Saturday, April 16, 2011

Loneliness and Revolution Part I

Political oppression is a terrible burden for the individual citizen.

Not only does it marginalize the inherent worth of a human being, it deprives the person from seeking a meaningful recourse to end the suffering. Temporary alleviation is unsatisfactory because changing one leader, one politician, or even a series of laws does not undo the endemic tyranny which forbids a citizen to exercise his natural rights: speech, assembly, religion, and civic participation.

To suffer in imposed silence is isolating torture. Oppressed people are lonely people, convinced that since they cannot speak out for themselves, no one else knows what they are going through. Because they cannot express their outrage, their pain, because they buckle beneath the weight of ignominy, they feel trapped in the certainty of never escaping their political plight.

Loneliness because of powerless isolation produces frustration and despair. Of course, the despair which political oppression creates will not be passively endured forever.

Revolutions throughout history have not broken out because people do not have enough money, or because their governments do not treat them well. People rise up when they are prevented from speaking out, when they are suppressed, when the ruling "powers that be" refuse to allow them to express, protest, or seek redress.

When a nation if pushed to the breaking point, a people will stop at nothing to be heard, even if it means sacrificing their lives.

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