Remember the 70s movie Network? In it, Howard Beale, a news anchor with declining ratings, goes off his rocker and starts ranting and raving, urging people to open their windows and scream with him, "I'm angry as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore." And they do, by the thousands. Craziness ensues.
Fast forward 35 years and the central streets and squares of Israel are filled with people quietly, cogently, and simply saying to the powers that be that we really are mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore. No shouting from the rooftops, no threats, just row upon row of honest citizens living in tents.link The sad part is that those in power are completely deaf to what is really being said.
People in power, especially those in government have asked the protesters - some tentatively and some dismissively - 'what do you want?' Expecting of course a list of demands that could be haggled over. What 'they' fail to get is that there is nothing specific that the demonstrators want. Oh sure, affordable housing, affordable education, Gilad Shalit back, you name it. But it all boils down to something very simple. We want our lives to belong to us.
How about taking a little less in taxes and returning a little more in tangible benefits? Would that be so hard, that they money that I pay in taxes might actually be used to my benefit? At the end of the day (and the days have been long indeed), the protesters want the government to understand that our lives are our own. That they money we make belongs to us and that they take some of it away, and not as is the case today, that they money we make belongs to the government and that they'll leave us some of it so that we can keep on making money for them.
To understand this simple truth, that our lives belong to us, would require for the government to change its collective mind. Not change its opinion or its position. Change its mind. Literally, stop thinking that an over-large, over-bearing, arrogant behemoth knows the solution to the country's problems, and start thinking that it, they, whatever, are here to serve us. To allow us to grow. The government is too large, it takes up to much space, it suffocates life, and for it to make the protesters happy, it'll have to shrink itself and its role in society.
This brings to mind yet another picture, Creature Comforts. In it, a very funny Brazilian panther explains in a sentence what the government of Israel simply cannot get through their collective head, "We need more space."
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In a few days Israel will shut down. No TV, no movies, no entretainment of any kind. No cars on the streets, absolutely no business open...
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There is a certain stately progression on the Day of Remembrance for the Fallen (Yom HaZikaron). Around 4 pm . TV programming starts ... -
I got called out on the one and only comment to the last entry. What would I do, where I in Bibi's shoes, or at least in his position...
"We want our lives to belong to us."
ReplyDeleteBen, I believe that is a universal truth of humanity, a characteristic of the human condition so deeply ingrained in us that at times we mistake our frustrations in our quest for this empowerment as angst over the mundane or even the trivial.
That you managed here to identify this as an (perhaps "the"?) simple, underlying impetus driving a general state of civil dissatisfaction often expressed through focus on a myriad of much more specific yet limited issues strikes me as akin to looking at the forest and seeing not just the trees as part of the forest, but perhaps also managing to peer INTO the forest of trees and discovering what actually lives there.
Anyone can look at waves of public protest and recognize that people are unhappy. We all have our favorite "issues", our lists of things we desperately want to see changed in our pursuit of what we view as progress. I tend toward political conservativism while others have different ideals. So what...we all have our opinions. Yet I understand, as I believe many others understand, that my world-view is just one of many, and that sharing our world requires us to compromise as often as not, and probably more often than not. So while I might, as others might, express my opinions on particular issues of interest (political or otherwise) through public outcry, protest, or other forms of self-expression, your post here successfully keys in on the fact that ultimately, the frustrations we express over this issue or that might often times be more accurately attributed to an underlying frustration at what we, the common citizens, desperately lack in politics the world over: a some measure of control.
I don't feel the need to run the world my own way; I don't feel the need to aways have my own way. Compromise is the way things should work in a diverse society. However, these days in the U.S. I find myself feeling a lot of the same concerns you expressed in this post with respect to an over-inflated governmental bureaucracy that is stifling the individual. I feel that I have no voice, because the politicians elected to represent me no longer seem to care about the needs or wishes of their constituents.
Case in point (and I'm not making any of this up): when the first massive stimulus bailout was presented to congress, I contacted my congressman and expressed my opinion on the issue, urging him to vote "no" on the bill for a number of specific reasons, which I stated at great length. The congressman ended up casting a "yes" vote, which I then assumed (silly, I know) must have meant that the majority of the feedback he received from his constituents had taken positions opposing my own views on the stimulus and what it would or wouldn't actually do to our economy. However, a week later I recieved a letter in the mail from said congressman, explaining that he had been contacted by XX thousands of constituents concerning the matter, and that even though 87% (not making that number up...it was actually in the letter) of those opinions had urged him to vote "no" on the bill, he had voted "yes" anyway because of reasons X,Y, and Z.
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(part two)
ReplyDeleteNevermind the fact that that particular stimulus bill didn't actually do what it was purported to do...making that point would take me on a tangent here from which I might not return. My point in relating the above anecdote is that hearing an elected official supposedly "representing" me admit flatly that he knowingly and intentionally voted in opposition to clearly communicated viewpoints of 87% of his constituents made me feel incredibly disempowered. I'm not so naive as to think that just because I take the time and trouble to write a lengthy letter to my congressman, things will always go my way. It isn't so much that I, personally, lost on the issue that concerns me...it's the knowledge that in this case the voice of the vast majority of citizens in our district concerned enough to attempt to get actively involved in the political process ended up meaning nothing to this elected official. And this isn't the only such example I can provide here for what, to me, is a disturbing trend--the loss of control to the individual.
I guess what I find particularly interesting in your post, Ben, is that your tackling the issue of political unrest in a country clear around the world, yet as I read your words I felt them applying directly to my concerns over what has been happening here in the U.S. politically in recent years as well. This suggests not only the common desire for individual empowerment, but also a common/global problem caused by democratic governments forgetting that their purpose is to serve the will of the people.
~Steve W