There is someone I’ve very close to, but we couldn’t be more different on our political beliefs. To protect his privacy, I’ll just call him “H.” H and I end up arguing about politics fairly frequently, especially now, with it being an election year and all.
It’s not entirely true that we’re exact opposites. H and I both detest George W. Bush, and Republicans in general, mostly for the same reasons. We both agree that working people should get paid a fair wage, that all Americans deserve the same health care, paid holidays and child care Congress gets, and that the government should not regulate matters of personal choice.
It’s our vision of how to achieve these goals that are diametrically opposed. I believe that change can happen, as Gandhi said, when we become the change we wish to see in the world. By starting small and local, we transform our world a piece at a time, until it simply becomes the standard way of doing things. I would also include more radical forms of social protest, such as direct action, as long as they are non-violent, to put a stop to the most egregious injustices.
His view – like many disenfranchised people’s – is the same as Mao Tse Tung: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” He sees the only way to making such radical changes in our political system is for mass numbers of people to march on the Capitol, armed, demanding change. In his view, this is the only way change ever occurs. He won’t vote because the system is rigged (and he’s got a point about that); but any locally-focused candidates or issues he dismisses as “deluded” and “won’t ever work.” Even if it does, “it won’t make any difference.”
To his credit, he is mostly right about change flowing from the barrel of a gun – just look at most of human history. But here is where I think a good education comes in: violence is not the only way to create change. I try to point out the examples of MLK and the Civil Rights movement as well as Gandhi and the Indian Independence movement. But he doesn’t see the victory they achieved; he sees them as distractions and failures. “The British didn’t leave India because of Gandhi,” and “Racism is just as bad now as it was before the Civil Rights movement.” A poor grasp of history makes it impossible to see past the status quo.
I can get him to agree that change for the better occurred in both instances, but because both societies “still have problems,” then the entire strategy is dismissed as ineffective. It is as if because Gandhi and MLK didn’t solve all the problems at once, they didn’t really achieve anything. I tend to think they might have achieved even more, had they not been assassinated.
I see his position as sort of a “messiah complex” – the strategy of passively (if angrily) waiting for some person or movement to swoop in and solve all the problems of our society all at once. All the problems we have – poverty, crime, ecological destruction – are interconnected, to be sure. But each needs to be addressed and solved in its own way. There is not “one answer” for all the world’s ills.
For those of us wanting to change the political and economic system to make it more fair and humane, these types of people (and believe me, there are a lot of them) make it even more difficult. The weight of their apathy adds to the power of corporate interests’ money and influence, making activists have to fight a war on two fronts.
