G-20

(LS: 10-0   Mood: Oddly Detached)

So tempting to just say "gas the shit out of them", isn't it?  Or, if you're charging the ramparts, to cry "police state".  So so tempting to opt for the simple, time-honoured tradition of intellectualized and institutionalized name-calling for the sake of advancing one ideology over another.  Fortunately, I'm not so easily tempted.

The convolution of issues surrounding the G-20 in Toronto - or really, anywhere the leaders of the twenty most prosperous nations on Earth decide to meet - brings out all the emotions, but strangely, very little on the issues.

And those issues - the continued functioning of the global economy, sustaining the environment, distribution of resources to the world's needy, human rights - almost never make the front pages.  Instead, we get the violence.  Indeed, that's all we get.

I'm not sympathetic to violent actions.  The hypocrisy - and comedic irony - of those Starbuck-swilling lefties with their rasta-coloured knitted hats and beat poems donning balaclavas and smashing the windows of the very same Starbucks where they planned their marches is fair game for all to see.  The guerilla tactics of blending into peaceful crowds, rightfully exercising their democratic rights to protest, and then putting on masks and rampaging through the streets before blending back into the crowds, do a great disservice to the causes advocated by the majority of those taking to the streets.

And yet, I'm equally reluctant to lend my support to the elite - the business leaders and political officials who live at the top of the capitalist food chain at altitudes of wealth and prosperity and power that 95% of the world population will never reach, thanks in large part because those already at the top have rigged the system that way - because I will not be a useful idiot. 

Speaking of revolutionaries, that's the term, mistakenly attributed to Vladmir Illyich Lenin, that describes those in the intelligentsia and middle class who speak out against progressive change that would benefit the lower classes, despite themselves being blocked by the very powers they endorse.  It's the Uncle Tom approach to manufacturing the consent of the mainstream population: get a few of "the ordinary Joes" to be your tools, and the rest of the population - seeing someone just like them advocating in support of the bourgeois - will go along with it.

I'm a writer, an artist.  I'm very loathe to align myself with those already in power, for whenever we speak out in support of one side or another, we add our power to whoever is already there.  And those in the upper echelon already have so much... including the ability to take away my freedom, my expression, in the name of "public safety" or whatever self-serving pretext they want to invent.  A quote from V for Vendetta sums it up nicely: "People shouldn't be afraid of their governments.  Governments should be afraid of their people".  If they turn us into a police state, they were always going to turn us into a police state.  At least, if that ever happens, I will be able to say that I didn't contribute my words to helping manufacture my own shackles.

But before you declare that I'm on the side of the window smashers, V was, of course, talking about violent revolution against an actual dictatorship.  Though highly statist and institutionally conservative, Canada has no such regime in place.  For that, we are lucky.

Useful idiots exist for every ideology, and I will not be one of them.  It's just as easy for righties to call the violent protesters "terrorists" and condemn the violence as it is for lefties to assail the suspension of "democracy" in the live zone.  The battle lines are familiar, the banners the same, in this debate as all others that happen daily: the only difference now is that there are actual battles taking place.

  

They need to find another way to discuss these important issues, a method that's far less high profile and likely to attract violence than what we have.  Those who will smash windows have always had that predisposition to do so: the G20 is the best excuse available for them to align themselves with whatever "cause" and throw rocks.  The initial reason to have "summits" was purely for prestige reasons, I think.  It's a world class event, a chance for host nations to pull down their drawers and say "See?  My boner's bigger than 85% of the other countries in the world".  Prestige costs us, though, as evidenced in the destruction and injury happening in the streets of Toronto tonight.  Maybe it's time for a more flaccid approach to ruling the world.  Give them nothing to hit, and they won't show up to throw rocks.

Until then, where do I stand?  After all, we're in extremis to some extent, and in such situations, you're either with or against.  I'm biased, primarily because I know there's at least one police officer friend who's likely fending off bottle-throwing socialist crackheads as I sit in my comfortable apartment an hour away by the lake, but I don't buy that half these guys are serious about their "causes".  The real heroes - the guys and gals who truly love progress - aren't charging the barricades in Toronto tonight, but are actually down on the shores of Louisiana and Alabama;  in sub-Saharan Africa and the Congo; in Haiti and in Chile; in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, becoming the change they want to see in the world.

It's one thing to sit in a posh cafe in the city, sipping lattes and bitching about capitalism and Darfur, quite another to put your money where your mouth is and assuage your "white/straight/male/capitalist/middle class" guilt by going out into the world and making a real difference.  I'm not happy with the rioters, and I hope our police use only the appropriate level of force to ensure they are contained.  Of course, the level of propriety in the police response depends almost entirely on the conduct of the protesters.  After all, it's not like they didn't know what they were going up against beforehand, and the time may come when "gassing the shit out of them" is the best way to keep the peace.  In fact, I believe we've reached that time.

But when this is all done, we need to engage with the existing processes for political and social progress, because the lefties are right on one count: if enough of the middle class populations of the developed world knew the true extent to which corporations and governments have been exploiting them, every nation would have its own version of the destruction of the Bastille. 

We only find out about the whitewashing and denials, the decisions to choose profits over sustainability and safety, the scams designed to exploit the poor to the benefit of those already living in ridiculous wealth, after the fact.  The sub-prime mortgage scandal and the BP oil spill are two examples.  Imagine if we knew, right now, all of the profiteering schemes being cooked up by unelected, unaccountable corporations that control vast swathes of our lives, property, and natural resources.  The Toronto riots would seem trite in comparison to the global revolution that would transpire. 

We can avoid this, and potentially reduce the intensity of protesters at these summits and other gatherings, by doing one thing: listen to the arguments they are presenting.  This is difficult to do without somehow granting legitimacy to the violent tactics now in use, but part of the problem is that people who are ignored all the time will eventually get your attention, and sometimes in a way that you don't like.  As a collective society, we do ourselves a disservice by ignoring the voices on the fringes crying out for an end to poverty, to justice between men and women, for a cleaner world and an economy that doesn't exploit those who work at the bottom of the economic order. Ignore them long enough, eventually, they will make themselves heard. 

We don't have this problem with those behind the barricades with presidents and prime ministers: they already have the power to turn their opinions into policy.  But will we also allow them to manufacture our consent without question?  I'll let you figure that out for yourself.

Until then, let's hope and pray for the safety of our cops, the liberties and safety of those engaged in legitimate protest, the security of our city, the protection of our democratic freedoms as well as our democratic nation, the welfare of the downtrodden around the globe, and - as cheesy as it sounds - a better tomorrow for all six billion human beings and the world on which they live in this, the second decade of the 21st Century.