By Edward-Yemil Rosario
People often ask me to talk about solutions. I believe that most of the time people are genuinely interested in what I have to say. However, sometimes I suspect the question is a passive/ aggressive way to dismiss my observations, mistakenly thinking that because I can adequately articulate what is, that I have lost sight of what can be.
I am deeply steeped in theory and scholarly pursuits, but I am also a doer — I am an activist by profession. Activism is a way of engaging the mind/ body in the service of change. The process itself is pure creativity. I have come to understand that the process of activism (what I like to call engaged spirituality) as just that — a process. “I” am not the owner of the process; “I” don’t bring about change. Rather, I am part of a creative process of change.
I will submit that many politically-minded people approach political science from an almost purely philosophical perspective. Everybody has an idea or opinion about how to do something, or a critique of how things are now. I call that “activism from the neck up” — something akin to mental masturbation. I have found that people who engage the world mostly from the “neck up” (disengaged from action) oftentimes fail to understand the experiential component of social change. That’s because they’re not flowing in the process of actual change, they’re merely staring at, to use Plato’s metaphor, the shadows on the cave wall.
This is not a terribly complicated affair, but if you’ve never participated in a grassroots movement, or in the process of organizing people around the notion of change, then it’s a foreign concept. This disengagement — this disembodiment — tends to make people form reductionist and condescending notions about human behavior and how change occurs. There is nothing more magical than being a part of a group committed toward social change. It is in within that process where you become intimately aware of just how smart people actually are, or what it takes to move a group: from the couple who provide their apartment for meetings, to the old lady who brings food, in short, all those who take care of all the little details that converge to make something significant happen.
I’m not going to go into the details of community organizing or social policy change at this time, but I do want to share a framework of how to look at how things change because it’s a key in developing a winning strategy for change. Knowing that everything changes and how things change is empowering. For example, sometimes people say, “What difference can one person make?” When you understand that each drop adds up to make a mighty ocean, you know you are important. Every vote counts; every voice matters; that extra bit of effort may be all it takes to reach a turning point.
Having an evolved sense of how change occurs provides the tool that gives you the wisdom to work steadily and patiently for change — building the side you want to win, studying how much farther you need to go and what you need to do to make a turning point. When all of your small pieces of effort are added to other people’s, great things can be accomplished: buildings are erected, railroads are run, elections are won, diseases are defeated, regimes are toppled.
I’m going to call this framework, Spiral Dialectics, and I borrow heavily from Engels who was a collaborator of Karl Marx’s.
But before I go there I want to get all pedantic on yo asses just a little longer… Last week one of my fellow contributors here at Subversify, posted a rather thought-provoking piece (click here). In it, he offers a general outlook on human nature and in the process articulates several assumptions about history and the process of change. He also offers some solutions. The piece is well-written, but I believe it suffers from an over-simplified view of how change occurs, and a reductionist assumption of human nature. But my aim here is not to address specific parts of the essay (you can judge the piece for yourself). Rather, my aim here is to offer an alternative framework.
So here goes…
First let me offer a very quick (and admittedly inadequate) overview of dialectics. Dialectics is a tool to understand the way things are and the way things change. The notion of dialectics has a long history — far too lengthy for my purposes here. However, understanding dialectics is actually quite simple:
1. Every thing (every object and every process) is made of opposing forces/opposing sides.
2. Gradual changes lead to turning points, where one opposite overcomes the other.
3. Change moves in spirals, not circles.
These are the three laws of dialectics according to Frederick Engels, a revolutionary thinker and partner of Karl Marx, writing in the 1870s in his book, Dialectics of Nature. Engels believed that dialectics was “A very simple process which is taking place everywhere and every day, which any child can understand.” This web site is dedicated to proving his point. In fact, this essay is partly dedicated to proving Engels’ assertion correct.
The dialectical process is not a creation of Marxist philosophy. It was modified and polished into a broad-based philosophy by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, who died when Marx was thirteen years old. Marxists combine the theory with materialism, creating a hybrid philosophy — dialectical materialism. Here’s how it works:
1. Everything is made of opposites. No object could hold together without an opposing force to keep it from flying apart. The earth tries to fly away from the sun, but gravity holds it in orbit. Electrons try to fly away from the nucleus of an atom, but electromagnetism holds the atom together. Ligaments and tendons provide the ties that hold bones together and muscles to bones.
Like material objects, the process of change needs opposing forces. Change needs a driving force to push it ahead, otherwise everything stays put. A billiard ball only moves when hit with a pool cue or another ball. We eat when our hunger tells us to. A car won’t move if its engine won’t start. To win in fair elections candidates need more votes than their opponents.
Engels called this law the “interpenetration of opposites.” Hegel often referred to the “unity of opposites” (one also sees this at work in Eastern philosophies). This may sound contradictory, but it is easy to understand. It’s like acknowledging there is no night without day, or that there is no game if one side quits, no atom if the electrons fly away or that the whole needs all of its parts to be a whole. In fact, I doubt you can come up with anything that isn’t made of opposites.
2. Gradual changes lead to turning points. What happens is that the two opposing forces in a process of change push against each other. As long as one side is stronger than the other side, change is gradual. But when the other side becomes stronger, there is a turning point — an avalanche, a birth, a collapse, a discovery… Engels called this the law of the transformation of quantity into quality. Quantitative change is the gradual build-up of one opposing force. Qualitative change takes place when that opposite becomes dominant.
It’s hard to overestimate how powerful this law is in describing the stages of development of anything. A person’s life follows these quantitative/qualitative changes. Likewise human history, or the history of a particular place, has gone through many stages. Dialectics is so powerful a tool that physicist Michio Kaku describes the history of the universe for its first 10 billion years by a series of dialectical stages, using only 250 words!
3. Change moves in spirals, not circles. Take a breath. Take another one. Seems like the same, huh? It isn’t. The “you” who took the first breath is quantitatively different from the “you” who took the second breath. Cells have died and been replaced. Time has passed. Perhaps, being mindful of your breath, you have come to an epiphany. While your breathing may appear cyclical, it is actually a spiral. Many changes are spiral — first one side dominates then the other — as in day/night, one opposite then another. Dialectics argues that these cycles do not come back exactly to where they started; they don’t make a perfect circle. Instead, change is evolutionary, moving in a spiral.
Sometimes the changes are so minute we think nothing is really different. It’s true that we hardly change in a measurable way with every breath. But we can see that many cycles do come around to a different place — children are not the same as their parents, even if they are a lot alike. People go to school and learn; when they return home, they are no longer the same. And, like it or not, you are a bit older with every breath you take.
Engels, again following Hegel, called this law “negation of negation.” This sounds complicated, but, as Engels said, it is going on all the time. What happens is that first one side overcomes its opposite (first negation). This marks a turning point as in Engels’ 2nd law. Next, the new side is once again overcome by the first side. This is negation of negation.
Here is a common example: A normal conversation requires negation of negation to move ahead. First one person talks, then the other; the second negates the first. Pretty soon, however, the first person begins talking again. The conversation makes no sense if the first person simply repeats what they said the first time. Instead, the first person now has listened to the second person talk, so the negation of negation returns to a different place (hopefully one of more understanding).
Unfortunately spirals can go down as well as up. For example, if a person is feeling depressed, they may take drugs or alcohol to feel better. This may negate their bad feelings for a while, but when the drug wears off, the person often feels worse than when they started.
Of course we want our spirals to go upward. When they do, we live healthier and happier lives, full of learning, growing, and reaching our full potential.
So that’s the three laws of dialectics. Not too difficult, right?
Of course, there’s more to understanding change than these three laws. Perhaps at some future date, I’ll write about real campaigns I have been involved and how they benefited from this framework. The work I am involved in is all about the process of change. It is one of the great pleasures (and frustrations!) of my life.
Criticizing existing political and economic systems without at least giving an idea of what can replace them is more than activism from the “neck up.” Let me state right up front that, regretfully, I am not in possession of the “ideal” meta system. I don’t know the exact steps that need to be taken to free us from our invisible (and sometimes visible) shackles. Furthermore, I doubt that it is possible for human nature to be contained within a system developed by the collective consciousness that created the shackles in the first place. Our passions are wider and more profound than simple structuring and decision-making. Our hearts and bodies, ruled by sometimes unconscious demands moored in the history of our cultural DNA, rule us more than any system or mode of production.
Our history over the past twenty-five hundred years or so is littered with idealistic systems that have failed to break our chains.
Plato’s Republic was, at least partially, a philosophical rant against the failings of Athenian democracy. Plato idealized a particular form of education as a rigorous system for weeding out in order to obtain and empower a group of enlightened rulers. These rulers would then sit over the lesser population, without family ties or wealth; thus they would be relieved of the desire to pass on power or to sell it.
For Plato, the state was of prime importance. Family relations and other personal freedoms were secondary.
Karl Marx believed that the economic system overseeing production also ruled the social relations and political structure of nations. He believed that there was scientific necessity behind these economic forces and that there was a predictable end to social development based on the mode of production. But change, Marx declared, was necessarily accompanied by tectonic-like social shifts between the old system (represented by the capitalists) and the proletariat (the workers).
Both the Republic and the theories of capitalism saw an enlightened dictatorship as a necessary part of the development of the state, thus exhibiting a distrust of the nature of intelligence of the common folk.
Platonism is an extreme ideal. And while almost everyone is aware of the great communist revolutions of the twentieth century and the failures that accompanied them, Plato’s ideas (in one form or another) had a much longer run, eventually melding into a thousand-year-long medieval society, with its serfs and soldiers ruled over by a global theocracy. Today, one can see the same forces at work creating a globalized form of government ruled by multinational corporations. Platonism has had its moments of experimentation and it failed because of its deep distrust of the minds of the masses.
This distrust of human nature seems at first blush to be a valid point of view in light of the evident criminal self-interest rampant in our nation (and the rest of the world) today. This compels some to believe that a population allowed to exercise free will is an open invitation to chaos.
Restrictive measures, we are often reminded go hand in hand with unfettered capitalism. Freedom for Americans, it follows, becomes no more than an economic issue. Money equals freedom (and post Citizens United, also free speech). Money equals happiness; money is even the primary element in love and beauty, and intelligence. All these centuries of science and technological advance and socially we’re no more mature than we were thousands of years ago. In fact, some might argue (quite successfully) that we have spiraled downward.
Last week I wrote about the events happening in Wisconsin. I think if you look at Wisconsin from the limited scope of history as a cycle, Wisconsin doesn’t mean all that much. However, I believe that if you keep an open mind and look at Wisconsin (as well as Egypt, Libya, and Bahrain) from the framework of spiral dialectics, you begin to see the true significance of these incidents. Egypt has touched off Libya, the Saudis, and even (to a smaller extent) Iran. Wisconsin has essentially awoken the sleeping giant of American politics — the vanishing, abused middle class. I really don’t care about your opinion here; rather my challenge to the reader is to point out another time in American history where tens of thousands of everyday citizens have sustained such a prolonged and passionate outrage. Wisconsin has touched off Ohio and Indiana. New Jersey is rethinking its bullshit and every other politician demanding that the financial malfeasance committed by the richest 10% be fixed on the backs of the workers and the poor is looking to see what happens in Wisconsin.
Wisconsin is showing that a society that puts the interests of its corporations above those of its citizens creates instability. A nation where poverty is commonplace and homelessness is a reality cannot expect self-sacrifice from the majority of its people.
Change, history shows, comes in increments — it’s a play between the yin and yang of polar opposites, each negating each other in a spiral of development that is itself a delicate balance. Anyone who thinks we can continue to fuck with environment without long-term horrific consequences, for example, is a fuckin’ blind idiot. The science is out on that. Period.
The point here is that this framework can help you understand where to place the wedge. And the wedge, when applied at the right time at the right moment in collaboration with your brothers and sisters, topples the most powerful. All the guns and power and greed eventually are negated. It is how it has always happened and will continue to happen. The point here, my fiends, is whether we will continue the bullshit activism from the “neck up” or actually pull up our sleeves and nurture the Wisconsin in our heart and soul, where we live.
My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…
karlsie
Eddie, America is changing, but i think it would be delusional to believe the change we are looking at will be incorporated by one of the two leading political parties. Civil discord has reached too great a height, even to a number of legislators who are shrugging off their party platform in a quest to follow good conscience. We are no longer divided party liners; we are a divided nation.
We are a divided global entity. The seeds of discontent have spread everywhere. Information awareness has shocked public sensibility into realizing what goes on behind the curtains, but the winner mentality keeps the authorities in International diplomacy scrambling to stay on top.
I live on the Cook Inlet, which has the strongest bore tide in the world, with the exception of New Zealand. Most people who live in coastal towns are aware of the high and low tides and the changes they bring. These tides, however, are not generally extremely noticeable, unless you’re a fisherman or very observant. The changes that take place in an evolving political conscience are like these tides; not extremely perceptible, but rhythmically rearranging sea shells, nibbling or producing new banks, and offering up a new collection of seaweed and other under water debris.
The bore tide, though, is tremendous. When it goes out, it takes everything with it. It leaves miles of long, flat land that hours before had been under water. It disappears. You think it’s over. You see nothing but the endless mud flats and a thin, shallow line of water in the distance. Then it comes in. A single, white, moving line appears. In minutes, streams and pools appear on what had once been dry land. The bore tide sweeps up everything in its path, destroys everything in its way. It’s unstoppable. It’s insurmountable. This is how the change will be. What it brings with it is anyone’s guess.
@ Eddie,
1. Regarding the principles of change – my goal is not (and has never been) to favor one opposing force over another, but rather to destroy them all and pave the way for something new to emerge in their place. And unlike the “neck up” activist I am actually engaged in bringging about anomie and building something to take the place of the existing oder: in short, my process is more Nietzschean than yours – I’ve given up on waiting for history to circle/spiral/any other motion you can think of and have taken matters into my own hands.
2. Regarding the Wisconsin incident – yes, it certainly does reveal a large degree of public discontent. However, unless that anger is given the means to fight the powers of state (an entity that exists because of force) that rage will accomplish nothing but get people arrested, maimed or killed for opposing the state.
State entities rarely ever die a nice, peaceful death – as much as I’d love to believe in some kind of karma that will just balnce everything out on its own (the thought certainly has its comforts), I know better than to keep working within a failed system…
Azazel: it’s not karma, Dialectics is based on SCIENCE. If you don’t understand how things change, or have a robust lens with which to understand history, then you’ll miss it.
Secondly, how is dialectics about waiting for ANYTHING??! Where was that stated in my article. In fact, it’s the other way around. Dialectics isn’t about waiting for anything, it’s about UNDERSTANDING how opposing forces work. As an activist, I clearly understand the importance of knowing the structure underlying change processes.
Finally, whenever people call for armed rebellion, I’m always reminded that 80% of all the casualties in ALL the wars of the 20th century were mostly women and children, followed by the elderly and the infirm.
Karlsie. I like your use of the tides as a metaphor. Taking the tides in the context of its relationship to its environment, however, gives it a different take. Those tides perform a multitude of functions that make indispensable in the grand scheme of things. Someone like me, or someone using dialectics in order to understand the tides will learn its underlying structure and use that structure to benefit the whole of the environment.
Someone using a linear, ahistorical, framework will attempt to use the tides in a way that will come back to bite them in the ass. Being part of the process of organic, POSITIVE change means understanding the underlying forces at work and the context in which they get played out.
If we want to create a world with food, clothing, shelter, health, and a bright future for all, we can do it. Dialectics teaches that change is within our power. Now all there is left to do is to make it happen.
Dialectics teaches us to look at all sides of a problem. The saying, “He who knows only his own side knows little of it,” applies here. Knowing that change can only occur when one side overcomes the opposing side teaches us to learn about both sides’ strengths and weaknesses.
[Quote=Eddie]it’s not karma, Dialectics is based on SCIENCE. If you don’t understand how things change, or have a robust lens with which to understand history, then you’ll miss it.[/quote]
If by science you mean the social sciences (which are “soft” sciences) then yes – and I fully understand how history has traditionally moved. My goal is to disrupt that pattern, not to patiently work with that broken system.
[Quote=Eddie]Secondly, how is dialectics about waiting for ANYTHING??![/quote]
You implied such in your final paragraph…
“And the wedge, when applied at the right time at the right moment in collaboration with your brothers and sisters, topples the most powerful.”
I’m done waiting around for the sheeple to get their act together – thus I prefer to act with a relatively small group of disaffected persons dedicated to the destruction of this rotten society over trying to get some kind of popular uprising to happen (as most people would prefer to simply veg in front of the T.V. over slaying incorporeal monsters).
[Quote=Eddie]Finally, whenever people call for armed rebellion, I’m always reminded that 80% of all the casualties in ALL the wars of the 20th century were mostly women and children, followed by the elderly and the infirm.[/quote]
Given the fact that our civilization is about to hit peak oil (which means a *huge* blow to the agra-industry that keeps most people supplied with food) that will probably happen anyway in the next couple of decades – thus I’ve already written off those not willing to fight this corupted establishment as dead from the start. We have reached the point where our nation’s resources are going to be stressed to the limit and only the strongest will be able to lay claim to what’s left.
It’s not a question of how many people will die, but rather how many will survive the coming storm – I intend to be one of those that makes it through the coming nightmare rather than a helpless victim of forces beyond the control of the average person (and the best way for me to do that is to destroy said forces before they destroy me).
This is not unsimilar from what people like Voltaire were writing about in the 1700’s. Even Locke would fit here with his ideals that in order to learn one must experience things.
And yet, what did all that lead to? The French Revolution was bloody and awful as was our own. It disrupted trade all over the world and we still screwed it up. We are still back to where we began heading towards an Oligarchy.
We need to be involved,yes definately, but I think we need to do it at smaller levels to be more effective. What we need is more enclaves of Robbing-Hoods with protective villages and less of the rioting mobs.
Azazel: yes, the social sciences are soft in the sense that they don’t deal with cause and effect, but that doesn’t negate them, nor does it mean that CORRELATION isn’t important. Your position vis a vis the social sciences is ironic considering your obvious debt to Nietzsche (and Plato) and your use of Weberian terms to make your points.
You state irrational things about the “sheeple,” and this is partly the motivation behind my posting this article. It is obvious to me you’ve never attempted to organize or implement institutional change because your view of people wouldn’t be as dismissive. Your thinking on this isn’t very original. Platonists have been using your frame for over a millenia to no avail.
finally, your rationale for killing people (mostly women and children) is without merit, to say the least. and I’m being generous.
Grainne: you bring up an important consideration:
“We need to be involved,yes definately, but I think we need to do it at smaller levels to be more effective. What we need is more enclaves of Robbing-Hoods with protective villages and less of the rioting mobs.”
Most lasting change begins small, and the most spectacular mass movements, were non-violent. Gandhi, MLK, Thich Nhat hahn, Paolo Friere (whose pedagogy has been responsible for the liberation of MILLIONS world-wide) and many, many, others created lasting change without shooting off one bullet.
also, if you see change from a dialectical perspective, there really isn’t ever one side winning over the other. When you operate solely from a polarity, it’s a perspective divorced from reality and actually creates more problems than it solves. Instead, there are spirals. Understanding these spirals and understanding change empowers.
Eddie wrote
“The point here, my fiends, is whether we will continue the bullshit activism from the “neck up” or actually pull up our sleeves and nurture the Wisconsin in our heart and soul, where we live.”
Its time to start a real grassroots entity unlike the well financed TEAPARTY. The wags of the facists.
Call it ……….The ProActive Party as a discription of what it would do and not just be an empty name. Those opf us concerned enough could begin the task of taking our republic back from virtual extinction!
1. I did not dismiss the social sciences – I only mentioned that they were soft sciences to point out that they are open to interpretation.
2. I actually did try to move within a traditional activist organization and got nowhere fast – which is why I gave up on them and prefer to work with a cadre of motivated individuals instead.
3. At no point did I suggest killing women and children – what I said was that I’ve already written off those unwilling to fight their oppressors as dead. Why? Because resources will soon be too scarce to support this bloated population (which is at 7 billion and going up – this can’t possibly last much longer): a massive die-off is coming and there is little can can be done except to acquire the means to survive the coming catastrophe – and this will require a force of arms powerful enough to match those of the state (as it will be the big player in the coming resource wars).
Like I said before, I intend to be of those hardy enough to survive the coming catastrophe – and those who don’t ready themselves (probably too busy watching “American Idol” or something) simply won’t make it out alive.
Sorry it took me so long to respond…midterms.
“For example, sometimes people say, “What difference can one person make?” When you understand that each drop adds up to make a mighty ocean, you know you are important. Every vote counts; every voice matters; that extra bit of effort may be all it takes to reach a turning point.”
I remember getting involved in the Nader movement that made me realize that change is slow but it does happen. Even if it is one drop of water, many other drops do follow. I read your post here several times to make sure I’m not embarrassed here. I must admit…again you will have me back at Amazon looking for some of the people you mentioned…stop doing that to me! LOL!
The spiral example…wow! I always likened change to a metronome, but a spiral is spot on.
Thanks for this…gives me a little boost when I don’t feel like studying…I will remember that I’m not studying for a degree…but for the little ones I will be educating once I have the degree.
Chris: proposing to continue the same actions and expecting different results is madness. For example, proposing to kill more women and children as a way to stop killing women and children is crazy. Armed rebellion, war, and all violent measures kill more women and children than actual soldiers. You propose violent measures, so in a way that you’re perhaps blind to, you’re actually proposing killing more women and children.
Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity.
Secondly, people have been predicting the end of the world for centuries. While it is always a possibility, it hasn’t happened. Change doesn’t happen in the way you describe it. Change is part of the interplay of yin and yang, night and day, dark and light. You propose to kill off the night as a way to usher in a new day, but it just has never worked that way.
Sayntj: if you ever get a chance check out spiral dynamics. That shit will blow your mind (the chart used in the post is an illustration of spiral dynamics). In short, the same consciousness that caused the problem CANNOT bring about a solution. A different consciousness is needed.
[Quote=Eddie]proposing to continue the same actions and expecting different results is madness. For example, proposing to kill more women and children as a way to stop killing women and children is crazy. Armed rebellion, war, and all violent measures kill more women and children than actual soldiers. You propose violent measures, so in a way that you’re perhaps blind to, you’re actually proposing killing more women and children.[/quote]
1. I never proposed killing women and children – so quit saying that. I’m aware that people die in revolutions, but at this point I doubt that can be avoided (as peak oil will bring about rapid depopulation with or without a coinciding revolt).
2. My goal isn’t to stop the impending depopulation (I’ve already accepted that as an inevitability), but rather to preserve and strengthen those who seek the demise of the established order which brought about the coming cataclysm in the first place – thus the reason I consider those unwilling to rise up and fight their oppressors dead from the start.
[Quote=Eddie]Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity.[/quote]
I’m not “fighting for peace” – in fact, I’m not convinced that peace has the potential to be a permanent state of affairs in the first place. What I fight for is the end of the old order and the rise of a counter-order to fill the vacuum.
[Quote=Eddie]Secondly, people have been predicting the end of the world for centuries. While it is always a possibility, it hasn’t happened. Change doesn’t happen in the way you describe it. [/quote]
Who said anything about the end of the world? The world will go on with or without us – or without life of any kind, for that matter. No, the world is in no danger of ending anytime soon. But a civilization highly dependant on a finite resource (a non-renewable one at that)? That’s in danger of folding like a map in the next few decades. Just look at what happened to Easter Island for a microcosm of this phenomena…
[Quote=Eddie]Change doesn’t happen in the way you describe it. Change is part of the interplay of yin and yang, night and day, dark and light. You propose to kill off the night as a way to usher in a new day, but it just has never worked that way.[/quote]
What I seek is not change as most people understand it, rather I seek what is the rarest of opportunities in nature – the chance to capitalize on a mass extinction event (or at least the sociological equivalent thereof). Just as the mammals were allowed to evolve to fill brand new niches after a planet-killer meteor wiped out the dinosaurs, I plan to fill the niches left by the mass destruction of incorporeal beings (states, corporations, etc…) and evolve brand new forms of society that can’t possibly exist as long as the present sociological ecology remains intact.
And the armed revolt coupled with the draining of the oil reserves will function as my planet-killing meteor – without such a thing the rise of new societies will be all but impossible (they will likely just be fodder for the state entities to exploit otherwise), just as humans would not have evolved had the dinosaurs suddenly disappeared from the world stage…
Azazel: You miss the point of the article entirely. You speak of change, but MY point is that without a shift (change) in consciousness, there can be no positive change.
a gun or power doesn’t create that shift, a change IN THINKING/ FEELING creates that shift.
But, and I say this with all due respect, your credibility suffers when you state unequivocally that killing innocent people is justified. That’s nothing new.
finally, I seen more violence than most “normal” people,. I have lived with REAL killers — people who would kill you without so much as a thought. I seen people get shot, have been shot at. I know the sick thudding sound a body makes when it splatters on a sidewalk after being thrown off a ten-story building. I also know well the smell and sound of someone emptying a gun into that same body.
In short, i know violence intimately, and aside from a few sociopaths I’ve met, no one who has committed such violence speaks of it as easily as you do. I don’t think you know jack shit about violence, or revolution, or what happens sin a mass protest when it goes violent.
I know killers, Azazel, and you ain’t no killer.
Respectfully, speaking.
BTW, to all who comment: I’ve been remiss in responding because I’ve been extremely busy at work tying to save my project.