Cary Tennis' Wicked Volley

Candor of this magnitude requires guts. Responding to a professor torn between academia and radical activism, Salon's Cary Tennis has this to say:

At a certain point in the near future, if the current oligarchy cannot be removed via the ballot, direct political action may become an urgent and compelling mission. It may then be necessary for many people in many walks of life to put their bodies on the line. For the moment, however, although pressing and profound questions have arisen about whether the current government is even legitimate, i.e., properly elected, there still remains a chance to remove this government peacefully in the 2008 election. (Or am I living in a dream world?)

I do think this regime's removal is the most urgent matter before the country today. And I do think that at a certain point the achievement of that goal might take precedence over our personal predilections for writing, teaching and the like. We might be called upon to go on general strike, for instance. We might be called upon to set up camp in the streets for weeks or months, to gather and remain in large public squares as the students in Tiananmen Square did, and dare government forces to remove us or to slaughter us in the streets.

This is all terrible and rather fantastic to contemplate. But what assurances have we that it is not all quite plausible? Having discarded the principles that Jefferson & Co. espoused, the current regime seems capable of anything. I know that my imagination is a feverish instrument. But are we not living in feverish times, in times of the unthinkable?

Given the Republicans' naked quest for permanently rigged elections, an argument could be made that Tennis is, indeed, "living in a dream world." Of all the ugly truths gurgling up from the soft, bloody ground, the most dispiriting one is that "change at the ballot box" is increasingly unlikely thanks to: (1.) power mad, democracy-hating Republicans; (2.) tone-deaf and utterly corrupt Democrats, and; (3.) a corporate media with interests served all too well by the whole of the neocon agenda.

Because the few non-Koolaid drinkers in positions of official and unofficial authority have an astounding lack of courage, principle and will, asserting "we might be called upon"to use People Power to amputate our gangrenous limbs borders on fantasy - a nice one, but a fantasy nonetheless. When that changes - if it changes - everything changes. Until someone forcefully and unequiovocally tells the criminals in the White House and Capitol Hill NO - and implores citizens to come together to oppose our shiney new neo-tyranny, Americans will remain held hostage to the rancid, self-serving ideology of today's theofascist GOP.