We have a romanticized notion of "fighting for our freedom" and "watering the tree of liberty from time to time with the blood of tyrants and patriots".
That notion drags us back into a mythical past, where we can fantasize about our own heroism and having the courage to die for whatever cause (just or lost) being sold to us by people who benefit from our blood and struggle - and our willingness to commit murder in the name of God and Country - instead of bleeding and struggling and committing those crimes themselves.
So instead of thinking, "Thank the fake lord I never had to do such horrible things", we're fed a line of bullshit that keeps us thinking in terms straight out of the movie Fight Club - "I was never tested on the field of battle - how can I really know myself if I've never been in a proper fight?"
We lose the lesson. We get so fervent and hung up on glorifying the heroes of the revolution, we forget the part where those heroes put together a form of government designed to prevent the need for bloody violent insurrection.
And I hear it in my own rhetoric. It's there in the tagline on my little blog - "stay in the fight".
I don't have any quick and handy solutions, btw.
There's a metric fuck-ton of wrinkles and variations when I start to think about "the fight" and the lessons we should learn but always seem to miss.
It fogs my brain and makes it impossible to stick to my editorial rule about keeping these posts short and snappy.
Suffice to say -
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