Posted by pancho from pool0007.cvx20-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net (209.179.250.7) on Wednesday, January 22, 2003 at 8:41AM :
In Reply to: Re: Saul Alinsky posted by Julia from dhcp102208.res-hall.northwestern.edu (199.74.102.208) on Wednesday, January 22, 2003 at 2:59AM :
Makes perfect sense...you start by questioning. That's where schools kills the spirit. They pretend they know it already...at the lower grades I mean. After years of being subjected to that it's hard for a kid to throw it all out...
You're sort of given a life jacket when you're born...told you can't swin without it...told it's impossible or morally wrong to try to swim without it...told you'll drown if you so much as question the need for it...told it starts taking on water the minute you long to swim like a mad Dolphin...
It becomes very scary to even think of letting go of the thing and trying to swim on your own...go against all those dire warnings. That's why the first acts of the Radical can seem clumsy and overblown...exactly like someone flailing his or her arms around trying to stay afloat at first, after letting go of your government issue Life Preserver...it gets smoother in time, and pretty soon you're skimming along in the water doing the Butterfly surrounded by a lot of envious pissed as hell people clinging to each other in their life preservers, muttering about how you're brazenly flouting the rules everyone has to swim by...resenting the hell out of you because you are an example that it doesn't have to be that way...that you don't need to go on fearing the water...that the life preserver, instead of making it possisble for you to "swim"...stops you from it...that the definition of "life" or "swim" that you picked up early on...when you were too young to know about swimming in the first place...is just plain wrong...designed for the benefit of the LifeGuards...not for yours. That it has more to do with controlling traffic than anything else..."What would happen if we let everybody zoom around doing the Freestyle and Back Stroke etc? They themselves fear that because they are so damn incompetant and fearful THEY can't imagine swimming without one...are afraid they wouldn't be among the "controllers" then..the Leaders...so the thing goes on and on till a friendly Shark comes along and nibbles their arses cause they're bobbing up down and can't get away with those damn life preservers strapped on.
That's the pay-off.
Talk about your tortured alligator.
-- pancho
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