A political cartoon last year at Indian Country Today:
It’s pretty clear that the takeaway is: what a falling off is there. Radicals in the 70s were strong and slim and heavily armed, and of course male. Now radicals are nerdy and weak and writers, and of course female.
So what we’re being invited to agree with is the idea that violence is better than discourse…and that weapons are better than keyboards, buff people are better than nerds in glasses, men are better than women.
Hi. Allow me to speak up for writing as being preferable to weapons. Weapons are just force. Writing is about presenting reasons. Explaining why your political views are better than your opponent’s is not weakness or cowardice – it’s the foundation of politics.
Down with guns, up with words.
Comments
9 responses to “Spare us the nostalgia”
Point well taken, of course, but…I didn’t read the second figure as female. I assumed those were the same braids as in figure one…
Ah, could be.
^ Possibly. they are wearing tear drop ear rings as well though…
In the age of Trump how does explaining how your views are better than your opponent’s help? This is not a civilized age; it’s an age of savages that are given over to violent speech and acts. They understand the boot on their neck but not the words coming out of your mouth.
Radicals of the 70s were often poseurs, of course a few were dangerous, and given the state of Western society these days, totally ineffective. Probably many became successful paper entrepreneurs, corporate bankers, CEOs of mining companies and conservative politicians. The result was not social democracy, but neoliberalism.
Let’s try the ‘very strongly worded blog’.
Sometimes a woman with a gun is the most beautiful thing in the world.
Not if it’s aimed at you and the safety’s off.
RJW #7:
I was thinking specifically of the YPJ.
The American passion for empty macho gestures is amazingly bipartisan.
Follow ups on Baton Rouge show that the killer’s mental furniture came as much from the loony-fringe Right as from anywhere on the Left. Self-righteousness, hair-trigger ‘offendedness,’ a conspiratorial mindset, topped off with access to military firearms.