Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Dear George,   Be not afraid, Jesus is covering your ass.  Hark and heed what He has done for you.  He has gutted revolutionary action until all that is left is the toothless corpse of revolutionary activism.  Action is to activism as hundred-proof shine is to milk.    Action transforms reality; activism is hung up in vapid abstractions that skim the surface of reality as a flat stone skims the smoother surface of an evening lake at rest. Activism chokes on the tangled vegetation of symptoms; action cuts to the root cause.  Activism preaches; action participates.  Activism believes you change reality by changing the language; action knows that language changes only when reality changes.   The writer Paulo Freire explained it as follows: In the process of oppression the elites subsist on the “living death” of the oppressed and find their authenticity in the vertical relationship between themselves and the latter; in the revolutionary process there is only one way for the emerging leaders to achieve authenticity:  they must “die” in order to be reborn through and through with the oppressed.   This is why revolutionary activism will go nowhere in America.  Activists cling to their fragile egos so they equate rebirth with a fashion statement—change the costume, change the soul.  Consequently, they spend more time at the mall than on the barricades.   So party on, George, America’s revolutionary manifesto is a Mastercard statement.   Your admirer, Belacqua Jones 5:02:00 AM    comment []

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