I’m switching it up today as I will post my ceditra entry first and then tie it in with the news of the day.
My process for randomly picking snippets (and I don’t use darts as they are so passe) from which I draw inspiration to opine about landed me on page 106 of Dr. Mardy Grothe‘s compilation of quotes entitled Oxymoronica, where I found this quote…
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July 6, 2011
The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution
The above quote was brought to you by the political theorist Hannah Arendt.
This snippet would seem to be a decent corollary to the ceditra entry of June 1 where I spoke about how a reformer’s work is never done. Here we see the oxymoronic condition of what happens to a revolutionary, who one can think as an extreme type of reformer, when his quest is successful.
While it seems counter-intuitive to think that a radical will become a conservative overnight, it actually makes perfect sense. A revolutionary, by definition, wants to overthrow the status quo and change everything. Whether it’s in the arena of government, politics, business, or culture, the radical wants to upset the proverbial apple cart (or even, as in the case of the French Revolution, use them as barricades) and NOT keep things the way they are. The conservative, on the other hand, wants to keep things exactly as they are. So when a revolutionary succeeds in overthrowing whatever it is they didn’t like, they will become conservative because they want to keep the new status quo exactly as it is.
The Founding Fathers of the United States didn’t keep rebelling against the new country once it defeated Great Britain in war. The Leninites didn’t keep overthrowing themselves once they were in power. A new CEO for a business doesn’t keep reorganizing the company once he assumes control (well, okay, this does happen quite a bit).
Once change is accomplished, those who made the most impact for that change will likely fight hammer and tongs to resist any further change.
How else to explain Fidel Castro and North Korea.
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Back to October and I was reminded of the above ceditra entry courtesy of the following news item about the aftermath of the Arab Spring, the popular uprising that took place in Arab countries at the start of the year.
In Libya, with Muammar Gaddafi out of power, people celebrate the end of repression and oppression by…continuing to oppress and repress. This story tells the tale of David Gerbi, a Libyan Jew, who returned to this home country to help rebuild and reopen a Jewish synagogue in Tripoli.
He was unsuccessful and forced to leave the country as the newly freed citizens of Libya took their hard-fought freedom and created signs like “There is no place for Jews in Libya” and “We don’t have a place for Zionism”.
As the band, The Who, once sang, “Meet the new boss / Same as the old boss”, but this time we continue to be fooled again (and again and again).
Simply ask the people of Tunisia, birthplace of the “Arab Spring” courtesy of the action of Mohammed Bouazizi, where protests against the new regime are met with tear gas.
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