By David Simmons
Turn the sound down on the TV set and
you will be hard pressed to tell the difference among the current
street protests of Kiev, Caracas, Athens and Bangkok, or the earlier
ones in Dhaka, in Cairo, Dublin, Madrid ... the list goes on, and on.
This is no coincidence.
While the motivations of these protests
vary in detail, underlying all politics worldwide today is the
economic failure of democracy. After a brief spurt of progress in the
most successful democracies of Europe and North America, the economic
situation of working people went into decline in the early 1980s.
That, of course, was before democracy had even had a shot in much of
Asia, South America or Africa, and by the time places like Brazil,
Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia emerged from dictatorship, it
was too late. The global forces of reaction had won the day.
Everywhere we look, the picture is the
same. Wealth that briefly had begun to be redistributed toward the
working class has massively reversed. The income gap is vast
everywhere, and growing. No one disputes this, not even the ruling
class, whose most insightful economists can see this situation is
unsustainable on a small, overpopulated planet with dwindling
resources and where the very ecosystem is being disastrously
mismanaged for the infinitesimally temporary gain of a tiny few.
The great majority of people in a
growing number of regions see what is happening and are lashing out
in frustration. Every class is threatened; for the very poor, the
goal is the same as it ever was, simple survival. For the middle
class, it is to hold its ground, stop the slide back into poverty and
disempowerment, battling against foes real and imagined. For the
ruling class, it is to stay in power, sometimes in the belief they
can do actual good, but increasingly for power’s own sake, and
whatever security can be found in their gated communities.
There is no middle ground, and no
competent or incorruptible peacekeepers to call in. As we see this
week in Bangkok and Kiev, the police just make things worse. Here in
Thailand the right wing who perpetrated the current political clashes
have always counted on the military to restore order – which, by
their definition, is disfranchisement of the working and rural
classes – and it now appears imminent that they will get their
wish.
But it is simplistic to blame the right
wing. Democracy by definition is rule by the people, and the people –
mostly in the West – dropped the ball. We shirked our
responsibility. We accepted payoffs by wealthy corporations,
tolerated wage slavery abetted by (sometimes well-meaning) labour
unions, believed the lies of “fiscal conservatives”, and ignored
the signs of creeping rot in the just society our forebears had
sought.
As I watch the hourly newscasts,
interspersed between the images of violence in Kiev, Bangkok, Homs,
and much of Africa are those of drought on the US west coast, and
ferocious winter storms on the east coast. Huge sinkholes are
swallowing entire forests in England, and some motorways are closed
for fear they will be next. Ninety per cent of the world’s food
fish are gone. New technologies like fracking are celebrated as more
efficient ways to hasten the demise of civilization, if not Homo
sapiens itself.
Oh well, who cares. The new Formula One
season begins in a few weeks, and I’ll be out of this bad mood.
