Violence

I wonder, what would it take for people to resort to violence, and for the others not to think they have reacted somehow beyond reason.

By our standards today, the uprising of the American colonists against England would have been thought petulant, brutish, and almost certainly as rank terrorism with a blatant disregard for life. Now, the colonial people were not of immediate threat to their lives, nor to their property; they revolted for remarkably little as far as material reasons are concerned, much less than what we put up with from both out government and our corporations.

I saw a video the other day disputing claims that we are the most violent peoples on earth ever, that older societies had much more of a balance, their warfare being more for show than intending actual slaughter. Rather, says the video, as time has passed, war and cruelty have decreased steadily and significantly. It wears the assumption on its sleeve that this is a good thing.

What are you suggesting, Mr. Jacob? Blasphemy. Heresy. Am I suggesting violence is a good thing?

No. Not hardly. Though one must wonder about our propensity to sell ourselves for peace; to avoid confrontation not out of love, but out of fear. And most of all, to claim to be a self governed people, and yet vilify any and everyone who acts violently outside of the law, while at the same time upholding the rights of the state to not only use violence, but to provoke violence against it, that the victims might be called murderers themselves.

Nonsense. How it rules us. We are ruled by the letter of the law, not the intent, but we are afraid of ourselves and each other to such a great extent, that we dare not trust interpretation of the law, of its intentions, to the public at large. An FDA official attacks a small business, something so small as a child's lemonade stand, and we uphold the law? If we react the only way we can, with violence, we will be vilified. But what other way is there, besides a slow, strangling death of freedom, which leaves the body fully alive, to witness morosely its lacking of a soul. To have strangled that official, even to have ridden her out of town on a railroad tie, would have been considered a punishment in excess of her crime, for of course, she did not commit one, because it is not written.

Perhaps it is our fiction, the popular myths of the theater, of modern literature, which says we must wait...wait until it is in fact too late to sue for justice through violence? All too often, the hero is the one who waits, sees the 'foolish hotheads' do something stupid, which inevitably causes the death of the hero's own wife...then, and only then, when something personal has been taken away from you, is it reasonable to strike out. Strike for an ideal, for freedom, for others, and you are evil, forever tainted, branded a sinner, a traitor. Unless, of course, you wear the badge of the state, for we have given all the authority for justice up, not wishing it for ourselves.