#HowardZinn
#SystemFail
#TopsyTurvy
#DefyAuthority

From Voices of A People's History, edited by Zinn and Arnove

"I start from the supposition that the world is topsy-turvy, that things are all wrong, that the wrong people are in jail and the wrong people are out of jail, that the wrong people are in power and the wrong people are out of power, that the wealth is distributed in this country and the world in such a way as not simply to require small reform but to require a drastic reallocation of wealth."...

..."And our topic is topsy-turvy: civil disobedience.

As soon as you say the topic is civil disobedience, you are saying our problem is civil disobedience.

That is not our problem.... Our problem is civil obedience.

Our problem is the numbers of people all over the world who have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience.

And our problem is that scene in All Quiet on the Western Front where the schoolboys march off dutifully in a line to war.

Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world, in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war and cruelty.

Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country.

That's our problem. We recognize this for Nazi Germany.

We know that the problem there was obedience, that the people obeyed Hitler.

People obeyed; that was wrong. They should have challenged, and they should have resisted; and if we were only there, we would have showed them.

Even in Stalin's Russia we can understand that; people are obedient, all these herdlike people. "...

https://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinnproblemobedience.html