Protest Therapy…
I read something that stunned me tonight on a somewhat unrelated topic. The article mentioned the commonly held belief today that “Web 2.0” is an expansion of democracy. Every citizen now has a global soap box to preach from with a potentially unlimited audience. However, the author of the article immediately refutes this by saying this isn’t democracy this is THERAPY.
Therapy is what you do, say, or rationalize to make yourself feel better about yourself or the world it is an internal solution involving the individual. Granted your solution maybe to go out into the world and cause an external change but Web 2.0 is not a very meaningful way of making an impact. Sure it feels good to get it off your chest and to even get agreeable feedback but what has really changed?
Since grad school I have been disillusioned about a lot of things, but particularly with the Peace, Social Justice, and Anti-Globalization movements. I have personally never gone to a rally or protest. I really just didn’t see the point of preaching to the choir or what fighting with local police was going to get you.
These movements are caught in the past. Their solutions are mostly marches, protests, and sit-ins. These are the preferred methods because they were championed by our greatest leaders MLK, John Lennon, Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela. However, people have forgotten why they worked. Fundamentally these protests were DIRECT defiance of the offensive government action. For MLK a sit in was ILLEGAL and had a real meaningful shocking impact. When John Lennon sang, “All that were saying is give Peace a chance” this was a RADICAL departure from the establishment’s cold war mentality of constant total war and mutually assured destruction. When Gandhi marched to the sea, his people were violating a law forbidding them from taking from free salt from the sea and instead having to BUY it from the British. Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 25 years, and never gave up his defiance. In contrast, having a die in or sit in today to protest a war is not a direct defiance of that war. It makes us feel like we made a difference in actuality though because it doesn’t actually change anything it allows our opponents to marginalize us as radicals that don’t get anything done. Worse, because we feel like we did something we are not driven to do more. I’m sure Karl Rove knows all of this and more…
So how should we be protesting? I honestly don’t know. We all have to, “Support our troops”. However, like a corporation that is the only face the US military shows to the American Public. It’s like trying to complain to a corporation no matter who you yell at they tell you, “Please don’t yell at me, I didn’t cause this problem I only work here.” For troops they only follow orders, but unless they follow those orders those things wouldn’t get done. I see this problem getting worse though with the ongoing mechanization of the military, how do you appeal to the humanity of a machine that killing your own citizens in the name of “Security & Stability” is wrong? We’ve tried appealing to our elected representatives but they tell us we don’t understand they are as powerless as us to change anything…
It reminds me of a comment I heard once in college, “Terrorists are bad cause they kill people”. I responded, “Of course they kill people, killing soldiers is a futile gesture because they are acceptable losses we have a volunteer military. Now that doesn’t make their actions right, but they do make sense. Taking or losing life is the ultimate protest because it is irreversible and is universally understood that you are willing to take and risk it all to get your way.”
I’ll let everyone know the moment I have figured out how you protest an unjust economic system and war at a systemic level :P
