I'll be blunt. Where is the revolt? Where is the bringing it to the
streets? The anger over the George Zimmerman verdict seems to have
ended. (Not to mention that the anger, if there was any, over the Edward
Snowden affair has also disappeared. Or the anger over murderous drone
strikes. Or the anger over the diminishing of our constitutional rights while fantasies about royals, however, have taken over. Such things are to
be expected.) But in the immediate aftermath of Zimmerman's not guilty
verdict, some held up signs. Some marched. Some shouted slogans. Others
raised their fists and wore hoodies. There were shouts of anger, tears
of despair and the odd bit of window breaking and other sporadic
outbursts. The parents, the sad broken parents of Trayvon, their child,
were prodded, by who or what I do not know, into being selfless,
forgiving, calm, rational while feeling terribly dispirited & full
of sorrow, their anger almost seemingly surgically taken from them by calls for calm or perhaps
fears of not wanting to be catalysts of violence. It's understandable.
It's understandable that they would prefer to have their private grief.
But the President of the United States meanwhile
assisted by the news media truly diffused it all. The President said: I
am Trayvon. Demand freedom. Demand justice. Demand rights. But do
it quietly. Be peaceful. Be orderly. And we all did exactly that. There
was nothing different. We did exactly what we always do. Nothing! For it
is better that we do nothing as we can go on with our individual
lives, our individual days, our individual selves, confronting our
nagging inconveniences and paying our bills. It's all swept under the
rug so it seems. It's pushed aside. It's stale like yesterday's coffee
still sitting on the stove. But having done what was done in that
aftermath of "not guilty" we can pat ourselves on our back, our
collective backs, for having had the courage to speak out, but willing
to keep our powder dry, live to fight another day, hold on to our anger
to let it loose the next time an outrage is committed.
There
will be another day and there won't be another day. There will be
another day because there is always another day, a new outrage, another
we can't take it anymore outrage. Another stunning, shocking, how can it
get any worse than this day kind of day. And yet there will not be
another day. There will not be another day because the next response to
the next outrage will be the same as the last response to the last
outrage. This is because we are paralyzed. This is because we have no leaders. We run in
circles and we scream and shout but we get nowhere and we get nothing.
Anyone who will take up the mantle as a leader will be immediately
suspect will immediately be thought of as someone who has an ulterior
motive, an axe to grind, a person with a childhood problem that is being
played out in the sandbox of today's reality.
Motive.
What might the ulterior motive be of a leader who would lead us out of
this morass? Search me. I'm sure the solons of the media could make up
something. But what can be done? Nothing as we talk everything to death. Everything ends up in talk and we take the easy way out because we are all exhausted from the talking and do absolutely nothing. And we slip away into what is the easiest thing to do. That is the real motive, the motive of those who have a stake in seeing nothing done, nothing changed.
So we return to yoga. We have that run in the park. We order those tasty fries. We repair to our favorite watering hole or have another Starbucks coffee. We sit in front of our computers, laptops and TV sets, stream our favorite shows, or we read another detective novel where morality ends up to be upheld. We recharge our smart phones and post another message somewhere or we watch our children play with tablets but carefully regulate what apps they play with. And above all we show up to places with our headphones on, our little mp3 players crushing our hearing with urban lyrics, that subsume our anger. Have a nice day world. We are pathetic. We are weak and we get what we deserve.
