John-John, RIP

Eric Beck rayrena at accesshub.net
Tue Jul 20 13:54:10 PDT 1999


Alex harangues:


>Christ, all the fawning makes one wonder if people truly want to be free.
> It's no wonder that for the past quarter century or so Leftists have
>been looking to the Third World for liberation struggles. Apart from a
>few brave labor and black liberation fighters, this country is full of
>snivellers.

Alex, this sounds eerily similar to the stuff that Ken Lawrence was taunting you with a few months ago: that is, that you were not living up to his "brave" example, that you were "sniveller" yourself; in essence, that you weren't doing things the way he thought they should be done. Now you are projecting your expectations onto the masses. I found it pretty repellant on him, and I don't think it looks very good on you either.

Are you sure that all this fawning you so rightfully despise is not just a media creation, that it only represents a small portion of real people? I don't know too many people that are completely distraught over this thing. Even on television, the newspeople announce that people are shocked and saddened, then proceed to show people who are pretty blase and indifferent. Let me make it clear that I am pessimistic about the current political temperature in this country, and pretty depressed about the apathy of all the classes, lower, working, middle, upper, whatever. But this kind of chest-thumping gains nothing. Plus, I think it's misdirected anger.

Is it possible that leftists have looked to the Third World because it is much more romantic than revolt in their backyard, because revolution and struggle are much prettier to think about than to participate in?

I don't pretend to know the answers to these questions. But I'm not going to assume that because the media represents a situation a certain way, or because a few leftists look halfway across the globe for their revolutionary fix, that all 270 million of us should be flushed down the toilet.

Eric



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