Some Quick Thoughts On The Occupy Movement From A Dumb Guy Who Doesn’t Really Understand Things
And forgive me if this sort of thing has been said before.
My parents’ generation grew up in the shadow of the bomb. It hung over them and terrified them and they protested. They did not trust the people at the triggers and they saw no need for a weapon system that could end everything and they had to do something. And so they protested.
The bomb was an idea as much or more than it was anything else and the better idea was not killing millions of people. So en masse and not infrequently in handcuffs they offered their better ideas. They put flowers in the barrels of guns and had lots and lots of sex and they said life was the better idea.
The bomb that hangs over my generation is the future. And the future is an idea as much or more than it’s anything else. It’s not as tangible as a bomb, sure, but more volatile and every bit as dangerous in the wrong hands. And we do not trust the people at the trigger so we are protesting.
The biggest difference I see is our lack of mutually assured destruction. Back in the day If we dropped a bomb, then someone would retaliate and vice versa. Murder was the same thing as suicide in those days and that’s a powerful deterrent.
But we don’t have that kind of assurance. We know we don’t. We’ve seen what happens when the triggermen knowingly, deliberately detonate the economy and government and, with them, many, many tomorows. What happens is WE pay to clean it up. We bail them out and they walk away burdened only with the weight of our cash in their pockets.
What Occupy is, to me, is the better idea. The better idea is fairness and decency and trust. The idea is that maybe the one percent shouldn’t be cheating their way to making the world a small, brutal mess for the ninety-nine percent.
The better idea is life.
The triggermen are on Wall Street and Occupy is saying we’d like it if you didn’t murder us. And if you do pull the trigger, you won’t find us on our knees. You’re going to look us in the eye while you do it.
E
