Alternatively Speaking

Do you see the same fallacy I do? I never said I am necessarily advocating violence, individual or otherwise. When one finds oneself in struggle with an implacable enemy that is supremely ruthless, the enemy dictates the form that one’s response takes by necessity. If one's enemy resorts to the most brutish forms of violence then one is compelled, on pain of death for failure to do so, to respond in kind. Unlike other forms of conflict resolution, violence demands reactions on those it is practiced upon based on necessity, in order to live another day. not choice. It is either flight or fight. Except that in this case, the long overdue overthrow of a decayed and decrepit socio-economic order, otherwise known as Capitalism, there is no place to run if the better part of humanity is to avoid its continuing brutalization at its hands.

Beyond the philosophical technical issues in dealing with violence, particularly state violence, things have gone way too far for even a solid mass movement to prevail over the system. We've foolishly allowed the government to amass too much power. The legal framework for military dictatorship is about complete, elections can be counted on to be rigged (as Stalin infamously said: "it is not who casts the votes but who counts them"), traditional mass organizations such as unions have been decimated from both within and without, the two party system is nothing more than a sham and the masses have not shown an ability to snap out of the collective hypnosis engineered by the mass media. I think the folks at WSWS are crazy to think there is even a glimmer of hope for a mass movement to succeed in terminating the Capitalist system in a relatively peaceful manner. If by some miracle it were to happen, it would be the first time in its history that Capitalism did anything even resembling "going quietly in the night."

It is always important to know your enemy. The neo-nuts are OK with the use of torture, have bombed two countries back into the stone age as some of them have gleefully put it, engineered a backdoor pogrom targeting black folks in the wake of hurricane Katrina, are apparently about to attack their next victim Iran and did not hesitate to have Cindy Sheehan arrested. The people in power are not simply negligent or even simply criminally negligent; they are simply criminal. Like any hardened criminal, and they've proven this hands down already, when push comes to shove, they will kill. Moreover, they will kill en masse if they have to in order to stay in power. In the year 1989 Tiananmen Square was immortalized as a symbol of how the state reacts when seriously challenged. Ultimately the system's contradictions will explode and we will either have civil war (meaning a struggle between opposing Right wing forces) or revolution (meaning a struggle between opposing Right and Left wing forces) in this country. Either way, it is going to be painful and bloody. I believe the people at WSWS are either incredibly naive, simply want to position themselves to replace the current rulers or are simply holding their cards close to the vest. I guess we'll find out.