A Sha Nah Nah Revolution?

One of the truly amazing things about capitalism is its ability to trivialize anything it touches.

We never thought much of Flower Power as a political force; but we thought even less of daisy-decals stuck onto beetles, which metamorphosed into sunny smiley faces which in the end became the Walmart logo.

Similarly, we have not been very sanguine about the ultimate prospects of the Occupy Movement, the collective impulse of which strikes us as being counter-historical and slotted for failure without or without a strategic program.

Nevertheless, we would like the movement to have a fair crack at its paragraph in history even if it yields no more than les evenements of '48, '72 or 68.

Instead, the Occupy Movement has been reduced to the level of fracas at the frat house. Will Bloomberg evict the occupiers? Will the occupiers re-takey Oakland's Frank Ogawa Plaza? Whose panties will get stolen this time?

You can bet your last doughnut that the cops have been ordered not to do something stupid, outrageous and escalatory like blasting a rubber bullet into some pretty coed's eye. They have no doubt been issued strategic doses of prozac to keep their aggro levels in check. The kleptocracy wants to keep things as "sha nah nah" as possible -- good clean tussle-fun between our dear raucus kids (learning all aboout democracy) and our stern but patient campus constables.

If only we could bring back the Everly Brothers...or at least the Kingston Trio. We could turn the "movement" into a post-millenial version of occupying a telephone booth.

The worst thing that could happen to the movement is that it be turned into a cultural artifact... a street version of Beach Blanket Babylon, the "world's longest running musical revue" now going on 40 years of repeat original outrageousness. At that point middle aged couples from Iowa come to Oakland or New York to watch the occupiers do their monthly park takeover.

We have met the revolution and it is ours. None of the world leaders are loosing a night's worth of sleep over indignados or ninety-niners. They are off tete a teteting, trying to figure how much inflation to impose on us in order to save the banks.

Occupiers circa 1959

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