Revolution

Revolution

When I was a young, white, suburban punk growing up under Reagan and Bush, I couldn’t imagine the future.  I had been convinced we would all burn in a nuclear fire. Seriously. In 1986, Kirby Puckett signed a baseball contract that lasted through 1993.  I remember reading it in the paper and being astounded that people thought there would still be baseball in 1993. It slowly dawned on me that other people didn’t think World War 3 was really going to happen, at least not on American soil.  

As a GenXer, I regarded revolution as a boomer dream from the 60s.  They acted like they invented marching and sit-ins, and that all protest should look like it did back then.  I didn’t want the job of replicating their failed revolution.  

When I consider the long history of injustices perpetrated by the American government upon its people, through its ongoing refusal to guarantee its first principles to all people, I conclude that revolution is necessary.  How else will we achieve the eradication of our bigotries?

I have been thinking that the next war would be the American Race War, in which we finally defeat the white supremacists.  But then I read Neal Stephenson’s new book, which convinced me that we are too lazy and privileged for all that fighting.  Instead we will fight the Reality Wars, which have already begun.