Insurrectionist Envy
Deep down, we wish we had their guts (minus the insanity & violence)
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Fasten your seatbelts. I have something I want to say. Something I probably shouldn’t. Right now it’s just you and me here. The security cameras are turned off. The NSA guy who monitors my calls, Fred, has taken the day off. I’m glad, because I need to say something to you and I need you to admit you’ve been thinking the same thing, too.
Aside from the violence, aside from their despicable racism and misogyny, aside from the fact that we vehemently oppose everything they stand for — the truth is, that deep down in your soul, as you watched what your eyes could not believe was happening, admit to me that in that appalling moment on January 6, 2021, you were — how do I say it — jealous that it was the fascists who had risen up, and not us long before now. Again, not jealous of the unforgivable violence they unleashed. Rather, I’m suggesting that there’s a small piece of you and me that has wished for just once in our lives we had that kind of courage, that resolve, that rage of conscience and commitment to just not effing put up with this shit any longer.
Deep, deep down we ask ourselves why didn’t we do this when there was a real theftof an election in November of 2000? We did not storm the barricades of the hanging chads in Florida. We did not surround the Supreme Court when they handed the White House to the man who lost.
We did not storm the Pentagon in August of 1964 on the day after Lyndon Johnson lied to the American people, telling us that the Vietnamese had attacked one of our ships in the Gulf of Tonkin.
And last week, as the Republican politicians in Texas declared their ownership of the reproductive organs of all women in Texas, we the majority did not rush to Austin and nonviolently encircle the state capitol building, take down the Texas flag, and refuse to leave until they removed their filthy hands from the bodies of the 173 million American women they wish to control. We are just months away from the Supreme Court’s own grubby hands doing just that — and what, my friends, are we going to do about that? Right now the Trump Court should be quivering in their boots, not from fear of our violence (we are nonviolent), but simply because they know WE are the majority, WE elected a House, a Senate, a President who believe what WE believe — and as long as this barely remains a Democracy and there are millions more of us than there are of them, they need to fear our wrath, the wrath of this Democracy, that WE are nonviolently coming for them and WE are not leaving until they back down from their stated desire to declare women 3/5 of a man.
Tens of thousands of you have been wrongly turned away from the voting booth, stripping you of your constitutional right to elect YOUR representatives. You’ve been shown the door, tossed to the curb like the garbage they say you are. Why is it not your very next move - and we, your neighbors, OUR very next move - to put on our Viking headgear and run like wild men and women with the force of hundreds of thousands of us, nonviolently storming the chambers of our state Capitols and NOT LEAVING until they give us back our voting rights?
We all talk a good line about climate and the environment and the destruction of our planet — but really folks, if you TRULY and ABSOLUTELY believed that the end of the world is near, you’d be right now running and screaming down the middle of the West Side Highway like your hair was on fire, on your way to Wall Street with nonviolent clubs in your hands, or storming down Grand Boulevard to General Motors HQ in Detroit to shut them the fuck down, or flying like crazed banshees down Market Street in San Francisco to PG&E and nonviolently show them what it would look like for their executives to be without power, or a million of us in the Potomac on anything that floats and nonviolently surround Joe Manchin’s yacht and tow that bastard away, safely, so he doesn’t cause harm to anyone else.
You would do that, wouldn’t you, because you believe the earth is at its end, because you believe women’s bodies are their own and no one else’s, because you believe the police do not have the right shoot a Black kid in the back and laugh about it later, and because you believe your sick baby has a HUMAN RIGHT to see a doctor! And for THAT you would join MILLIONS in the street, right now, to demand that this State violence, these corporate attacks on WE the people must end and we will not relent until this madness ends.
But you and I will not do that. Why? Because we’re afraid? Because if the planet isn’t worth dying for, then the planet won’t be worth living on. That’s the ultimate fight and it’s been that way throughout history, throughout all the struggles to make people free. And if your children, your control of your reproductive organs, your right to vote, and the death of this planet aren’t worth the fight, then let’s just say that out loud, be honest with ourselves and get back to arresting the hooligans of January 6th because that’ll show ‘em — and it will make us feel better about ourselves because we would never do what they did! And because we will not rise up, well, the shame of knowing that about ourselves and revealing it to the White Supremacists who at least have the courage of their sick convictions — that’s just too much to bear. In the summer of 2020 we showed the world the largest nationwide demonstrations ever and the murderous cop was sent to prison and Trump was sent packing — and then what? So all we have left to do is throw Steve Bannon in jail? And then we can get back to the real fight of recycling our pop bottles, putting some solar panels on our roofs and whatever else our environmental leader Mike Bloomberg and his Sierra Club tell us to do? Because we all know, deep, deep down, the fix is in, our Democracy is in shreds, Black Lives don’t really matter and it’s too late now to stop Planet Earth from spinning off into the sunset of its demise because we ignored the real radical environmentalists and the teenage student from Sweden and went with the sell-outs instead. All this, because we secretly admire how the Right fights, wins, stands their ground, and never backs down. Even when they KNOW there are far many more of us than there are of them. They don’t care. This is THEIR country and we can either go eff ourselves or just go whine in the corner, wringing our hands about how “we’re going to lose the House and the Senate next year! And Trump will be back in 2024!” By the Democrats failing to deliver on most of Biden’s promises, we may depress the vote in 2022 and make that our self-fulfilling prophecy. Yes, we secretly admire the Right — not because of their bigotry and fascism, but because they get the job done.
Partly I think we have been satisfied by our little “victories”… electing the first African-American President, convicting the man who murdered George Floyd, getting Trump out of the White House, getting the majority in the Senate. We’re too lazy to fight for more. Things aren’t that bad for us white privileged people… why should we stick our necks out for our black and brown brothers and sisters? We need to start caring for all of us. Maybe that will be the day we non-violently storm the Capitol.
The corrupted Supreme Court has sent a clear signal that they will kill Roe. They won't stop there. They will overturn Obergefell, Griswald, Loving and I would not put it past them to overturn the Brown decision as well. They are going to take us back to Jim Crow.
Is that the breaking point?
Or will it take the corrupted court to kill Social Security and Medicare to finally wake people up from the narcosis of Ayn Rand's selfishness?