How to Start a Protest.
How do you do it these days? I tire of the war. I tire of my people. I tire of the apathy and the complaining in equal measure. It has become generational and factional and sad. How do you start a protest these days and not seem like you‘re selling something? How do you protest something without being co-opted by fanatics? Because we must protest war. Not just ours, but everyone’s. The world‘s. It’s all of it cruel and unjust and inhuman. We have become desensitized into inhumanity. We worry about American Idols while thousands perish daily of hunger and disease and bullet and bomb. Nature and inhumanity leading whole nations to the slaughter, and somehow people still give a shit about LOST.
I enjoy history. I enjoy learning about us. Our forbearers. We humans share a common ancestry. As much as world religion and personal hatred attempt to deny it, we are all about 99% the same. We have lost our ability to communicate. We live in the Age of Communication, yet even still we cannot seem to commune. Every technology and advancement in the world seems to push us farther away from everyone. Encourages us to stay indoors and play with a machine. There is no consequence for this counter-production. Rather, we are encouraged in our isolation by pseudo-connection. Reward for participation. We are fooled into believing we have an investment in the future.
How do you start a protest? Everyone who used to is too dead inside to care I guess. Too comfortable in their life to risk being tear gassed by men with big plastic shields. Too afraid of confrontation of any kind. We do not confront any longer. Not in society. Fist fighting is illegal. We are asked, as member of civil society, to repress and contain our primal natures. If it is to be fight or flight let it be flight. Our violent urges are spent in digital masturbation or physical sport, and ye Gods who plays sports anymore? We have professionals for that sort of work. We could march, but it’s so very far, and so very cold.
Is there no one left to stand for peace? Just and universal peace? Not killing people is simple. You do it every day. Saving people is a much greater challenge. Why can’t we just invest our efforts there? Why can we not build rather than destroy? Is it simply our nature? Our history to constantly want more and more to the point of homicide? Are we not our brother’s keepers? Or merely his destroyer? We should apologize to those killed by our apathy. Maybe if we would have protested sooner they would still be alive. Maybe if we were willing to be bloodied and killed by armies of police and national guard the unpopularity of such action would have prompted change. As it is we have brooked a decade of war in obedient silence.
How do you do it? Just start marching? Sit in? Hunger strike? What if everyone who cared did all of that? If sitting in stops inequality will it likewise create peace? What if everyone marched? Started from wherever they were sitting at the time and made their way to Washington? We could march, sit, and not eat. Take that Mr. President. Why don’t you just watch thousands of Americans starve? I doubt I could find thousands. I doubt there is any yet who would lay down their health and life for the lives of strangers. You are too comfortable. You are too rich. You have too much to live for to care about peace.
Maybe it would take just one? Maybe it would take just one person, starving in front of millions, to turn it all around. That would be an American Hero. Not the idolatry of distracting ourselves from the grim truth. The terrible certainty that of every dollar you are taxed a quarter of it is invested into murder. It is all of it blood money. Your cooperative participation in the system is a contract you sign daily with the devil. It is choosing to keep your head in the sand and your hand in the game. To think in some way that buying a sandwich or driving your car or attending your school is an innocent act is merely ignorance acting on guilt. We are none of us innocent to the violence. We are all of us victims of war.
And yet there is not enough anger to do anything. Not enough indignation to rail against the murder. If we are overtaxed we take to the streets. We are willing to compare our taxation to the purest evil. We will protest against one another and our leaders for reasons not entirely known. We will call ourselves the righteous patriots while bearing the lapel pin of liberty bravely into the uncertain future. But there is none among you who would stand for peace. There is no one left to stand for what is right.
I enjoy history. I enjoy learning about us. Our forbearers. We humans share a common ancestry. As much as world religion and personal hatred attempt to deny it, we are all about 99% the same. We have lost our ability to communicate. We live in the Age of Communication, yet even still we cannot seem to commune. Every technology and advancement in the world seems to push us farther away from everyone. Encourages us to stay indoors and play with a machine. There is no consequence for this counter-production. Rather, we are encouraged in our isolation by pseudo-connection. Reward for participation. We are fooled into believing we have an investment in the future.
How do you start a protest? Everyone who used to is too dead inside to care I guess. Too comfortable in their life to risk being tear gassed by men with big plastic shields. Too afraid of confrontation of any kind. We do not confront any longer. Not in society. Fist fighting is illegal. We are asked, as member of civil society, to repress and contain our primal natures. If it is to be fight or flight let it be flight. Our violent urges are spent in digital masturbation or physical sport, and ye Gods who plays sports anymore? We have professionals for that sort of work. We could march, but it’s so very far, and so very cold.
Is there no one left to stand for peace? Just and universal peace? Not killing people is simple. You do it every day. Saving people is a much greater challenge. Why can’t we just invest our efforts there? Why can we not build rather than destroy? Is it simply our nature? Our history to constantly want more and more to the point of homicide? Are we not our brother’s keepers? Or merely his destroyer? We should apologize to those killed by our apathy. Maybe if we would have protested sooner they would still be alive. Maybe if we were willing to be bloodied and killed by armies of police and national guard the unpopularity of such action would have prompted change. As it is we have brooked a decade of war in obedient silence.
How do you do it? Just start marching? Sit in? Hunger strike? What if everyone who cared did all of that? If sitting in stops inequality will it likewise create peace? What if everyone marched? Started from wherever they were sitting at the time and made their way to Washington? We could march, sit, and not eat. Take that Mr. President. Why don’t you just watch thousands of Americans starve? I doubt I could find thousands. I doubt there is any yet who would lay down their health and life for the lives of strangers. You are too comfortable. You are too rich. You have too much to live for to care about peace.
Maybe it would take just one? Maybe it would take just one person, starving in front of millions, to turn it all around. That would be an American Hero. Not the idolatry of distracting ourselves from the grim truth. The terrible certainty that of every dollar you are taxed a quarter of it is invested into murder. It is all of it blood money. Your cooperative participation in the system is a contract you sign daily with the devil. It is choosing to keep your head in the sand and your hand in the game. To think in some way that buying a sandwich or driving your car or attending your school is an innocent act is merely ignorance acting on guilt. We are none of us innocent to the violence. We are all of us victims of war.
And yet there is not enough anger to do anything. Not enough indignation to rail against the murder. If we are overtaxed we take to the streets. We are willing to compare our taxation to the purest evil. We will protest against one another and our leaders for reasons not entirely known. We will call ourselves the righteous patriots while bearing the lapel pin of liberty bravely into the uncertain future. But there is none among you who would stand for peace. There is no one left to stand for what is right.
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