America Leads the World...In Protest

All over America, people are taking to the streets in protest. It began with the "Occupy Wall Street" initiative in New York and rapidly spread from city to city. Wall Street was never occupied; New York's "Finest" saw to that. But demonstrators moved to nearby areas to hold up signs in protest. Police eventually arrested over 700 who may have wondered what happened to free speech in America.

In Boston, police were more restrained at first and an "Occupy Boston" movement took over Dewey Square Park across from South Station and erected a tent city with a food and water station to support demonstrators and visitors alike. A small contingent sat under a tent fly creating one protest sign after another, while others took up the signs and marched by the side of the park displaying their messages to passing cars and pedestrians. When demonstrators began to spread to other areas, police moved in with riot gear and, according to the Harvard Crimson, hauled off about 100 of those participating in the protest and destroyed tents, signs, and other property left on the scene.

From Lower Manhattan, the Occupy Wall Street movement spread out throughout the country. Students at over 100 colleges spontaneously set up their own protests. At UVM, an appearance by a Goldman Sachs analyst who was to speak on career opportunities in the financial services sector was abruptly cancelled when the likelihood of protest emerged.

Unrest in the U.S. even spread throughout the world with similar demonstrations erupting in Toronto, Paris, Rome, London, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Sydney. In mainland China, red armbands started to make a timid appearance in sympathy with the now-international movement. The Chinese government was at first supportive, seeing this as a victory for communism over capitalism, but became nervous about its potential to incite dissatisfaction at home. Chinese censors began to block internet searches for Occupy Wall Street and any of its offshoots.

What are all these people protesting? Some have compared it to the antiwar movement of the late 60s, but few demonstrators in Boston, at least, appeared concerned about war. The spirit was more like that of TV anchor, Howard Beale, who in the 1976 film Network, asked Americans to stand up, wherever they were, and shout "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!"

No wonder. Millions of Americans are out of work. Our government has amassed debts of over $14 trillion (that's twelve zeros!) and is committed to spending nearly $50 trillion more over the next few years. Civil liberties are in ruins and the current administration has said that the President has the right to kill any American citizen who, in the  President's opinion, needs killing. What's more, the threat has been followed by action and drone attacks have already taken out "enemies of the state." both citizen and non-citizen. Stalin could have made good use of this technology.

For the first time since the late 1960s, American students are rediscovering that their voices matter. Dartmouth students also organized demonstrations sympathetic to the Occupy Wall Street protests. At the same time, participants in these events are learning that protest is no longer welcome in America. On the Dartmouth campus, student demonstrators were told that they could not erect a tarp to shield them from the rain.

Political leaders and school administrators insist that they support the right of Americans to demonstrate. That right is, after all, guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. But the powers that be want demonstrators to be well-behaved and to conform to laws that were passed to make sure that nothing like the 1960s happened again. Yes, you can demonstrate as long as your demonstration has no teeth.

In New York, Occupy Wall Street was moved away from Wall Street. It wouldn't do to interfere with the workings of the financiers after we bailed them out so that they could get back to work and make more money. Then Mayor Bloomberg ordered the demonstrators to leave the park where they went after removal from Wall Street. It was only, he said, to let the park be cleaned up. Supposedly they could move back but, of course, tents, tarps, and anything else that might be needed to keep them alive and active could not be allowed.

What is to be done? Conservatives in Congress want to reduce spending by a paltry hundred billion dollars or so, while liberals want to replay the failed strategy of pumping money into selected projects and enterprises, but this time on a much larger scale. Meanwhile we have a central banker (read Fed Chairman) who sees the solution as simply a matter of printing more money. He calls it "quantitative easing." A good name. My life would be much easier if I could simply print money; how about yours?

The fact that there is no real money is no obstacle. We can always print more monopoly money. Both sides seem to agree that as long as their corporate friends keep funding their political campaigns everything will work out well in the end.

In the last days of the Roman Empire, entertainment was the key to keep the minds of citizens off the fact that their way of life was crumbling around them—bread and circuses. The strategy still works. Not long ago, Americans were dancing in the streets because we had gunned down a unarmed, pathetic old man after shooting his wife. In Nuremburg, we put those with fresh blood on their hands an trial so that the world could see that Americans, even in victory, held justice at their highest value. It's even in our pledge: "...with liberty and justice for all."