At heart, everyone’s a reactionary

From Roaming Charges: Railroaded, Again by Jeffrey St. Clair (CounterPunch),

Whitey on the Moon: Gil Scott-HeronI don’t know when Gil-Scott Heron wrote this, but it was probably around the time he wrote Whitey on the Moon, The Revolution will not be Televised, or Home Is Where the Hatred Is. Whereas he wrote and spoke about his home country, I can’t help but think that what he said resonates for people, in general. It doesn’t seem to matter what country you come from, you just want things to stay the same—even if they aren’t great. Even for those severely disadvantaged by their society, the power of “the devil you know” is strong.

We seek stasis. We even look back and seek that which we had, when things have changed against our advantage. We look away from the injustices that supported the advantages we enjoyed before, focusing laser-like only on ourselves. Those who manage to avoid this in themselves—choosing, for example, to forgo some unnecessary pleasure or benefit so that they may live more justly—utterly fail to do so when it comes, for example, to their children. Where someone might feel morally unjustified to support continued injustice that supports one’s own advantage, that same person wavers and falls in the face of making the same decision that will disadvantage their progeny.