Gimme that old time revolution...
I'm kind of missing the old time revolutionary days. Thinking about the grito de delores reminded me of that. There was a time where you could believe that all the old hide bound privileged people would give way to a world of true egalitarian justice.
(Voice like a southern sheriff arresting an innocent black man--or like our current president): You talkin' 'bout cominism! You pinko!
Yes, sort of. It needn't be perfect orthodox Marxism. It could be a peasant revolution--like the Mexican revolution--or some kind of reformist revolt at first (like Cuba and Nicaragua before the cold war got in the way).
Or not a war kind of revolution but a social justice movement--the civil rights movement, the global justice movement that recently fizzled a bit but still simmers slightly (although that one really suffered from this current hopelessness I'm trying to describe).
I don't know what I'm going on and on about--There really was this dream of perfecting the social world. Making life worthwhile for everyone--or nearly everyone. Something happenedto destroy this. It wasn't an accident. But this vision seems well nigh destroyed.
Maybe even without the thousands killed in covert actions by the U.S. and the corrupt populists taking over people's movements for their own benefit in the Third World and the unstoppable force of corporations and their wealth....maybe it never would have worked anyway.
But what we have now is nothing but greater wealth for fewer and fewer as our vision of the future. Almost no vision for liberation or equality or justice that people have faith in--even if they still desire those things. Just perpetual expansion of markets and this war that is supposed to never end. The forces promoting this seem so powerful now. Is it truly hopeless?
I'm kind of missing the old time revolutionary days. Thinking about the grito de delores reminded me of that. There was a time where you could believe that all the old hide bound privileged people would give way to a world of true egalitarian justice.
(Voice like a southern sheriff arresting an innocent black man--or like our current president): You talkin' 'bout cominism! You pinko!
Yes, sort of. It needn't be perfect orthodox Marxism. It could be a peasant revolution--like the Mexican revolution--or some kind of reformist revolt at first (like Cuba and Nicaragua before the cold war got in the way).
Or not a war kind of revolution but a social justice movement--the civil rights movement, the global justice movement that recently fizzled a bit but still simmers slightly (although that one really suffered from this current hopelessness I'm trying to describe).
I don't know what I'm going on and on about--There really was this dream of perfecting the social world. Making life worthwhile for everyone--or nearly everyone. Something happenedto destroy this. It wasn't an accident. But this vision seems well nigh destroyed.
Maybe even without the thousands killed in covert actions by the U.S. and the corrupt populists taking over people's movements for their own benefit in the Third World and the unstoppable force of corporations and their wealth....maybe it never would have worked anyway.
But what we have now is nothing but greater wealth for fewer and fewer as our vision of the future. Almost no vision for liberation or equality or justice that people have faith in--even if they still desire those things. Just perpetual expansion of markets and this war that is supposed to never end. The forces promoting this seem so powerful now. Is it truly hopeless?
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