I understand the urge to protest, to want to be part of something groovy and exciting and perhaps world-changing. I remember with a cringe the yellow overalls I wore as I sat in front of the US embassy on University Avenue in 1990, shouting, "Hell, no, we won't go, We won't fight for Texaco!".
For the record, I do think there is something fundamentally wrong with the way our current system functions; it certainly does appear sometimes like the system is rigged.
That said, I have some questions for the Occupy people:
1. Have you ever voted? I ask because it kind of wrecks your argument that democracy isn't working if you haven't yet participated in it.
2. Do you work? (writing that really hard paper on the juxtaposition of Scottish peasant feminism and the patriarchal nature of the original Greeks in third year doesn't count.) I ask because it kind of wrecks your argument about our financial system if you haven't yet participated in it.
3. Do you think it helps your cause that in pretty much every picture taken of your encampment, someone's smoking a joint?
4. Did you know the farmers who grow the local and organic food you love to gush about have to import workers from the Caribbean? I'm thinking there might be work for all, if some of us actually do some of it.
5. Who was wielding the credit card when it was racking all that debt you're complaining about? And what did you do with all that crap you bought knowing you couldn't pay for it?
I'm just askin'.
Hey, don't harsh their mellow! Or blunt their righteous indignation...
ReplyDeleteWhile there a lot of reasons for them to gripe in the States, I'm still not sure what the nature of their outrage north of the border would be...