They Say They Want A Revolution

Via Traffic Non-Santa, some dopey revolutionary sabre-rattling from Salon's Cary Tennis:

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. . . . 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?

Let me underscore Instapundit's jab: when disaffected, no-account fantasy-race-warriors joined militia movements in the nineties, the media was all a-twitter at this dangerous threat to our nation's stability. Nevermind that the movement was decidedly fringe and small, and that a lot of the people involved weren't particularly hard-core politically. They just liked running around the woods with guns (which, I have to admit, sounds kind of fun).

But when mainstream left-liberals write of violent revolution in not-at-all-fringe left-liberal magazines, no one in the media seems particularly bothered.

Suggesting they're not bothered by the idea of violent revolution, so long as the right people wind up with their backs up against the wall.

The "extremists" of the 90's were a constant source of fretting and column-inches for our nation's media during the Clinton Administration. Just as the media decided that homelessness wasn't such a big deal when Clinton came into office, they seem to have taken a blase attitude towards fantasies of violent revolution now that Bush is in office.

posted by Ace at 01:32 PM

| Access Comments