What I dream of is another leviathan parade composed of current members of the burgeoning revolt against Wall Street and all its minions. In my dream, it would end at the gates of the White House. Blocking those gates would last until such time as the military made mass arrests. Such a clash of citizenry with the polices at the gateway of our president might be seen as a turning point. It might nourish a slowly growing belief that Amerika is de facto wobbling along on the very precipice of an authoritarian state propped up by the military.
Sometimes it becomes necessary to propagate this kind of attitude and suffer being called a traitor. Let's not forget that Martin Luther King was called a traitor by such bodies as the FBI and the Pentagon. If you are called a traitor, you are in good company.
Thomas Jefferson once warned his fellow Americans that corporations must be abolished. He believed that if his fellow compatriots failed to do so, the corporations would one day corrupt and fatally undermine the American democracy. As far back as I can remember, American socialists have repeated that admonition. Alas, outside the circle of democratic socialists, nobody has ever seemed to have knowledge of Jefferson's stunningly astute warning.
I see this period as a stunning moment in American history. The fact that it seems to have sprung up chiefly among young people gives one hope it will not go away in the immediate future. I use the word "hope" advisedly. Following the horrors of the Vietnam War, the flower children and young peaceniks seemed to fade away. One of the greatest disappointments I have ever felt occurred when the vista opened by the peace movement was soon shriveled and gone.
I'm therefore cautious about my hopes for a nascent revolution spreading across the land. The power of the modern state is so immense, it is exceedingly difficult for a true democratic revolution to be born, nurtured, and ultimately to be made triumphant. The new movement could quietly lie down and die just as the peace movement died once the Vietnam War was over. The propensity of Amerika to engage in imperialistic wars and endless militarism has never been snuffed out or even slowed down by a peace movement. It will take a powerful resistance to stop those forces and currents that have been a part of the American ethos since this country was born.
Despite America's history, the current spreading revolt is well underway with a large underground of excellent leadership. Along with the Net, we even have a national TV network (Current TV) breathing life into a nascent revolution. As for the fourth estate, it generally is doing what it always does by doing its best to cover up and then cover up the cover ups. Nonetheless, the Internet and the new Current TV network together are excellent tools for revealing truth. We never had anything like that during the years we fought against the American genocide in Vietnam and the unconstitutional conscription supporting it. Note: If your ISP does not offer Current TV, you can watch it here.
Yet I am cautiously optimistic. In nearby Appleton, Wisconsin, a group of protesters decided to occupy the city park and emulate the scene in New York City. The mayor prevented their getting a permit to camp overnight or to hold any rally using any form of sound amplification! In short, he effectively banned any kind of rally that might displease the City Park's neighbors. The planned Appleton march and rally were cancelled. The original group has shrunk to a fraction of its original size.
And Appleton resident Senator Joe McCarthy is smiling in his Appleton grave.
On a positive note, I now realize that pocket phones and the pocket cameras that make movies are the bane of sadistic cops. Every cop, no matter how stupid, should understand he might show up on TV in a film if he brutalizes any person who is not doing anything that merits such an attack. The now famous group of sobbing girls on their knees triggered a chastisement of the police sergeant who tortured them and his relocation to a lesser peripheral precinct because he had sprayedtheir eyes with a painful chemical for no apparent reason other than sadistic pleasure. I am hoping against hope that some films survived the brutalities that took place in Oakland. Each day, I tune in to Keith Olbermann's program on the Current TV network. I'm guessing he will have some film footage of cops brutalizing demonstrators in Oakland.
Oddly enough, a group of masked anarchists, who were breaking bank windows, were ignored by the
cops!
