“Don’t Give Up the Fight. . .”
9 08 2007“Don’t give up the fight. INTENSIFY the fight. That is my answer.“
Spotted today at the end of a passion-filled political essay. Can you tell what question this answer is directed toward, from the above quote? It could be anything, right? Feminists, SAHMS and helpmeets fighting each other; spankers and not; education advocates from homeschool purists to school union bosses; racial, religious and nationalistic tribes — all use it to rally their troops and avoid seeking real answers in real progress, intensifying the fight instead of being willing to let go of one’s fight to try something, anything, different than what so clearly escalates the fighting even more. It made me think that this is ever the partisan’s answer, no matter what the question.
Never give up; intensify the fight.
Even when what the fight is fighting, is FIGHTING?? That is the Logic of Failure. (You’d be flunked for this circular silly-gism in a logic class: we must never give up the fight to give up the fight.)
We are squandering our environmental capital and undermining our social capital because we are trying to do things, or avoid doing things, that cannot be sustained for very much longer.
Surely the end is near then, if not of war, of reason . . .
We know all politics is based on hope and fear.
(So we fight what we fear and hope we win?)
I heard a “future of the workplace” poll from Businessweek’s Peter Coy, discussed on NPR this morning. Its responses to “which scares you the most?” might suggest that rather than Rs fearing/fighting Ds and vice versa, American citizens as team players should “intensify the fight” against (not ignorance, poverty, crime, disease, terrorism but) our own financial markets, oh, and those billions of universally terrifying Chinese:
Education (homeschooling too) knows a lot about intensifying fights and where that leaves the kids.
“Our Raging Drive to Be Number One” — does it justify the ravaging intensity of our partisan politics, public schools, economics, evangelism and competition for personal acclaim?
Why I don’t buy any side’s fight as progressive or peaceful :
Instead, the liberal tribe’s identity fight against us evolved, feminist homeschool moms was intensified. I got the message.