For over a hundred years peaceful protests have made change. Significant and historic change. From Ghandi and Martin Luther King to anti-Vietnam war protests, from the women’s movement to BLM, from Silent Spring and Greenpeace to anti-corporate corruption. Protests worked, albeit slowly, painfully and incrementally. Violent protests never really worked as well and they have worked less and less as the police state, Homeland Security, digital monitoring and social media have grown. But they, too, made a splash. Basically, protests worked. Peaceful protest worked best.
But recent studies have indicated that protests are becoming less and less effective. As government becomes more autocratic and oppressive, as the media becomes more and more corporate and as the police state becomes more militant and with cameras everywhere, the protests are getting more and more like flash mobs. They hit and they run. They are leaderless much of the time. Most of the time. Protests are becoming guerilla-ized, localized and often ignored by the media and the government. The peeps revolting are getting more and more like the Guy Fawkes masked Anonymous…..ineffective and forgettable.
Sadly, they are also getting kinda boring……evolutionary change is, perhaps, too slow for our times.
So…what does that all tell you….? Peaceful and violent protests are becoming more ineffectual and leaderless, anonymous and less focused. The media doesn’t ‘cover’ them properly (and perhaps because of that boredom) so they go underground and rely on social media to spread their message (along with the trolls, oppressors and wingnuts). And they are all largely ignored. Protests are declining in impact. Especially when time is a major factor (i.e.Climate Change).
So, then what? Waddya gonna do when they neutralize the only weapon you have for self (and planet) defense? Especially since many of those in protest are also suffering from lack of confidence in our supposedly well-intentioned institutions.
Well, you could do what the cowards, the old and the weak do – run for the OTG hills! (hmmm…..I just might know such a guy….)
You could also run for office but let’s be frank: our politics have been corrupted and the non corporate-sponsored don’t have a chance to even contend. You have to first sell out to get the ‘party backing’ which kind of defeats the point. The system is designed to compromise and homogenize, to cover and squelch, to make your voice – even in parliament – unheard. Why would anyone run for office just to be ignored? Salary and the pension, maybe? That’s a condemning observation….eh? And, if the salary and pension is not a factor, then why NOT speak up? But they do not. Your MP and MLA don’t make any noise. Those folks may have started out with good intentions but they were quickly and effectively corralled, comforted, compromised and ignored.
If you are not gonna run for office, run for the hills or run around in a dark hoodie painting graffiti, whatcha gonna do?
What will change action look like in the future? Revolution or Evolution?
Well, somethings are showing up already…much like the dead canaries in the coal-mine. We have more and more random stabbings to add to the ever-present mass shootings. We have cult figures conning millions of the weak and inept (who probably just want a mother/parent/leader, poor babies). We have a growing number of the mental and the addicted homeless. And the fallibility of our institutions is becoming and more more revealed. But those observations are not so much astute or constructive things to say, ya know?
Constructive? We may or may not have a heroic sub-culture in the tech industry trying to make things better…hard to tell yet. E-cars, the internet, satellites, batteries (that one’s for me)….that kind of make-a-buck revolutionary who gets rich doing good work (has there ever been such a person?).
We need a real leader. On a global level. But do we have a real, uniting, charismatic visionary? Do we have a natural Messiah-type? One that preaches goodness and doesn’t lie, I mean. Wasn’t Anonymous gonna do that kinda good? What happened to those Guy Fawkes guys? For that matter, what happened to GreenPeace? Do we have a ‘movement’ that everyone wants to support that is led by intelligent, well-respected, unselfish people who have not tried to have sex with a reporter or choir boy or some other naturally-born-to-sue quasi-victim? (Greta Thunberg is the only one I can think of).
The answer, I am afraid, is: NOT YET. NO ONE HAS STEPPED UP. NO GROUP. NO MOVEMENT. NO HEROES. Where is the Second Coming when we need one?
By the way….people have stepped up. No question. Probably thousands have risked their lives, their careers, their futures all in an attempt to right a wrong. I know that. I applaud them. I admire them. I even support them sometimes. But I always end up grieving for them. They are persecuted and killed, they are dissed and ruined, they are ignored and shunned. There are a lot of dead heroes in Mexico, Russia, China, Myanmar, North Korea and Iran just to name a few random places.
It seems the successful hero business is owned lock, stock and barrel by Marvel Comics now (a subsidiary of Disney).
BTW: “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” is NOT the same as “Wherefor art thou?” (the latter from Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliette). The first asks: Where are you? The second asks “What/who are you?” Methinks the distinction is becoming moot. We need a hero whatever is her or his makeup and we need him or her NOW.
Will change come by evolution? Maybe. Or will a revolution happen? History indicates revolution will not happen until the peeps are hungry. They will be persecuted, oppressed and controlled into oblivion but they will obey until they die. And they went out on a full stomach. And that may be our future.
History suggests that only the hungry revolt.