Social Distancing

Civil disobedience will likely be considered, first of all, as an inconvenience. It will, and not for a predictable length of time, interrupt one’s life and one’s work. I have always been suspicious of people who seem to devote their entire lives to forms of protest. We all ought to have better things to do. Ken Kesey once said that the reason not to resist evil is that such resistance is dependent on evil; it makes you dependent on evil. He was right. And Edward Abbey said that saving the world is a good hobby—though he worked hard to save at least parts of it. As for me, the older I get, the less happy I am to leave home. All the places I go seem to be getting farther away. My home here in Antioch Ten, now appears as far off as the planet Saturn, and I wish it more remote. Reluctance, then, may be a dependable enforcer of thoughtfulness. Protest becomes properly a part of a citizen’s life and work after political and legal processes have failed, and other recourse is exhausted. Civil disobedience is properly the last resort.

It is also an unhappiness of citizenship. By it, you make yourself, publicly, an exception. It involves a kind of loneliness. I, at least, have felt no pleasure in opposing constitutional authority, however corrupt and irresponsible I have found it to be.

Civil disobedience is also plenty scary. At least to me it is. I have never felt one bit brave even in thinking about it. It involves a strange and risky paradox: You and your friends will be exploiting your obvious powerlessness to recover to your cause, and to your own citizenship, a just measure of power. But your acknowledged condition is powerlessness. Your commitment to nonviolence makes you vulnerable to violence. You can get hurt, or worse. It is fearful also to make yourself available to be treated with contempt. And you are, in effect, volunteering to go to jail.