You say you want a revolution?
“The people are revolting” – as the old joke goes. But revolting against what? And just who are this era’s revolutionaries?
The metaphorical, if not actual, role of the revolutionary is to have a vision. It is to overthrow a tired status quo, to liberate the enslaved – whether they are physically enslaved or whether they are bound to ideologies that no longer function. The revolutionary tends to be a free thinker, a liberal concerned with a fairer deal for all. Rightly or wrongly (and for blogging expediency this is a greatly simplified view) the revolutionary wants to move us forward.
The new revolutionaries, however, have emerged from some freakish opposite dimension. They are ultraconservatives, fighting for poorer health, poverty, ideological enslavement, wider gaps between the haves and have nots, the pre-eminence of ‘rights’ over needs, unlimited economic growth even if it leads to societal and planetary collapse and most incomprehensible of all Sarah Palin for President. If the inconsistencies and contradictions weren’t so funny they would be truly frightening.
Their revolution is based in fear rather than vision. It is a collective, but completely unconscious and poorly conceived uprising of the all-too-common man who, after years of media scare stories about the coming Armageddon, feels that he is losing everything and paradoxically has nothing to lose. It’s the collective equivalent of the guy who goes berserk with a gun in a gas station because the mini-mart didn’t have his favourite kind of donut.
This ‘Tea Bagger’ revolution has nothing to do with what is really wrong, nor is it intended to fix anything. It is just a senseless acting out of what Robert Bly called the Sibling Society – a society populated by emotionally inarticulate adults of the late post-war generation who have come to be ruled by consumerism, professional, personal self interest and narcissism. The end result? Emotionally stunted or “half-grown adults”, intent on their own agendas, and incapable of fulfilling their parental, nurturing and leadership obligations to the next generation. In short, a society populated by a bunch of pseudo-adolescents who want everything all the time and who can’t think past their own childish tantrums to the damage they are doing.
Which brings me to my second point – where are the real revolutionaries? The ones who understand the complexity of modern life and the urgent need for change and are agitating to move us forward within that framework.
A few years ago my more liberal activist pals and I would toss around words like ‘revolution’ with glee. Every baby step towards sustainability, every minor green victory was the social tipping point that would prompt the people to rise up and demand a more sustainable, more fair, more inclusive world. Every assault on human dignity, on the wholeness of the planet, on the destruction of culture and community, was seen as the final spark that would ignite the flame.
We’d done the research, we’d got the data, we had charts and graphs and we’d seen the future. We were ready for the revolution. Sociologists even gave us a name – the Cultural Creatives – the ones with the education and intelligence, the depth and breadth of understanding, to envision a better world and to drive meaningful change. Paul Hawken called us the ‘movement of movements’. But I see precious little movement here and definitely nothing revolutionary. So where the hell are you guys?
Watching events unfold I can’t help thinking that we are all victims of a bigger agenda. That there is a political expediency in letting such extreme childish behaviour run its course.
The environmental and social problems we face are complex and the solutions we need must acknowledge that complexity – and that makes policymaking difficult. Policymakers like clear cut options, and the truth is we are way beyond that reality now. But keep the focus on the extremes, and the voice of the educated middle eventually gets lost – and then ignored. And without all those tiresome people – the ones who take a long-term view and see both sides of the story –policymaking is so much easier.
In any hierarchy the organisation can only be as complex as the guy at the top. In this respect Americans can thank their lucky stars and stripes that they have a leader who appears to have a degree of complexity. In the UK the race for Prime Minister is between ‘dumb and dumber’ where both candidates have lost sight of the issues and each seems determined to outdo the other in terms of childishness tantrums and meaningless rhetoric. The prospects for our own ‘sibling society’ are not encouraging.
Back in the US of A the thing I find most bewildering is that these ultraconservative ‘revolutionaries’ are being framed merely as Average Joes exercising their right to protest.
Not long ago environmental campaigners, engaged in largely peaceful and lawful activism were reframed as a major terrorist threat on US soil. Documents released a few years ago show that a private security company run by former Secret Service officers spied on Greenpeace and other environmental organisations from the late 1990s through at least 2000. Two years ago in the UK activist group Plane Stupid was infiltrated by an aviation industry spy and last year it was revealed that EDF – the French energy giant – was illegally spying on environmentalists and infiltrating their ranks.
It may well have been the abuse of basic civil liberties and long arm of the law coming down on them – for instance by removing their right to take part in protests – that has driven many green protesters underground. Many in the environmental movement now seem happy to be pacified with ‘green consumerism’ and the lie that they are doing their bit with every solar powered cappuccino whisk they buy.
The new conservative revolutionaries – the ones who think their President is a closet ‘mooslem’ and Guantanamo Bay is a holiday camp – are throwing not just insults but punches and bricks, and they are making death threats in order to influence government policy. In short, they are seeking to “(i) intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion”. Doesn’t that put these fine patriots in direct breach of the Patriot Act?
Aren’t they just domestic terrorists? And if so isn’t it time they suffered the appropriate penalties?
In the mean time, what will it take for these Cultural Creatives, this movement of movements, to stop trying to shop its way out of trouble and start its own visionary revolution for a better world; something more inspiring and inclusive than name-calling and flag-waving.
Seriously, what will it take?
© Pat Thomas 2010. No reproduction without the author’s permission.
This post originally appeared on AlterNet on March 28, 2010
