When you meet the Keyboard Kommando on the road…

There’s a post over at Claire’s place in which she says, among other things,

How many people just get stuck … in a perpetual tizzy of fear, disgust, or rage? So off we go to a blog or a forum or a Facebook page and shout and pound our fists — or raise a metaphoric digitus impudicus toward Our Eeeevil Overlords. And we neglect to move on to the next step, which is detaching ourselves from the state and refusing to honor the state even with our thoughts.

Among the comments was a question that touches on something I think about a lot.

The members of The White Rose should have never said a word, rather they should have jumped ship, moved to New Jersey and gotten jobs milking cows?

Actually I’m fairly sure Hans and Sophie Scholl, Christoph Probst, Alexander Schmorell, Kurt Huber and Willi Graf thought maybe that would have been a better plan. At least now and then. While they were waiting to be beheaded by the Nazis. For a very, very brave act of anti-authoritarian propaganda that did no earthly good except to get them posthumously canonized. One of them literally. They’d have been more than human not to wonder if they’d just fatally made fools of themselves.

What they did was, as the evidence amply demonstrates, very much more hazardous than raising a middle-finger salute to a cop, which is one of the things Claire’s post was about. It bought them fame and honor, and one of their leaflets was even reproduced and allegedly airdropped by the Allies. Not that they lived to see it. It was certainly heroic, and only they could judge whether it was a good outcome for spending their lives.

But if any or all of those people had decided a long, obscure life in America beat a very short life followed by a great Wikipedia entry and some memorials in Germany, I wouldn’t have had a thing to say in rebuttal. Because it’s the sort of thing only the individual can decide for himself.

I detest keyboard kommandos who are full of judgements about what other people should be doing. You know the ones: They’ve got ‘lines in the sand’ that will supposedly bring death and destruction to their oppressors. They excoriate people who live in the wrong states. Oh, they’ve got all the answers. Somehow you never see them doing anything dangerously subversive themselves, but they sure know what everybody else should be doing. I’ve a feeling if any of these losers ever found himself associated with anything like the White Rose, he’d end up being the Gisela Schertling of the group.

There’s a lot I don’t know. One thing I know for certain is that I’m in no position to dictate actions to anybody else. The only person I can judge is myself. Also, I’m the only person who can decide what actions are right for me. You’re the only person who can decide what actions are right for you.

And that’s the most prescriptive thing you’re ever likely to see me write here.