Zeitgeist Trends: February 11, 2022
Mars Out of Bounds, Baby. The Canadian-US trucking blockade as a reminder of how to organize a kick-ass protest.
I’M NOT GOING TO ARGUE the pros and cons of the ongoing Canadian trucker blockade. (But how fabulous is the name?)
Except I do congratulate the men and women who organized the clusterfuck for bringing back into collective consciousness the impact of good old-fashioned protest and civil disobedience. The sort that adjusts meters on brain-dead attention spans.
I’m fully vaxed, should you care, but this isn’t about any particular issue, it’s about commanding public awareness in a way that registers.
And in a way that harkens back to the days when people cared enough to organize and got off their asses to do so.
That is to say: the days before people were tech-numbed to the point where hitting an ‘angry’ emoji on a Facebook newsfeed was considered a form of rebellion.
I’m politically agnostic. I don’t identify either way on a political spectrum. Culture wars don’t interest me as much as class wars.
And if someone asked me to explain in several seconds why we are living through such wildly disparate times socially, I’d say that those with all of the money and power in the country have gotten things arranged perfectly for themselves.
The plebs are too distracted over issues that have little to do with easing the grotesque disparity between those who have means and those who don’t.
Affordable health care, a roof over one’s head, nutritious food, and clothing. Nowadays those basic human rights are considered ‘entitlements.’
What’s wrong with that picture?