Justice
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Is violence ever justice? Is coercion better than violence? Israel, Palestine, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Christianity, and the question of violence
What if there were no more physical violence but we agreed to argue, fight, or address conflict by other means? Would we not resort to espionage and trickery? Is that really any better than physical violence? But that is in the nebulous realm of international or interstate conflict. Imagine you stand face to face with your captor. He has not physically trapped you anywhere. Instead, he has coerced you through laws, rules, finances, relationships, and so forth. Shoot, maybe he’s plain smarter than you. So you’re trapped doing his will. Any little thing you do is at once what he asked—and then some—but not good enough. You sweep the floor,…
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Why, on Earth
To be trapped seasick nauseous and hungry in a small prison cell-like yet expensive room aboard the m/v Kennicott in the North Pacific Ocean, incomunicado from friends and family and with no doctors obviously on board (a sign outside the purser’s office reads to the effect of “medical professionals please volunteer during an emergency”), enclosed with physical and emotional pain, and peep on the horizon outside the little circle window the snow white ridges of the Fairweather Range rising above gentle crests of wake and against clear celestial blue sky is just about worth the trouble. It is better in some ways than living a cubicle life in D.C. Most…
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On Climate Justice
I will discuss herein my beliefs about climate justice without thoroughly justifying them. I will justify them in future posts. Justice is a synchronic condition that society either meets or doesn’t at a given moment in time. That is to say: either society synchronizes in the correct way or it is not a just society. The correct way is simply the society’s being the way it ought to be. The definition of a just society, then, is a society that is the way it ought to be. That sounds vague but it shows us a surprising lot about what a just society would be like and what we ought to…
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Activism is worth it
Dedicated to the volunteers from Plymouth, New Hampshire, and around the country that built our win there, as well as my colleagues Introduction to the introduction Bernie dropped out. Uh oh! There are a lot of things that could be said about Bernie’s dropping out and the years that lead up to it. Bernie is probably one of the most impactful presidential candidates in American political history. The ruling class and the media suck. I wish there were a less candid way to say it but niceties don’t cut it anymore when it comes to those two. They can’t handle their responsibilities, which we’ve been saying for decades, and which…
