indymedia | Being a god on Earth is a natural human desire, and saving someone else
is the closest we’ll ever come to achieving it. All Greek mythology and
every major religion that followed has really been devoted to that
single premise: the hero who leads the way is half god and half human,
fueled as much by pity as by power.
When the Greeks created the
heroic ideal, they didn’t choose a word that meant ‘Dies Trying’ or
‘Massacres Bad Guys.’ They went with ‘heros’---"protector." Heroes
aren’t perfect; with a god as one parent and a mortal as the other,
they’re perpetually teetering between two destinies. What tips them
toward greatness is a sidekick, a human connection who helps turn the
spigot on the power of compassion. Empathy, the Greeks believed, was a
source of strength, not softness; the more you recognized yourself in
others and connected with their distress, the more endurance, wisdom,
cunning, and determination you could tap into.
Conservatives
frequently say that socialists want to have everything handed to
them---that instead of complaining, they should be buckling up, showing
up to work every day, and achieving something the "hard way." This seems
a bit odd, considering that, all in all, achieving a complete and
revolutionary overhaul of long-standing economic and social structures
against the wishes of all the world’s centers of power is probably
harder than, say, becoming a reasonably successful middle manager with
two cars.
Our idea of what a revolution is like, how it is
carried out, and who it is carried out by has been warped by our own
cultural propaganda, and by the romantic Marxist propaganda of the
twentieth century. We have this idea that revolutions are led by
rational-minded, tea-sipping men in three-pointed hats who discuss the
rights of man while burning the candle at both ends. Or we’re warped by
the Marxist ideal of revolution: a rational, inevitable historical
process in which the most enlightened, most sympathetic, least
overdressed human beings team up with the Historical Trend itself to
effect a glorious, clean revolution. In fact, revolutions are messy,
ugly, gory affairs. Nowhere in our popular notion of revolutions are
such factors as stupidity, bad luck, unintended comedy, and revolting
madness allowed in. Yet most of the time revolutions are ‘led,’ by
people we would call nutcases and who indeed were considered nutcases
during their time---and in all likelihood were nutcases. While time and
distance provide a romantic view of revolutions, at the time when they
actually occur, they usually seem bizarre, uncalled-for, frightening,
and evil to their contemporaries, which is why they almost always seem
snuffed out at their inception.
Our lives and our movements
today are as shaped by the political prisoners who still sit behind
concrete walls as the prisons themselves invisibly shape the landscape
of the world we seek to make more just. Many have had their lives either
ended by the state or have been tried, convicted, and jailed for
nothing more than the crime of loving their people enough to attempt a
revolution in the United States.
They remain behind walls,
often isolated, and at times tortured for their political beliefs. To
accept this fact is to ask what ideas can be so dangerous that those who
hold it in their heads must be hidden from us? To understand that these
people and their circumstance do indeed exist is a necessary first step
for a country whose cloak of democracy keeps us in denial. Americans
believe political prisoners are a fact in countries like China, Iran,
and Cuba but live the lie of the US government’s denial of the existence
of US political prisoners within its borders.
We could live in
a sustainable, just, free, and peaceful world. And yet we are
descending into a world of perpetual wars; slavery; ignorance; overwork
side by side with unemployment; vacant homes side by side with
homelessness; specialization; crass materialism; contaminated food,
water, and air; destitution; despair.
Since the men in the
shadows are not about to change, the only hope is their removal from
power---by any means necessary. Unfortunately, given these men’s
cohesiveness and organizational skills, given their power over our
minds, given their ability to convince the vast majority to act against
its convictions and interests, given their success in establishing
cross-generational dynasties, such removal presents humanity with a
herculean task.
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