Summer Solstice Moon
It is now the spring, then summer, then winter of our discontents. We have had the Arab spring, now the vinegar rebellion in Brazil, the dislocation of Egypt’s president, widespread disruption in Istanbul. There are those who say China’s population boils just below the eruption point. We had the tea party rebellions here as well as the Occupy movement.
I’m not smart enough to know if these protests have some deep underlying connection, one feeding them in a Geist’s subtle movement, but I have my own experience of rebellion and protest. People rebel for noble reasons, pacifists against war, for self-interested reasons, being draft eligible during a war, for ideological reasons, to support the masses, for the thrill of it, for the fun, for the sex, for the party, for the rock and roll. And for various combinations of these reasons.
And, I think, increasingly because they can organize with greater ease. When the main means of communication were leaflets handed out or stapled to telephone poles, phone calls from landlines, or mass meetings, getting folks to one place for an event had more steps, entailed more volunteers, demanded more discipline. Now an e-mail can go out, a twitter feed, a facebook posting and all those connected can convene. If they do, and I’m sure they do, use the old organizers trick of having each person contacted invite two more, then all you need is the grain of wheat on one corner of a chess board to see how vast crowds can become. Fast.
It may be, just might be, that there is something in the water these days that says we’ve had enough. Of authoritarianism. Of despotism. Of ham handed religious pronouncements substituting for policy. Of the rich gathering in more and more while barricading themselves in enclaves of glass and steel. Of the rich putting cordons around privilege and assets. It’s bound to get noticed at some point, isn’t it?
Whatever it is, I find it hopeful. When people finally decide to act, politicians will learn the truth that all governments get their power from the consent of the governed. Some choose to give away their power because of fear or religious belief or ideological commitment, but push people far enough and those bandaids over the cancer of elitism and oligarchy will get ripped off.
That’s not to say that protest and rebellion are without their costs. It is no accident that the conservatives among us fight to ensure order against frivolous assault. The break down of public order is a dangerous moment, as much for the protester as for the protested against. And revolutions don’t have a wonderful track record of ushering in utopia. Far from it. But I consider these actions against the leaden weight of tradition and scorn. Whether in a particular instance they achieve the goals they seek may not be so important as demonstrating again, and again, and if necessary yet again, that no government can ignore its people, allow the unchecked aggregation of wealth and influence, without peril.
This is, I suppose, why that poster boy of the Tea Party crowd, Thomas Jefferson, wrote the following words, which we celebrate tomorrow:
“Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
