There are basically two camps in the world “battling it out” while the rest of the masses shift and moan and watch it all go down. I use quotation marks because there is often no battle at all. In the Arab countries, there is. In the West, there is not.
Two possible representations for the two camps are Juan Cole and David Goldman. Goldman is a Wall Street Trader, religious Jew and neo-liberal conservative who blames the world’s woes on unproductive, unrealistic youth who contribute zero to culture, but want handouts. Juan Cole is a professor at the University of Michigan who specializes in relations between poor and rich, Middle East and West and he blames the world’s woes on corrupt, greedy capitalists with no morality or sense of justice.
Today the NYPD swept the Occupt Wall Street Protesters off of the street like so much crumpled newspaper. A little different than what happened in Egypt or Tunisia right? I wasn’t surprised and if you are honest with yourselves you weren’t either. Goldman has one thing right: the youth in the West are not the desperate rebels they want you to think they are. In essence, they’re hippies and hipsters who will yell and pitch a fit, but go home as soon as a little push becomes a little shove.
That’s just how it is, I ain’t hatin. I wish it were otherwise. But we’re cowards really. We think we all have the great novel, the great masterpiece, the great theory within us — and maybe we’re right — but this also means we are not ready to die for anything but ourselves. Not much difference between us and the fat cats in the nice suits, eh?
I learned in Hong Kong that it takes an ass kicking to get anything done. Do you really believe realists with a belief in a Punishment God will “repent” in the face of whining?
The Goldmans of the world need to get dragged out of their offices by their scalps and beaten. Suits are easily scared. Kill a few and the rest will fall in line for a while.
What’s that? Tough talk from a Nobody Blogger in Chengdu?
Absolutely right. Talk.
But you know I’m right and if I did go up into an office and grab a fistful of greasy locks there would be no one behind me but cops with batons. Because blood ain’t part of the process as today’s American and European youth envision it. It has got to be Enlightenment and peace and love and spiritual.
You must be joking. The Mayans were wiped out and those that survived are weaving quilts for pesos or mixing up gravy for under-the-table dollars. This world will continue, as is, until blood is shed on a massive, heart-rending, throat-burning scale.
A Punishment God and his slaves will not step down for anything less.
One thought on “There will be blood”
Tell it to a black bloc.
Not that they’re right, tactically or strategically or philosophically or in any other way, necessarily, but they do like to fight.
And since you mentioned Mayans, so do the Zapatistas. They won something, and they fought for it, and they still got something, and they’re still fighting for it, though they put the guns down a long time ago.
Just saying I’m thinking it’s a bit trickier, this protest biz, and there are more possibilities for resistance and action and activism than you’re sketching out here.
People can get radicalized pretty quickly under the right circumstances. You think anyone in 1950s America really had much of an idea of what the 1960s had in store?
I’m also finding it interesting that a few of the guys hurt bad by the cops have been vets back from Iraq and Afghanistan. Dudes maybe kind of like that Chomsky-reading Ranger Pat Tillman, guys who think and feel a bit left of center as well as more than a bit left out, and smart enough to see how things add up. Those guys are pretty hardcore. Of course, there’s probably more pissed off vets who’d like to shoot a few OWS types than who’d like to join ’em, but still.
But yeah, I gotta say I agree big change would only come with some big bloodshed.
Interesting times. Interesting times like seven billion.