On the Kirk business

Look. I would prefer to live in a world where no one ever gets shot. For any reason. Whatsoever. But I am neither kind nor compassionate enough to feel anything but a sense of grim justice when it happens to one of the people actively working to prevent us from living in a world like that.

It’s not pleasure. It’s not glee. It’s a deep, gritty sense of seeing someone reap what they have sown.

I’m seeing a lot of my liberal-leaning friends posting about their concerns about an uptick in violence as a result of this, and I am so sorry, but you are right. That uptick has been inevitable from the moment Trump got elected the first time.

I remember saying, back then, to my USAian friends, your system is failing you. It is not democracy, it is autocracy. It is oligarchy. The only way you win this is by dismantling the system, and the wealthy have been working on this so long that at this stage the only way I can see it being dismantled is through revolution. Back then people still believed that it could be changed from the inside. I heard a lot of: “But revolution is so messy - innocent people will die.” Even then, my response was, innocent people are already dying.

I have watched the downfall of the USA empire over the last ten years. Everything since Obama has been down. He was a small shining light, but even he was too moderate, too trusting in the systems and the basic decency of humanity. Bless him, I believe he is a good man, and he worked miracles within the constraints imposed on him because he wouldn’t break the rules. But the rules, even then, were working against him.

Since then, the Democrats have tried to walk this neo-liberal middle of the road path. I reposted a thing on FB recently where Stuart Stevens said: “There is nothing in the middle of the road but yellow lines and dead armadillos.” This is my new favourite quote about neo-liberalism. The Democrats had Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, and they chose Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. The US two party system means that the difference between the two parties is not nearly as big as it should be. Both Clinton and Biden are Democrat royalty, and that’s why they got the nominations. They were moderate, and didn’t scare the white collar liberals with wild socialist ideals like “maybe in a society we have an obligation to care for the most vulnerable in that society”. And that’s why they got the nominations. And they were the wrong ones. I’m not sure what would have happened if Warren or Sanders had got it, but Biden was a BandAid on a gushing wound.

I hate to say this, and I hope I am wrong. But I think that the only possible road right now is some kind of full scale dismantling of the political system. And I don’t think that’s going to happen without a revolution. Revolutions are violent. People do die. I don’t want people to die violently because a bunch of rich guys don’t want to give up their grip on power. But I am a student of history, and there has never once in the history of humanity been a case where the oppressors have given up their power because someone argued at them with the right words, or because it was the right thing to do. It has always been because they no longer had a choice.

I have spent the last ten years hoping I’d be proved wrong, and I have been proved right again and again and again. The situation that the US is currently in is the inevitable, logical end result of a system that was built by a bunch of slave-owning colonial puritans 400 years ago. And it is long past time that USAians came to terms with the fact that the system they like to proclaim as the height of democracy doesn’t even meet the basic precept that everyone’s vote count equally. That the two party system that has developed has become a choice between two lots of very wealthy people, one batch of whom is inclined to help the vulnerable and one batch of whom is inclined to kill them. So there’s an obvious (I would think) good choice, but only by comparison.

Innocent people are already dying. Every person who dies from something treatable because they can’t afford the exorbitant medical bills in the US is an innocent person killed by the system. Every person put into what amounts to concentration camps for people the current administration considers “not American enough”, who dies from the awful conditions is innocent. Every black kid shot by a policeman for walking while black. Every trans or gay person who kills themself because they can’t see any way to exist in a society that wants them miserable or dead. Every child in Gaza who starves because of a long history of allegiance between the US and Israel. It’s all connected.

I wish there was another way. I hope I am wrong. I desperately wish I could get every person I love out of there to a civilised country where they would be safe, but even saving the people I care about is not enough. I can see the road. I can only hope it is short, and targeted, and that you have enough people left at the end with the strength and character to build something better from the wreckage.

I don’t want to see people get shot. It does not bring me joy, no matter who they are. But I am pragmatic enough to know that if the authorities are coming for your neighbours and your children, you’re not going to convince them with pretty words. I’m good at pretty words. I wish they were enough. But they never have been. Strap on your boots and dig out your courage. You’re going to need them.