The Chapo Guide to Revolution: A Manifesto Against Logic, Facts, and Reason

by Chapo Trap House

As Matt and I have both noted in the past, part of what sent us towards the hawk camp was that, without much historical context for what war means, we simply evaluated the arguments (and sadly, that means the spokespeople) for the two sides. In that calculus, becoming a hawk seemed not just warranted, but unavoidable. That’s not fair to the doves and not fair to the Democratic party, and while we (hopefully) won’t make the same mistakes again, it’s really incumbent that the anti-war wing funds a media savvy opposition (instead of protests organized by subsidiaries of Maoist groups [read: ANSWER]) so future generations aren’t turned off by the absurdity of their spokespeople.XI In their own words, they really had no choice. Camp Hawk was where all the “serious” jobs were! You see, if the antiwar side had developed a “savvier” media shop in 2002—instead of simply turning out millions of ordinary people into the streets, all over the world—there’s a good chance they could have given Matt and Ezra the “historical context” that war involves mostly senseless cruelty and slaughter. People like M&E generally regard everything to be a matter of “optics,” and at the time, being against the War on Terrorism would look very, very bad! To their finely calibrated moral and aesthetic compass, the hippies and dopey Marxists shouting in the street looked absurd and clueless, whereas Donald Rumsfeld, Fred Barnes, Bill Kristol, and Paul Wolfowitz looked dignified, smart, and fuckin’ hot to b...