Engage or Provoke?

People who mostly agree about what is wrong and what should be done to fix it, often disagree about the approach to use in effecting change. My personal preference for engagement over provocation doesn't mean I believe there's no time for provocation, or that those who prefer a provocative course cannot be quite effective. Indeed, often they are more effective, certainly in garnering more attention, but over the long haul BOTH approaches are essential when the forces of dominion have no scruples about how they enforce their will.

I have just added two links to my sidebar, one from each approach. The Conversation Cafe which is slowly spreading from my home state of Washington where it was started, is strictly about engagement, and carefully honors a diversity of opinion. In fact it is incorrect to categorize it as an agent of any particular change other than a return to civility.

The graphic on the front page of the Project for the Old American Century (at time of writing), in contrast is very provocative, and I'd probably not be comfortable wearing it on a t-shirt. Nonetheless, it makes a point, is an attention-getter, and comes far closer to the mark than most Americans want to believe. I tend to be cautious in what I'm willing to accuse our leaders of, when it is clear to me that even when exercising such caution it is painfully obvious they need to be ousted from power. We somehow missed our opportunity (or perhaps it was stolen

from us) last November, so with Bush as a lame duck there is a legitimate question as to whether simply replacing him next time around with a less offensive administration can heal the deep wounds which have been inflicted on us and the world. More on that later.

My preference for engagement comes in large measure because I am keenly aware that plenty of decent people, whether they voted for Bush or Kerry or someone else, are very worth reaching out to, and are alienated by such provocation. Do I believe that Bush and Cheney and Rove and Rumsfeld and DeLay and Frist are liars motivated variously by vanity, greed, power lust, convenience, and meanness? Well frankly, I do believe that. But I certainly don't believe it of all Republicans or all conservatives. And I stop short of calling the aforementioned politicians 'evil', because I agree with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties, either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. Even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained; and even in the best of all hearts, there remains a small corner of evil.

How can we expect those good-hearted individuals of a conservative bent not to dismiss all those who disagree as irrelevant and even mean if they are so dismissed by most of those of a liberal bent? Without bridges, no change will happen; for a small minority screaming foul against a monied powerful minority will be squashed, unless it makes important alliances.

But let's return to the conundrum of the majority of the American voters having (ostensibly) returned to power the very administration whose hubris and militarism has alienated much of the civilized world, with no apparent opportunity to finally vote them out. I'm serious when I state that I think we would be better off right now if Bush could and would run again in 2008. With the current makeup of Congress, impeachment seems far-fetched, but that's the tonic recommended by former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Reagan, Paul Craig Roberts, in his recent article America's Reputation in Tatters, which begins:

George W. Bush and his gang of neocon warmongers have destroyed America's reputation. It is likely to stay destroyed, because at this point the only way to restore America's reputation would be to impeach and convict President Bush for intentionally deceiving Congress and the American people in order to start a war of aggression against a country that posed no threat to the U.S. America can redeem itself only by holding Bush accountable.

He continues in scathing fashion, and I can only marvel at the irony that someone associated with the last Presidency which took me to the local federal building in protest against ill-conceived military intervention in Central America, is more provocative than I am in lambasting the current administration.