I was watching the news but what I was seeing could have been a scene from some futuristic film.
Helmeted cops clubbing protesters and arresting reporters… Destroying the protesters’ makeshift camps and ripping their tents to shreds… Dismantling their library and confiscating their books…
Big Brother inflicting his will on a defenseless citizenry…
In 2011… In the United States of America…
Who would have dreamed such a thing?
Click here for a report of the assaults.
The age of the oppressor is approaching its peak, as the world’s leading democracy yields to jackbooted fascism. If this were some Mideast dictatorship, America’s leaders would be demanding air strikes by NATO or at least severe sanctions by the United Nations. They might even be considering unilateral intervention in defense of democracy… and oil.
But this is America, and the enemy is us. Our financiers. Our corporate executives. Our members of Congress. Our state representatives. Our mayors…
Yes, the mayors of those 18 cities where a coordinated assault on the Occupy Wall Street movement was launched in the predawn darkness yesterday.
And what about the rest of us? This is, after all, a democracy. There is no dictator. Nothing can be done against the will of the people. Unless the people abrogate their responsibility. Unless they are too lazy to be informed, too selfish and greedy to insist on justice, too heedless to vote.
The Founding Fathers gave America a priceless gift, and Americans have tossed it in the trash.
Brainwashed by the oligarchs depicted in George Orwell’s “1984,” and subjected to the thought control in Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451,” Americans are being transformed into the kind of passive society where autocracy flourishes.
The Occupy Wall Street movement might be the last spark of rebellion, America’s – and the world’s – last hope of saving democracy.
We cannot let this movement fail.
Last night’s outrageous attack on the protesters must be a call to arms for the rest of us. We have the power to change things – if we take the trouble to use it. We have the ballot box.
The next election is only a year away. We have time to mobilize. Let’s get to work and kick the oppressors out of office all across this land.
