Maybe It’s About Time for Another Kind of Revolution
SHORT TAKE
The prudent writer, we’ve been told since school days, knows to avoid generalizations and cliches; but, often unsurprisingly, sometimes finds both can be essentially appropriate. -for example,
“The first thing every dictator does, is destroy any and every vestige of free inquiry in the existing system of education and, simultaneously, take control of the nation’s curriculum.
Put simply, “Every Tyrant starts with the obliteration of free speech".
Those statements are within quotation marks; but I’m not actually quoting anyone; they didn't originate with any known author, for they’ve long been commonplaces of our historical culture: the sentiment has probably been with us as long as it’s been thought necessary to say it.
And today it’s becoming more necessary to say it than ever before
Surely, it goes without saying, that the full import of those cautionary observations is reinforced by our historical, and, continuing, defense of our belief that the free and, unconstrained, and therefore, uncensorable expression of personal opinion, is the unalienable right of everyone in these United States.
And to be sure, “everyone” means everyone. Citizen or not
It is not, and, constitutionally, cannot be a crime to say that Israel’s persecution of the people of Palestine is genocidal.
Moreover, to verbally recognize that the present day Israeli leadership has openly, publicly, advocated the extermination of all Palestinians, is not an expression of anti-semitism either.
Both are statements of the obvious.
Every person in the United States, -citizen or not- has equal right, under the law, to the full protection of our constitutional Amendments
“Everybody” means Everybody.
No exceptions.
And yet, at no time since the notoriously hysterical (and lethal) anti-communist McCarthy era of the 1940s and 50s, has public political discourse been more widely avoided, irrationally feared, unjustly condemned and, indiscriminately persecuted.
More than I might have anticipated, people I’ve spoken with casually -at the lumber yard and the garden center and the bakery- over the past three weeks -all have been openly dismissive of our government, and fear Donald Trump and the direction of his hyper-patriot intentions.
No mistake about it, neighbors who voted for him tell me, Trump may get two or three thousand poor Americans -and many thousands more Iranians killed, as he pays off his Israeli benefactors, but that done, his most cherished accomplishment will be the ultimate gelding of “decadently intellectual" USA.
Moreover,
Every one of us who knows people who teach, may also know someone who at this moment is hurriedly erasing an incriminating syllabus entry, another revising his lecture notes; somewhere someone else is reorganizing next week’s discussion outline, while an adjunct professor is rephrasing corrections on student papers and another’s simply reminding herself what’s never to be mentioned in class again.
All over the country conference abstracts are being softened; faculty meeting agendas have been suitably adjusted, unreliable faculty remarked and some retired early; HR directives rewritten while it's also becoming clear everywhere that the cafeteria coffee table, the faculty lounge and even the after-work martini is no longer entirely safe ground.
As an understandably habitually prudent one-class-per-term permanent part-timer said not so long ago, the only plan is to stay outa sight an’ keep your head down.”
It’s a matter of sheer survival.
But delighted as most academic administrators surely are by a cautiously quieter faculty, all know also, there’s much more to anticipate from a passionately awakening student insurrection.
And that will be a very slow burn.
The young people who have taken to the streets and those elder others who’ve joined them- are of a wider and deeper and richer mix than we’ve seen in years, and their inspirational alliances are not with Ho Chi Minh, nor Mao, nor Malcom, nor Martin, nor even Che Guevara; but with none other than the International Declaration of Human Rights, the fundamental procedures and protections of our constitution, The First Amendment of our Bill of Rights, the principles enshrined in our Declaration of Independence and, the values and aspirations of the revolutionary generation of 1760 to 1788.
"Silence," it's been said. "is consent"
