Don't get me wrong, I am encouraged by OWS, but it is just the first stirrings of discontent. So far, the militarized corporatocracy has nothing to fear. Remember: money buys time and the criminals we are up against have more money than god. Which is what they are counting on. They can wait out OWS. And winter is coming.
The next time the economy takes a nose-dive and unemployment in the U.S. leaps from 10 to 20 or 30%--that's when the real action is going to begin. But it will be desperate, not enlightened, action, and we'll see tanks in the streets of US cities. In the White House situation room, they are probably watching film footage of Tiananmen Square from '89 and planning their next move.
The late, great Chalmers Johnson's Dismantling the Empire is a bracing read. No, it's not Hegel's Panglossian Phenomenology of the Spirit, but Hegel was wrong. Brilliant, but wrong.
Johnson understood the problem quite clearly. We are in a new imperial age. And empires take centuries to run their course. So the question becomes: How do we conduct ourselves with integrity and plant seeds for the empire's eventual demise (long after you and I have passed from the scene)?
Shelter the flame of Jeffersonian democracy; recall the utopian ideals of lower-case "r" republican government; honor the Prophetic tradition; lead lives of prayerful decency and good will towards all.
And remember:
Friends don't let friends join the military.
Ask yourself:
What Would Whitman Do?
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