I wonder how many of us have on our list of New Year’s resolutions not just various items of personal makeover, but revolution itself? Talk about turning over a new leaf.
This should be a dangerous time of year, bombarded as we are with the traditional Christmas movies with their essentially revolutionary message: Scrooge’s overthrow of his inner capitalist, the defeat of the one percent by the 99 in It’s a Wonderful Life, the hint in both favorites of a “socialist” agenda, the rightness of people taking care of each other. The Christ story itself is one of radical rejection of prevailing power.
The Occupy movement has given an extra edge to such revolutionary sentiment, with its focus on our democracy’s tendency to turn into de facto rule of the wealthy few.
But even for the Occupy-inspired, much needed deep change in the way things are (the “system”) seems less likely even than losing that extra 20 p ounds you’ve been lugging around. Probably most of us don’t even think about making such a big resolution.
The fact is, revolutionary change in the U.S. is hard to imagine.
The 1979 Grenadian revolution against the dictator Gairy and his notorious Mongoose Gang was accomplished in a few hours by 50 young idealists in two rental cars That’s all it took on that island the size of Martha’s Vineyard.
The overthrow of Batista in Cuba took more imagination (not to mention courage and sacrifice). Much bigger island, Batista much more firmly established with a large army and police force.
We witnessed the huge upheaval of 20 years ago in eastern Europe. We have watched on TV the “spring” revolutions in Tunis, Egypt, Libya. Something of the sort may even be cooking in Putin’s Russia. Here, not so much.
But maybe just as daunting to the imagination as the sheer momentum of the established order backed by the huge army provided by our taxes is the p owerful myth of American exceptionalism, the belief in our essential and unique virtue that survives, teflon like, all the reality to the contrary.
A part of what makes radical change unlikely is simply that it seems hard to imagine.
The status quo suits the “one percent” just fine. But I wonder exactly what percentage of us are too well off to risk what we have—a mortgage we are able to pay on, compensation in the form of a big hi-def TV and other bread-and-circuses– to transform a system that seems incapable of deep reform of itself?
What percentage of even those said to be the natural supporters of Occupy, those without jobs or houses, hesitate lest we throw the baby out with the bathwater. Other countries are having even more economic difficulties than we, we reflect. There must be a reason Mexicans risk everything to get a shot at a job north of the border, right? And speaking of babies, stability itself is not to be sneezed at. Revolution, serious change, is unstable, man. Dangerous. You could get killed.
One of those babies is freedom of expression. Isn’t that worth a lot of economic suffering and unfairness? Hey, “Time Magazine” put “The Protestor” right on the front cover as person of the year. Is this a great country or what?
Then there’s Bradley Manning, who may get life imprisonment or even death for his whistle-blowing WikiLeak. There’s no question the video he made available doesn’t do any favors for our country’s reputation. It could make us have to change our way of making war. At what point does our much cherished freedom of expression become a version of “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me”? We allow you to speak as long as it doesn’t have any real effect.
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