YES, I've been saying this over and over. The rebels are not always the good guys, but American culture is VERY uncomfortable recognizing that. Everyone always wants to be the rebels. Everyone!
I've been thinking over the last few days that as much as I enjoy the term "ass hole putsch" to describe the attack on the Capitol, I'm a lot more worried about ending up in something closer to the Spanish Civil War. Where the rebels were not the good guys, unless you were a fascist. Which is rather the problem here.
Fun, romantic, sure, but unless you want the evil empire to be in power forever (because that's the only way you get to be the noble resistance forever--if you never win), you have to imagine a time when you're governing, where you're setting policy, where you're trying to build a thing, and that's inevitably going to be ... not perfect.
That's one of the reasons I like Yoon Ha Lee's Revenant Gun (2018) so much: it is entirely about what happens after the splintering of the evil empire, which is (a) civil war between its successor states (b) PAPERWORK. The character in charge of the non-totalitarian successor state would be fine with the paperwork if it didn't come with so many administrative meetings. I really feel for him.
Less fictionally, I really don't want to be fighting an evil empire forever, thank you very much. These last five years of merely living in one have been exhausting enough.
Truth and reconciliation requires an acceptance of responsibility, remorse, and a willingness to make restitution AND EVEN THEN it's not a get-out-of-jail-free card.
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I've been thinking over the last few days that as much as I enjoy the term "ass hole putsch" to describe the attack on the Capitol, I'm a lot more worried about ending up in something closer to the Spanish Civil War. Where the rebels were not the good guys, unless you were a fascist. Which is rather the problem here.
Fun, romantic, sure, but unless you want the evil empire to be in power forever (because that's the only way you get to be the noble resistance forever--if you never win), you have to imagine a time when you're governing, where you're setting policy, where you're trying to build a thing, and that's inevitably going to be ... not perfect.
That's one of the reasons I like Yoon Ha Lee's Revenant Gun (2018) so much: it is entirely about what happens after the splintering of the evil empire, which is (a) civil war between its successor states (b) PAPERWORK. The character in charge of the non-totalitarian successor state would be fine with the paperwork if it didn't come with so many administrative meetings. I really feel for him.
Less fictionally, I really don't want to be fighting an evil empire forever, thank you very much. These last five years of merely living in one have been exhausting enough.
Truth and reconciliation requires an acceptance of responsibility, remorse, and a willingness to make restitution AND EVEN THEN it's not a get-out-of-jail-free card.
Teshuvah, damn it!