filed under: revolutions are messy

The little dust-up that occured between Occupy Wall Street protestors (DC branch) and Americans for Prosperity tea-partiers over the weekend has gotten a little more attention in the last couple of days.  (link) Much of this stuff is underground, I think.  Perhaps much ado about nothing, except that in an election year, the stakes are fairly high.

The right has its base in the grass roots tax protests that began several years ago and have already been through an election cycle or two, calcifying into the Republican Party in a way that the Moral Majority once did.  Tax policy has now become the civic religion for them.  They are still driven by their religious roots, though.  Don't think for a moment that if the Republicans sweep the elections in 2012 those compulsions will not resurface.  Fifteen minutes after the Congress takes the oath, we will be feted to a new round of abortion controls and flag-burning bans and all of the old social issues that have been so important to the right over the years.  These issues have only been temporarily quieted by the economic storm.  The moralists won't be able to help themselves.  They will demand accountability of their representatives for having worked for their elections.  Still, at the moment, the talk is about economics, and they stand for deregulating and lower taxes and less spending and all of the things that drive a free markets approach to prosperity.

On the other hand, the left protestors want social justice.  They define their stance in a way that combines a class-based anger at the wealthy with their call for social programs.  Theirs is not a new movement either, just a newer iteration of the net-roots, the Seattle protests against globalism, and the like.  They, like their counterparts on the right, have added some new wrinkles with their calls for economic solutions to student loans and a host of other programs, all revoving around their language regarding a supposed stance in favor of "the 99%."  But the fact that they stood at the door of the AFP protest and pointed their fingers and shouted their slogans and epithets in the faces of common people seems to put the lie to the idea that they truly intend to achieve social justice for "all."  What they want is what they have always wanted, an approach to responsible government controls of corporate greed and a redistribution of the profits.  Anyone who stands in their way, whether by fact or ideology, is to be opposed.

So starts the revolution.  It is a time of anger, driven by the harsh economic times, managed by a President and a Speaker of the House playing a high stakes game of chicken with the economic fortunes of the country.  The crowds have grown larger than they were in protests from the recent past, or at least more vocal.  Feet are liable to grow entangled as the two groups march against each other. (link)

Revolutions are messy.  People get stirred up and act on their passions.  They feel angst and flail in frustration.  Given the clash of the OWS and AFP that occured over the weekend, it is unlikely to end with a prefered outcome, one in which a real revolution comes about.  Instead, the groups are simply sorting themselves out into their corners, calls for peace all around, the media shaming them into submission with cries about extremism and the need for organization.  And so we can propbably expect that OWS and the Tea Party will, like so many protestors before them, get sucked back into the parties.

But here is a question:  What would happen if the two groups found a way to march in the same direction?  Maybe meet at the Washington convention center and walk the mile or so it would take to stand in front of the US Congress and ask the representatives of the people and the corporate lobbyists they are holding meetings with to interrupt their meetings and come out and explain themselves... maybe have a real revolution.  Now that would be a real mess.

Or they could just tear at each other's throats for a while, shout their slogans, jostle around the margins, point fingers and incite and maintain the ongoing hatred between right and left... while both of those other two groups -- the politicians and the corporations -- laugh each other all the way to the bank.