Dallas

In the wake of the Dallas sniper attack, I find myself thinking constantly about the language the American left has been using lately. Specifically, that nonviolence is not the only legitimate means of resistance to government repression. Spoken in whispers and without going into detail, it nevertheless serves as a finger-wag to the less committed among us. A mild reproof for those of us who have sold out to the establishment.

When I hear this, it tends to come from educated people. People who have spent a lot of time perusing the dimmer, mustier corners of the left’s library. People who can, for the sheer intellectual stimulation and personal edification of it, write 5,000 well-sourced words on the growth of anarchism in Eastern Europe between 1920 and 1930 and the relevance thereof to the present-day European Union.

The coarser cousin of this particular line of political thinking has been the constant talk of “revolution” that has surrounded Bernie Sanders’ campaign for President. Let it be known that I, from the first, assumed that Bernie meant “revolution” in a rhetorical sense, within the bounds of the American political system as it exists today. I still believe this. However, I do not believe that a lot of young, strident people who spend their days discoursing on Twitter and Facebook would necessarily agree. I don’t think most of them have an actual clue just what they’re advocating for, mind, just that it’s something more, shall we say, kinetic than phone-banking for progressive state senate campaigns in off-year elections.

And here we are. Nonviolence has been set aside for the moment. We have five dead cops and a dead shooter. Does this portend progress? Is the future of police reform brighter today than it was a week ago? Is rapprochement and healing between law enforcement and the communities they are sworn to protect any closer? And if you truly mean what you say, are you prepping the Molotovs and readying a charge to the barricades? Or are you perhaps expecting those with less to lose to fight your battles for you?

I would encourage us all on the left to think hard about just what we are advocating for in our tweets and notes and blogs. Reality is intruding far faster than those of us who spend our days solving the world’s problems via keyboard and smartphone realize. We are standing on the precipice of a new death spiral and we ought at least to look before we leap.