bravura and privilege

[badgerbag]

What was percolating yesterday in my post was something I know, but most of the time I get to ignore. It's that I get a lot of props for a sort of bravura that is real, but that is fueled by, that works through, mostly by various kinds of privilege that I have, and that won't always be there and that won't always work and that are a result of luck or arbitrary conditions, not things under my control. It is not that I was angry at that specific bus driver. And it is not that we shouldn't speak up or resist power and authority and social injustice whenever we see it, in a big or a small situation. It is that those tools I used Don't Work unless you are me. (I take credit for all the bits of what I do that are awesome, also. I could be me and still not have the will to resist or the knowledge of how to.) When they stop working for me (and I can think of many reasons why a bunch of those tools will stop working) I may not have the political tools, the political organization, that's necessary to fight. So I need to look to that and think harder about what I should be doing and how I should be living my life. Feedback on this thought is welcome.

Comments

[onyxlynx]

Hmmmm. One of the reasons I hang out online is that a lot of the tools and workarounds I'd been using since oh 1970, which mostly worked because I was exploiting exceptions to various conditions and weirdnesses, stopped working. I should never have looked down after running past the edge of that cliff...

So. Developing political ju-jitsu (so to speak) is an excellent idea. Implementing it is what has to be done. Especially since some of the political tools have gotten rusty from disuse.