Late Stage Capitalism

I am not an elected official who has been empowered by the people I represent to use the resources of office to protect them when shit hits the fan. I cannot summon the National Guard to protect my people from the illegal activities of ICE. I do not have access to the funding and legal resources of that office to figure out how best to undercut and defy the regime in ways that actually hurt them to their core. I am not a public face of power that can go stand in front of a masked thug and both of us understand that if they shoot me the consequence of doing so escalates the conflict to a level even their masters would have to face. I’m just a dude who knows that a one man stand as a nobody is an invitation to annihilation and that I’m up against a hydra, not a snake. At best such actions might take out one head, but I’d die and the head would easily replace itself. For people such as me the significance of violence will arrive when it does and the choice is upon me to act in defense of others or not. That’s why I demand more of those who have put themselves in positions of leadership and authority to do more. Our enemy is not restrained by questions of legality or morality, they do as they please, when they please, and eventually if they go too far, they are the immunity qualified “law enforcement”, the judicial system, the legislative branch that will make it legal after the fact, and the executives ordering the action. Leaders who continue to play it safe and play by the rule book do so at our peril.

Reconciliation hamstrung any progress that might have been made after the Civil War. Confederate leaders were either mildly scolded, then allowed to become figure heads of the Lost Cause narrative, or slapped on the ass and told “good game”. The progress of the last 125 years, women’s suffrage, civil rights, the right to bodily autonomy, equality, queer rights fought long hard battles against conservatism, but after each victory came the mythology that achieve change one must suffer nobly, turn the other cheek, accept the violence and to fight back invalidates the win. Now we fight regressives, who not only want to halt progress, they’re undoing a century plus of gains that people struggled to achieve, both with peaceful protest and by meeting violence with violence. 

We’re not fighting for utopia. The long, slow, change you value that has taken over a century to achieve is being undone on the daily. They already destroyed abortion rights, now they’re re-enacting Jim Crow. They disregard due process and legal protections immigrants, illegal or legal, have. They arrest without warrants, they beat and kill for exercising your freedom of speech and assembly. They’ve gone so far beyond their norm they argue against the rights of the Second Amendment. That this is all being done illegally doesn’t stop women from dying in hospitals during miscarriages that should but can’t be medically dealt with, isn’t going to stop them from rigging the next election in their favor now and ignoring the lawsuits after, not to mention the damage they will do in the interim. It’s certainly not stopping them from murdering fisherman, starting a war with Iran, and kidnapping foreign leaders.

You don’t kill your way to a utopia, but they’re killing their way to a dystopia. If you see someone assaulting someone, do you wait for someone else to help, or do you accept the risk to yourself to limit the harm to the victim even if you know you’re going to get harmed in the process? I expect leaders to recognize the times they are living in, adjust their methods accordingly to protect their people from an increasingly violent and lawless aggressor, and expend every resource at their disposal to protect their people up to and including putting their lives on the line. They’re our leaders, we have them power and resources for a reason.