I feel the despair. Not only do things keep getting worse, the state of dissent and opposition in America makes me think that we’re still collectively not even at step 0.
At the same time, Fidel and Castro landed with 80ish men and had what, fewer than 20 left after the initial attack from Batista’s forces? How many times did the Chinese Communists evade death and certain defeat?
It’s never going to be easy. It never was. Sometimes Things Happen. The George Floyd Uprising was not something we could have predicted, and it was flash of hope. There are important lessons to be learned from the successful counterinsurgency against it and that ultimately it achieved very little. But it does illustrate that sometimes things do happen, unexpected opportunities arise.
I guess I see it this way: the forces of reaction had won in the imperial core before I was born. I had some false hope in 2016 and 2020 that we could get some reforms with Bernard, but I realized since then that that was always utterly false hope, because Bernard is sadly still an imperialist at heart, and no solution which doesn’t address the rapacity of the US Empire is no solution. The solution, as it were, has always required imperial collapse. Our prospects are no worse now for knowing that bitter truth than they were when we thought there was some shortcut to victory.
As for China invading, for all that I find the memes about “Xi Xinping please, the American people cry out for liberation”, Absolutely nobody is coming to save us. Nobody wants to invade the US. Nothing would be better for the invader if they invaded the US and then fought major war over a large amount of territory against a heavily armed populace of people ideologically primed to do insurgency. Nor would it even be better for us to have war.
(There’s something absurd about the fact that I can only ever feel a shred of optimism when I am arguing against someone else’s despair, but I myself am drowning in despair that I cannot drag myself out of. There is absolutely no shame to being despondent)
The thinga bout despair is this: What is the point? It serves an emotional purpose, which is to protect people from disappointment. If you despair, you cannot hope. If you do not hope, you cannot be disappointed. But how useful is that really?
I feel the despair. Not only do things keep getting worse, the state of dissent and opposition in America makes me think that we’re still collectively not even at step 0.
At the same time, Fidel and Castro landed with 80ish men and had what, fewer than 20 left after the initial attack from Batista’s forces? How many times did the Chinese Communists evade death and certain defeat?
It’s never going to be easy. It never was. Sometimes Things Happen. The George Floyd Uprising was not something we could have predicted, and it was flash of hope. There are important lessons to be learned from the successful counterinsurgency against it and that ultimately it achieved very little. But it does illustrate that sometimes things do happen, unexpected opportunities arise.
I guess I see it this way: the forces of reaction had won in the imperial core before I was born. I had some false hope in 2016 and 2020 that we could get some reforms with Bernard, but I realized since then that that was always utterly false hope, because Bernard is sadly still an imperialist at heart, and no solution which doesn’t address the rapacity of the US Empire is no solution. The solution, as it were, has always required imperial collapse. Our prospects are no worse now for knowing that bitter truth than they were when we thought there was some shortcut to victory.
As for China invading, for all that I find the memes about “Xi Xinping please, the American people cry out for liberation”, Absolutely nobody is coming to save us. Nobody wants to invade the US. Nothing would be better for the invader if they invaded the US and then fought major war over a large amount of territory against a heavily armed populace of people ideologically primed to do insurgency. Nor would it even be better for us to have war.
(There’s something absurd about the fact that I can only ever feel a shred of optimism when I am arguing against someone else’s despair, but I myself am drowning in despair that I cannot drag myself out of. There is absolutely no shame to being despondent)
The thinga bout despair is this: What is the point? It serves an emotional purpose, which is to protect people from disappointment. If you despair, you cannot hope. If you do not hope, you cannot be disappointed. But how useful is that really?