Mao famously said that “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” Suggesting that in order to take outright political control the armed struggle is an absolute necessity. And although this is known as one of the famous creeds of Marxist-Leninist revolutionary theory, it has also clearly been adopted by those on the other side of the barricades, most aggressively by the United States.
Gandhi on the other hand taught that the monopoly on courage is held by those who stand and face the cannons, not by those who cower behind them. Guns (or insert drones here) are for the cowards in other words.
Until American society chooses Gandhi’s message over Mao’s message as its overarching philosophy on violence, and commits to teaching it from the earliest grades in schools and to echoing it repeatedly and endlessly in the media, no mere tweaking of easily circumvented gun laws will make the fundamental difference. There are no quick fixes, it will take generations. Shame is a powerful human driver and nobody aspires to be known as a coward…
A notable philosopher once wrote: “all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice… the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.”
The tragedy: occurred in November 1915 when labor organizer and songwriter Joe Hill was convicted on uncorroborated circumstantial evidence and executed by a Utah firing squad. Hill’s case, appearing to be clearly rigged against him, became a national cause célèbre, with many personalities of the day weighing-in on his behalf. President Woodrow Wilson even tried to intervene to stay the execution. But in the grand tradition of states rights Utah would have none of it. After all, the after-party was set and invitations already printed. For his part, Joe Hill had already come to the conclusion (correctly as it turned out) that he was more valuable to the labor movement dead than alive. In a last letter to labor leader “Big Bill” Haywood, Hill asked to be buried across the state line, indicating that he wouldn’t want to be caught dead in Utah. His last word, shouted while standing blindfolded, was “Fire!”
The farce: Utah Gov. Gary Herbert signed a bill bringing back the firing squad as a method of execution. Fox News, America’s most trusted purveyors of farce, reported it this way: at the beginning of the article we learn that “The bill’s sponsor, Republican Rep. Paul Ray of Clearfield, touted the measure as being a more humane form of execution. Ray argued that a team of trained marksmen is faster and more humane than the drawn-out deaths that have occurred in botched lethal injections. The bill gives Utah options, he said. “We would love to get the lethal injection worked out so we can continue with that but if not, now we have a backup plan.” How reasonable.
In the name of fair and balanced reporting, Fox gives opponents their say a little further into the story: “Opponents, however, said firing squads are a cruel holdover from the state’s wild West days and will earn the state international condemnation.” And the last paragraph in the article: “The Washington, D.C.-based Death Penalty Information Center, which opposes capital punishment, says a firing squad is not a foolproof execution method because the inmate could move or shooters could miss the heart, causing a slower, more painful death. One such case appears to have happened in Utah’s territorial days back in 1879, when a firing squad missed Wallace Wilkerson’s heart and it took him 27 minutes to die, according to newspaper accounts.” 1879!
And then there’s Gary Gilmore.
Here’s an idea: let’s bring the execution process into the 21st century. Why not just put the prisoner’s name on the Military’s High Value Target (HVT) hit list and send a drone to kill him one day while out exercising in the prison yard? That is clearly a more humane solution than a firing squad since the prisoner won’t even know what him/her.
Listen to Ohio State’s own rebel songwriter Phil Ochs sing “The Ballad of Joe Hill”:
Citation:
“Utah lawmakers vote to become only state to allow firing squad.” Fox News Channel. Published December 20, 2015 2:35pm EST
On March 7, 1965 the protest marches from Selma to Montgomery Alabama began. The first march was ended by state troopers and some county citizens, who charged on about 600 unarmed protesters after they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge in the direction of Montgomery. The event became known as Bloody Sunday. By Monday morning LBJ was knee-deep in a political confrontation of epic proportions. His recorded phone conversations that day show that he was more upset with MLK than with Wallace.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, with much less fanfare, his Marines were landing on Red Beach 2 near Da Nang in South Vietnam, marking the beginning of what the Vietnamese call the “American War.” That was March 8, 1965. The next day LBJ authorized the use of Napalm. Before the year was out he would be “waist deep in the big muddy.” Quite a weekend.
Note: six years later, on March 8, 1971, anti-war protesters broke into a Media, Pennsylvania FBI office and stole a trove of classified documents that revealed the FBI’s COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program). The covert program was aimed at spying on, discrediting, and disrupting domestic political organizations, primarily the anti-Vietnam War movement. One of the principal players in the COINTELPRO story was one Mark Felt, later revealed as “Deep Throat” in the Watergate Scandal:
Mao famously said that “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” Suggesting that in order to take outright political control the armed struggle is an absolute necessity. And although this is known as one of the famous creeds of Marxist-Leninist revolutionary theory, it has also clearly been adopted by those on the other side of the barricades, most aggressively by the United States.
Parallel Narratives 