Voluntary Servitude: The American Tragedy

Tolstoy read La Boetie's treatise and developed his theory of non-violent non-cooperation from it. Gandhi read Tolstoy, adapted his theory to the circumstances of foreign occupation and empire, and on that basis drove the British from India. MLK read Gandhi, adapted the theory to the circumstances of racial apartheid in the U.S., and on that basis became a key figure in the civil rights movement of the 1960s. The same principles could be used to break the stranglehold of the two-party system upon our politics, potentially changing their very nature (which the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed to be utterly dysfunctional), but too many people have a vested interest in that system or believe, contrary to the evidence, that it is the greatest political system on earth--all we need to do is get rid of Trump. But the dysfunction has been evident for decades now (long before Trump's election) to anyone who has been paying attention. And so it is clear that our servitude to a broken system is voluntary; and therein lies the American tragedy.