Keith Olbermann says it: violence has no place in our world

[avevale_intelligencer]

Here.

I wish I believed that anyone who didn't already agree would be listening...but history has shown, time and again, that enough of us cherish our ability to choose to do harm to other human beings that it will never be sufficiently controlled while we remain human to prevent such incidents as the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords.

And democracy dictates that if I were to form a party whose goal was to enact a law permitting the evisceration of any person wearing a red shirt on odd Tuesdays in September, and if I were to keep quiet about that bit while campaigning, and if I were to gain enough public support to mount a sufficiently persuasive campaign to gain victory in an election, there would be nothing to stop me enacting said law. (And perhaps liberals would tell each other "well, it's only two or at the most three days a year, and you can always leave the red shirt in the closet on those days, so maybe it won't be so bad." Wait till next year.)

It seems as clear as the weather outside my window today, to me as a liberal, that however reasonable and sane and well-intentioned and humane and generous billions of conservatives across the world may be, and they are, conservative (EDIT: and quasi-conservative, cf. new Labour) political parties are in general (EDIT: as they are constituted now, based on my interpretation of their actions in America from 2000-2008 and in Britain from 1979 to the end of bloody time, apparently) founded on principles which have no place in any enlightened government; in any government which exists to further, insofar as it can, prosperity and peace and freedom and security for ALL its citizens, not merely the ones with the most money and the biggest guns. And yet there can be, under a democratic system, no law to restrain those conservative parties from seeking, and from gaining power...because if there are enough people who want to be oppressed and exploited, who want to be slaves in all but name, who want to be deluded with false promises into collaborating with the promoters of poverty and exclusion, and who will give up the right not to be shot at with a gun in return for the right to have one themselves so that they can shoot back...then democracy dictates that that is the government the people want, and the rest of us must submit and endure. Cue Heinlein quote about democracy; I'm sure someone here has it at his or her fingertips.

I'm not saying there is a solution; I am saying there is none. Freedom of speech must include hate speech. The fact that that freedom confers a responsibility to govern one's own tongue is not something that can be forced into the minds of those who will not entertain it. Democracy must mean that the people get the government they want, however stupid, however greedy, however dishonest, however evil. The fact that the freedom to choose a government confers a responsibility to choose one that will benefit not merely you and your friends but everyone in the country--even the people you don't like--again, cannot be forcibly implanted in minds which refuse to get it.

(EDIT: And here I should say that many conservative supporters do get it, and while I may think they are mistaken, I would never say that they have not thought about the matter. There are minds such as I have described, but they are hopefully relatively few.)

The only solution, the only way to ensure one kind of government over another, would be to abandon democracy, and there is, as far as I can see, no alternative that seems significantly better.

I would love to believe that Sarah Palin, and Jesse Kelly, and all the others Keith mentions and does not mention, would be repudiated by their party, whichever that might be, and forced by such repudiation to seek a livelihood outside politics; that one country in this world might, in this year of grace 2011, take a first faltering step towards outlawing violence of all kinds against fellow human beings, whatever the cause, whatever the provocation. I would love to believe that, just as we are, finally and possibly too late, starting to look into alternatives to burning the substance of our planet to provide our energy, so we might begin to look into alternative solutions to war, and execution, and torture, and the ever-growing prevalence of horrendous weapons of personal destruction from a distance.

But it won't happen. We love the violence too much.

To paraphrase Keith: Violence, or the threat of violence, has no place in our civilisation, and I apologize for and repudiate any act or any thing in my past that may have even inadvertently encouraged violence. Because for whatever else each of us may be, we all are human beings.

And now there'll probably be another row. But hopefully a non-violent one.

Comments

[keristor.livejournal.com]

I have a lot of time for Keith Olbermann. Whether I agree with him or not (and most of the time, like this one, I do agree with him) he is one of, possibly the, most rational commentators I have heard. (I did keep wanting to correct the transcript with what he actually said. But it may have been a pre-released script which he then said slightly differently.)

As for political parties (and individuals) which encourage violence, they can be anywhere on the spectrum. I don't believe that anyone who wants power is immune, some just have policies which some people find more palatable than others because they are in favour of those voters.

I'm not sure which Heinlein quote you had in mind, the one which springs to my mine is the one which goes something like "Dictatorship is based on the idea that one man is wiser than lots of men. Who decides? Democracy is based on the idea that many men are wiser than one man. Come again?" Oh, and "Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for dinner."

Not that either we or any country I know have democracy. We have an elected oligarchy (where the difference between those who can be elected is so small as to be not very significant), America has a republic, a number of countries are theocracies...

[howeird]

On the one hand, I agree with everything you said here. On the other hand, I don't think it applies to this particular case. I propose a slight twist on the "there is no solution" theme, and that is there is no solution to the problem of a person who has a mental health issue suddenly acting out on his paranoia.

[earth-wizard.livejournal.com]

To explain in a reasonable way the violence of madness is in itself unreasonalble. To politicise an act of madness is a form of violence not against the perpetrator, but against the victim who should have the right to a cultural memory free of the very violence that brought her being into connection with what can only be termed - the dark power of our own genetic heritage as animals.

For we are the very violence we would disown, and until we can accept this violence as the central animalistic core of our own non-essence we will never be able to overcome the dark force of its terror. For we are not reasonable animals, but unreasoning creatures full of that most terrible truth: the self-awareness of our nothingness. This and this only allows us to let such non-beings as the violent killer who, instead of obliterating the meaningless of his own existence, force society to end it for him: a cowardice in the face of his own inanity.

I know many will hate what I say, but it is for me the truth and we need to face harsh truths. How else explain such things? Shall we just make this into a political act? Shall we castigate any madman that makes any mad act as always a poltical event to qualm our own inability to act?