Ok, so what are we supposed to do about this? Stop working?
Doug
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Well, that's what I did in a twisted up rage. Fuck this shit. Fuck it all. I ain't gonna work on Maggie's Farm no more... On the other hand, as I wrote, ``How that trick is performed is something I don't know how to do--but just doing my `job' turned out to not be the answer.''
On the other hand, I suspect it would take less than a week, if millions did walk off their job to bring the US empire of the `innocent' to its knees.
Back to the argument. The problem is refusing to understand our (my) position and refusing to acknowledge it is complicity and is part of the oppression that is inflicted. The problem is hiding in the pretense that my `job' makes me a non-combatant gives me a deferment.
GWB was elected by this kind of denial. The whole `war on terrorism' is predicated on the `innocence' of everyone just doing their `job', just as a similar troupe is enacted in places like Israel.
So, when we get to this point:
``..Churchill has given aid & comfort to apologists for imperialism, which is a pretty awful offense. He's made it very difficult to talk seriously about the responsibility of the citizenry in a bourgeois democracy...''
On the contrary. He forced the point of responsibility of the citizenry in a bourgeois democracy--cum imperial trappings with nazis-lite decor--by denouncing the pretense of `innocence'.
It is the silent pretense of this so-called innocence that does the harm, continues the war. That's the trap the rightwing and its imperial power puts to anyone with a conscience: keep your mouth shut, go back to work, forget about it.
If you don't stand up to condemnation and retribution, then you sit out the war in silence. This whole act is a re-play of similar charges of `traitor' and `aiding the enemy' and so forth from the long forgotten Vietnam days. (We can stop the war, if we work within the system)
These jerks in power really are nazis and the more they are pushed (9/11) the more nazis-like they become (Afghanistan, Iraq, Abu Ghraib, etc)---and the less they are pushed (Kerry and the Democrats) the more nazis like they become (Swift Boat Vets, Iran is next...).
It is no-win, no-win either way.
The left is not going to politely tease out some recognition of responsibility for US imperial crimes by pretending the US public has nothing to do with those policies. And that is especially so now that a majority voted for the Bush motherfucker. They signed on to a completely known on-going crime performed in their name with their money and their kids.
The era of pretended innocence is over. (As if none of the previous cycles of `innocence' ever counted and were not part and parcel of the exact situation we face.)
Given the vote in 2004, Churchill is absolved ex post facto. We've got a real good resemblance to the Good German Red States doing their very best to silence guys like Churchill---exactly to cover their own culpability. Bush said so himself---the 2004 vote was retroactive permission.
And as final irony, non-irony, Malcolm X was denounced in exactly the same way for his comments on Kennedy's assassination---hurting the cause, alienating white liberal support, confusing the message of non-violence, etc, etc, etc... blah, blah, blah.
CG