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"terrorism"..."the common man"....jeez....
if the action you are talking about occurs far away: there is nothing you can do.
chances are that if you watch it on tv, you will understand alomst nothing about what is going on anyway. you will know about the violence. you will always know about the violence. if it bleeds it leads.
if the action that you are talking about occurs in a context you can help to shape: work to change the situation.
try to keep political opposition within the boundaries of the conventional process.
even if that requires a radical critique of the existing order, of the existing "conventional" political mechanisms for channelling dissent.
because almost all "terrorist" acts are political.
most are undertaken by people who have no hope of altering the oppressive situation in which they find themselves (situations that they understand as oppressive, as dehumanizing) by conventional political means.
most are undertaken by people who understand themselves as invisible politically, for one reason or another.
most are undertaken by people who see the situation in which they find themselves as grinding away their dignity.
most such acts are theater.
we have the pleasure of living in a climate at the moment in which any attempt to understand what might motivate a "terrorist" action is seen as condoning those actions.
i suspect there will be some who read this and interpret it that way.
however, you could also see it as saying that if you dont try to look at how these actions might come to be considered, all you will be able to do is say tsk tsk tsk as you watch pictures of carnage unfold in your living room on television.
occaisionally you reflect and wonder what you might do----even though you know, if you think about it, that the tv coverage is framing these matters in such a ways as to imply that there is nothing you can do and that the theater of oppression needs to be countered with the theater of state power.
either way, lots of innocent people die.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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