Forum Post: Some hard strategic facts

I know, I know. This is a revolution and we're all the spiritual heirs of Buddha and Jesus, etc. But unfortunately no matter how paradigm-busting this all is, one has to look at some hard realities here.

1. WE HAVE NO ECONOMIC POWER. We are rebelling in a time when there is massive unemployment and there are too few available "suitable" jobs for too many people. The 1% do not need you. They have Chinese and Bangladeshis to make the consumer goods they sell, and Mexicans and Hondurans to pick the tomatoes they sell. They only need us to consume, and in fact they really don't need us for that either now, since they pretty much have all the toys already. They would be quite happy to go back to a situation where they, the aristocrats, play power games with each other and fight each other for each others' money (using guess who, you, as serfs and soldiers).

So to sit around talking about "peaceful consensus" and "occupying" is all well and good, but you're not going to actually make anyone do anything this way just by sitting around in a park. Why? Because the economy really doesn't need you any more. Why aren't the 1% concerned at the fact that you're out of a job? Well, because they don't care; they have all the toys now. So, please reflect on this hard reality while you are dreaming of a sit-down revolution. The only real power you have, since you have no economic power, is to muck up the public order and sow chaos, and you all say you don't really want to get into that. Marches, active civil disobedience, throwing stuff: that's all very distasteful to you, and not surprisingly, because you believe you're "above all that" as the American middle class. You're civilized and moral and educated. You went to college. Blah de blah. What you really are, is a lot of good-intentioned but politically very weak people sitting in a park, and the cops can come in and clear out some or all of you any time they want. And they will - bit by bit, this place that week, the other place the next week, until next year at this time you'll still have occupy encampments but they will not have grown and nobody will really care any more. Ten arrests here, 20 arrests there, week in and week out, until your much-vaunted media impact is totally neutralized because the rest of the American public will simply become desensitized to it all. The process has already begun.

1. THE WORLD DOESN'T FEEL SORRY FOR YOU. I know this movement likes to style itself along the "We Shall Overcome" lines, as if the American masses are terrible victims in all this, but the rest of the world doesn't see it that way. As an American, I personally feel sorry for people who are unemployed and screwed over by the 1%, but if you really believe that all this global Kumbayah we're experiencing this week means that we're all gonna rise up in solidarity together with the Australians and the Libyans and the Syrians, and start a brave new era (one where, naturally, we Americans still get to be pretty much in charge), I don't think so. The world does not feel sorry for Americans who bought into the globalization and our problems here are pretty much peanuts compared to the problems of other people around the world. We have no real moral high ground to claim, which means that when the cops and military get sick of sitting around and start busting heads, it's not exactly going to have the same impact on the global stage as the water cannons and German Shepherd dogs in Birmingham had. Everyone's got their own problems, and Americans are at the top of the global food chain. Your sociopolitical genes are much closer to the 1% than you care to admit. Trust me: the rest of the world has already noticed.

So, to review: 1) we have no economic (and therefore no political) power, and 2) no moral force power.

And yet, you still think you're going to accomplish something in a "nice, middle-class, non-confrontational, moral force way."

Uh-huh.

Word to the wise: stop nattering on about "consensus" and "paradigm shifts" and start thinking about good old fashioned organization and leadership. Better start choosing some good leaders, before you wind up with bad leaders you don't want. Because you WILL wind up with leaders whether you want them or not.