Occupy The World: The Values of Revolution

Last week, Barbara “wah-wah” Walters—thank you, Gilda Radner!—was trotted in front of ABC’s Evening News cameras to assure those familes still chowing down that the brutal, disgusting, illegal, savage beating, sodomization and execution of Libyan “dictator” Gaddafi was… understandable… because, he was “crazy.”

To confirm Gaddafi’s craziness, Clinton-tell-all-renegade George Stephanapoulos, filling in for the most artfully cadenced voice in Television—Diane—Kissinger-protégé–Sawyer—switches to a tape of Wah-Wah interviewing Gaddafi about 10 years earlier. Muamar is preening in his robes, and Wah-Wah slurs point blank: “You know, a lot of Americans think you’re crazy!” And Gaddafi laughs.

“Boy!—that laugh is chilling!” proclaims ever-boyish, perfect hairline, Georgie S.

And that’s about the essence of the insight we’re going to get from the MSM about the Transitional National Council’s public butchering of Libya’s former leader. That and porcine Hillary Clinton snorting through her snout: “We came, we saw, he died.” And thus, in a weird nutshell paraphrase of Caesar’s megalomaniacal description of his conquest of Gaul, we see the perverted logic of NATO’s bombing campaign and resources-grab that results in the death of some 50,000 Libyans in order to save perhaps 1000 “rebels” at risk in Benghazi.

One week later, and there is Wah-Wah again in some advertisement for an upcoming series of interviews she will conduct with billionaires! This is Wah-Wah’s and the MSM’S answer to Occupy Wall Street! Visit these nice, friendly billionaires at home and show how they’re “just folks”! And how did they make their billions? Why, as John Houseman intoned in the old Smith Barney ad—“They made their money the old-fashioned way! They earned it!”

That’s pretty much the way Herman Cain sees things, too. Asked a couple of weeks ago about his reaction to OWS, Cain blurts something inane like: “If you’re poor in America, it’s your fault! Blame yourself!” (Not exactly Martin Luther King… but, that was then and this is now!)

Well, what other sort of answer would one expect from the Godfather? And as for Wah-Wah, a woman who brags about her trysts with the likes of war-criminal Henry Kissinger–is that a judge of character anyone can trust?

As for the Godfather…consider this:

Let’s say we have a party, and, feeling small-“d” democratic,” we invite 100 people from all walks of life. We’re going to “entertain” these people with Lady Gaga’s gyrations and pay her a cool million dollars—the going rate—because “she earns it!” We’re going to feed our guests with a nice-a, big-a pizza pie, which we’ll cut into 100 equal slices—each slice sufficient to feed one guest. Problem is, the first person takes 40 slices! S/he doesn’t “need” 40 slices, but s/he has “earned” it—meaning, they can do whatever they want with it—from creating jobs to throwing it on the pink-flamingo decorated lawn—with the little, black jockey boy statue, holding the lantern!) Now, the next 4 people get 7 slices each because they “earned it,” too—mostly by doing number two whenever Number One tells them to! Now, the next 15 people get one slice each. So these 20 folks are doing okay to totally decadent–they each have at least one slice of delicious pizza to fill their bellies.

But the Godfather—who is transforming right before our eyes into a black, obese but jocular Tony Soprano—can’t understand why the remaining 80 folks are grumbling because they only have 7 slices to divide among themselves! Mr. Cain, who can barely do the math for his own “9-9-9” scheme, can’t figure out how to feed 80 folks with just 7 slices of pizza.

These, metaphorically, are the sick values of our Mainstream Media, our politicians and our corporate tycoons. They just don’t get it! They don’t understand why the young and the old all over America, all over this world, are in rebellion against their perverse ways.

The “Occupy” crowd is beautifully named. They want to “occupy” their space, their time, their lives. They—we—do not measure our lives’ worth in terms of the billions of dollars we have never amassed. We ask: How is money made? (“Right Livelihood,” we recall, is one of the essential aspects of Buddha’s Noble Eight-fold Path!) What good has come of the wealth? (“Lay not up worldly treasures,” the Essene Jesus advised.) What lives were improved? How? Was the planet made more liveable, more beautiful? We ask: What is the measure of a life worth living; and, yes–what is the meaning of life?

It’s a question as old as Plato and Aristotle, as old as the Hebrew prophets and the Sumerian cuneiform tablets. It is a much greater question than the question of happiness… because enduring happiness depends on it.

We have been a culture distracted by the baubles of consumption. We have been willing to kill and maim millions of people, unheroically and stupidly, while just “following orders” or “doing our jobs,” so that an insignificant 1 percent–and even much less than that—could accumulate more and more baubles and dictate more and more orders.

There are four great reasons why the Occupy movement will not go away, why it will grow stronger as we advance into winter and next spring: 1. It is inter-generational. 2. It is international. 3. It is technologized. 4. It is life-saving and essential.

Greater connections will be formed. The young will screw each other (in the best sense!) and fall in love; and the white-haired women who run with wolves and the graybeards who danced with Janis J. for peace in the ’60s will re-learn the language of the young and impart the rich ore of their own experiences. And when the snow comes, and the cold appears to drive them away… they will retreat in order to regroup–and fight again come spring.

Because we are connected now…, and talking–all around the world. And we see each other now, and we ask: “If not us, who? If not now, when?”

GARY CORSERI’s work has appeared at The Activist Post, Dissident Voice, Common Dreams, CounterPunch, the New York Times, Village Voice and hundreds of other venues worldwide. His dramas have been produced on PBS-Atlanta and he has performed his work at the Carter Presidential Library and Museum. His books include novels and poetry collections. He can be contacted at [email protected] or [email protected].