Hypocrisy, Insanity, or Protest?

Egyptians and Tunisians have thrown off their tyrants. They demand all the freedoms a democracy can offer. Libyans, Yemenis and Bahrainis are willing to die for those freedoms.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton lectures the world about America's freedoms. Fine. It's good that we've got the rhetoric right, but what's happening while she's speaking? Ray McGovern, a well-known progressive activist, stands up, and turns his back on her. He's saying something, isn't he? He's protesting the foreign policy she represents, and the wars she promotes. McGovern manifests freedom of speech as Hillary speaks: freedom to protest, too, but he also, inadvertently demonstrates the administration's hypocrisy. Hillary calls in Security. Uniforms arrest McGovern and bundle him off.

Maybe, freedom of speech is not getting shot with live ammunition or rubber bullets. It's being arrested for turning your back on the Secretary of State--and then, eventually being sprung by supporters and human rights activists. Oh, I get it. Because we have laws that can be used, sometimes, to defend ordinary citizens, we have freedom and democracy.

It's good we do have those laws, because the powerful are becoming more brazen, regardless of party. It isn't just governments: corporate honchos are flexing their monetary muscles, too. The confrontation in Wisconsin demonstrates the extremes to which the powerful are willing to go: they want to strip union rights from public employees (their lame excuse: cut the state's deficit). Wisconsin brings together both political and corporate elites, since new Governor Scott Walker(R) is a client of the Koch brothers, energy industry billionaires. The Kochs want to destroy unions and government regulations, especially environmental ones.

Most Democrats in power are either hypocrites, like Hillary, or Republican lite, like Obama. In Wisconsin Democrats do know to support the unions--that's obvious. But New York's new Governor, Andrew Cuomo(D), has sounded almost as anti-union as Walker. And Hillary can go on about the virtues of freedoms, and then have McGovern arrested--for a silent protest.

Remember the millions demonstrating against the war in Iraq before we invaded? I was there, but would Bush have listened if we'd occupied Times Square? What if millions came to occupy the National Mall in Washington, or camped outside the White House to protest, what then? Maybe, they'd protest the Afghan war, torture, the security state with its bloated military, the "PATRIOT Act," black prisons and Guantanamo. Maybe, millions would come to protest the skewed political economy: the wealthy getting trillions of taxpayer dollars while the rest of us get laid off, or slashed wages.

Why don't Americans protest like Egyptians? Maybe we have to be reduced to Egyptian wages and unemployment before people will explode. Romans were passive, more concerned with circuses; then, it was too late. Will we sit by, let Fox News' lies wash over us, stay at home and watch TV? Then it, too, will be too late.