On Peace And Power

 

I hold some truths to be self-evident. There's a resistance in my chest when I am confronted by what my heart reads as false. That internal pressure--that's the signature of a principle.

Who knows where my principles come from? A lifetime visceral revulsion at violence, for sure. Or a learned distrust of statements that scrub out doubt and detail in favor of certitude and a simple slogan.

Some things are simply factually wrong. The right wing specializes in those. Thugs in black are not traveling by airplane to destroy your suburb. There are no, do I need to say it, lizard people. The thing about lizard people is if you believe in them, you will believe in them hard. You will lock on like a pit bull on a poodle. We can blast you with a fire hose of truth and you will not let go. So we move on.

But we hear other things, from other quarters. They get repeated. Every age has its platitudes, but time does not always redeem them. Gosh, we used to believe love was all you need, and it isn't.

One thing we're hearing now is that all protest is equally worthy. That there is no wrong way. That we can't tell other people how to resist.

Bullshit. Of course we can. Perhaps what is meant is that we can't tell people how to feel. And since we can't know what it's like to be in their skin, we can't be critical of their actions. It's a platitude from a new age in which all voices are encouraged, and every opinion entertained. If Tyler wants to burn a dumpster for civil rights, shouldn't he be allowed to express himself? Well, that's one special kind of emotional anarchy, one in which every response is as righteous as every other, and every individual must be a vigilante for the truth as they see it. And if so, that must be extended to those who murder abortion doctors and those who show up in the town square bristling with assault rifles in defense of the freedom to bristle. Should Tyler's country cousin storm a wildlife refuge for the liberty to plunder public lands?

And we hear that if peaceful protest hasn't gotten us anywhere, violence and destruction will. Peacemaking is naïve and ineffectual. That's what warriors have been insisting for thousands of years, but if warring ways have gotten us any closer to peace and justice, I haven't seen it.

I read a quote from Martin Luther King that was trotted out in service of this notion that all protest is legitimate. "I think," he said, "that we've got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard." Which meant he understood why people riot. He sympathized. As Pope Paul VI said, "If you want peace, work for justice." Absolutely.

But telling people how to protest is exactly what John Lewis and King did. The Freedom Riders were trained in passive resistance. It took work, practice, courage. It wasn't easy. It isn't natural. Blood was shed. But the power of peaceful resistance is immense. It can move mountains.

We can't tell other people how to protest? Of course we can. We can distinguish between raw feeling and wise action. We can strategize. Under our big, broad tent, we can insist people not pee in the kitchen area.

Same for any blanket characterization. It's easier to look at the world this way, assign people simple uniforms of good and evil and play them in our heads like checkers, but it won't be true, and the truth will out. There are a lot of good ideas for police reform and defunding. But when you deride cops as an evil monolith, you've lost me. Because I know it's unfair. It's untrue. It's lazy. There's plenty of work to be done, but you will not achieve justice with a false premise.

I'm sure it's satisfying to punch a Nazi. It's also a great way to get a lot of people dead and keep a lot of the wrong people in power. Let your heart ache, but use your head.

This town is all in for Black Lives Matter. It's not even controversial. So the Patriot Prayer Boys are coming back on the 26th. There is nothing this gang of outsiders likes better than to costume up, invade our home as if it's enemy territory--and it is--and holler about their favorite little fragment of the Constitution. To provoke a predictable response and get it made into a poster for the evil empire. Maybe spark a war. Why do we want to give them exactly what they want?

Let's stay home for a day. Or gather peacefully in a glory of numbers, miles away from them, and sing. Sing anything. America the Beautiful. Build Me Up Buttercup. Let's dispatch one dude with a tuba to march around the Proud Boys with derp music. How flimsy a fist will get when its target turns away! Let's ignore the incel army and watch them go limp.

If you value peace you stand up for it every time. And you work for justice.

In Portland, They Are Literally Asking For It

On August 17, right-wing agitators assembled in Portland for the stated purpose of drawing out violent opposition. They numbered about 300; resisters about 1000; two bridges were closed, local businesses lost about $3 million, and taxpayers ponied up $2 million for the police presence.

I'm coming around. And Trump gets the credit.

I've got principles. They're not always the thought-out kind. They live in my gut rather than my head. For instance: if something is fundamentally unkind, it's fundamentally wrong. And: the ends don't justify the means, because in the end all you have is means. And: violence is wrong.

That last one's visceral as hell. I have hardly ever witnessed violence. Mom spanking me on the fanny doesn't count. I don't even remember that except the times I didn't think I had it coming, which was twice, and even then her case could be made. I saw two boys punching each other at the school bus stop once when I was about ten. Everyone else was egging them on and I was running away with my hands over my ears. I can't even watch boxing on TV. Do people realize they're actually hitting each other? 

So I've been dismayed by the small faction of us anti-fascists that likes to come out swinging. Some of my dismay is thought-out. The tactic plays into the hands of our enemies, and fascists are our enemies. If they're coming to little Portland specifically to score points by attracting predictable violent resistance, why give them what they want? We should ignore them. Or surround them in stupefying numbers, preferably serenading them with tubas, kazoos, and slide whistles.

But I've already seen what the right wing machine is doing with our activist fringe. They are shocked, shocked that Liberals are resorting to violence when they don't agree with what someone is saying! Trump's all over it. Unacquainted with irony, he perches his podium on the backs of terrorized children and the bullet-ridden bodies of the innocent, and he tells his mob of knuckle-draggin', mosque-bombin', immigrant-bashin', pasty-faced vigilantes that Antifa are domestic terrorists. And that means they can be rounded up, along with any sympathetic souls in the vicinity. I know how this story ends. The world has seen it before. And if it happens, Portland, at least, is going to go all Spartacus on their asses. I'll suit up in black and a bandanna myself, and so will 100,000 more of us. Arrest us all, mofos.

I put this question of violence to Dave, and after he hawed, and hemmed, and bobbled opposing talking points on either hand, he said it didn't necessarily matter what he thought, because all our shared history confirms what we'd both do: if confronted by a bunch of Nazis mouthing off, he'd start pummeling, and I would run away with my hands over my ears.

Weirdly, the only people I have ever felt like actually unleashing my tiny fist of fury on were racists. It's just as well I've never followed through. I'd probably bounce off, and my victim would be left absently flicking knuckle cells off his nose and looking around for the mosquito. I'm not big.

Here's how my own fantasy plays out. The leader of the Proud Puffy Patriot Prayer Peenie Preeners postures and prances onto a platform, three-quarters erect in his body armor and flag underpants, and begins to rattle on about his various favorite amendments for no reason whatsoever. I make my way up to the platform--Excuse me, sonny, pardon me--in a clean flowered housedress and sensible shoes and I tip into the microphone and say Now, now, honey, you're all upset. Why don't you go home and put your feet up for a while, and have a nice lemonade, and then when you're feeling better you can go out and see if there's something nice you can do for somebody. Someone will want to have sex with you eventually, honey, just you wait and see!

In the meantime, what the hell. I still don't think you can violent your way to peaceful. But if a handful of our anti-fascists wants to smack some Nazis, I say, give 'em one for me.

All Dressed Up For The Brawl

We'd walked all the way downtown anyway, so I said, Well heck. Let's go watch the rallies.

What rallies, Dave wanted to know?

That would be your Patriot Prayer rally, with guest appearances from the Proud Boys, plus the other contestants, Antifa and a group of Reg'lar People like us.

Who are the Proud Boys, Dave wanted to know?

I'd looked them up. According to Wikipedia, they're boys who are proud of being white, and also they don't masturbate, in case that prevents them from getting off the sofa and going out to find a real woman.

Dave elected not to pursue.

Patriot Prayer is a right-wing group based in nearby Vancouver, Washington, where people from Portland go if they want to escape the tyranny of taxes and decent civilization. "Patriot Prayer" is one of those names you cook up if you want to rattle the opposition with otherwise inoffensive words. Like if I started a group called "Divine Uterus."

We walked along the waterfront; I'd heard that was where the action was. There were blue flashing police lights in the distance. The closer we got, the more people seemed to be wearing outfits. Everyone gets an outfit! We were puzzled. Some of the people--all right, they were all men--were wearing American flags. Some of them had bandanas over their faces. Some had, what do you call them, flak jackets? Big puffy vests anyway--not at all slimming. Everyone was playing dress-up.

"I can't tell who is who," I told Dave. The folks who had cut up flags into clothing might appear to be our vaunted Praying Patriots, but maybe the flag was being worn ironically. There didn't seem to be much violence in the air at this point, just a lot of milling about, although the Patriots had promised to come packing.

Per my query, a gentleman explained he was wearing a bullet-proof vest to protect him from the counter-demonstrators.

"Couldn't you just stay home?"

Evidently not. They were here to demonstrate free speech, or something. I'm all for it. ACLU supporter and everything. Their little get-ups looked more like a provocation than protection but in either case that's free speech too. I'm not sure why they're worked up about it. We do have free speech. Could it be they think free speech means nobody is allowed to object to it?

The gentleman next to the large bullet-proof fellow was saying something about the state of our country that--I'm sorry, I know it's not polite--made me laugh out loud at him. Kind of a lot. Also I may have blown a fart noise at him. Twice. Whereupon he loudly informed me that I'm in fucking denial.

"Language, son, language!"

I believe the inciting comment was "It was Obama who divided us, as soon as he got in."

Huh. Well, he did flush out the bigots pretty fast, I'll give him that.

But, sonny! Why get all het up about free speech and then spend it on profanity? Never mind. I have other questions.

Why call yourself Patriots and then turn around and desecrate the flag?

Do you have star-spangled underpants on too?

About that Prayer. Didst thou know thou art to enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly? Of course thou did. Everyone knowth that.

Isn't this a beautiful day? Isn't it nice to get out of the basement for a while? Did your mom pack you snacks? I hope your mom packed you snacks.

Dave began to steer me away. He is not a macho dude and has never, and would never, intervene in any fight I might want to pick. Unless he senses I'm in actual danger, which hasn't happened yet. Nevertheless, he doesn't care for my interest in picking fights with Nazis.

We walked a bit from the epicenter of things and only then discovered that all of the dressed-up boys were far-right types, and then there was a four-lane street with police in it, and then on the other side was the crowd of anti-fascists and Reg'lar People like us. It's like the Revolutionary War. Everyone gets spruced up in their uniforms and colors, and then they stand in a line and face each other, and maybe there will be some blam-blam. It always seemed like a silly way to conduct a war, albeit orderly. When Dave and I came up on the backside of our merry Patriots, we were accidental guerrillas.

Far out.

Anyway that was the whole problem. Here we were, just a little late for the ceremony, and there wasn't an usher to direct us to the correct side of the aisle. Our friends were over there, and here we were with the batshit brigade. Oh, well. Do you, Dave, and you, Murr, promise to defend the Constitution and fight the forces of autocracy and hatred for as long as you both shall live?

We do.