"I do believe that, where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence... I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honour than that she should, in a cowardly manner, become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonor."--MK Gandhi
In offering this quote, I am not advocating violence. I am pointing out that even Gandhi, the modern Prince of Peace, found violence superior to "compromise" that amounts to abject capitulation.
In Obama's tactics right now, we have two things that Gandhi utterly disdained: 1) the willingness to accept long-term damage and degradation in return for short-term relief 2) the willingness to abandon core principles to avoid a painful confrontation.
It is extremely unfortunate that we have a leader (if that is the word) who believes a balanced accord can be struck by taking three paces to the center from the most dangerous and vicious position an opponent can stake out. This is not principled. It's not even practical. It is deeply shameful, and it is treacherous to those he has sworn to defend.
It is also unfortunate that he thinks so little of us that he believes we are unwilling to suffer in the short term in order to preserve all we hold dear. Our forebears stood up to the corporations, threw their bodies on the gears of exploitative industry, saw their children starved and their wives abused, were shot and stabbed and poisoned by union-busting thugs and haters of human dignity. Now we will have to endure those things all over again, without our president standing with us. With the added disadvantage of his having already given away so much of what we fight for, and offering to give away more.
We are not a weak people, President Obama. We know how to endure suffering when we must. But what is most heartbreaking is that the ruinous compromises you are making will not prevent our suffering. They may forestall some suffering in the short term, but long term, our suffering will be exponential.
Said Gandhi:
My creed... has no room for cowardice or even weakness. There is hope for a violent man to be some day non-violent, but there is none for a coward. I have, therefore, said more than once....that, if we do not know how to defend ourselves, our women and our places of worship by the force of suffering, i.e., nonviolence, we must, if we are men, be at least able to defend all these by fighting.
Our women are being brutalized. Our elderly are being savaged and robbed. Our children are being deprived. The last of our unions are being broken. Our sickly are being further injured. Our local jobs continue to be shipped off. Our tax money continues to fund foreign industry at the expense of our prosperity. Our tax money pays Monsanto and Exxon to pollute our foundation and choke out innovation. We are shoveling over half of our resources into defense, supposedly to to protect Americans, and in doing so we are absolutely guaranteeing that hundreds of thousands of Americans will needlessly suffer and die.
We hear consistently that Obama "cannot be seen" as a pushy or angry man, because of his color. If this is so, if how Obama "is seen" by the people who already call him a tyrant and a pretender is more important than his standing up for the weakest among us, then honestly, what good is he to us? If a person is too afraid to be seen as a fighter, what business has he in being the leader of all our warriors, the Commander-in-Chief? Said Gandhi:
I must not let a coward seek shelter behind nonviolence so-called... many have honestly believed that running away from danger every time was a virtue compared to offering resistance, especially when it was fraught with danger to one's life...
It is time to face the fact that we have been led into the woods by a man with no compass. For those who find this charge unfair, I will echo a question asked earlier: "On what principle will Obama [or you] absolutely refuse to compromise?"
No, Obama's not the one who's been terrorizing us for sport. But he's given up our position to the political revenants and the corporate Nazgul, in the name of "bipartisanship."
If we want out of the woods, we are going to have to enter a whole new level of commitment and self-reliance. We are going to have to be our own champions. It is humiliating to cooperate with an oppressor, and it is humiliating to follow a leader who thus subjects himself.
I have been repeating over and over again that he who cannot protect himself or his nearest and dearest or their honour by non-violently facing death may and ought to do so by violently dealing with the oppressor. He who can do neither of the two is a burden. He has no business to be the head of a family. He must either hide himself, or must rest content to live for ever in helplessness and be prepared to crawl like a worm at the bidding of a bully.
--MK Gandhi.