Protesters--the Good, the Bad & the Ugly

Whatever it is, I’m against it.

                                             Groucho Marx

Everywhere you see protestors. From Washington, D.C. to Oakland, California and in between you see them, spilling over with righteous indignation, angry at bankers, corporations, anything and everything resembling capitalism.  The world is unfair and they don’t like it.

Earlier this year people were protesting across the Middle East. The occupiers here like to see themselves in their role as similar to the people in the streets of Cairo and Damascus. This fall is our “Arab Spring.” Sure.  As a baby-boomer from the sixties and a person who came of age with protests when they were new, exciting, and interesting I have some thoughts about what we are seeing now.

Let me suggest a taxonomy of protesters.  There are three kinds in my view.  The first I call Protesters of Principle.  These are folks with real grievances up against great odds. They put themselves at grave risk. The people in Syria who take to the streets are attempting to put a tyrant, Dr. al-Assad, out of business. They had endure his murdering, torturing father, Haffez, for decades.  Then they get his ophthalmologist son, Bashar, who turns out to be as nasty and brutal as Dad.  They had had enough.  On the streets they get shot at. They risk arrest, beatings, torture, possibly death.  These are very desperate, highly courageous people.  Their freedom and their lives are at stake.

The second type I call Protestors for Perks. The best examples are the school teachers in Wisconsin we saw last year. They have secure jobs, good benefits, enviable pensions. They occupy public buildings, call the Governor “Hitler” and pretend like it is 1963 and they are in Selma, Alabama with the firehouses and the police dogs about to be turned on them. They get paid time off to act like persecuted public servants. Why were they protesting? Their perks were in jeopardy.  More of their own money was to go to health care and retirement.  Unlike the folks in Damascus, with their protests they risk nothing.  No Bashar al-Assad torture chambers to fear, no Bull Connor to let the dogs loose.  Just the voters who had said, “enough.”  They are spoiled children.  “I can’t have the car, tonight?  I hate you, Mom!”      

The third type I call Protesters for Paradise.  These are the most entertaining. Don’t look for coherency, practicality or reality from this group. This is Bolshevism, the children’s edition.   These protesters call for the abolition of capitalism which will get rid of greed, war and discrimination. Abolish all debt. World peace follows. Everyone gets a guaranteed job and a “living” income.  And, of course, the environment has to be fixed.  All of this comes about somehow by smashing bank windows, urinating in the street and calling for the execution of rich bankers.  The rich celebrities make appearances and “show solidarity.”  It’s all fantasy and delusion.  Like that of the school teachers and the professors, their protesting is theater.  It’s entertaining but no one should take these people seriously.