B: Well, maybe we can manage to agree more often on some of these points, I don't know. But the same issue does arise: there are allies of ours here and now who want to use violence; there are also disputes as to what counts as violence. We can't build a movement by excluding people.
A: And how's that working out for you? Where's the movement? You could ask the same question of me, of course. But I have a theory backed by extensive evidence that one way to increase our chances of enlarging the movement is to publicly commit to nonviolence, at least in our own actions in the Belly of the Beast. We can't build a movement by excluding that vast majority of people who want nothing to do with violence. Yes, they may love violent movies and violence done with their tax dollars in their names. They may tolerate violent prisons and violent schools and violent Hollywood casting offices and violent police. But they do not want any violence near themselves.
B: So you want a movement of hypocrites?
A: Yes and of cowards and thieves and braggarts and cheats and perverts and failures and fanatics and narcissists and recluses and also of courageous leaders and geniuses. But we can't be overly picky when we're trying to bring in everyone. We can try to encourage and bring out the best in people to the extent we know how, and hope they do the same for us.
B: I can see that. But you still want to exclude the guy with a gun.
A: But only because the gun ends up excluding many more guys.
B: Yeah, you said that.
A: OK. Well, let me try saying one other thing about guns. I think there's a way that empires oppress distant peoples that's not quite the same as sanctions or bombs or missiles or death squads. It's the provision of products. Native Americans were given diseased blankets, but they were also given alcohol. The Chinese were given opium. You know what poor abused countries are given today by wealthy abusive countries? Guns. The places on the globe that we're trained to think of as violent manufacture almost no weapons. The weapons are sent in from the North, and largely from the West, like truckloads of diseased blankets. And the guns mostly kill the people who live in the nations they are sent to. I think celebrating the guns as a means of resistance is a mistake.
B: Well, that's one way of looking at it. But there are people who live in those places who don't see it that way. You see it that way from your safe, air-conditioned office. They don't see it that way. You know what we ought to do? We ought to have a meeting, a conference, not a contest, not a debate, but a discussion of these disagreements, a polite, civilized discussion so that we can figure out where we can and cannot agree. Do you think we can agree on that?
A: Absolutely. That is a very good idea.
B: You'll have to be part, of course. You were really killing it on some of these points.
A: And you of course. You were really living it.
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