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...by James Mason
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Most people run like hell at the first hint of real trouble. But their idea of "trouble" is so ridiculously low-threshold that the word itself loses its meaning. I have two ideas pop into mind at the mention of the word trouble: one, a violent, physical confrontation, one-on-one or between very small groups, wherein death or serious injury could come at any second. And two, a bottomless pit of quicksand involving an arrest and prosecution by the System which could result in, again, death or permanent loss of liberty. That, to me, represents trouble and I've run the risk of it routinely for eighteen years. Anything less than those two merely amounts to varying degrees of a pain in the ass. For most, however, trouble in the first degree starts in earnest with spooks, ghosts and goblins breaking loose and running amok through their childlike and undisciplined imaginations, playing on their fears and dark spots representing areas that are unknown to them.
Violence, hardship, jail, ostracism and all the rest are those very same dark places of the brain and the experience that all "good citizens" are supposed never to know. We, as professional revolutionaries, know them quite well and are on daily, intimate terms with them. We, as a result, don't scare easy. Implications and threats are better names for ghosts and goblins in this modern day reality. Only physical annihilation– or the immediate prospect of- should give us any pause. The rest is garbage and it is for the teeming BILLIONS of the earth's swine to cower before the remainder, just as Haitian savages would before voodoo.
It's been said that pressure makes diamonds and no truer words were ever spoken. I've had often occasion over the past twelve months to comment that you never know a person until you have known them under extreme stress. Most, instead of becoming diamonds, are reduced to coal dust in a hurry. But without these live-ammo exercises in daily life well before revolution spills over into the street, how are we to know really who is who? How are we to know in fact who we are ourselves unless we are TESTED? Right Wing bullshit-slinging and cat fights are no test. Smears in print are no test. Power struggles among powerless contenders are no test. The old style street demonstrations WERE kinds of real tests as were the resultant entanglements with the System (not to mention the Enemy in the street) and the Pig Bureaucracy. Only when you tangle with a REAL ENEMY who can cripple or kill you if you make a single false move can you accurately gauge your prowess in any area.
When situations get hard it first of all causes one to take a true stock accounting of the people and things around him. At those times he can see the clearest of all... because he must if he is to fight well and survive. Just as the hardest tests cull out weak individuals, it also cuts out weakness in the strong individuals and this is what accounts for the phenomenon of the strong getting even stronger under fire. The hardest trials are the great leaveners of men. Performance under prolonged stress is the only way of knowing because all of the rest can be faked. Commander Rockwell called for men ready and willing to march into hell with him. He got only a handful but look at the legend they created in nine short years! What could be done with a thousand? Ten thousand?
Conflict and adversity should be viewed as no particular problem, no big deal. Just as part of the job. It comes with the territory. Once we see how we can deal with it and overcome it, and once we recognize what it does FOR US, then it should almost come to be viewed as an old and welcome friend. We must know the ways of adversity and be comfortable with them. Those who fear adversity and who spend their existences trying to keep it as a stranger, may the Devil take and sacrifice!
[Vol. XIII, #6– June, 1984]
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