Peaks and valleys most definitely marked last week, from the resurgent OWS leading a march of tens of thousands through NYC to the disenchantment of accepting the reality of a media blackout. But by the end of yesterday’s General Assembly meeting of Occupy Astoria LIC my resolve began to gather again.
Yesterday’s news bolstered that too, and there was lots of it. As I buzzed around from blog to blog hope began springing up from deep as one story after another were reminders of the prevailing notion that people around the world know that the ONLY story, is the economic crisis and the meltdown caused by Wall St criminals and unregulated “free market” capitalism.
France elected its first Socialist President in almost two decades, the Greek people voted strongly against austerity, Quebec students have turned a student protest into a 300,000 person-strong movement, NY AG Eric Shcneiderman sat next to a member of Occupy the SEC on Chris Hayes’s MSNBC show and made the salient point of “I believe in movement politics. Leaders do what you get them to do” – a reference to keeping grassroots activist pressure on making business regulation strong on Wall St, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz published an excellent piece on Daily Beast two days after May Day entitled “The 99% Wakes Up,” referring to the current worldwide uprising as another epoch forming around a mass consciousness that realizzes moral deprivation in business practices are ruining the planet, and Robert Reich was on the Leonard Lopate show on WNYC, invoking the grave income inequality stat “the top 400 families in America now have more wealth than the bottom 150 million together,” which though we’ve all heard numerous times seemed in context of everything else happening to be particularly jarring today.
The dots all seemed to be connecting, and I felt a oneness as an emerging consciousness connected me with humanity around the world. So I went to my favorite online community, the very first place I’ve been going to for more than half a decade, to gauge the temperature on these tumultuous and interconnected events. What do we get? A top story on Donald Trump’s birtherism, Then Romney campaign stop vs. Barack campaign stop, then ad naseum, predictable Repugs vs. Dem pandering. I can’t decide what kind of performers in the Greek Chorus we would be: graveyard whistlers or Roman fiddlers.
As the world feels the tremor of the gathering global tsunami Kossacks can only be bothered to tow the company line; stuck in muted apathy while the world teeters. I thought I was hallucinating again – the same way I did thumbing incredulously through the Daily News the day after May Day and seeing not one bit of coverage there. Nothing, nada, a big fat goose egg. If DK was for me a consistent number two or three hitter in my batting lineup of news - the strength of the team, none of the fans in the ballpark would be surprised to see it demoted to batting ninth, or benched or traded, like the previous weak-hitting Huffington Post after Ariana held hands with recently-departed RW douchebag Breitbart to dumb-down her content in order to play ball with the AOL folks who were about to hand her a huge sack of cash (which apparently didn’t trickle down to the many unpaid writers). Too many strikeouts this season from Kossacks. And of the worst kind: caught-looking. I had started to wonder if I l might be living in a parallel universe. But after looking around just a little I know I’m not. It’s this place that’s become bogged in the mire of hubristic tunnel-vision.
It’s times like these when I’m grateful to be a resident of Gotham. Excellent used books stores like Book Thug in Bklyn and Mast Bookson Ave A have helped immeasurably to restore my sanity. In fact, in a world going off the rails it’s imperative to commune with the great ones regularly. My apartment is overloaded with piles of great literature purchased there, and my girlfriend tries in vain to keep me from those sanctums for I rarely leave without bags full. There’s nothing better than turning off the computer and sitting down with Studs Terkel, Mark Twain, George Bernard Shaw, Kurt Vonnegut, Henry Miller or HST to ground oneself. My bedside book there past few weeks has been Turkel’s “Hard Times,” a collection of first hand stories of people living through the Great Depression. It keeps me humble, grounded and connected with humanity. I’m eternally grateful to the great chroniclers through whose dedication we are bequeathed the essential gifts of history, compassion, understanding and empathy - the cornerstones on which society is founded. As we are continually reminded in their instructive company there’s nothing new under the sun. And while I accept that omnipresence, it runs contrary to this hopeless romantic who feels that just maybe, quite possibly with the interconnectedness of the internet as the difference, we could be on the verge an epochal change, put forth in films like Zeitgeist and "2012: Time For A Change"
The world’s economy has been hijacked by greed-gone-wild Wall St scammers who pillaged money out of unwitting hands by certifiable Ponzi schemes. The rest of the world knows this, as evidenced by yesterday’s hopeful international developments. Frontline just aired an incredible four-part series called “Money, Power and Wall St.” that pulls no punches. Quite simply, neither the Dems or Repugs or in control. Wall St is. It’s a most stunning endorsement for Occupy Wall St.
As the Kossack frog continues to happily frolic in raising money for Democrats and shooting Republican fish in a barrel, the consuming rolling boil of world events focused squarely on the fact the biggest issue to everyone else in the world by far are the scams perpetrated by Wall St. Yet we’re here again in ignorant bliss, content to tread in the warm heating-swimming pool waters of the Romney/Obama spectacle, safe in the backyard of two-party politics and away from the treacherous, forbeboding and unpredictable ocean waters.
Ever day to my dismay this place seems more and more just riddled with fiddlers. As a worldwide awakening senses tremors of an imminent disaster not too far off the horizon we’re jollily spending all of our time preoccupied with party politics instead of Occupied with a global awakening.
Nero begs your pardon.