Last night we had an interesting character come out to Hopkins as part of our Milton S. Eisenhower Symposium. The theme of this symposium is "America's Boundless Possibilities." From the start of the year, I found this theme interesting. We are in the middle of an international institutional crisis. Our country is finding itself increasingly isolated and increasingly powerless in a global order in transformation, in challenge from so many angles.
So, what does this have to do with Karl Rove and the awesome display of autonomy by a few protestors? Everything.
Karl Rove represents an era in this country's history that people who see the world like I do remember as the destruction of American ideals. That presidency unfortunately witnessed one of the saddest events in human history on 9/11/2001. However, instead of coming out of that tragedy with strength and integrity, we finished our own destruction. We allowed the people behind this event to turn us into monsters. Our government responded with a most violent attempt to reestablish its dominance in a reality that could no longer house our power. The consciousness of our people was hijacked and flown into a fiery and deadly explosion with Iraq and Afghanistan in our cross-hairs. We were convinced that the only way we could protect our identity from the evils of the world was to police the rest of the world. We didn't have to change; we could bomb the rest of the world into submission!
With the help of Karl Rove, we not only destroyed our identity, we also lost 4,485 American troops, 10,000 Iraqi troops and over 100,000 Iraqi civilians (with some reports suggesting over 600,000 dead Iraqi civilians). The numbers go on and on to reinforce the fact that we destroyed a country because we could not bare the possibility of losing our power; we would rather kill civilians and our own identity than lose influence in the world.
This is why I was so distraught when I saw Karl Rove get a standing ovation on Tuesday night. How could my fellow educated students stand in respect and defense of a man who was a key player in all this? How could they allow a man who architected the hijacking of the government and the murdering of innocent people for the sake of power feel welcomed in our campus? This is where the relation with the Occupy movement becomes clear.
The preceding explanation of the polarization of power can be applied locally as well. Our government was at first an institution that aimed to represent the people; it aimed to capture our identity, harness its power and use the ensuing energy to create a wonderful America. However, our actions here and abroad have changed the local landscape as well. We no longer provide for most of our people. The very forces that used to create jobs have used their global influence (which they go to war for) to move their energy outward. They have neglected their own people and care only about the reproduction of their status. They "work" merely to maintain their position of relative power in this country. No longer do they use their power to develop their home, but rather to prevent people from seeing the subordination upon which the local institutions are based. They infiltrated the media, education, government, the police, even our language. They dominate our thought. They have hijacked our consciousness. They tell us we are still working for an American dream that does not exist. They tell us we need them but all they do is use our resources for their own plunder. They keep us out-leveraged in this economic system so that we are afraid to say "no more." How many of you struggle simply to keep your mind focused on this paper as you read it? How many of you can't seem to think about one thing for longer than 5 minutes? This is no coincidence, but rather a historical phenomenon.
