage (which is pretty much all the time these days).

Live in the now, think towards the future, but always keep the events of past in mind...

To that end, I present this piece of political street theatre as practiced in 1928 Germany:

(from Berlin: City of Stones, Book One by Jason Lutes)
"Don't rejoice in his defeat, you men. For though the world stood up and stopped the Bastard, the Bitch that bore him is in heat again." - Bertolt Brecht, May 6, 1945

"When fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." - Sinclair Lewis

"I think the number one issue people should make [in the] selection of the President of the United States is, ‘Will this person carry on in the Judeo-Christian principled tradition that has made this nation the greatest experiment in the history of mankind?’" - Sen. John McCain

Danny Ray - Revolution Rock (from Revolution Rock: A Clash Jukebox, 2004) - Rather than post The Clash's cover of the song, I decided to get back to the roots (rock) and share the original version from 1976.