Thinking About: Interesting Times

Anyone who has picked up a newspaper recently or has tuned into a decent news programme cannot have failed to notice that we live in interesting times. Not only do we live in an era with a background of Global Warming rumbling on apparently inexorably we are now faced with what seems to be an ever widening revolt of the people against their leaders. It’s something else that has been quietly building during the past few decades. I suppose that it really hit the headlines with the anti-globalisation movement that was becoming increasing more organised and more effective against what many previously believed to be the inevitable process of turning the world into variations of western democracies all operating under one form or another of universal capitalism. Many commentators saw this as some kind of end point in human progress. Despite all of the evidence to the contrary I suppose that many of them still do.

Looking back, if you can use such a phrase about something that is still unfolding in front of us, the latest iteration of the global revolt happened during the Arab Spring which, with winter here, is still blossoming feed by the blood of martyrs in Syria and in Egypt (again). No one saw it coming and no one could’ve imagined that we in the west would begin to emulate it so effectively. What has become known as the Occupy movement could have equally been called the Western Winter of Discontent (and may well be by future historians). Interestingly it is not confined to nations too poor to cope with the austerity measures brought on by the global economic problems created by the staggering greed of the already super-rich. Protests have sprung up throughout the west in a decentralised ad hoc fashion that has surprised supposedly acute political commentators on all sides of the issue. The people – the much vaunted 99% - seem to finally be saying that they have had enough. For far too long, they appear to be saying, they have been taken for granted. No longer. They have found their voice and their voice will be heard despite often being ignored by the media or suppressed by the authorities. Oh, and what a huge mistake that suppression has been – when combat veterans are hospitalised for defending free speech and free assembly, when peaceful protesters are pepper sprayed and tear gassed, when celebrities, University professors and police captains are arrested on camera for questioning the actions of an elected government we know that something is deeply wrong with the way things are. Throughout Europe and increasingly the United States people are waking up to the fact that politicians no longer believe that they work for us and not the other way around. People are waking up to the fact that electing an official and getting that official to act on their promises and pledges are two very different things. People have moved from passively not voting to actively marching and occupying to show their deep disgust and distrust of those supposedly in power to do our bidding.

It is far too early to tell where this will eventually lead. It is still possible that the whole movement might well fizzle out despite the radicalisation of many thousands of people, both young and old, across the world. Alternatively, despite or because of the heavy handed response of so-called democratic governments, the pressure could continue to grow leading eventually to a global uprising the like of which has not seen since the European revolutions of 1848. Most likely it will be somewhere in-between with lessons learned in each encounter with an increasingly desperate authority rippling across Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. One thing alone can be guaranteed – whatever happens it will be televised one way or another……