What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared
to what lies within Us

by Damien Zielinski

"Better get down to it: soldiers are gunning us down."
~Neil Young, "Ohio"

We are beyond petitioning the Father figure of Government, "Hey you, we don't want this." We are beyond using 'proper channels' to voice our dissent. We are beyond pointing out the hypocrisy which tells us that, though we are in a time of recession and belt-tightening, we have 17 billion dollars to spend on the Afghanistan initiative and another quick billion to spend on sonic guns, tear gas canisters, and ad hoc penitentiaries for use against our own population. We are beyond observing aloud that public space is for everyone, and that riot police violate our 'inalienable constitutional rights'  in assaulting  us or arresting us for merely occupying said space. Every one of these claims has become inane, outmoded and inadequate for our present situation.

It is because I work and pay taxes that I will personally subsidize the erosion of my personal rights as a citizen, and the erosion of my children's world by the consolidation of public wealth into private hands. I believe myself to be a pacifist, motivated by love. But it is only because I choose to remain passive that activities of violence occur in my name. As Howard Zinn would put it, "one cannot stand still on a moving train," but the apparent truth is that even when we all jostle, or wave picket signs, or convene in a park, or march down a street, we are unable to shift  the train's trajectory.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoKAVIcs4Bs&has_verified=1 [ed.note: please observe the youtube restriction to 18 and older]
This video of a pacifist protest in Copenhagen perfectly crystallizes the hopelessness of a generation (warning: what happens at 2:57 makes me cry every time I watch it)- 'the rule-makers will break their own rules at a moment's convenience, and yet we are expected to follow the same rules as a performing seal is expected to beg for a treat.' When we watch a spectacle like this, a naive and obsolete part of us that still trusts an invisible paternal superstructure will be tempted to reach vainly for the notion that somewhere a gavel will fall and the truth will be vindicated. But we must grow beyond that. No gavel will fall.

Or more accurately, the gavel will fall on the wrong side. We do not need European examples- the recent Bryant/Sheppard scandal, in the eyes of young Torontonians, just like the Vancouver Olympics debacle, is inseparable from the G20 summit: in every instance, a story full of holes is presented, from media to courtroom to parliament and back, with an absurdity that could dress the naked emperor, as truth, and whether we believe it or not, we will not only endure it but actively enable its possibility through hard work. When our grandchildren ask what we did about Canadian imperialism, from Iraq to Afghanistan to Burma to Honduras to Colombia, and onward (citing only recent examples for concision), we will only be able to shrug and say "I did what everyone did. I went to work." We might be able to say "I went to Queen's Park with a picket sign one afternoon..." But we will have to follow it up with "...and the next day I went to work."

Perhaps I can distill my argument as simply as this: while we feel ourselves to be passive spectators, we are in fact active participants. We can not logically protest something that we, ourselves, are doing. At the present moment it is more important that we 'stop doing the wrong thing' then 'start doing the right thing.' Genuine pacifism is what is desperately needed.

We can dream of an era where the train runs on a different track, but until such a time, we are still watching it hurtle at maximum speed down what is certainly the wrong track. Our ethical injunction is not to attack the driver, not to throw ourselves on the tracks, not to jump out the window, and not to plant dynamite in the caboose. Our ethical injunction is to cease shoveling coal into the engine.