notes toward everything

Finished Thaddeus Russell’s A Renegade History of the United States.  It is an interesting book … not good, but interesting, which is sometimes better.  I will comment on it in more detail soon, probably in longer form at this site.

In the meantime, think about this: trace a line from Booker T. Washington up through Martin Luther King all the way to President Obama.  Can we see this thread as counterrevolutionary?  Add in the current push for gay rights (re: the military and gay marriage) and ask yourself the same thing.  Just though these struggles may be (and they are just, so spare me your liberal indignation), they amount to normalization for larger parts of the populace; and as such, Russell shows them to be counterrevolutionary*.  Here, at least, I believe he is right on the money.

It could be argued that this is the revolution, after all.  Tell me: are you happy with Obama?  Has he made any real changes for the better?  Did Stonewall happen just to make the world safe for Log Cabin Republicans?

I think not.  This point goes to Russell … but there are many more to be discussed at greater length, and trust me, he doesn’t fare as well across the board.

____________________

*  Not that he would use the term “counterrevolutionary” or even talk about revolution.  I can’t think of him using either term even once in the book, though surely he did at least a couple times.  He did, after all, have to avoid even the faintest whiff of Marxism, lest he be savaged by his libertarian friends.