"...it's not the training to be mean but the training to be kind that is used to keep us leashed best." ~ Black Dog Red

"In case you haven't recognized the trend: it proceeds action, dissent, speech." ~ davidly, on how wars get done

"...What sort of meager, unerotic existence must a man live to find himself moved to such ecstatic heights by the mundane sniping of a congressional budget fight. The fate of human existence does not hang in the balance. The gods are not arrayed on either side. Poseiden, earth-shaker, has regrettably set his sights on the poor fishermen of northern Japan and not on Washington, D.C. where his ire might do some good--I can think of no better spot for a little wetland reclamation project, if you know what I mean. The fight is neither revolution nor apocalypse; it is hardly even a fight. A lot of apparatchiks are moving a lot of phony numbers with more zeros than a century of soccer scores around, weaving a brittle chrysalis around a gross worm that, some time hence, will emerge, untransformed, still a worm." ~ IOZ

Nov 19, 2011

Language

Sometimes you have to speak the enemy's language, or he won't be able to hear what you have to say. Hell, he might only know about you, in theory. You may only exist to him as an obstacle. Or as a bundle of potential or manipulable reactions. If his response to your existence is a life destroying legal action, he's looking to break you with your fear. If his reaction to your discontent is to send in ten cohorts of the peace legions of the homeland, it's your terror at death and injury, your dread of punishment, your horror at ostracism and recrimination which he is trying to provoke. You aren't human to him. He has no word for your humanity, in his native tongue.

If you play make-nice and do-good with him, he may not be able to comprehend. He might not even speak the language. Perhaps the best response is to use the language he understands.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Speak the truth even if your voice shakes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlvLNjQRCVM&feature=BFa&list=ULzXQwoc9kjSY&lf=mfu_in_order

In solidarity
Frances