Most people want not only food and water and shelter and air, but security – the confidence that these other essentials won’t suddenly be taken away from them by forces beyond their control. Most people don’t want to go back to the kind of life led by the mythical prehistoric caveman, cowering in his cave, hungry and wet and cold, looking out on the raging thunderstorm, fearful that a sabertooth tiger or enemy caveman was going to attack if he drifted off to sleep. In those early times it was natural for humans to band together in groups centered around strong and decisive leaders, assured that these leaders had the power and will to protect them.
That need for a protector is deeply and indelibly rooted in the human psyche; it is why to this day people largely support their leaders, democratically elected or in power by military coup, benevolent or malevolent – because they think that allying themselves with powerful men, even though the methods and goals of these individuals may be horrific, will serve to put a mantle of protection over the people.
It is often a surprise to Western Europeans and North Americans that people in other countries don’t rise up to overthrow their dictators. The main reason is that human beings tend to be defensive of their Weltansicht (the mental “lenses” through which they interpret and construct reality) because it serves as the axiomatic foundation for their entire lives. They know factually that their dictator is evil, that his spies are everywhere and that any of them, any at all, could be in any moment unexpectedly detained and imprisoned or executed without even the pretense of due process. But they refuse to think about this fact because it is simply too frightening, too threatening of the security they crave. So they outdo one another in singing praise to their dictator, hoping that loud voices of support will keep them safe in the dictator’s smile.
This is why it is a miracle, the worldwide “Occupy” movement that began in Tunisia – not just that it has so widely spread, but that it has, on occasion, been so successful in toppling dictators. It is a miracle that, despite this natural tendency to feign support for a feared dictator, the people in many countries fear their dictators’ excesses so much that they are rising up against them.
This is also why many people in many countries, including in North America and Western Europe, oppose the Occupy movement, expressing ridicule, calling them unpatriotic fomenters of chaos. Such persons still believe that the best choice is to cozy up to the dictator (whoever he, or whatever it, may be) rather than arouse his ire and risk losing that precious security. It’s not that they’re stupid or obtuse, as some Occupy supporters have alleged; it’s not that they can't get it, it’s that they don't want to get it. As Daniel J. Boorstin eloquently put it in his brilliantly prophetic 1967 work The Image, they prefer the comfortable, comforting lie to the frightening truth.
Just as people in a totalitarian state loudly proclaim the glories of their leader to protect themselves from his wrath and avail themselves of his strength to protect the country, so even in a democracy many people prefer to believe that the status quo may not be ideal, but it’s better than the chaos potentially unleashed by the Occupy movement. These little lies hold their lives together, and they will do everything they can to prevent purveyors of the truth from pulling down those false idols.
The Occupy movement needs to remember that everybody wants security, including those who question or oppose the Occupy movement. So the movement needs to help those others understand that these powermongers – particularly in North America and Western Europe that means the ultra-rich plutocrats who control the government (including the legislatures, courts, military, and police), the economy, the media – are, down the road, not going to protect them.
That these ultra-rich care not a whit for the common man and woman, except to use them for what pecuniary value can be extracted from them and, once the latter are deemed expendable, there will be no further security for them.
That adhering to these plutocrats inevitably will, in time, leave them bereft of protection, and destroy their well-being.
The Occupy movement needs to state repeatedly that the current privatized system of medical care, designed to make a profit, not to protect health, will leave them without access to decent medical care should they get seriously ill.
That the removal of pollution controls will destroy their environment and leave them, and their offspring, deathly sick.
That privatizing their schools will, like their universities, put the cost of a decent education out of reach of all but the rich, and/or turn schools into mere training centers for lifelong drudge-work.
That state laws allowing employers to fire employees at will, to ignore fair hiring practices, to get around minimum wage requirements inevitably will lead to mass unemployment and destitute poverty among minorities and single mothers, and eventually the white males as well.
That high fees on loans and credit cars from profit-making financial enterprises will destroy their future security.
That they no longer have any reason to trust these plutocrats will protect them and provide them security – that their very security is at stake. That, therefore, their best bet is to go with Occupy.
We have to persuade everyone of the truth of these statements.
But, to do so, we must remember that Occupy opponents want security just as do Occupy supporters. We must not call those opponents enemies, or stupid - we must appeal to their intelligence, so they see that the ultra-rich oligarchs are going to provide the people with security no longer.
The Occupy movement must be on guard. The usual procedure for governments or businesses found out to be corrupt is for those at the top to make some minimum changes – window dressing – so they can quickly “get things back to normal” – with those responsible for the corruption still in charge, and the sheep quiet in their pens. That means blaming a few token middle-management fall-guys, calling them aberrations or loose cannons, kicking them out as a sacrifice to “restore domestic tranquility”, and then pronouncing the system healthy, instituting a few meaningless, ineffective window-dressing reforms which they can promptly ignore – and then get back to the business of making more fortunes at your and my expense.
Some three and a half decades ago, after the Watergate scandal and the Storm King environmental furore, there were real changes. But ever since the “smart boys”, the legally shifty bureaucrats, have been paid good salaries to find tacitly legal circumlocutions around the good financial and environmental and social reforms enacted back then.
To name but one example among many I could cite, the New York state constitution clearly stipulates in Article I Section 10 that there shall be no casinos in the state. Period. It’s one of the strongest-worded such impediments in United States law. But there are several casinos operating in the state, and more are contemplated – why? Because greed in state government was allied with greed in the New York city financial institutions (often virtually the same thing), and so those “smart boys” were set to find legal tricks to get around their own constitution. How, I ask, can a government survive when it shoves aside its own foundation?
I could go on forever... let me just mention two prominent political prisoners, Bradley Manning and Leonard Peltier; the lies by the George W. Bush administration to get us into Iraq and Afghanistan; the criminal acts by the CIA and others in sovereign foreign countries....
We must constantly bear in mind how the ultra-rich plutarchs in this world are not ethical but pragmatic. They will “change sides” as easily as they change their expensive suits if it means more money. They are fighting al Qaeda in Iraq and Afghanistan - but in Libya they sided with the revolutionaries, who were and are largely associated with al Qaeda.
Yes, a dictator was toppled, and perhaps now the people of Libya will now enjoy peace and freedom under a real democracy. But let's not kid ourselves that the Western support for the Libyan uprising (without which it would have failed, squashed by Qadaffi!) was really about toppling a dictator. If it were, then why does the United States cozy up to dictators in China, Russia, and half of Africa? Oh yes, profits. Oil in particular.
I still have some vanishing hope that President Obama will lead - that (to quote African American friends of mine) he will “go black on their sorry white asses, that he will take out a big ole can of whupazz and beat them with it.” As president, he has access to a powerful bully pulpit – HE SHOULD USE IT! As did Franklin Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln in the same office before him, as did Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King and Mahatma Mohandas Gandhi and John Lennon, for that matter. As long as he plays the game, negotiating with their sorry white asses, we the people lose. He's got to start a new game.
Moreover, the Occupy movement and Obama must keep in mind that this is a worldwide problem. If the United States “solves” the current economic crisis in a way that ignores the rest of the world, that is at the expense of the rest of the world, the problem is not solved, and it will just come back eventually – today’s economy is global, not national.
Bhopal and the Gulf of Mexico, the sweatshops of Asia, the maquiladoras of Latin America, my neighbors here in Panama who are lucky to earn $6-$8 a day, my friends in Africa who earn that much in a month – their problems are those of the United States too. “Buying American” and saying “the rest of the world can go to hell” is not the answer. Thinking globally and acting locally is. Otherwise, the problem is just exported out of the United States.
Gautama Buddha taught: “In the sky, there is no distinction of east and west; people create distinctions out of their own minds and then believe them to be true.”
Get over it, people. We are all one. The malevolent plutocrats, the ultra-rich who control our media and our schools – and therefore our minds – would have us believe that “we” must hate “you”. Americans are taught to hate North African Muslims, and North African Muslims are taught to hate Americans. Palestinians are taught to hate Israelis and Israelis to hate Palestinians.
The evil rulers (including the ultra-rich plutocrats in the United States, who manipulate the government and media) thrive on such division, since as long as we are divided amongst ourselves, everyone hating and fearing everybody else, we will never band together to overthrow those evil rulers – and we will continue to look to them to protect us from those people we’ve been taught to hate.
So we have Christian vs. Jew vs. Muslim, Black vs. White vs. Brown vs. Red vs. Yellow, Liberal vs. Conservative, West vs. East, North vs. South, one generation vs. another, male vs. female, straight vs. gay/lesbian/bi/trans....
And, if we are fatally foolish, we have Occupy vs. anti-Occupy. The Occupy movement will make a mortal error if it keeps speaking harshly to those who oppose it. The real enemy, the ultra-rich plutocrats, are delighted to see us fight amongst ourselves, because that way we'll never be united against them.
There are those who prefer to say that this “Occupy” movement began on Wall Street. It's very nice that they're so supportive of their own country, but I'm aghast when my fellow liberal friends adopt such a position, since it's one step away from the false but prevalent culturocentric notion that “anything good in the world” came from the U.S.A., a notion that we want to avoid not only because it isn't true, but because it is promoted by the hate-spewing "news" media and their ultra-rich masters, because it helps them sell American products and further rape the world economy - and it's only two steps away from ethnocentrism, and three steps from bigotry - the racist dogma that “anything good in the world” has come only from people of white northern European ancestry.
Nothing could be further from the truth, and this “occupy” movement is an example of that. It began, folks, in Tunisia, and it is from Tunisia that it has spread worldwide. When I challenged this notion recently, a friend of mine replied that the Wall Street version isn't against government but against Big Money. That is clearly not the case. I've been observing carefully the signs and statements of participants, and the reflections of informed analysts, and this is clearly directed, too, against a U.S. government that large swathes of the citizenry feel has so pandered to Big Money that it has failed in its responsibility to that ignored 99%.
So - as Tunisia celebrates its first democratic election - I shout hurrah! to that wonderful little country and thank them for showing the world how effective peaceful revolution can be!
This battle against the ultra-rich plutarchs is a worldwide battle with a worldwide solution and we must approach it on a worldwide basis. We must join hands with citizens in every country in solidarity against the real "Evil Empire". Let the plutarchs spray their propaganda that "America is Better", since that sells more Levis and Cokes. But let us be equal and united with our brothers and sisters the world over!
We must emphasize and bear in mind that all attempts to divide us (by race, by faith, by sex, by sexual orientation, by politics) ARE WELCOMED, EVEN INSTIGATED BY THE ULTRA-RICH ENEMY such that we defeat ourselves.
All these divisions are but an illusion. Race? There is only ONE race, the HUMAN RACE. All the rest are artificial, human-made distinctions. Pry deeply enough into your DNA and you realize what an illusion it all is. The farther back I go in my ancestry, the more I realize my ancestry isn’t this or that but a mélange of many. And I am sure that the same is true of you. So forget those foolish artificial distinctions.
We must unite against these ultra-rich potentates! We must unite and take on the Evil One... whether he goes by the name of Mubarak or Pol Pot or Noriega or Koch or Goldman Sachs. We must take him on wherever he lives – nonviolently, peacefully, but as persistently as water. As the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao-tse taught, “Water is the weakest thing in the world, but it can wear away a continent.”
And that, right there, is the strength of the Occupy movement that began in Tunisia - it has the power of water. The evil rulers cannot arrest it away or shoot it away, for when the people arise they keep coming and coming and coming until the evil is gone.
As individuals, all any of us can do is to look to ourselves and make sure we are doing, saying, thinking, and being the right thing.
Being a human being is not doing the expedient thing, the thing that helps you and yours be better off, but doing the right thing. Even at the expense of everything you hold dear.
Therefore, what we must do do is pray, stand up to evil, and support and encourage those around us to do the right thing. And – as did those mythical cavemen in the earliest age – we must band together to stand united against the evil forces.
If every individual (especially those of faith, whatever their particular faith-path) does this, the world will become a far better place.
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