Motivations

Coup Plotter #2:
He's a "can't we all just get along" kind of person, and presumably blames me for the dissension we've had in the team, people who've left, and so on. He doesn't realize that people leaving happens in any organization. I've seen more people come and leave in my present job than in seven years of the ULA. Conflicts will happen-- especially in an outfit whose mission is rebellion.

I've had time to think about the question of leadership-- when a leader is necessary. I've sought the ULA to have role models, not leaders.

Without leaders a group can operate ONLY in the spirit of cooperation-- which is not how Coup Plotter #1 has been operating.

Every revolution in history has had leaders-- which may mean in the final analysis nothing more than someone there to take the heat, which has been my role in my seven years as unofficial leader of the ULA. Someone out front to receive the inevitable brickbats. During this period I've tried several times to push someone else to the forefront. There were never any takers. It takes a certain kind of personality to take the responsibility and take the heat. A revolt-- even a literary revolt-- is going to generate heat. In many ways that's the point.

Have I riled people? Many many people. I have enemies all over the place. It comes with the territory-- with daring to make real change.

Revolutions have tried to move without leaders, or a series of leaders. The French Revolution failed because it had no overarching unifying force like a George Washington. Men like Danton and Robespierre took their turns but were swept aside by the conflicts and heat, the madness of those who could not keep their heads while making change and so lost them literally.

What dilemmas did someone like Robespierre face? He started as a man of peace and of utter integrity, then faced a choice between losing the revolution or compromising his ideals as the Revolution was assaulted from all sides; betrayed from within and attacked from outside. Easy enough for us to sneer at him from the outside, through the pages of history books, without understanding the choices he faced.

The same can probably be said for Castro in our own time. Yes, he's a monster, a ruthless dictator; hardly a saint. He's imprisoned many people. Why? Attacked from without and within-- he could either act or lose the revolution, what he'd created. One can agree or disagree with his cause but at the same time recognize that the moment he caves in to the U.S. and the monopolies that experiment is over. It will be dismantled, piece by piece, becoming swiftly enough what it was before he came on the scene-- a Disney amusement park for the corrupt and the monied.

I'm trying to prevent the ULA from being co-opted and destroyed. . . .

What kind of ULA will remain if the coup plotters succeed?

There will be no leaders, certainly; not a trace of a leader. no decision making. No actions done which create any waves. It will separate into fiefdoms feeding on the remains of the ULA's reputation. There will be no one to generate-- or take-- any heat, and so it will stagnate into just one more on-line place for conversation and back-slapping, while the two coup plotters recede safely into the background, satisfied there is no longer any noise.