it's midnight right? i'm sitting in my friend's truck outside my house. the engine is idling. i've had a few glasses of wine. nothing crazy. a gentle buzz; still got all my faculties.
we're having the same argument we've been having for 20 years. literally the same argument. 20 years of this one argument. we're leftists living at the tailend of the failed experiment of the US. we have no love for our country and no desire to preserve it. the argument is about the way forward.
he says: reeducation for the masses; benevolent dictator; work camps for the fascists. if he had the crown, that's what he'd do. he says that's "the most humane option." i say: liberation can't be achieved thru tyranny and systems of coercion and control. that it's the definition of inhumane to do these things. that social cohesion is not the same as social control. you can't force ppl to accept an ethos. you can, however, provide for their basic needs, regardless of their ethos. a good place to start, maybe, since we all have the same basic needs.
he demands i build a utopia without coercion, control, criminalization right there in the truck. convince him. prove a better world is possible. better than just another iteration on the fucked up world we wanna see change. i say my one mind isn't enough to create a new world. i say if you handed me a crown, i'd bust it up into one million pieces and dole them out to one million ppl. i say severed is the head that wears the crown. i say i'd rather risk death fighting a fascist on the street than put us both on either end of a chain and call myself their benevolent jailer; robbing us both of humanity.
we've been saying these things to each other since George W Bush was president.
he says we agree on everything but this one thing. i say this one thing negates all other agreement. that's how fundamental it is. after 30 minutes, we throw it on the pile. hug and say goodnight. he says "you win this round... but not bc i think that you're right... bc i hope that you're right."
i'm unsure which thing he hopes i'm right about.