I do not JUST recieve hate mail

Sometimes, I recieve quite extraordinary responses.

Not too long ago, I wrote an article On The Laws I Live By.

A man named Bob, wrote to the site it appeared on MWC News and our first exchanges are here...

Then tonight they informed me he wrote back.

It is a fascinating look into the mind of an American struggling to come to grips with our times...

From Bob;

Thanks for the feedback.

I admit I do feel a little counterfeit trying to draw ironclad parallels between other historic personages and our present age. Nevertheless I sometimes indulge - especially when I hear the founding father’s names taken so in vain by the Christian Right. I think I am accurate however in my comments that the founders were the sort of men who, finally after much agonizing, broke with the Crown and took some pretty violent, radical actions: The Boston Tea Party; I’m sure Tom Pane would have assassinated King George if he had got him in his sights; and the sabotage of the British troops.

Parenthetically, one of the things I remember from my wholly inadequate high school American history class was the British shock at the American rebels not playing by the noble rules of conventional warfare: “They won’t even line up in honest file on a field of battle but choose to fire upon us from behind trees and fences!”

Pushing the parenthesis slightly further - To me this is not unlike the consternation in Washington and Jerusalem when reading reports of suicide bombers. There is a wonderful quote from The Battle of Algiers that I recently viewed (again).

“Journalist: M. Ben M'Hidi, don't you think it's a bit cowardly to use women's baskets and handbags to carry explosive devices that kill so many innocent people?

Ben M'Hidi: And doesn't it seem to you even more cowardly to drop napalm bombs on defenseless villages, so that there are a thousand times more innocent victims? Of course, if we had your airplanes it would be a lot easier for us. Give us your bombers, and you can have our baskets.”

This film is quite past due for a major revival.

The rationalization of the French to justify the use of torture and to “stay the course” in Algiers is so resonant.

Rent it again if you have not seen it recently.

I am not in any way advocating terrorism here. It’s just I can understand the reasons why people resort to it.

I experience a great deal of frustration when I read never-ending page upon page of caterwauling from our beloved left carping endlessly as if even the choir was awake. All these writers (me included) seem such purveyors of empty air. If this were truly just a debating society, it would be great fun – but while we talk, thousands continue to suffer and die. Their agony haunts me. Is it any wonder that occasionally I wish we could break through into the imprudence of pure action? As I said, this is unfortunately not a debating society. Our opponents in this contest are out committing wholesale torture, murder and conspiring to do the same to us. Yes, these “gentlemen and women” who run our government would kill you and me with as little compunction as we would squash a bug. Debating them, writing letters, contributing to worthy causes seem to have no impact on their actions whatsoever.

I, like you, believe in the supremacy of law. If anything sets this country apart from much of the history of past regimes it is that occasionally the law does serve us blindly as the courtroom statue with the scales promises. That is why the wholesale assault of the Bush administration on the Judicial Branch is the scariest of his actions. The Judiciary is all that presently stands between us and the unbridled power madness of this juggernaught.

I have little reason for optimism. I have had so many of my illusions destroyed in the past few years. Whoever said it, was right: “This world will break your heart.” Actually I think I said it. The thing that has done more to cause me to abandon hope than anything else in this struggle is the capitulation on the part of the party of Joseph Lieberman; that and the bald-faced way the last two presidential elections were stolen without so much as a ripple of dissent. These Democrats are in it up to their eyebrows – just as much as the president. There are damn few who aren’t. The result, I think, is that corruption and power has reached an insurmountable critical mass on the federal level. They have come as close to absolute power as has ever existed in this country and by their holy, jealous God they mean to keep it. In fact, we had better pray they don’t even begin to feel even slightly threatened: “Hey Adolph, throw another Reichstag on the fire!” In politics (as with my feelings for our environment)

I seriously doubt that there is any longer anything that can be done to save us.

So where does that leave me (and you)? For the present I don’t think there is any validity in any personal political engagement on the national level. Those few, heroic members of Congress who still labor under the hallucination that there is a role for statesmanship in government will just have to be left to continue to twist in the wind. There may be local pockets of political enlightenment that can develop a modicum of sustainability and autonomy – especially if the economy tanks for the middle and lower classes.

Those of us who still cannot accept what these demagogues are doing to this country (after all, we do so richly deserve the politicians we’ve got) and more important to the world, may yet have a role to play. It may be a dangerous role and it may not be all that clear as to what sort of strategy will be most effective. As I have said, I am firmly committed to non-violence. If I were not, my options would not be so circumscribed or so limited. I am truly amazed that there is no grassroots, American, violent resistance movement that has arisen like the Weathermen of old. Are we all that narcotized

Does al Qaeda have to do all the heavy lifting?! (Just kidding). I’m afraid that I (we?) may sometime come to advocate employment of the horrific Bonhoeffer option:

"If I see a madman driving a car into a group of innocent bystanders, then I can't, as a Christian, simply wait for the catastrophe and then comfort the wounded and bury the dead. I must try to wrestle the steering wheel out of the hands of the driver." Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Martin Luther King said that if your enemy has a conscience, you act like Gandhi. If your adversary has no conscience, like Hitler, you act like Bonhoeffer. I leave it to you to decide if George W. Bush has a conscience. When we finally decide that violence against a regime that is irredeemably pernicious is justified, I hope that, like the frog in the gradually heating pot, we will be able to act before we’re cooked. Actually, I think we’re probably cooked already. I think Bush (read Neocons) realized before any of the rest of us that a revolution might eventually break out in this country and, long ago, began to take steps to thwart the anticipated resistance. That is really what is behind all the police state crap he has been quietly putting in place while we sleep. One of these mornings you will be awakened by the sound of an iron door slamming shut. If you are lucky you may get to be a trustee and pass out bars of soap.

That’s why nothing of any real consequence will ever come of the investigations of all the high crimes and misdemeanors that Bush has been pulling so flagrantly. Abramoff and Libby will fry like pfc England, but nothing will ever touch these Masters of War (and deceit): Bush, Cheney, Powell, Rice, Rumsfeld, Gonzales - even Rove. Probably not even DeLay. I really do hope they get that son-of–a–bitch, DeLay. Down the memory hole will go the Downing Street memo. The Plame leak, Halliburton scammers, Abu Ghraib, torture/ rendition, UN and NSA citizen wiretaps, etc, etc. Flush, flush, flush. By 2008 who will even remember? Will you vote for Hillary?

Actually, when I used the word cowardice I was indulging in provocative hyperbole. It was an indictment of all of us on the left. It’s not a matter of prudence. None of us have the daring or the wit to throw off these scoundrels. I am not a coward; it’s just that I judge my lack of creativity and the resultant impotence harshly. I see others in history who staged revolutions against a foe like the British Empire that was as formidable in its time as the one we face to day. Our founders and countless other “subjects” of the Crown in Ireland, Scotland and India put us to shame. Next to men like Jefferson, Gandhi and even William Wallace we on the left today seem more like toads than actual bipedal primates.

I know that I cannot rest while the struggle persists. I do not have much time left in my life (I’m 69 years old), but I will use what remains in a way that hopefully may be of some benefit to those who come after. For now, it means that I will seek every opportunity to put these ideas out there, to argue and fight with you and others I respect to try to hammer out the issues, the strategies and the revolution that might just save what is left of this country and our planet. I do not want to leave the children of this world I love, to live in chains and deprivation. With Sartre, I believe that every man is responsible for the world. Hyperbole Perhaps, but I intend to live the rest of my life as if that were indeed true.

Peace to you Christy,
Bob Boldt