Morocco is the most honest place I’ve ever been. Many years ago, it gave me a dozen stitches and a broken arm. There are few things more honest than a broken arm. I likely killed one of my assailants. That was honest, too. I think killing someone is probably as honest as you can be.
We liberals need to be honest about violence. The oft-said cliché of the quill besting the sword is a myth repeated by people of breeding and good education as they sip expensive reds. They are people who lecture us with safe and tired arguments that have earned them a good living and achieved almost nothing for the rest of us. Honesty is recognizing the value that violence has wrought. Wars, strikes, vandalism, fire bombs, riots, assault and broken windows cause change. Little else does. Certainly not clever hands on the keys; our liberal elite craft books, letters and stern editorials from their comfortable lives and change little or nothing.
If you want to have a conversation about police brutality, burn down a police station. You’ll get your conversation. To be sure, there is no joy in broken glass or burning buildings. There is no joy in stitches, fractured bones or death, but there is the satisfaction of having been honest, of being acknowledged, of causing people to think about you, your life, your wellbeing, of knowing that your hunger is not without recourse, not without purpose. Admittedly, there is a passion to violence, a physical and spiritual lust, the deep satisfaction that comes from settling a score, of showing people with power what true power is; the power of material destruction, the power of bodily injury, the power of death.
For a liberal to call for violence is out of character. The liberal credo is much like the Hippocratic oath; “First, do no harm.” Except that the Hippocratic oath doesn’t say that (ironically, the Hippocratic Oath does forbid abortion, but that’s not this conversation). Likewise, we liberals should look at our beliefs and our history and ask ourselves, why is violence off the table? We every day accept violence brought by the society around us, the violence of poverty, the violence of poor education, the violence of inaccessible health care, the violence of bigotry and stigma, the violence of a failing climate, the violence of law enforcement, the violence of unjust incarceration. Why is this state-sponsored violence, which has caused the misery and early deaths of so many for so long, so acceptable? And why is a violent response so taboo?
There is no power in stewing and chewing the gnawed bones discarded by the wealthy. The power’s in the taking, in the wresting of wellbeing from those who would not give it freely; the power’s in causing the wealthy to reflect on the thin and delicate branch of their perch. It’s in acknowledging that there is such a thing as wellbeing and that we are all due wellbeing; we are all due food, a roof, a bed, a doctor, a teacher, an opportunity to celebrate the fact of our being.
The pursuit of wealth beyond wellbeing is a fool’s errand. It’s a pursuit for people who don’t comprehend the marvel of life, nor its brevity, nor their unearned good fortune in living it. These are people without the intellectual capacity or sense of irony to recognize life for the remarkable moment that it is. These are people without empathy, people who mistake owning for success. That their eighty years of life, never to be repeated, will be best observed through the crap they surround themselves with; toys, mansions, sycophants and genuflecting politicians. They’re dupes and fools, the bunch of them. But the wealth they’re taking is yours and mine, it’s our wellbeing. We need them to stop. And they won’t stop by asking them nicely.
