Oh, To Be Egyptian!

To all the would-be Wall Street occupiers, I get it. I understand. 

It sucks when someone looks cooler than you do.

All those Egyptians and Tunisians, bravely facing down the forces of oppression, brandishing signs and kuffiyehs…who wouldn’t be inspired? The campout in Tahrir Square looked like a blast, too.

So, we have signs and kuffiyehs, right? We can get tents and stoves and stuff for campouts, right? We can get on camera, fight the power, and come out on top as the world looks on in stunned approval, right?

And we – the educated, white American youth with enough time to go camp out at Wall Street - we’ve totally suffered the same kind of brutal, bare knuckled, strangling, adjective-defying repression as the struggling people of the Arab world, right?

Don’t get me wrong. I believe that there is something very wrong with the political system in this country. The level of corporate influence in our government is unacceptable, the partisanship stifling, and the disconnect between the governed and those who govern is quickly approaching oceanic proportions, just like the chasm between rich and everyone else. We must indeed send a message to our bankers and our politicians that their continued adulterous affair at our expense and on our dime will no longer be tolerated.

But taking over Wall Street a la Tahrir Square? That, in my mind, means that the protesters feel their experience to be analogous to those of the Egyptians, Tunisians, Syrians, and Libyans. That does a disservice to the Arab youth now overthrowing their rusted, pitted oligarchs, and does a dishonor to the ones who died in the process.

Frankly, the whole protest is kind of farcical. Why begin an anti-corporate movement on a Saturday, when the business establishments targeted are closed? Why make a stockbroker even happier that it’s the weekend? Why start an outdoor occupation when fall is upon us and an apparently brutal winter is just around the corner? The love affair between Wall Street and Washington is hardly a recent development.

And then there’s this, from the New York Times’ City Room blog.

“After a police lieutenant used a megaphone to tell those sitting on the sidewalk that they were subject to arrest the protesters got up and marched south.”

Arrest!? Oh spare us, sweet God of democracy! How awful it would be to spend a night in the Tombs, where we shan’t be beaten, tortured, have our families threatened, and possibly “be disappeared.” How awful it would be to lose an evening and bail money as the price of our convictions.

What bravery. What courage.

Maybe if the police had brought camels, the protesters would have made a stand. It would look a lot cooler.

My great grandfather once said that God is so plagued with unjustified tears that he has no time for the justified ones. (I’m sure he was quoting from somewhere.) The words seem rather a propos here.