Ali on War, War on Ali

In an indignant and defiant defense of his draft orders refusal, Muhammad Ali comments "I ain’t got nothin’ against them Viet Congs," and his refusal - and justification for the refusal - continues to chill me, even today, when we feel that it is now all the more risky to put forth one's political views or to name ourselves as public owners of such views for fear of their consequences.

Ali's act shows us what it means to stand on principle, while his selfless, risky act shows us that it is not only the politicians who need and should be political.

In so few words, Ali says much about the content of his disapproval for a body politic that instrumentally utilizes and deploys its citizens in pursuit of removed, questionably justifiable geopolitical projects and political machinations for which we may neither personal involvement nor care.

Being a boxer, a fighter, he is paid to face off against those with whom he often has little actual dispute. But in this case, he desires to take off his gloves and does so to show his unwillingness to perpetuate unjust, unfair processes that coerce individuals into obedient and 'justified' violent acts in order to preserve a polity (or any system or organization, really) that polices them at every turn.

For this reason, politicians, in fact, should hardly be the only to justifiably dispute the regrettable decisions that a state, and its legislators make. It takes little more than an understanding that there is no personal dispute here, on Ali's part (not to mention the moral prescriptions of his religious obligations), that the issue is fabricated or constructed in one way or another. There is also the more than likely explanation that their work is the product of parochial interests who exercise political will, a power dynamic that persists even today.3

He hints also at his own pacifist leanings, implying that any kind of force would need heavy justification, and in his case, nobody has provided sufficient reason for feeling as much, just legal obligations and coercive force. Just as importantly, Ali appears to lament our own ability to make these decisions for ourselves, as our country reserves the right to decide what a legitimate enough cause is for us to perish in its wake

"No," he succinctly elaborates "I am not going 10,000 miles to help murder, kill, and burn other people to simply help continue the domination of white slavemasters over dark people the world over. This is the day and age when such evil injustice must come to an end."

He acknowledges the profound importance of making a stand where he can, wherever that might be, and, given his own image-capital - the fact that he is very well-known - he is able to wield a kind of persuasive, personal-brand-logo-infused power that another making the statement might lack.

Ali's is a reading of the state, and the ability of the individual, however defined, to oppose it (but to do so nonviolently) when their respective priorities are incompatible and when the state charges its citizens with violent, deplorable, condemnable acts and utilizes its own powers of coercion to advance these interests, often even at the cost and to the disadvantage of its own people.

Ali is a model for us all, to do what we can with what we have at the right time in order to stand on what ideals we hold dear, for we are as much our principles as we are anything else. Forsaking those for some other ends, then, is a way of forsaking ourselves.

Granted, we must accomplish this strategically, and this is our particular challenge, something that few others have felt like us before. Knowing when and for what to expend our personal capital in the service of our ideals is essential, as expending our capital means thrusting ourselves into the public sphere where we may be scrutinized, but also means subjecting ourselves to possible examination and policing by enforcement bodies that hold sway over our futures in some way or another.

In this way, Ali shows us that we both have an obligation to our community to disclose ourselves and our beliefs, not to mention a dear fidelity to them. This is not to say that we should do so fundamentally, but by bringing them to the public realm, we effectively do the opposite: we are subjecting them to scrutiny and welcoming the discourse that might come with conversing with others on the matters.

I am the Greatest that ever was?

I really tire of this "greatest novelist" or greatest anything talk: it is neither accurate - in that no such standard could ever really be created, because creating a standard for greatness would have to be created by someone greater (most likely) - and because it has all the worst effects:

it appears to make us feel that we need all aspire to such things, exactly the realization of the failed dream of productive, constructive competition that capitalism's logic continues to furnish.

Moreover, it fails to acknowledge that any kind of greatness is the outcome of no eternal, objective judgment but largely suffused with irrefutable political alliances. That is, what becomes known and great is that which is acceptable within prevailing standards and political persuasions of the day: the result of that which is considered worth recognition based on the existent distribution of the sensible (what is shown and what is kept invisible).

It is again the logic of capitalism rearing its deceitfully distant head, convincing us of the need to become something we may not be, possibly losing ourselves and our aspirations in the process of being teased by the temptations of 'Greatness.'