Hard Rain

Desert Rain  by rcw

Right now the world is on fire....Tunisia, Egypt, Greece.... so many people rising up because their governments aren't serving them.  Our nation is in a precarious situation as well...anger, frustration, fear as our economy falters.

It's a Hard Rain gonna fall, as Dylan once said.

I believe in revolution, but not revolution for the sake of doing it....and I believe that violence is NOT the answer.

When I was a youngster and involved in the protest movements of the '60s, there was a very hard-core group that called for violent revolution. Some people bought into that.....many did not. Hence the difference between the SDS/Weathermen and the peace, hippie, civil rights movement in general.

 We deplored hypocrisy, regardless of origin...that included fellow "long haired freaks" who wanted to take things to the next level. While they were going around expounding on the wonders of Molotov cocktails through the windows of congress, we were attempting to communicate our ideas through education, example, grassroots activism and national mobilization, all calling for peace-even amongst ourselves.

History shows repeated examples of true, good revolutions going terribly wrong when hijacked by groups with bad intentions....the Nazis come to mind.   The Iranian revolution in the '70s comes to mind as well.
Shining examples of honest revolutions being twisted into tools for tyrants.

We have to be very careful here....not just on the home front.  We have to change our ways, too...lest we find ourselves on the receiving end of cities burning and wrongly-intentioned revolutionaries.

The United States must put an end to hypocrisy, stop aligning ourselves with despots and dictators, stop doing business with nations who are guilty of human rights violations. Put our house to rights so we can honestly deal with this world, because otherwise we are doomed to fates similar to Egypt and Tunisia.

For today, Fifty Five Is the New Hard Rain...the storm of revolution is raging all over the world.