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what i gather so far is that there is no particular impulse that would cause you to imagine that freedom for others is a way of extending such freedom as you do or do not enjoy where you are---so having dispensed with any actual rationale that might come from the usual suspects in terms of political commitment--like say ethics or a political inclination to oppose oppression of others because you see in them human beings not a whole lot unlike yourself--the entire issue becomes more of less arbitrary and the processes whereby one factoid/problem (is there a difference?) acquires weight and another doesn't also becomes more or less arbitrary.
so we can blame the hipsters for harshing our collective mellow. or signifiers like the dalai lama.
but there are interesting and to my mind disturbing problems underneath all this.
absence of a political message that shapes or gives direction to opposition to a colonial occupation, for example, does tend to efface the fact of occupation, yes?
if the people who are under occupation are adequately pulverized, political mobilization is a problem.
for example: there hasn't been a whole lot of political mobilization amongst the native american population in radical opposition to the entire american order since, o i dont know, wounded knee, except for the aim of the early 1970s. and even that you probably wouldn't know about unless you read "in the spirit of crazy horse" or some such.
but there is alot of political activity, particularly around questions of winning recognition of "tribal" status from states around the country...
recognition of status entails recognition of claims to exist.
but it is a problem--if everything is the same as everything else, really, then even being informed about some of the conflicts happening in various states around the country about this kind of issue is unnecessary, unless you happen to stumble across something in print or on the radio...in those few pockets of "alternative" information that still function in this increasingly homogenize infotainment wasteland we live in...
information is a problem.
on the other hand, it seems to make some sense that one's sense of solidarity, if it exists, would be shaped by the demands of the folk with whom you express solidarity, yes?
otherwise, you'd just be telling them what their situation "really means" and that's not a whole lot different from being colonized, is it?
what links the two is lack of information about political situations around the world--hell, even within the united states--not only about basic challenges to the existing order (and they're out there)--but even about groups or movements that work in the trenches of ordinary politics.
why is that? you'd think with 24/7 cable "news" outlets that you'd see and hear a whole range of stuff about all kinds of situations, that 24/7 would be enough time to provide actual context and a sense of history and grain to those situations. you would think that knowing something about , say, the costs entailed by the "american way of life"---to make things "local"---would be important.
but apparently this isn't the case.
apparently, you don't see or hear much.
i see alot of the thread so far (not all of it) as reproducing the effects of a sanitized information context that simply does not provide anything remotely like coherent coverage of movements that challenge what exists.
what's curious to me really is not that this reproduction happens--it happens all the time, all around, not just here--but that so few folk seem to notice that there's anything strange about it.
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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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