On Cancerous Meats, Fireworks, and the “R” Word

A meditation on honesty and clear thinking in a world that discourages both, on a day that discourages both.

Photo by Ray Hennessy on Unsplash

My first jiu-jitsu coach is not someone I (any longer) take advice from. The memes he shares on Facebook betray a mind palace filled with conspiracy theory, tacky American-flag clothing, and pro-capitalist propaganda. Still, on the mats, he passed on many insights that have served me well:

• Practice makes what? Perfect? No, habit. Practice makes habit.

• Try harder by resisting less. Be open to the possibilities that emerge from each new constraint.

• Good people should be dangerous.

It’s this latter point—good people should be dangerous—that comes to mind on the Fourth of July, a holiday that celebrates a revolution in a country whose entire existence suppresses revolutionary impulses and demands (and in 2026, that suppression is happening in a revolutionary conjuncture).

A big supporter of The Un-Diplomatic Project (pod and newsletter) confided recently that he thought we should be more embracing of the “R” word. In the sense of “Assata’s Code,” of a transformation of how we relate to one another, I get it. I think that’s how he meant it. But, depending on what you mean, revolution also raises the specter of violence on behalf of something other than self-defense. If I criticize empire and the national security state because it propagates harm against people, I must not be seduced into moving in those same bloody grooves.

For me, this is both a moral distinction and a strategic one.

As I said in the latest episode of the pod, violence is the province of the state. It’s a highly unfavorable terrain for those with politics oriented around peace, democracy, and equality. Sure, revolutions can be won, but 1) they’re often pyrrhic, and 2) just because something is possible doesn’t make it a good bet. For a revolution to succeed requires very specific conditions and I’m doubtful that those conditions exist today in rich countries. Practically speaking, we’ve let our national security states become unfathomably powerful. Are you really going to resort to gunplay after a lifetime of allowing the consolidation of the most totalitarian capabilities of force and control in human history?

But to be against violence is not to be incapable of it.

Because “the left,” broadly construed, aspires to a world at peace, we should at least be honest that being peaceful and being harmless are not the same. A people whose government has stripped them of the capacity for organized anything are the latter. Whatever you think of my coach’s advice, it’s manifestly the case that good people today are generally not dangerous. That doesn’t stop the national security state from persecuting them as terrorists anyway.

Should good people be making themselves dangerous, building a capacity for organized violence? I mean, everyone should train jiu-jitsu if you ask me, but I suspect this is one of those cases where jiu-jitsu is not a good analogy for life in general. Insofar as good people should pose a “danger” to the system, it should be in delegitimation—a refusal of the myths that justify state violence. Building real power is not about “lethality” but rather building a capacity for organized care (mutual aid), as well as organized withdrawal of labor and consumption—that is, organized refusal of relations of theft, repression, and exclusion. That surely would be dangerous to a star-spangled machinery of death, wouldn’t it?

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I want to leave you with two resources that give much food for thought. One is just out, from the Everyday Anarchism podcast. I don’t listen to the show very often but I happened to catch their latest episode, which interprets the Boston Tea Party as a form of direct action and civil disobedience. Nothing stimulates critical thinking better than destabilizing settled facts with new interpretations.

The second resource, depending on where you find yourself in life these days, could either make you vomit or rethink everything: Gerald Horne’s The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America.

As the title suggests, Horne takes an evidence-based approach to reinterpreting the American Revolution as a counter-revolution of settler-colonial slavers against a British empire that was phasing out slavery and inhibiting Westward expansion on the continent.

Whatever you think of Horne’s take—and if it makes you guffaw then you owe your soul an honest read of the book—that interpretation of America’s founding makes it easier to situate Washington’s long tradition of repression, exclusion, and violence in the name of “national” security. What makes the New Deal Era so remarkable, in hindsight, is that it was a rare moment in American history in which the American version of liberalism became something more than reactionary, expansionist claptrap.

The New Deal’s uniqueness raises the stakes in understanding what it was—a byproduct of a unique political configuration, powered by a strong and growing organized labor movement, and a self-interested willingness on the part of the capitalist class to engage in class compromise…all under revolutionary conditions where fascism was a real alternative.

What, then, of the Fourth of July? I don’t want to take anyone’s holiday away from them. Celebrations are good! But so is honesty about the past and present. If the feel-good celebration of it all is what you’re after, know this: We can celebrate each other with a clearer conscience if we know our history. And if we know our history, we have a better sense of what’s happening now and why.

Armed with that kind of knowledge, we can sublimate ourselves into each other rather than the “nation”; we can even venerate exploding lights in the sky and the masticated carcass of pigs and cows. We don’t need a fake history to bring us together; it’s enough that we’re alive and still aspire to liberation for all.

So happy Cancerous Meats and Fireworks Day, to all who celebrate.

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