The Cautious Anarchist
an excerpt

PROLOGUE

It was bad roads, a school levy referendum and a tornado that made me into a terrorist. Okay, not a terrorist. I see a terrorist as someone who is all about inflicting pain and death with the sole objective being to drive fear into the hearts of fellow human beings. That is no my goal, nor is it even my desired method. The newspapers and the TV stations all call me a terrorist. Of course the government and the big corporations call me a terrorist. That way they can lump me into a big pile with crazed right to lifers and wild eyed nomads. It makes it easier to deal with me if the public doesn’t understand me, only fears me.
What then, you ask, do I want to be called. I am a revolutionary. Yep, that’s it. I am a revolutionary. I want to radically alter the current state of affairs, to disrupt the status quo, to bring down the powers that be. I understand fully that I will leave chaos in my wake. I know that people will suffer, and those that do not suffer will be afraid that they might. I know this makes me a scary man, a dangerous man. I also understand fully that I will use whatever means I have at my disposal to make this happen. The goal, of a total change in our social and economic situation and systems, will not be accomplished with halfway measures and cowardly actions. It will take bold actions and bold statements. It will also take careful planning.
The deck is stacked against success. The odds do not favor a positive outcome. I am one of a very few who are working to destroy the world as we know it. We are smart, we are crafty, and we are dedicated. We are also very few, without the support of the huge organizations we oppose.
I also understand that this is deadly serious. My co-conspirators and I are dedicated to minimizing the collateral damage. We wish to see no innocent blood spilled, no one to die for our cause that is not prepared to do it. It may happen, and that is perhaps the one thing that scares me more than anything else. I am not afraid of my own death; I have come to expect it. I am not afraid of failing, only of not trying. I am not afraid of succeeding, only of the suffering it will bring to innocent people. I am not afraid of taking the lives of the guilty, only of killing someone by mistake. And for that reason, I need to be cautious. That’s what makes me a cautious anarchist.
I’m getting ahead of myself. The idea here is to tell my story, to explain why I have made these drastic changes in my life, and what I hoped to see come of it. I need to move back to my story.