What the
____ is a cobweb? That’s the first thing
that came to mind when I decided to “blow the cobwebs off” this blog. The cob part likely derives from a Middle
English word “coppe” which simply means spider.
Cobweb means different things to different people. For some it is a spider web, for others a
spider web fat with dust, for others a spider web with dust and some broken
strands giving it a disheveled look, some ruggedness. My cobwebs are rugged. Sure the classic geometrically fascinating
spider web is a wonder of nature, but a proper cobweb looks like it’s been
around a while, had some hard knocks.
The black widow spider makes helter- skelter disorganized webs without
the aid of wind, dirt, or time. It is just her
nature to make a jumbled web. I can
relate.
The Occupy
Wall Street movement is blowing the cobwebs off popular activism that has been
hanging around collecting dust since the first half of the 1970’s. Sure we can debate, compare and contrast the
Occupy Wall Street bunch and the hippies, and there are probably more
differences than similarities when you break down motivations, economic
backgrounds, and the like. The hippies
were a product of several years of economic prosperity that, after World War
II, made the American middle class and gave definition to “the American
dream”. Hell, in 1971 you could walk out
of Haight-Ashbury, sober up, get a haircut, and get a job. Now you can’t afford a haircut and you can’t
get a job. You probably can’t afford a haircut even if you have a job. I don’t know if it is ironic or just sad that
1973 was end of the Golden Era, the last year in which the working class
American made real gains. It was the
year I got married. It was another 20
years before I discovered how blatantly we were getting screwed. Ignorance is bliss.
What the
Occupy Wall Streeters and the hippies have in common is a desperate feeling of
disenfranchisement, a knowledge that the forces driving their lives and their
futures are totally beyond their control.
They give voice to the sentiments of Howard Beale in the movie Network:
“All I know is that first, you've got to get mad. You've gotta say, "I'm a human
being, goddammit! My life has value!"
So, I want you to get up now. I want
all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go
to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell,
"I'm as mad as
hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!!"
This was
1976, before we even knew the good times were over. I can’t even imagine how pissed Howard would
be today.
I read an
article in Newsweek the other day.
It was about a guy named Raj Rajartnam who was convicted and sentenced
to 11 years in prison for insider trading.
His story was article worthy because he didn’t take a plea deal like all
the other guys caught in the same scandal.
I kept expecting to read that it was due to some higher sense of honor,
or maybe contrition, no chance; it was because he had been to some
soothsayer/witch doctor who told him he would be A-Okay. Whatever.
I wondered
why this was the first I had heard of this guy. I probably had heard of him, but didn’t pay
any attention. There are some crime
stories we pay attention to because they are shocking; a guy blows up his
family with a meth lab in the garage, or some woman buries her kids in her
suburban backyard. Rich-on-rich crime is
like water off a duck. We know that Raj
was just screwing other one-percenters and we could give a rat’s ass. It is like gang related crime. If a bunch of the baggy pants-sideways
hat-wife beater shirted-tattooed ding dongs want to shoot one another at a
wedding, so be it. If rich guy gets
richer by robbing some other rich guys, who cares?
We normally pay attention only when the gangs
actually come to our neighborhoods, or when the crooked traders tap our piddly
little retirement accounts. Lock the doors and buy gold buddy! It might get real interesting in the next few
years. Time to blow the cobwebs off some
dusty old social activism. Hooray for
the hippies!
