There is something more than a little sad about all this excitement over the monologue of a comedian on the eve of possibly the largest political general strike in U.S. history. Don't get me wrong. I enjoy watching Stephen Colbert speak truthiness to power as much as the next guy, but there is a disturbing impotence in the enormous weight that is being placed on one man making some pointed jokes about the president on C-SPAN. Comments to the effect that maybe finally the media will wake up to the real nature of the crimes of the Bush administration now that Colbert has dared to puncture Bush's balloon reflect the outlook of a populace so completely domesticated that it can only imagine political struggle as something conducted by celebrity proxies.
By contrast, the immigrant community is demonstrating concretely the REAL POWER that working people have to force this system to deal with their demands.
There is every reason to expect that a million or more people will not go to work or school today and will join mass street demonstration against a congressional assault on a large fraction of the U.S. working class. These workers are largely invisible in U.S. politics and public life. They are the nameless and faceless gardeners, dishwashers, chicken pluckers, strawberry pickers, janitors, construction workers and so on without whom much of this country would come to a halt. They are abused by employers, terrorized by the police, demonized by right-wing demagogues and until recently, largely ignored not only by elected officialdom, but by the vast majority of self-styled progresssives.
But over the past couple months they have begun to teach a lot of people that our power is not confined to hoping that the media "wakes up," to calling our corporate-toady congresscritters and begging them not to sell the internet, to cheering zingers on Comedy Central, to knocking on doors for candidates who rarely rise to hopes and dreams placed in their election. We are not just disembodied electrons zipping around cyberspace, but also people with bodies that can fill the streets and threaten social peace, people whose work makes this system run and who have the power to shut it down when we get organized and mobilized.
The weakness of liberalism derives from its faith in the system and its investment in its stability. Liberals really believe that the big problem is who is occupying the White House. More importantly liberals have something to lose and fundamentally distrust the poor to really know what is best for them. This is evident in the astounding equivocations that are expressed in response to the mass demonstration of immigrants.
People are calling Stephen Colbert a hero. Fine. But millions of workers are risking their jobs, and, in the case of the undocumented ones, possible arrest and deportation not to expose, but to stop a draconian assault on human rights.
Stephen Colbert is a fine comedian. But we aren't going to change a damn thing in this country that needs to be changed with our eyes glued to the TV set.
See you in the streets.
