This Blog Throws Itself on the Gears of the Machine

Let me begin this post with a picture:

You'll want the big version, duh

The top half of the image exemplifies my only real problem with the Occupy movement, but thankfully it's not really that big of a problem because I don't think the view posited in the image, to wit: that protesters believe it's the government's job to "solve the problem" of rich people, is the widely held view.

Clearly, some OWS protesters would like Uncle Sam to step in and bust up the 1%, presumably to redistribute their wealth and capital back among the 99%.  Yes, it's socialism - I don't think anyone's pretending that it isn't, so let's get over the notion that, yes, Virginia, there are socialists in the OWS movement.

But there are others, a growing plurality, that realize that the whole thing is rotten - big banks, big government - your public servants have been bought off, and are no longer beholden to your interests or principles.  The fact that our government even considers something like SOPA or Protect IP while protesters are being beaten bloody in the streets proves that our grasp on fundamental liberty and individual dignity is tenuous. Something has to give, and someone has to make it - and these are the people with whom I strongly empathize.

No, it's not real. Stop forwarding it to me.

America is starting to, pardon my French, fucking suck.  By fucking suck, I mean fucking suck for middle-class college-educated white males.  America has always kind of fucking sucked for minorities, the poor, and women, but now it's starting to fucking suck for me, and obviously, I'm important.

We, college-educated middle-class white males, believed the big bullshit story, and shame on us.  We believed that there would be cushy jobs waiting for us so long as we graduated high school, avoided prison, and made some sort of token effort at going to college.  Hell, we had those cushy jobs not ten years ago, but now "job creators" want workers who are educated, motivated, experienced, and willing to suck shit through a straw for sixty hours a week.  

The fact that we were very obviously wrong-headed for believing in the American Dream is, however, beside the point.  The point is that now there are a bunch of unemployed college-educated middle-class white males, and they are pissed!

Yeah, yeah - women and minorities too

Four months ago, I proclaimed that we probably wouldn't see riots as a force for social change in America anytime soon.  While I don't think I was wrong, I think I'm not quite as right as I could have been, and here's why: First, OWS isn't a riot.  OWS is a protest that could turn into a riot, or series of riots, given the proper initiating catalyst.  Second, there's not been an initiating catalyst - as Harvard Sitkoff points out in "The Struggle for Black Equality," the Civil Rights movement had Bull Connor and prime-time news coverage of protesters being beaten, sprayed with fire hoses, and knocked down by snarling dogs.  OWS isn't there yet.

But two things are rapidly lining up to make this a full-on rage party:  first in this camp is solidarity. I don't keep mentioning white males because I'm some sort of racist - I'm mentioning them because they make up the power demographic. Speaking through the filter of the American socio-cultural-historical narrative, if things don't happen to white males, they don't happen.  Additionally, we are seeing increasing police brutality, albeit not anywhere near enough.

It's fascism, essentially.

When Mario Savio called on all people of conscience to "...put [their]bodies upon the gears...," he wasn't speaking metaphorically - well, okay, the gears are a metaphor, but the bodies aren't.  Misery, real, corporal misery beyond what the occupiers now suffer will be the mechanism for change.  There's much hand-wringing over Lieutenant John Pike's egregious pepper-spraying of peaceful UC Davis students, but fuck that.  He did the movement a favor that will only be eclipsed when the cops finally manage to kill a  protester.

You, reader who may be considering some sort of protest action, need to know what you are in for:  you will be courting death.  You will literally attempt to provoke the machine into killing you in the hopes that your death will be avenged through legislation or revolution.  This is what it means to protest - it's not the signs, it's not the slogans, it's not the blog posts or pictures - it is blood and flesh, bullets and bone, misery and suffering distilled out of malaise and angst into a raw tincture of provocation.

This is why I empathize with OWS - many of their mumbling points ring true: too much money in government, too much corporate greed, overwhelming evidence of a corporate-statist conspiracy, etc, etc - all that stuff is what is making America fucking suck: NAFTA, Citizens United, etc.  We all, at some level, know this, but only now are people doing the only thing that matters.  Only now are people taking to the streets and showing with their flesh, their blood, their very lives, that there will be a real change.

I don't know that OWS will be the sabot that destroys the machine, but I am very, very happy that Americans are throwing shoes. 

Today, I talked about the problem - tune in next week-ish when I ruminate over the solution!