There’s something to be said for the people who spent the last week or so hoboing it up in Martin Place. I certainly shared a lot of their anger from the safety of my keyboard. These protests are important for one primary reason, namely that they highlight the hypocrisy of governments providing socialised safety nets for dysfunctional capitalist enterprises, rather than letting those companies die the true financial death that real capitalism would allow. But that isn’t what I wanted to write about.
So we were down there at Martin Place last Friday, watching the hippies sit and ferment and foment in the sun, and I remember saying to my friend – “this won’t last. They will definitely get shut down.”
And sure enough, last Sunday morning, the inevitable occurred. A massive number of coppers in full riot gear descended upon the malodourous mob and had a good old fashioned shit kicking festival. Hurrah!
A whole range of thoughts and emotions went flooding through me as I watched this. Firstly, a kind of angry frisson, a sense of loathing that helps to confirm just who and what I hate. And then outrage, and then more anger, and then cynicism, and then a gentle subsidence into contentedness and bliss as the next episode of So You Think You Can Dance came on. Ha.
Actually, one of the more interesting reactions I noted was that I also felt a sense of confidence, a weird kind of empowerment. Because by the sheer volume of the reaction, by the ridiculous hyperbole that has spewed from the usual media goons, by the fervent claims of justification from government mouths, one thing is above all clear. There is fear there. You can smell it, and its almost as strong as the BO and hemp that wafted over Martin Place for that brief and tentless week.
Fear of the masses. Because what happens when the bread runs out? They (noting that THEY are such a clear and well defined social grouping, aren’t they?) got off easily here in Australia - the 99% have enough to eat, can generally afford somewhere to live (though increasingly not to own that place) and around 95% have jobs. So the hippies never really got traction.
But what happens if the shit hits the fan? Surely this is why Zucotti park is still full – there are simply too many people there. And many of them aren’t the usual social marginals who you can happily bash in the face and be confident that the corporate media will continue its compliant silence.
So ultimately, we are in a weird place. On the one hand, the occupy movement has the potential to really shake things up. It’s helping to challenge the long felt assumption that large corporations have all the rights but none of the responsibilities of average citizens. It’s helping to highlight the gross and growing inequality which has all the hallmarks of shifting us into some neo-liberal wetdream of economic feudalism.
But for it to really change the way our society functions, things have to get a whole lot worse. I wasn’t down there in Martin Place for long because I have a well paying job that I enjoy. While I can’t speak for anyone else, I’m pretty confident that there were many keyboard jockeys like myself who probably share the sentiments of the protesters, but simply don’t share the economic impetus to be down there waving a picture of Che and misquoting Lenin. But that can change, and quickly. Watch this space in a few years when the Australian commodities boom tapers off and things start to look a whole lot less peachy.
Anyway, the protesters are gone now and we can all return to enjoying the soothing balm of MasterChef, My Family stickers, Home and Away (or The Slap, if you prefer you soapies with a dash of intellectual elitism) and decent employment prospects. What happens now really depends on how smart the 1 percent are from this point on. If they are smart, they’ll authorise the expenditure of a small fraction of their wealth to address the most gross examples of inequality, and therefore take the fire out of the beast’s belly.
Or they may continue to ignore it, try to repress it, propagandise against it, and ultimately insure against it by investing in better weapons. However, the problem here is that 99 is a lot more than 1. And no matter how much riot gear you wear, you’ll still get smooshed if 99 people decide to step on you at once.
No comments:
Post a Comment