You say you want a revolution? Guess what. It's here. Get the fuck out of the way.

Me and my old partner in chaos and confusion, the legendary Don Hickok will be heading down to merrie olde Manhattan this week to take part in the historic occupation of Wall Street. If life is to gain any meaning through the living of it, generally it's a good rule of thumb to be where history is being made at any given moment. That being the case, where else would you expect to find us? Looking through the window at at Rockefeller Center while the Today Show is being broadcast? I've got better things to do and better places to be thank you very much. As Chris Hedges put it so eloquently in a column posted on truthdig this past Thursday:

"There are no excuses left. Either you join the revolt taking place on Wall Street and in the financial districts of other cities across the country or you stand on the wrong side of history. Either you obstruct, in the only form left to us, which is civil disobedience, the plundering by the criminal class on Wall Street and accelerated destruction of the ecosystem that sustains the human species, or become the passive enabler of a monstrous evil. Either you taste, feel and smell the intoxication of freedom and revolt or sink into the miasma of despair and apathy. Either you are a rebel or a slave."

Damn! Wish I'd said that!

It would seem that the white noise that has been spewing from the plutocracy's castle-in-the-sky lo these thirty years has finally awakened the sleeping giant of the American Left. If they think they can put a stop to this revolution - through violence or intimidation - they obviously don't know much about history. Revolutions are unstoppable. Just ask Tzar Nicholas the Second. Just ask King Louis XVI - 0r Momar Khadafi. Putting a halt to a revolution is about as easy as trying to stop the sun from setting in the west this evening. Best of luck to them.

If you haven't heard what is now happening in New York's financial district, you are completely absolved. Although today marks the beginning of the third week of this protest, the so-called "liberal media" has pretty much ignored it. Had this been a hundred-or-so Tea partiers picketing the offices of the ACLU it would have been a different story; the coverage would have been round the clock. But thousands of people have been descending on Wall Street since September 17 and - with the exception of the New York papers, MSNBC and a handful of other outlets - it's like this isn't even happening. But it is happening. The billion dollar shit-hammer has hit the trillion dollar fan.

This should have happened twenty-five years-ago, but better late than never I suppose. The fact that it's finally happening is good enough for me. What took us so long to get our act together?

Unlike the Tea party spectacle (which was created and financed by FOX Noise and the Koch brothers) this is a real, honest-to-goodness grass roots movement. It's only a matter of hours before the right-wing scream machine puts out a statement blaming the whole thing on a plot cooked up by Rachel Maddow, Barbara Streisand, Ed Asner and the Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream Company. I can see Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh chartering several busloads of counter-demonstrators - "real Americans" - to come in and bust some commie/hippie heads. But in the long run, what is said or done to put this fire out will be akin to fighting an inferno with a bottle of Perrier water. This is for keeps, baby!

You say you wanna revolution? Well, you know, we all wanna change the world. Get ready for some serious change, friends. Get ready to face the dawn. I'll see you in Manhattan. This is gonna be REALLY cool!

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
tomdegan@frontiernet.net