Some of my Right Wing Nut friends hate Black Lives Matters, Democrats, George Soros, any compassionate souls qualifying as “Libtards”, and probably just plain puzzled (and suffering) human faces on general terms. While the United States of America heads now into rougher waters — here’s a schematic –>
COVID-19 –> National Stand-Down of Basic Economic Activities (Bars & Restaurants and Events) –> Peonage (Americans in Unsustainable Debt) –> Foreseeable Loss of Hope, Independence, Opportunity, Property, and Stability –> De Facto Enslavement (and more about that on this blog later) –>
–> these same complain about “appeasement” before “radicals” (misguided youth generally among them) when governments stay their forces a moment to give peace a chance and clarify essential battlespace as the opponent has cared to define it. Those old levels of contempt, determination, and penchant for violence may remind us of how differently America works — when it’s working.
From the Awesome Conversation
Internally, Americans accommodate, compromise, and repair conditions through argument, reason, and talk.
None of that compares to “appeasement”.
Where are there foreign actors, however, fitting the label “agent provocateur”, then our tolerance of their presence, or disinterest in it, would amount to appeasement.
Islam has a concept for what interlopers may do in geopolitical space: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasad
In its feudal and narcissistic way, it’s self-centered with the Ummah in mind, but universalized, most statesmen would recognize the problem of having foreign agents in one’s domestic business.
BLM is domestic, somewhat poisoned by old rhetoric, and it may be infected by interlopers, but having become a visible element in OUR politics, it has to have its conversation with other Americans in public.
America’s two “rivals” in international influence and powers, Beijing and Moscow, believe in force and totalitarian control.
We don’t.
We don’t muzzle our critics: we defend protest; we investigate issues and try to bring their components into public view; we face political and social challenges and address them with peaceful but vigorous means. The day we stop listening, arguing, reasoning, accommodating, and compromising, and agreeing is the one on which we have failed as a democracy.
Those we refer to as “extremists” and “violent radicals” believe they have cause and permit to abandon those tenets and achieve their ends “by any means necessary”. Well, it’s at that point that the state must stand firm and take apart what has defined itself as a martial adversary. Generally speaking as regards that kind of “revolution”, the state wins.
If the state has been compromised, corrupted, and weakened from within, well then it may lose.
Even if a politically repressive regime “wins” against an enemy representing the better part of human values, as I believe democracies represent, it loses for being and displaying its ultimately closed, controlling, and destructive character.
Related on BackChannels: “Basic Training”.
Addendum, July 4, 2020
On FB, one reader posed the question, “What’s to like?”
Here’s the BackChannels answer –>
Our system of governance remains strong, i.e., embraceable and not yet hollowed out. I am certain most Americans are counting on America to work some political magic and return the ship to firm and steady sailing. Our present turmoil devolves to our hosting so many authoritarians, extremists, sophists, and zealots that supporting an authentic _and reasoning_ conversation has become nearly impossible. While throwing mud at one another, we seem to be ignoring “America the Beautiful” while melting down in fits of jealousy, greed, and resentment.
When idiots have tired themselves out with fighting or raiding — down on the street or up in the boardrooms — then more real people, so one may hope, will come out to sweep up the glass, turn over indictments, produce new law, and so on, and cobble the place back together and refresh it as it should be.
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BackChannels 