But the road Chuck's taking has a dead end, especially in this country at this this time. Anarchism is a tendency, a fluid set of ideas that tap into the basic wiring of political awareness and desire. It flows from left to right and back again. But in Chuck's case, as in many cases (including mine long ago), anarchism becomes a pseudo-religion -- the Answer to Everything. You wear the big "A" with pride, convinced of your moral superiority over those who -- gasp! -- fly a flag in their front yard. I recall once while visiting a friend in Connecticut, we went to a party, and outside the condo hung a huge Stars & Stripes. Well, being the righteous anarchist I was, I immediately launched into an attack on the condo's owner, demanding to know what right he had flying the imperialist flag when the US was engaged in killing the Third World's poor. Did he know about El Salvador? Nicaragua? East Timor? Oh, I really let him have it. Yes sir. Chomsky would've been proud, I thought smugly to myself.
Well, doubtful. In any event, I've aged, gotten married, had kids, and live in a working class neighborhood where the sense of community and the voluntary sharing of material items is closer to my old anarchist dream than any amount of hours I spent as a hyper-youth hanging out with like-minded, self-described sullen anarchists in NY. And hopefully, as Chuck gets older, he'll see the patterns of the life I described above amid the hot and heavy rhetoric. Take the Red Pill, indeed.
DP