The Power of Protest at the Greengrocers

At DAVOS, yesterday, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, the smart, reality-based new leader of the free world referenced Václav Havel’s 80-page essay entitled, “The Power of the Powerless,” written in 1978.

It’s worth a read >>  https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/wp-content/uploads/1979/01/the-power-of-the-powerless.pdf

“The greengrocer has not committed a simple, individual

offense [by taking down the sign], isolated in its own uniqueness, but something incomparably more serious. By breaking the rules of the game, he has disrupted the game as such. He has exposed it as a mere game.  He has shattered the world of appearances, the fundamental pillar of the system. He has upset the power structure by tearing apart what holds it together. He has demonstrated that living a lie is living a lie. He has broken through the exalted facade of the system and exposed the real, base foundations of power. He has said that the emperor is naked.”

Bingo.

Ladies and gentlemen, the emperor is naked.

Donald Trump only has the power we give him by acquiescing and obeying in advance.  

Trump only has power if we live in fear of what might happen if we step out of line to help our neighbors who, in turn, might help their neighbors.

We are the power.  

We are who we have been waiting for.  

We only need be good neighbors, and join other good neighbors, to help each other achieve a common goal through honesty and reciprocity.

But first, we must take down the sign that says we will go along to get along.

We must take down the sign that says we will comply in advance.

We must show that we, the people, will show up in numbers too big to police and too many to jail.

We must refuse to obey illegal orders.

We must fight the secret police who are already so scared they dare not show their face or say their own name.

And we must let the corporate dragons hoarding huge piles of gold know that we see them and hold them complicit.  It is their money and their cowardice that has enabled this, every bit as much as the cowardice and insider trading of Congress.

The world only needs to stop buying US treasuries for it all to come crashing down.

Denmark’s fleet of Maersk container ships only need boycott the US for 6 months for the US economy to lose a trillion dollars.

The current world order, with Trump and the US on top, is as fragile as a soap bubble, and collectively and individually, we all hold the pin.